11 Comments on “Mending Fences”   rss feed

1. Jeff on Dec 3rd, 2005 at 9:39 pm

   Clifford,

   Southern California “bleak Midwinter”?? Seriously? Have you forgotten Durham already?

   Jeff

2. Clifford on Dec 4th, 2005 at 1:41 am

   Jeff…it’s really cold here! Everyone’s wearing Ug boots. Wait….they do that in the Summer too. Never mind. (It is a actually quite cold in the evnings and mornings now, though.)

   I was talking about rain mostly. Lots of it.

   -cvj

3. Ed on Dec 4th, 2005 at 7:52 am

   My wife and I lived in Los Angeles for a little over 5 years, and those midwinters are not bleak compared to the gray, frigid winters in Minnesota (the “Great White South”). Think, “Fargo!” This week the lows are single digits and the highs are in the teens, and with any breezes, you get to experience subzero. Now that is cold!

   Much of my time in L.A. was in Venice Beach, but that was the late ’60’s early ’70’s, “man”. ;-P Even with my long hair (to just beneath my shoulder blades), I couldn’t have been too much of a “freak” as I remember most of it.

   Anyway, I really enjoy this, “Cosmic Variance” site as I have been fascinated with our cosmos for decades (Einstein, Bohr, Feynman (mainly his personality, Gell-Mann, etc.). Presently, I am reading Lisa Randall’s, “Warped Passages.” Anyone here have any opinions of her book?

4. Science on Dec 4th, 2005 at 8:12 am

   There is a slightly mean-hearted review of it here: http://members.lycos.co.uk/nigelbryancook/discussion.htm

   The problem is, Randall is the most highly cited person on arXiv.org, for her papers trying to get the gravity strength within the string theory framework. The arXiv.org won’t even host the gravity mechanism which works, predicting gravity right, although it has endless pro-Witten stuff. ‘String theory has the remarkable property of predicting gravity.’ – Edward Witten, April 1996 Physics Today.

   String critics like Woit are just frauds. Woit verified Witten’s work of 1979 some 20 years ago:

   ‘Using a clever current algebra and 1/N approximation argument (N=number of colors), in Nucl. Phys. B156 (1979) 269-283, Witten derived a formula for the eta-prime mass in terms of the second derivative of the vacuum energy as a function of the theta-angle (or, equivalently, the expectation value in QCD of the square of the topological charge operator). … my calculations gave a result showing that Witten’s formula was correct within the various uncertainties involved.’ - http://feynman137.tripod.com/

   This is why Woit has to attack the harmless string work of Motl and Susskind, while ignoring Witten’s M-theory claims. Woit actually said yesterday on Motl’s blog that Witten is as deserving as anyone else for work on QCD. What Woit can’t grasp is that QCD doesn’t excuse Witten from danaging gravity research by making unsubstantiated grandiose claims for strings.

   With the most outspoken “critic” of strings a closet Witten fan, what hope os there for validated gravity?

5. Clifford on Dec 4th, 2005 at 10:18 am

   HI Ed. I was moslty being ironic. However, if you had been here last year for the rain, you would know tha the term was not inappropriate. Sean reviewed Randall’s book somewhere. I forgot where. Use the search engine to find the reference, and also lots of chatter cencerning Randall and the book.

   Cheers,

   -cvj

6. Jeff on Dec 4th, 2005 at 1:10 pm

   Clifford,

   I’d pay good money to see you in Ug boots…..

   Jeff

7. Clifford on Dec 4th, 2005 at 1:30 pm

   Jeff, how much? I could use the money!

   -cvj

8. CapitalistImperialistPig on Dec 4th, 2005 at 5:51 pm

   Something there is that doesn’t love a wall… (or fence)

9. Science on Dec 5th, 2005 at 11:37 am

   Dear Clifford,

   When that post above was submitted, it came up “awaiting moderation”. I’m so glad that you don’t see the need to edit my objection to Woit’s excessive kindness to Witten! Unlike my previous posts, which you cut down to size

   Best wishes,
   Science

10. Clifford on Dec 5th, 2005 at 12:55 pm

    Dear Science,

    You’re mistaken in your belief that I’ve ever seen your comment before. This is the first time I’ve read it. Your other comments were cut down to size because of (1) being totally irrelevant to the thread, in combination with being (2) Ridiculously long, and so I asked you to post links to your own blog for comments such as that….

    Looking at this one I see that…… (1) It is not over-long…. but it is indeed irrelevant. I could cut it, but I won’t since it is amusingly demonstrating a totally flawed argument…… I don’t see how Peter Woit writing a paper in 1979 on Witten’s work on field theory makes him a fraud for criticising string theory 25 years later.

    That’s just so silly, if you don’t mind my saying so. So I’ll leave it up as entertainment.

    I repeat……it is silly. Silly. Silly.

    Cheers,

    -cvj

11. Jeff on Dec 5th, 2005 at 11:01 pm

    Science said:

    “With the most outspoken “critic” of strings a closet Witten fan, what hope os there for validated gravity?”

    I’d be happy to take the results of Science jumping off a cliff as a validation of gravity…

    JM

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