Ok video to summarize current theories. I’m still not onboard with quarks. As an experimentalist I don’t like a theory in which the primary participant, by design, is not able to be observed. The Standard Model is based on group theory which is a branch of math that “categorizes” symmetries. It’s very useful, but in the case of the SM doesn’t, to me, really give the actual physics. I once attended a seminar by a skeptical theorist who started out developing a quark model. What he didn’t tell the audience until the end it was a quark model for the solar system. Worked just as well as the Ptolemaic system, but hid the actual Newtonian/Einsteinian physics.
What is the actual physics? I’m guessing it will be revealed when QM and SR are reconciled, or a completely new picture emerges.
I’m encountering a new and somewhat disturbing phenomenon with my attempts at navigation in newneo-blog. My habit is generally to use the “recent comments” list of five at the near top right margin, where both last night and this morning I run into the problem. So, returning to the “recent comments” list I see a new comment by commeter “LL” in or under the title post “Trump announces reciprocal tariffs”. I click on that highlighted title expecting the window to load and load directly to the new post by “LL”.
The problem, or oddity causing my disturbance? A new window loads, sure enough, even loads the selected thread “Trump announces etc.”, but only loads to the top of the thread, and scrolling down to the bottom, only to the last entry at 7:28am by “Karmi”, with no “LL” post to be seen. That’s as of a few minutes ago. Last night I was encountering the same situation with posts by Huxley and Niketas (which posts were present this morning though not last night).
As I say, this is of a sudden onset and quite new phenomenon to me, so I remark it that it may be known to exist, rather than in any expectation that it should have to change.
sdferr – same here. I also use a lot of HTML, and recently it is not getting all the HTML I put in…yes, sometimes I make a mistake, but this is a new issue where it leaves off the closing of a HTML set.
is not able to be observed.
They are observed, but you won’t see an isolated quark outside of a proton or neutron. It isn’t that different than Rutherford discovering the nucleus by observing the scattering of alpha particles.
On the ytube video, I dunno how the rest of folks see it, but that still graphic of the cosmic-atom looks suspiciously like the plan view of a Reese’s peanutbutter cup to me. Mmmmmmm, reeeeeeese’s.
If the folks at DOGE want to look for wasteful spending, look no further than food stamps—EBT, Electronic Benefit Cards.
Chuck, how are they observed?? All we have is the postulate that a proton is made of 3 quarks. Yes, many scattering experiments say that this is so, but, as you say, no isolated quark is ALLOWED to be observed. Sorry, I don’t accept that. At the fundamental level a quark is part of the basis set of a symmetry group. So a proton can be described by a symmetry group. So what? That doesn’t imply that the basis set for that group is an actual physical entity unto itself rather than just a mathematical description of observed symmetries.
Yes, scattering experiments can imply the existence of the scattering center. Eventually we actually observed the nucleus. But when a theorist says I can’t actually observe an independent quark because of “confinement energy”, I’m not buying it.
As a follow up, Sabine just now put up a whopper of a video talking about how rotten high energy physics is:
When I came here, it didn’t show that there were comments. Then, I clicked on comments, and here we are.
Yahoo changed its email, again. It is terrible.
Very foggy here, high 20’s. Good day to stay in.
“Stop paying them” just might have a future, given half a chance.
So if they cant be observed its a hypothesis at this point
That doesn’t imply that the basis set for that group is an actual physical entity unto itself rather than just a mathematical description of observed symmetries.
As a non-physicist, but one who does mathematical modeling in another field, it sounds like the issue is testability. Is there any way that the experiments they run can reject the hypothesis? If not, then it’s not really scientific.
Jimmy,
The answer is unfortunately, yes and no. Many of the predictions based on quarks/Standard Model pan out experimentally. But, that doesn’t mean we have the right picture. I compare it to the pre-Copernican era where the Ptolemaic model of the solar system worked very well in predicting planet locations. And as better observations came out, the model was just adjusted to match the observations (more epicycles). And as new “particles” showed up in accelerators, some more quarks are added.
Then along came Copernicus/Kepler/Newton and blew the whole system that had worked for centuries away. I think we need a modern Copernicus for today.
• Danielle Sassoon, 38, resigned on Thursday as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York rather than drop a criminal corruption case against Adams.
• Sassoon, a member of the deeply conservative Federalist Society, is a rising star in legal circles. Six others are said to have stood down including Assistant U.S. Attorney Hagan Scotten, another conservative legal hotshot and a Special Forces veteran.
• In her resignation letter, Sassoon name-checked her former mentor Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative icon.
• The actions of Bove have set off alarm bells from conservative commentators, with several outlets publishing editorials condemning the Trump DOJ.
Rule of Law is about who controls it – President Trump controls it for now…
@ physicsguy > “Many of the predictions based on quarks/Standard Model pan out experimentally. But, that doesn’t mean we have the right picture.”
@ Miguel > “So if they cant be observed its a hypothesis at this point”
Kind of like “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…”?
From one who likes the Law of The Jungle.?
Or the Law of the Strongest ?
Nasty, brutish and short’ is a quotation from Thomas Hobbes’ book Leviathan, 1651 – not a firm of particularly unpleasant lawyers as some wags have suggested.
The fuller quotation of this phrase is even less appealing – “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”. Hobbes described the natural state of mankind (the state pertaining before a central government is formed) as a “warre of every man against every man”. In the book he outlines the ‘incommodites’ of such a war: …”
The DOJ is under the control of the president – not just Trump, but any president, who also appoints the AG of his choice. So it’s not surprising that decisions about whom to prosecute – always a function of a prosecutor’s discretion rather than a merely random selection – would align with the will of the president and the AG. Those who work beneath them either do what they say or resign; they’re not supposed to go rogue. It is not the least bit surprising that some would resign.
Also, The Federalist Society is actually a group with a libertarian slant.
I don’t think anyone would allege that the rule of law means there is no bias in the law. One bias – probably an inevitable one – is prosecutorial discretion.
I’m telling this story from memory, so I’m sure I’ll screw some of it up, but here goes. One of my favorite science writers is a man named Chet Raymo. Professional astronomer – the real deal. If you ever get the notion to learn the night sky better than you currently do, buy his book “365 Starry Nights”. It looks like a children’s book (he does his own illustrations) but it is packed full of useful info, but I’m getting off topic. As a young astronomer interested in the history of science he was investigating the Ptolemaic system, and realized there were no longer any experts on it. He could not find a colleague who could school him on exactly how to go about applying it. So he set about learning it himself (easier said than done), and after a lot of self education was able to use it to predict where the planets should be. He was stunned at how accurate it was. He assumed he’d be able to demonstrate its wrongness with his backyard telescope. He couldn’t. He needed much more detailed observations than he could make personally to find any deviation from the modern system.
We studied Euclid first (all the books), only then moved on to the Almagest.
As a follow up, Sabine just now put up a whopper of a video talking about how rotten high energy physics is:
Yep. A scorcher must-see for those interested in the state of much physics research. Though I might make a broader generalization myself.
Sabine reads a letter from an anonymous friend, who has essentially counseled Sabine against blowing the cover of all those nice researchers who know their work isn’t serious science, but is rather a nice cushy income and lifestyle.
A shame if anything happened to those nice pleasant arrangements.
I’ve never seen Sabine quite so indignant and strange-looking. She’s in a mostly white room, huddled in thick black clothing, speaking into a large black microphone, with her eyes flashing.
It’s as though she’s speaking from a fugitive attic, as a representative of the Science Resistance, getting the message out.
“Ghostbusters” — Dan Ackroyd speaking to Bill Murray
Personally I like the university. They gave us money and for some reason we never had to produce anything.
You’ve never been out of college. You don’t know what it’s like out there.
I’ve been in the private sector. They expect results.
“If Ukraine is going to survive as a sovereign country, their best hope is to settle under conditions that will be a bitter pill now than face a collapse with a dwindling GDP, a government deficit that will lead to hyper-inflation and the continued exodus of Ukrainian citizens.”
“…at any time Europeans can take over…” @Brian E
• 100% agree.
• I’ll add that I do not share the “concerns” that are being floated about how this conflict is settled will impact possible future conflict in Europe.
• Prior to the conflict there had not been a significant attempt by Ukraine’s neighbors to closely align themselves with Ukraine (see EU, NATO). And that reminds me of how in our personal worlds we might be civil to a family in our neighborhood, club, etc., but that does mean that we wish to be close to them – due to their behavior – or to involve ourselves in their misfortunes.
• When terrorist states, drug cartels, corrupt nations, etc. prey on each other the USA should not reflexively get involved to prove our “values” – especially when it is obvious that the involved parties do not share our “values” (see Elections, Opposition Groups).
• Part of determining a nation’s Interest & Security is differentiating between the Conceptual and Actual. And the actual nations matter – even if that is not publicly stated. Again, pay attention to “Who” Ukraine was before the conflict, How Ukraine’s neighbors responded, and How Ukraine handled our assistance – reflection of “Who” they are – and know that that is part of the USA’ stance on how to end the conflict.
om & neo: don’t push humble me—else this developing chaotic mess will get placed under the Weak category on the Trump Tally list…
welcome to the party sabine, and ‘i’m shocked shocked gambling is going on here,
shouldnt science theories be replicable, yes confusing faith with scientific proof, is a category error,’
Here’s an article on the Adams case and what’s going on in the DOJ. Makes some sense to me. I had previously read that the charges against Adams were underwhelming.
Initially it was just mathematics, I attended a lecture by Serber in the mid sixties that took that approach, but by 1968 evidence began to show up at SLAC. I attended a talk by Gell-Mann about that time that was sort on the edge. It was an interesting talk, Gell Mann was wined and dined before, and he came in a bit ruddy, took off his coat and tie and tossed them on a chair, and began to speak. The audience included T.D. Lee, Rainwater, Lederman, and Schwarz and everyone had fun.
However, I think the scattering evidence for the particles is pretty definitive at this point. I don’t know what you think is missing from the picture. Feynman was OK with that interpretation of the data, even if he called them Partons.
A new way to look at the evolution of human life here on Earth, which may mean that intelligent life evolving on other planets may be more likely than the current dominant “hard-step” evolutionary theory posits.*
Read Kate’s post from RedState.com before you get wound up about
The Rule of Law
and political prosecutors.
Speaking of Ptolemaic theories, dark matter/energy fit right in. AFAIK no one has been able to find a particle or atom of them despite their being supposedly a large fraction of the mass in the universe. How long will it be until DOGE turns their attention to physics funding.
@ Bob Wilson “dark matter/energy fit right in”
One of the speculations that I indulge in from time to time is a possible connection between dark matter and LDS theology.
A “folk quote” from Joseph Smith is “All spirit is matter, only more refined.”
How refined, we don’t know.
But, if there are a near-infinite number of spirits (before and after incarnation as mortals), undiscernible to human eyes, maybe they are what is causing the anomalies that lead to the hypothetical dark matter.
LDS theology also posits that the post-mortal righteous spirits (LDS and otherwise) will each reign over their own kingdom (solar system, galaxy, or even universe).
Which might explain why we keep discovering more and more and more and more..
The actual quote and its background are here: (for the ASCII code … in the source text, I have substituted the appropriate ellipsis …): https://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Matter
LINK: See this page in the original 1992 publication.
In the twentieth century, atomic theory has embodied a number of fundamental nuclear particles and powerful mathematical theories. Some, falling outside human intuition, account for properties of matter newly discovered in this century. Concepts have led to the development of unified quantum mechanical and quantum dynamic theories for both matter and light. The conservation law of Lavoisier has been extended to include all equivalent forms of matter and energy and still constitutes one of the primary pillars of modern science.
It is significant that the teachings of the restored gospel on the eternal nature of physical matter, along with a parallel in the spiritual realm, embody these conservation principles. These are key statements: “The elements are eternal” (D&C 93:33). “The spirit of man is not a created being; it existed from eternity, and will exist to eternity. Anything created cannot be eternal; and earth, water, etc., had their existence in an elementary state, from eternity” (Joseph Smith, in HC 3:387).
Addressing the issue of creation ex nihilo, Joseph Smith asserted in one of his final sermons: “Now, the word create…;does not mean to create out of nothing; it means to organize; the same as a man would organize materials and build a ship. Hence, we infer that God had materials to organize the world out of chaos-chaotic matter, which is element…;. Element had an existence from the time [God] had. The pure principles of element are principles which can never be destroyed; they may be organized and reorganized, but not destroyed. They had no beginning and can have no end” (HC 6:308-309).
Extending the concept of the eternal nature of matter to the substance of spirit, Joseph Smith revealed, “There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes; we cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter” (D&C 131:7-8).
…
In strict analogy to principles governing physical matter, the revelations to Joseph Smith stress that eternity for spirits also derives from the eternal existence of spiritual matter or elements. The preeminent manifestation of the eternal nature of both physical and spiritual matter is found in the eternal existence of God and ultimately his human children as discrete, indestructible entities. In this unique LDS doctrine, matter in all of its many forms, instead of occupying a subordinate role relative to philosophical paradigms, assumes a sovereign position, along with the principles and laws governing its properties and characteristics.
@ Bob Wilson > “How long will it be until DOGE turns their attention to physics funding.”
They are already inside the gates of the Department of Education, so it won’t be long before the “settled science” system of grants and sinecures are examined for every academic field.
Given Musk’s goal of sending settlers to Mars, he may go easy on the Sciences, but he ALSO knows if he’s looking at genuine investigations or bunkum.
Palmler Luckey, founder & CEO of Anduril, talks about the importance of manufacturing and how US reindustrialization can be accelerated:
@ David Foster in re Palmer Luckey’s Xweet (I really wish Musk had not mucked with the names):
“Trump instinctively understands this in a way that the globalist elites do not. They thought outsourcing everything was great. They’re against tariffs—why would you produce in a less efficient economy when you can manufacture wherever it’s cheapest according to global market dynamics? The problem is, they forgot that once you stop making things and your companies no longer produce anything, you lose all leverage—you’ve handed it away to everyone else.”
“Shouldn’t we wake up every day thinking, ‘Holy sh*t, everything I have right now is because Xi Jinping hasn’t decided to screw us yet’? And he will do it.”
@PalmerLuckey
”…he ALSO knows if he’s looking at genuine investigations or bunkum.”
Better than most, I would say, as his college major was physics, not engineering as most people assume.
It would take a much longer post than I care to write to explain fully, but I’m a bit skeptical of Sabine’s flame throwing. I’m sure there are lots of very smart (by standards of average intelligence) physicists, but mediocre (by standards of PhD’s in the hard sciences) who have learned to game the system and milk all the available grants and funding. I’m sure lots of money is being spent on scientists who will never produce any kind of breakthrough – their job is to write papers that lead nowhere.
But she often seems eager to indict the entirety of the state of science, and then provides scant evidence for her position. And yes, I have listened fully to her, and taken her seriously. But I have lost count of how many times I have listened to a two or three paragraph rant interspersing a bit of science and a lot of invective, and thought, I truly have no idea what she is talking about, and no, she didn’t lose me on the science.
But she often seems eager to indict the entirety of the state of science, and then provides scant evidence for her position.
Sour grapes, she isn’t that good a physicist. I wasn’t going to say it, but since you have started the conversation …
You may hate the crooks in the government, but you don’t hate them enough.
In November 2024, soldiers at Fort Carson, Colorado, were served a single slice of toast and a scoop of lima beans for dinner. Of the $22 million available to buy food at Fort Carson, only $5 million was used for that purpose. At Fort Hood, Texas, only two of ten dining facilities were open for service.
…
During 2024, the US Army siphoned off at least $151 million from the soldiers’ food budget and diverted it to other uses. A review of financial records from just 11 installations revealed that $151 million, or 67%, of the $225 million Congress allocated to buy food for soldiers living in barracks bought something else, though no one is exactly sure what.
…
This investigation by Military.com covers only 11 of the Army’s 104 installations, so the actual amount stripped from the budget to feed soldiers is much higher. The grift appears to have a local element because the diverted amounts vary wildly between bases.
The money is collected in what amounts to a tax on troops — taken from their Basic Allowance for Subsistence (BAS) payments, roughly $460 per month that is automatically deducted from the paychecks of service members who live in barracks and is intended to help cover food costs. For junior enlisted troops who earn about $30,000 annually, the cost can be consequential.
…
At Fort Stewart, Georgia, for example, soldiers contributed $17 million, but the base spent just $2.1 million — redirecting 87% of the funds. Schofield Barracks in Hawaii collected $14.5 million but used only $5.3 million, meaning 63% of the money was used elsewhere.
…
There is no moral or ethical justification for this level of theft, for theft is exactly what it is. Facilities and food service staff are paid for from different budget lines. The BAS money is, by law, dedicated to buying food for soldiers. It can’t be legally used for any other expense unless the Department of Defense goes to Congress and asks for a reprogramming of the funds.
This scandal represents an extraordinary betrayal of trust by the entire chain of command and the noncommissioned officer support channel. Everyone knew that not only was food in short supply but that the quality of the food was dog crap.
…
As the old saying goes, “Nothing is too good for the troops and that is exactly what we give them.”
Summarizing the comments indicates that (1) Secretary Hegseth needs to end this problem yesterday; (2) everyone in the Food Service chain of command, including the Base Commander, should be stripped of rank, fired, de-pensioned, and imprisoned with meals the same as the base was serving (those were the least extreme suggestions); (3) the meal costs should NOT be deducted in the first place (many soldiers with families are on Food Stamps, so we pay for them one way or another; (4) someone does in fact know where the money went, and DOGE needs to find it (suggestions of where to look first were proffered, none of them a surprise); (5) no wonder enlistment and retention numbers were in the toilet (in addition to the wokery).
For a thought experiment: imagine that Trump was accused of green-lighting the embezzlement (I’m sure he will be on CNN) – would the Regime Media devote any time to that, as they have NOT to this?
For another: imagine if the embezzlement was of funds for illegals or some welfare program (I’m sure there are cases*), and add “by Republicans” (see * again) – would the Regime Media REFRAIN from devoting any time to that?
The Military.com article notes that the problem has been known since at least 2020, and has been called out by at least two DEMOCRAT Congresscritters, but COVID derailed any investigations. The figures above are from the 2024 fiscal year. Even if it were happening under Trump, it’s extremely unlikely to have been brought to his attention, given the nature of the Swamp operating as nominal Republicans.
*PowerLine devoted a LOT of time and articles to a fraudulent “food for kids” contractor during Covid. The MSM ignored it as long as they could, because everyone involved was a Democrat.
They finally had to cover the trial of the ringleaders of a massive embezzlement of money that supposedly went feed Minnesota children unable to come to school for their meals.
Most of the claims of food served were fictitious, improbable on the face of the receipts, and ignored by the state’s overseers of the program.
DOGE needs to open a franchise office in every state.
Indeed, AF, it looks as though Joseph Smith beat Einstein to it…
…having anticipated him by a good half century…
E=MC(squared)
Where:
E = Esprit
M = Matter
C = the Spirit/Matter—AKA Spirituality—Constant
(Do they give retroactive/honorary Nobels?)
Meanwhile, does the name Victoria Nuland ring a bell?
==
She and her bag of pastries are an obsession with Unz dements.
@Mike Plaiss:He was stunned at how accurate it was. He assumed he’d be able to demonstrate its wrongness with his backyard telescope.
If Chet Raymo really thought the Ptolemaic system didn’t predict where to find planets, then he badly misunderstood the history. The Ptolemaic model was not superseded for being inaccurate–it’s just a device for computation and as such you can make it as accurate as you have patience for, just keep adding epicycles and equants until you get the right answers.
It was superseded for being post hoc. There was nothing in that system that could explain the moons of Jupiter. Sure, you could put in more epicycles and equants for the moons of Jupiter and shoehorn them in once you knew they were there. But it could never predict anything in the way that Newtonian gravity predicted Neptune from observations of Uranus.
Not everyone realizes how complicated the Ptolemaic model was. It wasn’t just the Earth in the center and everything going around it in circles. That WAS inaccurate, and obviously inaccurate. In the Ptolemaic system all the planets rode around on invisible epicycles that rode around on deferents and were offset by equants, and none of these things were physical objects. And more accurate astronomic observations got, the more of these ad hoc elements had to be added.
Open Thread Sunday: Vlad’s butcher bill, what did Stalin say about statistics?
Russian Casualties & Force Generation – Losses, Recruitment & Sustaining the war in Ukraine – Perun
00:00:00 — Opening Words
00:00:41 — What Am I Talking About?
00:03:35 — a Brief History
00:09:23 — Meet Your Trade Warriors
00:10:34 — Why a Trade War?
00:16:44 — Trade War Tools
00:30:37 — Making a Trade War Work
00:45:52 — Trade War Advantages & the US
00:55:25 — Forest Syndrome
00:59:45 — the Way Forward
01:00:59 — Channel Update
@AesopFan, Barry Meislin:Indeed, AF, it looks as though Joseph Smith beat Einstein to it…
In one of Issac Asimov’s essays, he showed that the myth of Zeus casting Hephaestos from Olympus was a prophecy of the establishment of Einstein’s theory of gravitation, right down to the very name of Einstein, as an exercise of the power of post-hoc rationalization.
Anybody can interpret words to kinda sorta sound like physical laws, but physical laws make quantitative predictions. Muslims love to claim the Quran predicts all findings of modern science, but it mysteriously only does so after those findings have been developed, usually by non-Muslims.
(In case anyone’s interested, there was a planet Vulcan, hypothesized in 1859, very close to the sun, that explained discrepancies in Mercury’s observed vs predicted orbit. No one could find Vulcan even though at every solar eclipse astronomers rushed out to try to catch a transit of Vulcan. Einstein’s theory of gravitation accounted for Mercury without the need for that planet, and the 1919 solar eclipse observations confirmed his prediction, so Einstein “cast Vulcan (Greek: Hephaestos) from the heavens”. Zeus as an infant was saved by wrapping up a stone and putting it in Zeus’ place. What does “ein stein” mean in German? “A stone…”)
Andrew McCarthy has a column up at National Review bewailing what he sees as Trump turning the DOJ into his “enforcer” which will “settle scores.”
To quote McCarthy: “Trump engaged in serious misconduct, regardless of whether it was actionable misconduct.” Yes, yes, now we know which side you’re on.
You can always count on the GOPe wing to undercut any meaningful push back against the left. They are good at railing against the little “excesses” of the left, but when someone who was an actual victim of leftist thuggery has his AG, Pam Bondi, assemble a commission to investigate and expose it, they oh so easily switch sides and prove their cowardice. They are such a disgusting lot.
I just watched the Sabine video so many here have referenced.
But Jesus, use your f***ing brain. Your problem is not that I am “making noise.” Your problem is that you are lying to the people who pay you. Your problem that you’re cowards without a shred of scientific integrity.
Odd. The words she uses in her attack of the state of scientific research would fit 100% into the current political debate about the light of transparency now shining on U.S. government spending.
This is a very unpredictable time. Strong forces are battling hard to bring the truth to light and they are being opposed mightily. And every day it seems more and more of us wake up to the importance of living an honest life grounded in truth.
And, unfortunately, this tumult will harm real people. I can’t recall any other time in my life where, based on current events, I can imagine a better future, a much better future. Yet, playing the same game forward I can also imagine great suffering and sorrow. So much of our “modern” lifestyle is based on materialism. When our ancestors went through economic downturns, the great depression, world wars… Most had strong community and family ties as a north star to weather their difficulties.
After watching Sabine’s video I wanted to refresh my knowledge of DUNE a bit. It will shoot a beam of neutrinos underground from Fermilab (outside Chicago) to a mine in South Dakota, about a mile underground, where detectors are currently being built.
The question that immediately jumped to my mind was, “How does one produce a “beam” of neutrinos?” They’re neutral and thus can’t be controlled by a magnetic field.
This is what I found and I thought others might find it interesting as well:
I wanted to just post the video, but couldn’t figure out how to do that. But if you scroll down just a bit, you’ll find it – cleverly labeled, “How to make a neutrino beam”
Niketas, Mike and physicsguy,
In my early teens I became very interested in Astronomy which led to learning a bit about Physics and then Chemistry. I was also interested in Classical Civilization and had a decent knowledge of Greek and Roman myths, which was useful in studying the constellations.
As I worked to attempt to understand more and more I ultimately came to a similar conclusion as physicsguy; modern physics reminded me a lot of Ptolemy and his system of cycles and epicycles and equants, etc… My understanding of Physics and Chemistry was very shallow, but still it seemed like theoretical Physics was doing the same thing Ptolemy was and the whole thing was getting rather unwieldy. When Copernicus wrote his paper on a heliocentric system his model was less good at predicting the location of celestial objects, but it was much closer to the truth. And much simpler. Occam’s razor, and all that.
Niketas,
Thanks for sharing Asimov’s essay on Zeus, Vulcan and Einstein!
Good comment, Rufus.
It might help to view what’s happening metaphorically, i.e., the country is the kidney, the Democratic Party is a sizeable kidney stone, and Trump/Musk/et al. are the medical team trying to get that kidney stone passed out of the body politic.
But that’s the very last thing that the Democrats want; in fact, they want to increase the size of that kidney stone so that it CAN’T be passed.
That they risk killing the patient in the process does not concern them because that has been their intention all along….
File under: First do NO HARM AS MUCH HARM as you possibly can while amassing total power and enriching yourselves in the process…
RTF,
Small quibble: i wouldn’t classify all of modern physics as Ptomlemaic. Condensed matter, atomic and molecular, optical physics, astro, etc are all in good shape. For me, it’s high energy and the Standard Model that are the problem.
Interest payments on the $36+ trillion debt is estimated at $952 billion in 2025 and $1 trillion in 2026.
Meanwhile the Treasury Dept will need to refinance $9.2 trillion in debt securities in 2025. This represents about 25.4% of the total U.S. government debt.
We’ll be borrowing the money to pay the interest debt.
and the whole thing was getting rather unwieldy
I have the opposite impression. What is unwieldy about the explanation of chemical bonds and conductivity? Is it unwieldy that the prediction of black holes and gravity waves was correct? Seems to me that describing the universe in terms of 17 fields is an advancement. It clearly isn’t the end, but it is a rather major simplification. That said, the mathematics is tough, but that could also be said of Newton’s mathematics back in the day.
One starting point for evaluating the current status is due to Fermi advising Dyson:
When I arrived in Fermi’s office, I handed the graphs to Fermi, but he hardly glanced at them. He invited me to sit down, and asked me in a friendly way about the health of my wife and our new-born baby son, now fifty years old. Then he delivered his verdict in a quiet, even voice. “There are two ways of doing calculations in theoretical physics”, he said. “One way, and this is the way I prefer, is to have a clear physical picture of the process that you are calculating. The other way is to have a precise and self-consistent mathematical formalism. You have neither.” I was slightly stunned, but ventured to ask him why he did not consider the pseudoscalar meson theory to be a self-consistent mathematical formalism. He replied, “Quantum electrodynamics is a good theory because the forces are weak, and when the formalism is ambiguous we have a clear physical picture to guide us. With the pseudoscalar meson theory there is no physical picture, and the forces are so strong that nothing converges. To reach your calculated results, you had to introduce arbitrary cut-off procedures that are not based either on solid physics or on solid mathematics.”
We’ll be borrowing the money to pay the interest debt.
US Govt Ponzi Schemes to Borrowing Money just “to pay the interest on debt” should all be Capital Crimes…
When do neutrino beams occur in nature, a pulsar
Most of the politicians would be in jail under these circumstances
We have been printing monopoly money for so long not because we dont tax enough but we spend too much the nadir was probably in the last four years
Mike
Thanks for that video of Dyson. I was struck by what he reported Fermi saying about ” parameters “. For me the original 3 quarks was impressive. But as more particles showed up more quarks were added. The quarks are Fermi’s parameters. Then there’s the color force..first 3 colors, then more. Epicycles.
Reality is like a RPG, things don’t exist until they are needed. We are not finding exoplanets, we create them by looking. Or something like that. Just don’t look at the spawn point or you will go mad.
No reality is observable by perturbations in gravity actual identification there are some aberrant patterns that suggest we might be in a simulation by i donf subscribe to that view
But you cant just come with a theory and determine the evidence afterward but that seems to be the pattern
“But you cant just come with a theory and determine the evidence afterward but that seems to be the pattern”
Well, actually that’s usually how it works. Make hypothesis, then see if the experiment either supports it, or not.
Seems to have her credentials in order:
____________________________________
Sabine has a Bachelor’s degree in mathematics and a PhD in physics. Her current work is mostly in the foundation of physics. She has written over 80 research papers on topics ranging from quantum gravity to particle physics, cosmology, astrophysics, statistical mechanics, and quantum foundations.
Her criticism of physics in that video is limited to current research in the foundations of physics, her speciality.
Note that Sabine is responding to a colleague, who presumes her criticism of physics is true yet cautions Sabine that her criticism could be damaging to the careers of the physicists involved — including her colleague.
As Rufus quoted Sabine earlier:
_________________________________
Your problem is that you are lying to the people who pay you. Your problem that you’re cowards without a shred of scientific integrity.
_________________________________
Either Sabine has substantially misrepresented her case or there is a serious problem here.
Barry,
I agree the best way out is through and honesty and transparency are vital to getting us on the right course.
There is going to be pain and many of the people who will be caught up in this are relatively innocent. Just a few levels down from the top of many of these NGOs are rank and file people with kids, mortgages, car payments…
Twice in my career I’ve had my meal ticket greatly disrupted by Federal government rule changes intended to “help” and protect workers like me and once I lost a good job because of government imposed lockdowns during the COVID pandemic.
Federal spending needs to be thoroughly examined and corrected, but we have to be cognizant that many of our fellow citizens will be getting difficult news and facing financial challenges. Compassion is warranted. The people that got wealthy off these schemes made bank, but, as in any organization, the support staff underneath were mostly just earning a working wage. As with all of us, a sudden, drastic disruption to their industry will be painful for them.
Margaret Brennan is functionally retarded. Why does CBS insist on placing a functional retard in such a visible political venue? It’s a puzzle.
Rufus: “Compassion is warranted. The people that got wealthy off these schemes made bank, but, as in any organization, the support staff underneath were mostly just earning a working wage. As with all of us, a sudden, drastic disruption to their industry will be painful for them.”
Agreed. I’m all for defunding the Dept. of Ed., Dept. of Labor, FEMA, HUD, USAID, NED, CFPB, CPB/NPR etc. etc. I’m glad Trump and DOGE are finally doing it. But I also lived and worked in the D.C. area. There are a lot of lower-level GS people, not just Senior Executive Service mucky-mucks, who will suddenly lose their livelihoods. And not just in D.C. and environs. You can say they’ll finally experience what their fellow citizens have been experiencing, for decades, in parts of the country that have been hollowed out and ransacked thanks to policies promoted by the D.C. ruling class and carried out by the agencies where ordinary staffers work. That’s true. But it’s not a cause for rejoicing. Innocents will, inevitably, be hurt. I think of the people I stood in line with, for hours, at the D.C. parking permit office ~35 years ago (I’m sure it’s all online now). Ordinary working people. The guy behind me in line was a government building security guard with a disabled child who could ill afford the hours he was not at work. Samantha Power will do just fine, even though she shouldn’t. People like him won’t.
Related:
…We have been printing monopoly money for so long not because we dont tax enough but we spend too much…
But hasn’t “Biden” and “his” merrye band of crooks and thieves demonstrated very vividly—AND COHERENTLY(!)—that it’s because “we STEAL (and LIE) too much”?
Trump Tally update – 2/16/25
Have been tough on President Trump after his recent ‘Neville Chamberlain’ negotiating moves towards Putin. However, the Trump Tally isn’t about joining either of the TDS or TCS choruses, i.e., the Trump Tally is Fair ‘n Balanced.
A majority of the American Left and RINOs hate Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) – President Trump said he is a “fantastic guy,” and I also like him. Hey, we think our Far-left dissidents are bad, but compared to Saudi Arabia’s dissidents ours are closer to a Mother Teresa. Trump has brought MbS in to host a summit between himself and Putin in Saudi Arabia – a most excellent move, tho I dislike the fact that Zelenskyy isn’t invited.
In the bigger picture here – Trump is building a stronger relationship with MbS, empowering MbS, whilst also opening negotiating ‘Doors’ for talks with Russia and Iran. A huge addition to the Trump Tally’sStrong category, IMHO…
Strong:
1) Pre-Jan 20 was very well organized w/ Trump quiet. CoS Susie Wiles has done a great job!
2) Quickly picked Admin & staff pre-Jan 20.
3) Inauguration Day 2025 shows total preparation made by good leader – unlike being unprepared during his first term.
4) Moved fast on illegal immigration promises – plus lots of helpful EO’s.
5) Have to give Trump a Strong on his choice of Pete Hegseth as SoD – and solid work by the GOP Senate to get him confirmed!
6) Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) continues to expose government waste, cutting regulations, and restructuring federal agencies. Early impact has been *AMAZING*!
7) Trump calls Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) a “fantastic guy,” and I also like him. Hey, we think our Far-left dissidents are bad, but compared to Saudi Arabia’s dissidents ours are closer to a Mother Teresa. Trump bringing MbS in to host a summit between himself and Putin is a great move – that also builds a stronger relationship with MbS, empowers MbS, whilst also opening negotiating ‘Doors’ for talks with Russia and Iran.
Weak:
1) Failed to end Russia-Ukraine war within 24 hours.
2) Re-designates Iranian-backed Houthis as terrorists – lets Iran continue to back them!?!
3) neo called it an “unforced error” on Trump’s part. Most commenters agreed. ‘Twas an internet vision of Trump starring as the Hare in ‘The Tortoise and the Hare’. Horrid response to Air collision above the Potomac – horrid response to a National Tragedy. Probably doesn’t bode well for confidence in his future response/s to a National Emergency…?
4) Still early into the Breaking News about ‘Second Buddy’ Putin and President Trump opening negotiations on Ukraine’s future; however, if this is Trump’s opening move in the negotiations, it is an incredibly ill-informed and/or naive one. Thusly, such an opening deserves a spot under the Weak category on the Trump Tally…Geez!?
5) President Trump may have been a *BIG* ‘wheeling-dealing fish’ in the New York pond, but it is starting to look like he is outta his league in bigger waters. His opening negotiations with Putin has earned him a comparison to Neville Chamberlain—an unfortunate comparison that seems to be sticking. To make matters even worse, ‘US officials have backtracked’ – that will be President Trump backtracking on his ridiculous opening negotiation offer to Putin of ‘Nato membership and US security guarantees were off the table for Ukraine’.
Does Karmi actually know anything about Nevil Chamberlain or just repeat catchy phrases?
One of them things ain’t like the other.
Does Karmi actually know anything about Nevile Chamberlain or just repeat catchy phrases?
One of them things ain’t like the other.
Back to the drywall.
Don’t wet yourself, om – what with all the stut-stut-stuttering ‘n excitement!
‘It would be great if Elon Musk could take a look inside Fort Knox just to make sure the 4,580 tons of US gold is there,’ the libertarian Zero Hedge news aggregator account posted to X. ‘Last time anyone looked was 50 years ago in 1974.’
Musk responded to the post with: ‘Surely it’s reviewed at least every year?‘
But Republican Sen. Paul of Kentucky said ‘nope‘ and invited Musk to ‘do it’ and have his DOGE staffers conduct an audit of the reserves located in the Fort Knox Army base.
I was struck by what he reported Fermi saying about ” parameters “
Friends and acquaintances sometimes pester me about my thoughts on climate change, because I’m the “science guy” in the circle of people they know. The problem is, the person doing the pestering has usually already made up their minds about it, and what they really want is for me to provide some confirmation. It is also nearly certain that this person has virtually no knowledge at all of mathematics.
How many free parameters are in the climate scientist’s model? A lot more than four, I’m sure. They can use that model to fit any curve they want. Where does one even begin to explain that to them?
sdferr,
Margaret Brennan: “You’re standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to commit a genocide.”
It’s beyond idiotic. It boggles one’s mind.
I guess her argument is, because humans often use speech as a component of motivating action and some human action is evil, quod erat demonstrandum, speech is evil?
In the wake of those layoffs, droves of former federal employees have packed up their bags and put their homes on the market, causing the average listing price to sink… In November, the median home in the nation’s capital was worth $699,000… By February, the median home value dropped 20 percent, bringing the price down to $560,000.
TKL found there are now nearly 8,000 homes listed for sale in the Washington, DC metro area, and almost half of them have been put on the market in the last 30 days.
…
‘I recently worked with a couple who bought their dream home with me a few years ago, but now they’re considering listing because they want to be closer to public transportation,’ said Stuart Naranch, a Redfin Premier agent in Washington, D.C.
‘They both work for the government and want a more convenient commute because they’ll need to return to in-person work soon.’
Jo Chavez, a Redfin Premier agent in Kansas City, Missouri said, ‘Since the inauguration, I’ve met with a few people, including one federal government employee, who are selling specifically because of anticipated return-to-office orders.
‘I also spoke to a client who was looking to sell and upgrade to a larger home, but he canceled those plans because he’s worried about losing his job due to restructuring of government jobs.’
Re: Tire inflator
Bought a new-fangled, USB-charging tire inflator about the size of a blackboard eraser. Only $60.
Pretty neat. Works with most cars, motorcycles and bicycles plus inflateable athletic equipment.
It’s getting harder and harder to find a working air pump at gas stations.
om: We need to stop fretting about Karmi. I’ve learned on the QT, through the grapevine, on the hush hush, that he could very well be a hidden world class debater and deal maker, which obviously explains his dismissal of Trump, the novice. Would that we had someone of his expertise at the helm and sitting across from Putin.
@Rufus, hubert:
Of course there are people who benefitting from the Swamp on the Potomac who won’t anymore. Of course some of those are “little people” who didn’t really do anything wrong.
Of course the legacy media is going to find every sob story they can. Seen and Unseen.
Unseen will be the house prices going UP in the areas the DC folks are moving TO.
Unseen will be the economic gains the rest of the country sees when the money taken from it in taxes is released to higher-value uses.
And for at least ten years now the legacy media line has been that house prices are too high and it’s not fair, yet all of a sudden they’re crying about houses coming down in the DC area? Won’t younger, poorer people now be able to buy better houses?
In the private sector people lose their jobs due to some slump in their business literally all the time, and I know Rufus acknowledged that.
And hubert, that guy in the DC parking permit office who made you all stand in line for hours, I sure HOPE he doesn’t have a job doing that anymore! His position was destroying the value of your time and that of hundreds of people if you think about your story.
Senator Rand Paul has asked DOGE to inventory our national gold reserve held at Ft. Knox.
Apparently the last major inventory was done some 50 years ago, and the records of seven of the last ten audits are reportedly “missing.”
Wanna bet that some of those bars of gold have somehow disappeared? *
The comment edit function goes AWOL from time to time. Tragic it was not being able to delete a just slightly earlier comment with a misspelling and incomplete thought.
Progress made on drywall.
Now if the voting power of the northern Virginia counties that adjoin or are nearby the District of Columbia is degraded by DOGE that would indeed be tragic (not) for Virginia.
Niketas: the guy behind me was standing in line like the rest of us. He wasn’t the functionary behind the window, whose job (I assume) no longer exists. And yes, it was a massive PIA and waste of time. But that was D.C. municipal government circa 1990, in the Marion Barry years. I certainly hope that particular ritual of living in D.C. is no more.
Re: The sadness of DC employees losing their jobs
It is sad.
It’s also sad to see the many closed storefronts in Albuquerque, San Francisco et al. and know that in each case the lifelong dreams and hard work of ordinary people went up in smoke during the Biden years.
I’m surprised that Harris got as many votes as she did.
@Hubert:the guy behind me was standing in line like the rest of us
I know I was talking about the guy behind the window who made you all stand in line. Those kinds of government jobs SHOULD go away.
Rufus, you don’t think Brennan means it was the free-speech absolutists who beheaded Sophie Scholl with a guillotine? Woah!
Certainly it is her right to do so, and the right of that share of the public willing to listen to hear her.
But what can we expect the outcome to be?
The public cannot know that she is presenting her case and her opponents’ cases fairly, and does not have the background knowledge needed to judge between them. Some percentage of them will have the illusion of understanding and go on to become crackpots, others will make a cult of personality and believe it because she says it, but not really understand anything.
Sabine cannot expect other physicists to change their minds by her talking to the public–she’d need to be talking to the physicists and I guess she thinks they won’t listen–so what is the outcome is she going to achieve? At best, the chance to vent, gratification to her ego, sell some books or get some clicks and associated influencer revenue, and eventually become a celebrity physicist like Neil deGrasse Tyson or Carl Sagan (hopefully smarter and less stoned). Is she hoping for some public outrage to cut off the grants or something? And if so, then what’s the next move that leads to better physics?
I don’t doubt the sincerity of her motives, I’m sure she wants better physics, I just don’t see how she’ll get there doing what she’s doing. Once you walk out the door of being a working-joe physicist and start being a talking-head physicist, your scientific influence wanes–you’re not doing the work and the ones who stayed behind are, and you just get further and further behind and less and less listened to, so you turn up the volume and the cycle repeats, and the crackpot element and the cult-of-personality among your followers doesn’t do any favors for your scientific reputation. Alternatively, you take the Sagan/Tyson route and become a propagandist for science, using your influence to get more funding for the physicists doing the work and the public thinks you’re a leading scientist, but you’re actually not.
Don’t know where she’s going to go, but there’s lots of ways to earn a living with what she knows how to do.
Just watched Midnight Cowboy for the umpteenth time. “Everybody’s Talkin’” is on the soundtrack. Fred Neil wrote the song but someone else sang it. Met Fred in Coconut Grove, FL thru some others I knew, who were major drug dealers—some had made major money supplying the drugs for the ‘69 Woodstock music festival. Big Woodstock click, with some knowing Michael Lang, and one living with Lang’s ex-girlfriend. Met a few musicians and/or their aides (people who did stuff for musicians like buy drugs or whatever) thru them. I was just a grower who sold my top stuff (Tops) to the BIG dealer as his personal stash. Sold my lesser stuff (mid ‘n bottoms) to two small dealers at Disney World—Disney World employees loved my product.
Fred was a great guy…lived in a modest home within a short walk to downtown Coconut Grove, where he would be most ever morning having coffee (?) on the outside area of the cafe shop there. Didn’t seem rich and heard his main money came from royalties from “Everybody’s Talkin’” – and apparently got something every time Midnight Cowboy was shown or bought (?). Lots of musicians would go thru the Grove—with many jamming with him—at a nearby club he frequented in the evenings. Popular with other musicians, but he just wasn’t into traveling, doing concerts, and/or whatever the big named musicians do.
Let’s see if Scotus steps in to stop the lawfare by district court judges. The appeal goes to chief justice Roberts who is known as an institutionalist.
Trump seeks Emergency SCOTUS Stay Of District Court TRO Preventing Termination of Senior Employee
A District Court prevented termination of Hampton Dellinger as head of the Office of Special Counsel. Emergency Application: “The United States now seeks this Court’s intervention because these judicial rulings irreparably harm the Presidency by curtailing the President’s ability to manage the Executive Branch in the earliest days of his Administration
Funny you should mention Carl Sagan. If you talk to biologists they will be happy to tell you that Lynn Margulis, his first wife, was a better scientist whose ideas were more influential. But who has heard of Lynn Margulis? Public fame doesn’t guarantee a reputation in the corresponding science community. There are exceptions, Newton and Einstein come to mind, but most scientists are invisible to the public.
Another physicist on YouTube comments on Sabine’s critique of fraud high energy physics:
Hossenfelder’s Bombshell: Fraud in High Energy Physics – Unzicker’s Real Physics
Heisenberg is nearly a household name, but I don’t know when that really came to be. Anyone know?
Unzicker’s cousin A.E. (RIP) was a friend of mine, an experimental physicist with the NRL back in the day. Good guy.
@Chuck:But who has heard of Lynn Margulis?
I have. I think she had one big idea, which is more than what most people get, but then spent most of her time since then being contrary (and a 9/11 Troofer).
She got plenty of awards and recognition, but not a household name I grant.
Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein are, in my opinion, the only scientists whose public stature matches their scientific stature. After them I’d put Maxwell and Dirac, but I’d have a hard time putting them in order, and the public has forgotten who they are. Emmy Noether is up there somewhere, but more of a mathematician, but not a household name and not even celebrated much by feminists. If we’re bringing mathematicians in, then Gauss and Euler.
@Mike Plaiss:Heisenberg is nearly a household name, but I don’t know when that really came to be. Anyone know?
Almost 20 years ago due to Breaking Bad.
Heisenberg (the scientist, not the TV character) was very controversial because of the part he played in either supporting Hitler’s efforts to get nuclear bombs or blocking them.
Opinions differ.
“Heisenberg’s War” covers the debate in terms of the events, but I don’t have any brief for the veracity of the author’s conclusions. It was a fascinating book, however.
Let us now praise a great biologist of our time, Lynn Margulis, who was outright dismissed for her big groundbreaking insight and won. She filled in a large, crucial hole in evolution which neo-Darwinists had missed.
Her theory challenged the prevailing view that all complex life evolved solely through mutation and natural selection. It is now widely accepted and included in modern evolutionary biology as a key event in the origin of eukaryotic life.
Lynn Margulis’ key insight was that mitochondria (and other organelles) originated as symbiotic bacteria that were assimilated into early eukaryotic cells, fundamentally driving evolution. This idea, known as the endosymbiotic theory, revolutionized our understanding of cell evolution.
Margulis proposed that mitochondria evolved from free-living aerobic bacteria that were engulfed by a larger host cell. Instead of being digested, these bacteria formed a mutualistic relationship, providing the host with energy in exchange for protection.
Traditional Darwinian evolution emphasized gradual genetic mutations. Margulis argued that symbiosis—organisms merging and cooperating—was just as important, if not more so, in driving evolution.
Margulis changed modern evolutionary theory. She’s one of my heroes.
Re: Heisenberg
Those forward-looking readers of science and science-fiction, we happy few, have known of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle since the 50s/60s.
“Speech is evil?”
No! No! No! SILENCE IS EVIL!
Oh.
Wait.
Evil is whatever Democrats say is evil.
Whnever…
”Heisenberg is nearly a household name, but I don’t know when that really came to be. Anyone know?”
One can know when that came to be or how fast that came to be, but not both. 😉
America’s recent initiatives regarding the Russia–Ukraine war suggest a worrying lack of coherent diplomatic strategy and method.
***
Ambiguities can be tolerated at an early stage in a peace process, though they must ultimately be resolved. The real concern is what these US initiatives convey about the coherence and quality of America’s diplomatic strategy and method. Four issues stand out.
Firstly, a contradiction runs through the United States’ approach. It has signalled that the US alone will negotiate an end to the war but also that Europe alone must pay for and enforce an outcome it has not played a role in deciding. Secondly, by declaring severe limits to the resources it will commit, America has pre-emptively weakened its negotiating position. The administration of Joe Biden was criticised for imposing red lines on its support for Ukraine. Its successor now seems to be doing the same to treaty allies. Thirdly, Trump’s urgency to end the war conveys further weakness. A patient Putin will seek to manipulate this haste by extracting concessions to end the fighting on his terms.
Finally, the administration’s framing of the war has abruptly shifted. On day three of his presidency, Trump suggested he would force Russia to negotiate by threatening more sanctions and a lower oil price – a policy that Hegseth and Bessent both namechecked in Brussels and Kyiv this week. Three weeks on, the US has now offered Putin the direct negotiations he craves while pressuring Europe by scaling back support. Europeans are reportedly finding it hard even to contact Trump.
All this suggests a worrying lack of diplomatic strategy and method. A major shift in US policy towards a dangerous war appears to be driven by impulse and instinct rather than a disciplined, coordinated inter-agency process – a product not of careful thought, but of the last person to have the president’s ear. Putin will work hard to make sure this person is him.
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Ok video to summarize current theories. I’m still not onboard with quarks. As an experimentalist I don’t like a theory in which the primary participant, by design, is not able to be observed. The Standard Model is based on group theory which is a branch of math that “categorizes” symmetries. It’s very useful, but in the case of the SM doesn’t, to me, really give the actual physics. I once attended a seminar by a skeptical theorist who started out developing a quark model. What he didn’t tell the audience until the end it was a quark model for the solar system. Worked just as well as the Ptolemaic system, but hid the actual Newtonian/Einsteinian physics.
What is the actual physics? I’m guessing it will be revealed when QM and SR are reconciled, or a completely new picture emerges.
I’m encountering a new and somewhat disturbing phenomenon with my attempts at navigation in newneo-blog. My habit is generally to use the “recent comments” list of five at the near top right margin, where both last night and this morning I run into the problem. So, returning to the “recent comments” list I see a new comment by commeter “LL” in or under the title post “Trump announces reciprocal tariffs”. I click on that highlighted title expecting the window to load and load directly to the new post by “LL”.
The problem, or oddity causing my disturbance? A new window loads, sure enough, even loads the selected thread “Trump announces etc.”, but only loads to the top of the thread, and scrolling down to the bottom, only to the last entry at 7:28am by “Karmi”, with no “LL” post to be seen. That’s as of a few minutes ago. Last night I was encountering the same situation with posts by Huxley and Niketas (which posts were present this morning though not last night).
As I say, this is of a sudden onset and quite new phenomenon to me, so I remark it that it may be known to exist, rather than in any expectation that it should have to change.
sdferr – same here. I also use a lot of HTML, and recently it is not getting all the HTML I put in…yes, sometimes I make a mistake, but this is a new issue where it leaves off the closing of a HTML set.
is not able to be observed.
They are observed, but you won’t see an isolated quark outside of a proton or neutron. It isn’t that different than Rutherford discovering the nucleus by observing the scattering of alpha particles.
On the ytube video, I dunno how the rest of folks see it, but that still graphic of the cosmic-atom looks suspiciously like the plan view of a Reese’s peanutbutter cup to me. Mmmmmmm, reeeeeeese’s.
If the folks at DOGE want to look for wasteful spending, look no further than food stamps—EBT, Electronic Benefit Cards.
* See https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=Co7BywoZE1c
and see also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR8zKOI1my4
*
Chuck, how are they observed?? All we have is the postulate that a proton is made of 3 quarks. Yes, many scattering experiments say that this is so, but, as you say, no isolated quark is ALLOWED to be observed. Sorry, I don’t accept that. At the fundamental level a quark is part of the basis set of a symmetry group. So a proton can be described by a symmetry group. So what? That doesn’t imply that the basis set for that group is an actual physical entity unto itself rather than just a mathematical description of observed symmetries.
Yes, scattering experiments can imply the existence of the scattering center. Eventually we actually observed the nucleus. But when a theorist says I can’t actually observe an independent quark because of “confinement energy”, I’m not buying it.
As a follow up, Sabine just now put up a whopper of a video talking about how rotten high energy physics is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shFUDPqVmTg
When I came here, it didn’t show that there were comments. Then, I clicked on comments, and here we are.
Yahoo changed its email, again. It is terrible.
Very foggy here, high 20’s. Good day to stay in.
“Stop paying them” just might have a future, given half a chance.
So if they cant be observed its a hypothesis at this point
Those words you are using
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1890064736123011335?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jh5X3rYQXg
==
Betsy Palmer was lovely.
That doesn’t imply that the basis set for that group is an actual physical entity unto itself rather than just a mathematical description of observed symmetries.
As a non-physicist, but one who does mathematical modeling in another field, it sounds like the issue is testability. Is there any way that the experiments they run can reject the hypothesis? If not, then it’s not really scientific.
Jimmy,
The answer is unfortunately, yes and no. Many of the predictions based on quarks/Standard Model pan out experimentally. But, that doesn’t mean we have the right picture. I compare it to the pre-Copernican era where the Ptolemaic model of the solar system worked very well in predicting planet locations. And as better observations came out, the model was just adjusted to match the observations (more epicycles). And as new “particles” showed up in accelerators, some more quarks are added.
Then along came Copernicus/Kepler/Newton and blew the whole system that had worked for centuries away. I think we need a modern Copernicus for today.
Right-wing media turn on Trump as Bondi goes scorched earth on conservative staff for refusing to bow to Eric Adams demands – less than a month into Trump’s second term ‘n here are some snippets:
Rule of Law is about who controls it – President Trump controls it for now…
@ physicsguy > “Many of the predictions based on quarks/Standard Model pan out experimentally. But, that doesn’t mean we have the right picture.”
@ Miguel > “So if they cant be observed its a hypothesis at this point”
Kind of like “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…”?
Especially for huxley:
https://notthebee.com/article/chatgpt-admits-christianity-is-true-in-shocking-response
Oh Noes! The Dread Rule Of Law!
From one who likes the Law of The Jungle.?
Or the Law of the Strongest ?
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/nasty-brutish-and-short.html
Karmi:
The DOJ is under the control of the president – not just Trump, but any president, who also appoints the AG of his choice. So it’s not surprising that decisions about whom to prosecute – always a function of a prosecutor’s discretion rather than a merely random selection – would align with the will of the president and the AG. Those who work beneath them either do what they say or resign; they’re not supposed to go rogue. It is not the least bit surprising that some would resign.
Also, The Federalist Society is actually a group with a libertarian slant.
I don’t think anyone would allege that the rule of law means there is no bias in the law. One bias – probably an inevitable one – is prosecutorial discretion.
I’m telling this story from memory, so I’m sure I’ll screw some of it up, but here goes. One of my favorite science writers is a man named Chet Raymo. Professional astronomer – the real deal. If you ever get the notion to learn the night sky better than you currently do, buy his book “365 Starry Nights”. It looks like a children’s book (he does his own illustrations) but it is packed full of useful info, but I’m getting off topic. As a young astronomer interested in the history of science he was investigating the Ptolemaic system, and realized there were no longer any experts on it. He could not find a colleague who could school him on exactly how to go about applying it. So he set about learning it himself (easier said than done), and after a lot of self education was able to use it to predict where the planets should be. He was stunned at how accurate it was. He assumed he’d be able to demonstrate its wrongness with his backyard telescope. He couldn’t. He needed much more detailed observations than he could make personally to find any deviation from the modern system.
We studied Euclid first (all the books), only then moved on to the Almagest.
As a follow up, Sabine just now put up a whopper of a video talking about how rotten high energy physics is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shFUDPqVmTg
–physicsguy
Yep. A scorcher must-see for those interested in the state of much physics research. Though I might make a broader generalization myself.
Sabine reads a letter from an anonymous friend, who has essentially counseled Sabine against blowing the cover of all those nice researchers who know their work isn’t serious science, but is rather a nice cushy income and lifestyle.
A shame if anything happened to those nice pleasant arrangements.
I’ve never seen Sabine quite so indignant and strange-looking. She’s in a mostly white room, huddled in thick black clothing, speaking into a large black microphone, with her eyes flashing.
It’s as though she’s speaking from a fugitive attic, as a representative of the Science Resistance, getting the message out.
“Ghostbusters” — Dan Ackroyd speaking to Bill Murray
Personally I like the university. They gave us money and for some reason we never had to produce anything.
You’ve never been out of college. You don’t know what it’s like out there.
I’ve been in the private sector. They expect results.
–“Ghostbusters on Academia vs. the Private Sector”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4394VCS7POE
• 100% agree.
• I’ll add that I do not share the “concerns” that are being floated about how this conflict is settled will impact possible future conflict in Europe.
• Prior to the conflict there had not been a significant attempt by Ukraine’s neighbors to closely align themselves with Ukraine (see EU, NATO). And that reminds me of how in our personal worlds we might be civil to a family in our neighborhood, club, etc., but that does mean that we wish to be close to them – due to their behavior – or to involve ourselves in their misfortunes.
• When terrorist states, drug cartels, corrupt nations, etc. prey on each other the USA should not reflexively get involved to prove our “values” – especially when it is obvious that the involved parties do not share our “values” (see Elections, Opposition Groups).
• Part of determining a nation’s Interest & Security is differentiating between the Conceptual and Actual. And the actual nations matter – even if that is not publicly stated. Again, pay attention to “Who” Ukraine was before the conflict, How Ukraine’s neighbors responded, and How Ukraine handled our assistance – reflection of “Who” they are – and know that that is part of the USA’ stance on how to end the conflict.
om & neo: don’t push humble me—else this developing chaotic mess will get placed under the Weak category on the Trump Tally list…
welcome to the party sabine, and ‘i’m shocked shocked gambling is going on here,
shouldnt science theories be replicable, yes confusing faith with scientific proof, is a category error,’
Here’s an article on the Adams case and what’s going on in the DOJ. Makes some sense to me. I had previously read that the charges against Adams were underwhelming.
https://redstate.com/streiff/2025/02/15/im-your-huckleberry-the-showdown-at-the-doj-corral-is-bigger-than-the-nyc-mayors-corruption-charges-n2185626
But, that doesn’t mean we have the right picture.
Initially it was just mathematics, I attended a lecture by Serber in the mid sixties that took that approach, but by 1968 evidence began to show up at SLAC. I attended a talk by Gell-Mann about that time that was sort on the edge. It was an interesting talk, Gell Mann was wined and dined before, and he came in a bit ruddy, took off his coat and tie and tossed them on a chair, and began to speak. The audience included T.D. Lee, Rainwater, Lederman, and Schwarz and everyone had fun.
However, I think the scattering evidence for the particles is pretty definitive at this point. I don’t know what you think is missing from the picture. Feynman was OK with that interpretation of the data, even if he called them Partons.
A new way to look at the evolution of human life here on Earth, which may mean that intelligent life evolving on other planets may be more likely than the current dominant “hard-step” evolutionary theory posits.*
* See https://www.popsci.com/science/alien-intelligence-likely/
Karmi:
I quake at you’re (not your) Weak threat.
Read Kate’s post from RedState.com before you get wound up about
and political prosecutors.
Speaking of Ptolemaic theories, dark matter/energy fit right in. AFAIK no one has been able to find a particle or atom of them despite their being supposedly a large fraction of the mass in the universe. How long will it be until DOGE turns their attention to physics funding.
@ Bob Wilson “dark matter/energy fit right in”
One of the speculations that I indulge in from time to time is a possible connection between dark matter and LDS theology.
A “folk quote” from Joseph Smith is “All spirit is matter, only more refined.”
How refined, we don’t know.
But, if there are a near-infinite number of spirits (before and after incarnation as mortals), undiscernible to human eyes, maybe they are what is causing the anomalies that lead to the hypothetical dark matter.
LDS theology also posits that the post-mortal righteous spirits (LDS and otherwise) will each reign over their own kingdom (solar system, galaxy, or even universe).
Which might explain why we keep discovering more and more and more and more..
The actual quote and its background are here: (for the ASCII code … in the source text, I have substituted the appropriate ellipsis …):
https://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Matter
LINK: See this page in the original 1992 publication.
@ Bob Wilson > “How long will it be until DOGE turns their attention to physics funding.”
They are already inside the gates of the Department of Education, so it won’t be long before the “settled science” system of grants and sinecures are examined for every academic field.
Given Musk’s goal of sending settlers to Mars, he may go easy on the Sciences, but he ALSO knows if he’s looking at genuine investigations or bunkum.
Palmler Luckey, founder & CEO of Anduril, talks about the importance of manufacturing and how US reindustrialization can be accelerated:
https://x.com/ShawnRyan762
A couple of useful sites on the subject of the corruption of the Democrat Administrative State.
https://judiciary.house.gov/media/in-the-news/house-weaponization-panel-releases-17000-page-report-exposing-two-tiered-system
Continual updates on the hard day’s nights working like a DOGE.
https://www.doge.gov/
Refresh the page if you are keeping it in your tabs.
Note to physicsguy: get ready to see more laments about real and potential job losses.
https://thenewneo.com/2025/02/15/why-is-the-democratic-party-continuing-to-move-to-the-left-when-even-its-own-voters-dont-want-it-to/#comment-2788515
@ David Foster in re Palmer Luckey’s Xweet (I really wish Musk had not mucked with the names):
”…he ALSO knows if he’s looking at genuine investigations or bunkum.”
Better than most, I would say, as his college major was physics, not engineering as most people assume.
It would take a much longer post than I care to write to explain fully, but I’m a bit skeptical of Sabine’s flame throwing. I’m sure there are lots of very smart (by standards of average intelligence) physicists, but mediocre (by standards of PhD’s in the hard sciences) who have learned to game the system and milk all the available grants and funding. I’m sure lots of money is being spent on scientists who will never produce any kind of breakthrough – their job is to write papers that lead nowhere.
But she often seems eager to indict the entirety of the state of science, and then provides scant evidence for her position. And yes, I have listened fully to her, and taken her seriously. But I have lost count of how many times I have listened to a two or three paragraph rant interspersing a bit of science and a lot of invective, and thought, I truly have no idea what she is talking about, and no, she didn’t lose me on the science.
But she often seems eager to indict the entirety of the state of science, and then provides scant evidence for her position.
Sour grapes, she isn’t that good a physicist. I wasn’t going to say it, but since you have started the conversation …
You may hate the crooks in the government, but you don’t hate them enough.
https://redstate.com/streiff/2025/02/15/army-siphons-over-151-million-from-soldier-food-buget-and-leave-the-troops-hungry-n2185616
Summarizing the comments indicates that (1) Secretary Hegseth needs to end this problem yesterday; (2) everyone in the Food Service chain of command, including the Base Commander, should be stripped of rank, fired, de-pensioned, and imprisoned with meals the same as the base was serving (those were the least extreme suggestions); (3) the meal costs should NOT be deducted in the first place (many soldiers with families are on Food Stamps, so we pay for them one way or another; (4) someone does in fact know where the money went, and DOGE needs to find it (suggestions of where to look first were proffered, none of them a surprise); (5) no wonder enlistment and retention numbers were in the toilet (in addition to the wokery).
For a thought experiment: imagine that Trump was accused of green-lighting the embezzlement (I’m sure he will be on CNN) – would the Regime Media devote any time to that, as they have NOT to this?
For another: imagine if the embezzlement was of funds for illegals or some welfare program (I’m sure there are cases*), and add “by Republicans” (see * again) – would the Regime Media REFRAIN from devoting any time to that?
The Military.com article notes that the problem has been known since at least 2020, and has been called out by at least two DEMOCRAT Congresscritters, but COVID derailed any investigations. The figures above are from the 2024 fiscal year. Even if it were happening under Trump, it’s extremely unlikely to have been brought to his attention, given the nature of the Swamp operating as nominal Republicans.
*PowerLine devoted a LOT of time and articles to a fraudulent “food for kids” contractor during Covid. The MSM ignored it as long as they could, because everyone involved was a Democrat.
They finally had to cover the trial of the ringleaders of a massive embezzlement of money that supposedly went feed Minnesota children unable to come to school for their meals.
Most of the claims of food served were fictitious, improbable on the face of the receipts, and ignored by the state’s overseers of the program.
DOGE needs to open a franchise office in every state.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/02/feeding-our-fraud-bock-to-the-future.php
Meanwhile, does the name Victoria Nuland ring a bell?
2 shooters you say?
Indeed, AF, it looks as though Joseph Smith beat Einstein to it…
…having anticipated him by a good half century…
E=MC(squared)
Where:
E = Esprit
M = Matter
C = the Spirit/Matter—AKA Spirituality—Constant
(Do they give retroactive/honorary Nobels?)
Meanwhile, does the name Victoria Nuland ring a bell?
==
She and her bag of pastries are an obsession with Unz dements.
@Mike Plaiss:He was stunned at how accurate it was. He assumed he’d be able to demonstrate its wrongness with his backyard telescope.
If Chet Raymo really thought the Ptolemaic system didn’t predict where to find planets, then he badly misunderstood the history. The Ptolemaic model was not superseded for being inaccurate–it’s just a device for computation and as such you can make it as accurate as you have patience for, just keep adding epicycles and equants until you get the right answers.
It was superseded for being post hoc. There was nothing in that system that could explain the moons of Jupiter. Sure, you could put in more epicycles and equants for the moons of Jupiter and shoehorn them in once you knew they were there. But it could never predict anything in the way that Newtonian gravity predicted Neptune from observations of Uranus.
Not everyone realizes how complicated the Ptolemaic model was. It wasn’t just the Earth in the center and everything going around it in circles. That WAS inaccurate, and obviously inaccurate. In the Ptolemaic system all the planets rode around on invisible epicycles that rode around on deferents and were offset by equants, and none of these things were physical objects. And more accurate astronomic observations got, the more of these ad hoc elements had to be added.
Open Thread Sunday: Vlad’s butcher bill, what did Stalin say about statistics?
Russian Casualties & Force Generation – Losses, Recruitment & Sustaining the war in Ukraine – Perun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja6-espHVSE
Last Sunday was late getting up
Trade Wars & How Nations Fight Them – Tariffs, Subsidies & the Risks of Trade Warfare – Perun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSXGUGFncgk
@AesopFan, Barry Meislin:Indeed, AF, it looks as though Joseph Smith beat Einstein to it…
In one of Issac Asimov’s essays, he showed that the myth of Zeus casting Hephaestos from Olympus was a prophecy of the establishment of Einstein’s theory of gravitation, right down to the very name of Einstein, as an exercise of the power of post-hoc rationalization.
Anybody can interpret words to kinda sorta sound like physical laws, but physical laws make quantitative predictions. Muslims love to claim the Quran predicts all findings of modern science, but it mysteriously only does so after those findings have been developed, usually by non-Muslims.
(In case anyone’s interested, there was a planet Vulcan, hypothesized in 1859, very close to the sun, that explained discrepancies in Mercury’s observed vs predicted orbit. No one could find Vulcan even though at every solar eclipse astronomers rushed out to try to catch a transit of Vulcan. Einstein’s theory of gravitation accounted for Mercury without the need for that planet, and the 1919 solar eclipse observations confirmed his prediction, so Einstein “cast Vulcan (Greek: Hephaestos) from the heavens”. Zeus as an infant was saved by wrapping up a stone and putting it in Zeus’ place. What does “ein stein” mean in German? “A stone…”)
Andrew McCarthy has a column up at National Review bewailing what he sees as Trump turning the DOJ into his “enforcer” which will “settle scores.”
To quote McCarthy: “Trump engaged in serious misconduct, regardless of whether it was actionable misconduct.” Yes, yes, now we know which side you’re on.
You can always count on the GOPe wing to undercut any meaningful push back against the left. They are good at railing against the little “excesses” of the left, but when someone who was an actual victim of leftist thuggery has his AG, Pam Bondi, assemble a commission to investigate and expose it, they oh so easily switch sides and prove their cowardice. They are such a disgusting lot.
I just watched the Sabine video so many here have referenced.
Odd. The words she uses in her attack of the state of scientific research would fit 100% into the current political debate about the light of transparency now shining on U.S. government spending.
This is a very unpredictable time. Strong forces are battling hard to bring the truth to light and they are being opposed mightily. And every day it seems more and more of us wake up to the importance of living an honest life grounded in truth.
And, unfortunately, this tumult will harm real people. I can’t recall any other time in my life where, based on current events, I can imagine a better future, a much better future. Yet, playing the same game forward I can also imagine great suffering and sorrow. So much of our “modern” lifestyle is based on materialism. When our ancestors went through economic downturns, the great depression, world wars… Most had strong community and family ties as a north star to weather their difficulties.
After watching Sabine’s video I wanted to refresh my knowledge of DUNE a bit. It will shoot a beam of neutrinos underground from Fermilab (outside Chicago) to a mine in South Dakota, about a mile underground, where detectors are currently being built.
The question that immediately jumped to my mind was, “How does one produce a “beam” of neutrinos?” They’re neutral and thus can’t be controlled by a magnetic field.
This is what I found and I thought others might find it interesting as well:
https://lbnf-dune.fnal.gov/how-it-works/neutrino-beam/
I wanted to just post the video, but couldn’t figure out how to do that. But if you scroll down just a bit, you’ll find it – cleverly labeled, “How to make a neutrino beam”
Niketas, Mike and physicsguy,
In my early teens I became very interested in Astronomy which led to learning a bit about Physics and then Chemistry. I was also interested in Classical Civilization and had a decent knowledge of Greek and Roman myths, which was useful in studying the constellations.
As I worked to attempt to understand more and more I ultimately came to a similar conclusion as physicsguy; modern physics reminded me a lot of Ptolemy and his system of cycles and epicycles and equants, etc… My understanding of Physics and Chemistry was very shallow, but still it seemed like theoretical Physics was doing the same thing Ptolemy was and the whole thing was getting rather unwieldy. When Copernicus wrote his paper on a heliocentric system his model was less good at predicting the location of celestial objects, but it was much closer to the truth. And much simpler. Occam’s razor, and all that.
Niketas,
Thanks for sharing Asimov’s essay on Zeus, Vulcan and Einstein!
Good comment, Rufus.
It might help to view what’s happening metaphorically, i.e., the country is the kidney, the Democratic Party is a sizeable kidney stone, and Trump/Musk/et al. are the medical team trying to get that kidney stone passed out of the body politic.
But that’s the very last thing that the Democrats want; in fact, they want to increase the size of that kidney stone so that it CAN’T be passed.
That they risk killing the patient in the process does not concern them because that has been their intention all along….
File under: First do
NO HARMAS MUCH HARM as you possibly can while amassing total power and enriching yourselves in the process…RTF,
Small quibble: i wouldn’t classify all of modern physics as Ptomlemaic. Condensed matter, atomic and molecular, optical physics, astro, etc are all in good shape. For me, it’s high energy and the Standard Model that are the problem.
Interest payments on the $36+ trillion debt is estimated at $952 billion in 2025 and $1 trillion in 2026.
Meanwhile the Treasury Dept will need to refinance $9.2 trillion in debt securities in 2025. This represents about 25.4% of the total U.S. government debt.
We’ll be borrowing the money to pay the interest debt.
and the whole thing was getting rather unwieldy
I have the opposite impression. What is unwieldy about the explanation of chemical bonds and conductivity? Is it unwieldy that the prediction of black holes and gravity waves was correct? Seems to me that describing the universe in terms of 17 fields is an advancement. It clearly isn’t the end, but it is a rather major simplification. That said, the mathematics is tough, but that could also be said of Newton’s mathematics back in the day.
One starting point for evaluating the current status is due to Fermi advising Dyson:
When I arrived in Fermi’s office, I handed the graphs to Fermi, but he hardly glanced at them. He invited me to sit down, and asked me in a friendly way about the health of my wife and our new-born baby son, now fifty years old. Then he delivered his verdict in a quiet, even voice. “There are two ways of doing calculations in theoretical physics”, he said. “One way, and this is the way I prefer, is to have a clear physical picture of the process that you are calculating. The other way is to have a precise and self-consistent mathematical formalism. You have neither.” I was slightly stunned, but ventured to ask him why he did not consider the pseudoscalar meson theory to be a self-consistent mathematical formalism. He replied, “Quantum electrodynamics is a good theory because the forces are weak, and when the formalism is ambiguous we have a clear physical picture to guide us. With the pseudoscalar meson theory there is no physical picture, and the forces are so strong that nothing converges. To reach your calculated results, you had to introduce arbitrary cut-off procedures that are not based either on solid physics or on solid mathematics.”
What criteria does the current situation violate?
Whatever we do, we must not look at the Congo: https://youtu.be/GKTr2YC_tcs
Thanks Chuck. More on Dyson and Fermi. This is gold!
https://youtu.be/hV41QEKiMlM
Brian E
US Govt Ponzi Schemes to Borrowing Money just “to pay the interest on debt” should all be Capital Crimes…
When do neutrino beams occur in nature, a pulsar
Most of the politicians would be in jail under these circumstances
We have been printing monopoly money for so long not because we dont tax enough but we spend too much the nadir was probably in the last four years
Mike
Thanks for that video of Dyson. I was struck by what he reported Fermi saying about ” parameters “. For me the original 3 quarks was impressive. But as more particles showed up more quarks were added. The quarks are Fermi’s parameters. Then there’s the color force..first 3 colors, then more. Epicycles.
Reality is like a RPG, things don’t exist until they are needed. We are not finding exoplanets, we create them by looking. Or something like that. Just don’t look at the spawn point or you will go mad.
Context to that kerfluffle
https://x.com/keny_berd/status/1890887470096511090
No reality is observable by perturbations in gravity actual identification there are some aberrant patterns that suggest we might be in a simulation by i donf subscribe to that view
But you cant just come with a theory and determine the evidence afterward but that seems to be the pattern
“But you cant just come with a theory and determine the evidence afterward but that seems to be the pattern”
Well, actually that’s usually how it works. Make hypothesis, then see if the experiment either supports it, or not.
As Feynman said:
https://youtu.be/OL6-x0modwY?si=I0MyiWx6TXU69K8_
Re: Sabine Hossenfelder
Seems to have her credentials in order:
____________________________________
Sabine has a Bachelor’s degree in mathematics and a PhD in physics. Her current work is mostly in the foundation of physics. She has written over 80 research papers on topics ranging from quantum gravity to particle physics, cosmology, astrophysics, statistical mechanics, and quantum foundations.
https://sabinehossenfelder.com/research-2/
____________________________________
Her criticism of physics in that video is limited to current research in the foundations of physics, her speciality.
Note that Sabine is responding to a colleague, who presumes her criticism of physics is true yet cautions Sabine that her criticism could be damaging to the careers of the physicists involved — including her colleague.
As Rufus quoted Sabine earlier:
_________________________________
Your problem is that you are lying to the people who pay you. Your problem that you’re cowards without a shred of scientific integrity.
_________________________________
Either Sabine has substantially misrepresented her case or there is a serious problem here.
Barry,
I agree the best way out is through and honesty and transparency are vital to getting us on the right course.
There is going to be pain and many of the people who will be caught up in this are relatively innocent. Just a few levels down from the top of many of these NGOs are rank and file people with kids, mortgages, car payments…
Twice in my career I’ve had my meal ticket greatly disrupted by Federal government rule changes intended to “help” and protect workers like me and once I lost a good job because of government imposed lockdowns during the COVID pandemic.
Federal spending needs to be thoroughly examined and corrected, but we have to be cognizant that many of our fellow citizens will be getting difficult news and facing financial challenges. Compassion is warranted. The people that got wealthy off these schemes made bank, but, as in any organization, the support staff underneath were mostly just earning a working wage. As with all of us, a sudden, drastic disruption to their industry will be painful for them.
Margaret Brennan is functionally retarded. Why does CBS insist on placing a functional retard in such a visible political venue? It’s a puzzle.
Another exercise in category error for malign reasons https://x.com/GPIngersoll/status/1891207314767528084
Rufus: “Compassion is warranted. The people that got wealthy off these schemes made bank, but, as in any organization, the support staff underneath were mostly just earning a working wage. As with all of us, a sudden, drastic disruption to their industry will be painful for them.”
Agreed. I’m all for defunding the Dept. of Ed., Dept. of Labor, FEMA, HUD, USAID, NED, CFPB, CPB/NPR etc. etc. I’m glad Trump and DOGE are finally doing it. But I also lived and worked in the D.C. area. There are a lot of lower-level GS people, not just Senior Executive Service mucky-mucks, who will suddenly lose their livelihoods. And not just in D.C. and environs. You can say they’ll finally experience what their fellow citizens have been experiencing, for decades, in parts of the country that have been hollowed out and ransacked thanks to policies promoted by the D.C. ruling class and carried out by the agencies where ordinary staffers work. That’s true. But it’s not a cause for rejoicing. Innocents will, inevitably, be hurt. I think of the people I stood in line with, for hours, at the D.C. parking permit office ~35 years ago (I’m sure it’s all online now). Ordinary working people. The guy behind me in line was a government building security guard with a disabled child who could ill afford the hours he was not at work. Samantha Power will do just fine, even though she shouldn’t. People like him won’t.
Related:
But hasn’t “Biden” and “his” merrye band of crooks and thieves demonstrated very vividly—AND COHERENTLY(!)—that it’s because “we STEAL (and LIE) too much”?
Trump Tally update – 2/16/25
Have been tough on President Trump after his recent ‘Neville Chamberlain’ negotiating moves towards Putin. However, the Trump Tally isn’t about joining either of the TDS or TCS choruses, i.e., the Trump Tally is Fair ‘n Balanced.
A majority of the American Left and RINOs hate Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) – President Trump said he is a “fantastic guy,” and I also like him. Hey, we think our Far-left dissidents are bad, but compared to Saudi Arabia’s dissidents ours are closer to a Mother Teresa. Trump has brought MbS in to host a summit between himself and Putin in Saudi Arabia – a most excellent move, tho I dislike the fact that Zelenskyy isn’t invited.
In the bigger picture here – Trump is building a stronger relationship with MbS, empowering MbS, whilst also opening negotiating ‘Doors’ for talks with Russia and Iran. A huge addition to the Trump Tally’s Strong category, IMHO…
Strong:
1) Pre-Jan 20 was very well organized w/ Trump quiet. CoS Susie Wiles has done a great job!
2) Quickly picked Admin & staff pre-Jan 20.
3) Inauguration Day 2025 shows total preparation made by good leader – unlike being unprepared during his first term.
4) Moved fast on illegal immigration promises – plus lots of helpful EO’s.
5) Have to give Trump a Strong on his choice of Pete Hegseth as SoD – and solid work by the GOP Senate to get him confirmed!
6) Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) continues to expose government waste, cutting regulations, and restructuring federal agencies. Early impact has been *AMAZING*!
7) Trump calls Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) a “fantastic guy,” and I also like him. Hey, we think our Far-left dissidents are bad, but compared to Saudi Arabia’s dissidents ours are closer to a Mother Teresa. Trump bringing MbS in to host a summit between himself and Putin is a great move – that also builds a stronger relationship with MbS, empowers MbS, whilst also opening negotiating ‘Doors’ for talks with Russia and Iran.
Weak:
1) Failed to end Russia-Ukraine war within 24 hours.
2) Re-designates Iranian-backed Houthis as terrorists – lets Iran continue to back them!?!
3) neo called it an “unforced error” on Trump’s part. Most commenters agreed. ‘Twas an internet vision of Trump starring as the Hare in ‘The Tortoise and the Hare’. Horrid response to Air collision above the Potomac – horrid response to a National Tragedy. Probably doesn’t bode well for confidence in his future response/s to a National Emergency…?
4) Still early into the Breaking News about ‘Second Buddy’ Putin and President Trump opening negotiations on Ukraine’s future; however, if this is Trump’s opening move in the negotiations, it is an incredibly ill-informed and/or naive one. Thusly, such an opening deserves a spot under the Weak category on the Trump Tally…Geez!?
5) President Trump may have been a *BIG* ‘wheeling-dealing fish’ in the New York pond, but it is starting to look like he is outta his league in bigger waters. His opening negotiations with Putin has earned him a comparison to Neville Chamberlain—an unfortunate comparison that seems to be sticking. To make matters even worse, ‘US officials have backtracked’ – that will be President Trump backtracking on his ridiculous opening negotiation offer to Putin of ‘Nato membership and US security guarantees were off the table for Ukraine’.
Does Karmi actually know anything about Nevil Chamberlain or just repeat catchy phrases?
One of them things ain’t like the other.
Does Karmi actually know anything about Nevile Chamberlain or just repeat catchy phrases?
One of them things ain’t like the other.
Back to the drywall.
Don’t wet yourself, om – what with all the stut-stut-stuttering ‘n excitement!
DOGE prepares gold reserve ‘audit’ after top Republican invites Elon Musk to review Fort Knox
I was struck by what he reported Fermi saying about ” parameters “
Friends and acquaintances sometimes pester me about my thoughts on climate change, because I’m the “science guy” in the circle of people they know. The problem is, the person doing the pestering has usually already made up their minds about it, and what they really want is for me to provide some confirmation. It is also nearly certain that this person has virtually no knowledge at all of mathematics.
How many free parameters are in the climate scientist’s model? A lot more than four, I’m sure. They can use that model to fit any curve they want. Where does one even begin to explain that to them?
sdferr,
Margaret Brennan: “You’re standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to commit a genocide.”
It’s beyond idiotic. It boggles one’s mind.
I guess her argument is, because humans often use speech as a component of motivating action and some human action is evil, quod erat demonstrandum, speech is evil?
Hubert,
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14403091/doge-mass-layoffs-median-home-price-washington-dc.html
Re: Tire inflator
Bought a new-fangled, USB-charging tire inflator about the size of a blackboard eraser. Only $60.
Pretty neat. Works with most cars, motorcycles and bicycles plus inflateable athletic equipment.
It’s getting harder and harder to find a working air pump at gas stations.
om: We need to stop fretting about Karmi. I’ve learned on the QT, through the grapevine, on the hush hush, that he could very well be a hidden world class debater and deal maker, which obviously explains his dismissal of Trump, the novice. Would that we had someone of his expertise at the helm and sitting across from Putin.
@Rufus, hubert:
Of course there are people who benefitting from the Swamp on the Potomac who won’t anymore. Of course some of those are “little people” who didn’t really do anything wrong.
Of course the legacy media is going to find every sob story they can. Seen and Unseen.
Unseen will be the house prices going UP in the areas the DC folks are moving TO.
Unseen will be the economic gains the rest of the country sees when the money taken from it in taxes is released to higher-value uses.
And for at least ten years now the legacy media line has been that house prices are too high and it’s not fair, yet all of a sudden they’re crying about houses coming down in the DC area? Won’t younger, poorer people now be able to buy better houses?
In the private sector people lose their jobs due to some slump in their business literally all the time, and I know Rufus acknowledged that.
And hubert, that guy in the DC parking permit office who made you all stand in line for hours, I sure HOPE he doesn’t have a job doing that anymore! His position was destroying the value of your time and that of hundreds of people if you think about your story.
Senator Rand Paul has asked DOGE to inventory our national gold reserve held at Ft. Knox.
Apparently the last major inventory was done some 50 years ago, and the records of seven of the last ten audits are reportedly “missing.”
Wanna bet that some of those bars of gold have somehow disappeared? *
* See https://nypost.com/2025/02/16/us-news/elon-musk-wants-to-crack-open-fort-knox-and-audit-the-gold-reserves/
and https://nybreaking.com/doge-prepares-gold-reserve-audit-after-top-republican-invites-elon-musk-to-review-fort-knox/
and https://survivethenews.com/sen-rand-paul-calls-for-first-fort-knox-gold-audit-in-50-years-taps-elon-musks-doge-for-verification-foia-requests-show-7-out-of-13-previous-audits-reportedly-missing-the-gatewa/
The comment edit function goes AWOL from time to time. Tragic it was not being able to delete a just slightly earlier comment with a misspelling and incomplete thought.
Progress made on drywall.
Now if the voting power of the northern Virginia counties that adjoin or are nearby the District of Columbia is degraded by DOGE that would indeed be tragic (not) for Virginia.
Niketas: the guy behind me was standing in line like the rest of us. He wasn’t the functionary behind the window, whose job (I assume) no longer exists. And yes, it was a massive PIA and waste of time. But that was D.C. municipal government circa 1990, in the Marion Barry years. I certainly hope that particular ritual of living in D.C. is no more.
Re: The sadness of DC employees losing their jobs
It is sad.
It’s also sad to see the many closed storefronts in Albuquerque, San Francisco et al. and know that in each case the lifelong dreams and hard work of ordinary people went up in smoke during the Biden years.
I’m surprised that Harris got as many votes as she did.
@Hubert:the guy behind me was standing in line like the rest of us
I know I was talking about the guy behind the window who made you all stand in line. Those kinds of government jobs SHOULD go away.
Rufus, you don’t think Brennan means it was the free-speech absolutists who beheaded Sophie Scholl with a guillotine? Woah!
Sabine is not the first physicist to appeal to the public that the other physicists are doing it wrong.
Certainly it is her right to do so, and the right of that share of the public willing to listen to hear her.
But what can we expect the outcome to be?
The public cannot know that she is presenting her case and her opponents’ cases fairly, and does not have the background knowledge needed to judge between them. Some percentage of them will have the illusion of understanding and go on to become crackpots, others will make a cult of personality and believe it because she says it, but not really understand anything.
Sabine cannot expect other physicists to change their minds by her talking to the public–she’d need to be talking to the physicists and I guess she thinks they won’t listen–so what is the outcome is she going to achieve? At best, the chance to vent, gratification to her ego, sell some books or get some clicks and associated influencer revenue, and eventually become a celebrity physicist like Neil deGrasse Tyson or Carl Sagan (hopefully smarter and less stoned). Is she hoping for some public outrage to cut off the grants or something? And if so, then what’s the next move that leads to better physics?
I don’t doubt the sincerity of her motives, I’m sure she wants better physics, I just don’t see how she’ll get there doing what she’s doing. Once you walk out the door of being a working-joe physicist and start being a talking-head physicist, your scientific influence wanes–you’re not doing the work and the ones who stayed behind are, and you just get further and further behind and less and less listened to, so you turn up the volume and the cycle repeats, and the crackpot element and the cult-of-personality among your followers doesn’t do any favors for your scientific reputation. Alternatively, you take the Sagan/Tyson route and become a propagandist for science, using your influence to get more funding for the physicists doing the work and the public thinks you’re a leading scientist, but you’re actually not.
Don’t know where she’s going to go, but there’s lots of ways to earn a living with what she knows how to do.
Just watched Midnight Cowboy for the umpteenth time. “Everybody’s Talkin’” is on the soundtrack. Fred Neil wrote the song but someone else sang it. Met Fred in Coconut Grove, FL thru some others I knew, who were major drug dealers—some had made major money supplying the drugs for the ‘69 Woodstock music festival. Big Woodstock click, with some knowing Michael Lang, and one living with Lang’s ex-girlfriend. Met a few musicians and/or their aides (people who did stuff for musicians like buy drugs or whatever) thru them. I was just a grower who sold my top stuff (Tops) to the BIG dealer as his personal stash. Sold my lesser stuff (mid ‘n bottoms) to two small dealers at Disney World—Disney World employees loved my product.
Fred was a great guy…lived in a modest home within a short walk to downtown Coconut Grove, where he would be most ever morning having coffee (?) on the outside area of the cafe shop there. Didn’t seem rich and heard his main money came from royalties from “Everybody’s Talkin’” – and apparently got something every time Midnight Cowboy was shown or bought (?). Lots of musicians would go thru the Grove—with many jamming with him—at a nearby club he frequented in the evenings. Popular with other musicians, but he just wasn’t into traveling, doing concerts, and/or whatever the big named musicians do.
Let’s see if Scotus steps in to stop the lawfare by district court judges. The appeal goes to chief justice Roberts who is known as an institutionalist.
Trump seeks Emergency SCOTUS Stay Of District Court TRO Preventing Termination of Senior Employee
A District Court prevented termination of Hampton Dellinger as head of the Office of Special Counsel. Emergency Application: “The United States now seeks this Court’s intervention because these judicial rulings irreparably harm the Presidency by curtailing the President’s ability to manage the Executive Branch in the earliest days of his Administration
https://legalinsurrection.com/2025/02/trump-seeks-emergency-scotus-stay-of-district-court-tro-preventing-termination-of-senior-employee/
@Niketas
Funny you should mention Carl Sagan. If you talk to biologists they will be happy to tell you that Lynn Margulis, his first wife, was a better scientist whose ideas were more influential. But who has heard of Lynn Margulis? Public fame doesn’t guarantee a reputation in the corresponding science community. There are exceptions, Newton and Einstein come to mind, but most scientists are invisible to the public.
Another physicist on YouTube comments on Sabine’s critique of fraud high energy physics:
Hossenfelder’s Bombshell: Fraud in High Energy Physics – Unzicker’s Real Physics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMTmnOx7RrA
Total time 06:11
Heisenberg is nearly a household name, but I don’t know when that really came to be. Anyone know?
Unzicker’s cousin A.E. (RIP) was a friend of mine, an experimental physicist with the NRL back in the day. Good guy.
@Chuck:But who has heard of Lynn Margulis?
I have. I think she had one big idea, which is more than what most people get, but then spent most of her time since then being contrary (and a 9/11 Troofer).
She got plenty of awards and recognition, but not a household name I grant.
Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein are, in my opinion, the only scientists whose public stature matches their scientific stature. After them I’d put Maxwell and Dirac, but I’d have a hard time putting them in order, and the public has forgotten who they are. Emmy Noether is up there somewhere, but more of a mathematician, but not a household name and not even celebrated much by feminists. If we’re bringing mathematicians in, then Gauss and Euler.
@Mike Plaiss:Heisenberg is nearly a household name, but I don’t know when that really came to be. Anyone know?
Almost 20 years ago due to Breaking Bad.
Heisenberg (the scientist, not the TV character) was very controversial because of the part he played in either supporting Hitler’s efforts to get nuclear bombs or blocking them.
Opinions differ.
“Heisenberg’s War” covers the debate in terms of the events, but I don’t have any brief for the veracity of the author’s conclusions. It was a fascinating book, however.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/211247.Heisenberg_s_War
Re: Lynn Margulis
Chuck.
Time out! Thanks for mentioning her.
Let us now praise a great biologist of our time, Lynn Margulis, who was outright dismissed for her big groundbreaking insight and won. She filled in a large, crucial hole in evolution which neo-Darwinists had missed.
Her theory challenged the prevailing view that all complex life evolved solely through mutation and natural selection. It is now widely accepted and included in modern evolutionary biology as a key event in the origin of eukaryotic life.
Lynn Margulis’ key insight was that mitochondria (and other organelles) originated as symbiotic bacteria that were assimilated into early eukaryotic cells, fundamentally driving evolution. This idea, known as the endosymbiotic theory, revolutionized our understanding of cell evolution.
Margulis proposed that mitochondria evolved from free-living aerobic bacteria that were engulfed by a larger host cell. Instead of being digested, these bacteria formed a mutualistic relationship, providing the host with energy in exchange for protection.
Traditional Darwinian evolution emphasized gradual genetic mutations. Margulis argued that symbiosis—organisms merging and cooperating—was just as important, if not more so, in driving evolution.
Margulis changed modern evolutionary theory. She’s one of my heroes.
Re: Heisenberg
Those forward-looking readers of science and science-fiction, we happy few, have known of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle since the 50s/60s.
“Speech is evil?”
No! No! No! SILENCE IS EVIL!
Oh.
Wait.
Evil is whatever Democrats say is evil.
Whnever…
”Heisenberg is nearly a household name, but I don’t know when that really came to be. Anyone know?”
One can know when that came to be or how fast that came to be, but not both. 😉
https://x.com/HaMeturgeman/status/1891324811172806799
Insurance fraud attempt – have to see it to believe it…
mkent @ 1:22
Nice
Ukraine: America’s diplomatic blitz