The h Bar

tpg2114

00:45

The TV show Ancient Aliens is perhaps one of the most entertaining "documentary" type shows ever

It is always spot on for a great laugh

David Z

01:24

0

Q: Where I can find a torsional stiffness table for different types of stainless steels?

I am trying to comparing the torsional stiffness of different types of stainless steels. I googled the keywords but I could not find any useful information. Would anyone please give me some links which provide those information?

That's not really a books question, but it's definitely not a reference-request. What to do? I'm thinking just drop books but I wanted to solicit input.

cc @Qmechanic

user54412

I thought reference-request was better than books, but I suppose the former isn't quite 100% defined (is it just for papers, or for tabulated data too?)

Qmechanic

@DavidZ : Remove the books tag if you think it is better.

@ChrisWhite : Please read the wiki tags for books and ref.req for a defintion. I would say it is more books tag than ref. req. tag. The point is that there is not just one canonical reference.

user54412

@Qmechanic I see what you mean, but I think we assumed those two tags partitioned the set of such questions, and this seems to have landed in a gray area in between, a data-request of sorts - not so narrow as a unique publication, but not so broad as to explain topics

user54412

perhaps one of the tag wikis can be edited to mention this type of question as belonging to them

user54412

@ManishEarth why would you be awake so early on a Saturday morning? :P

David Z

01:36

@ChrisWhite reference request is actually more precisely defined: it's for questions seeking a specific reference. It doesn't have to be a paper.

For example, "Does NIST publish a torsional stiffness table for different types of stainless steels?" would be a reference-request.

user54412

"Where can I find a torsional stiffness table" --> "What is the canonical source for torsional stiffness data?" --> "What is the canonical source for X?" (that last one is directly quoting reference-request, btw) - that was my line of thinking

ManishEarth

@chris Diwali.

Woke up quite a while ago. Or was woken up :p

David Z

@ChrisWhite ah well your first "-->" does not seem to follow. It's a significant change in the meaning of the question.

user54412

of course, as the answer points out, there's no such table anyway...

David Z

In this particular case, now that I think about it, we could convert it to "How can I find torsional stiffness values for different types of stainless steels?" That way it doesn't specifically ask for a reference.

user54412

01:40

@DavidZ true, but hopefully no one wants noncanonical sources :P

David Z

That is a slight change in the meaning of the question, but one that sidesteps this whole books vs reference-request issue while still hopefully giving the OP the answer s/he is looking for.

user54412

then again, I was just chastized by coauthors for using WMAP cosmology parameters rather than Planck - they called me out-of-date o.O

David Z

hehe

@ChrisWhite well actually, sometimes just any source will do. But the reason we have the tags as they are is that questions of that nature ("I just want some source, any source, for a value for X" or some such thing) are open-ended, and not really appropriate for the site.

ManishEarth

I think we've got a couple of those on chem which we closed as too broad

user54412

@ManishEarth I'm sorry to hear that holidays in India mean a reduction in sleep ;)

user54412

01:43

meanwhile, the US gets an extra hour of sleep this weekend

ManishEarth

Only some particular ones. I plan to sleep through the rest of the week.

David Z

oh hey, this is cool: the Scholarpedia article on the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy bound is curated by Bekenstein himself

3

ManishEarth

Nice

David Z

actually there are quite a few of them curated by the same people they're named after

user54412

there goes my productivity...

user54412

01:56

btw there's apparently a formatting error on the ADM formalism page (curated by D himself)

user54412

they wouldn't happen to have anonymous edit suggestions, would they?

David Z

Not anonymous, I think, but it looks like they do welcome minor edits. You just need to create an account.

tpg2114

03:35

@ChrisWhite That was my interpretation when I added the reference-request to it.

Crazy Buddy

03:54

Hmm... This question...

4

Q: Explain reflection laws at the atomic level

The "equal angles" law of refection on a flat mirror is a macroscopic phenomenon. To put it in anthropomorphic terms, how do individual photons know the orientation of the mirror so as to bounce off in the correct direction?

optics photons reflection

I've already explained in my blog: wp.me/p3OCmi-8k

But, I guess it's spam to say, "Come to my blog, I've explained it fully..!!!" :P

David Z

04:26

@CrazyBuddy No it's not. If you have a blog post that answers a question, it's a good idea to post an answer that links to your post. But you should also give the argument from the post in the answer as well, so that if your blog is inaccessible, the answer is still useful (and still constitutes an answer).

Like this:

25

A: Is a hard drive heavier when it is full?

I wrote a blog post about this some time ago. The answer is yes, but by a tiny amount that you would never be able to measure: something like $10^{-14}\text{ g}$ (roughly) for a typical ~1TB hard drive. That value comes from the formula for the potential energy of a pair of magnetic dipoles, $$...

Crazy Buddy

@DavidZ Yeah, I get your point. I should give an abstract of it :)

@DavidZ Hmm... Looks like I've read that one (Nice..!!!) :D

David Z

Not just an abstract, but the actual relevant content of the post.

Crazy Buddy

yeah, yeah... I get it ;-)

David Z

Actually I kind of like this one better:

5

A: Why would a fat skydiver fall first in free fall?

Ah, this gives me a chance to give a proper home to an analysis I first posted on Reddit. (I would much rather have first posted it here :-P) Mathematical derivation It all starts with a blog post I've written that comes very close to addressing the exact question you're asking. In the post, I ...

Crazy Buddy

Hmm... I haven't seen that one...

I think I didn't notice it because it has got only 5 votes :D

My answer-seeing is based on "votes", so it may probably come in the 20th page or so... (in your profile) :P

user54412

04:48

dmckee finally gets a neutrino badge

4

user54412

physics.stackexchange.com/help/badges/153/neutrinos?userid=520

Crazy Buddy

I think he's bored of neutrinos... Previously, his profile said, "These days I'm doing neutrinos"

Now, "Nowadays, I'm teaching" o_O

ManishEarth

05:10

@ChrisWhite you mean a cupcake badge

Crazy Buddy

Everyone shhhhh -- he's still watching us... Be careful, before he executes dmckee takedown :D

ManishEarth

05:37

stacky.net/wiki/…

Crazy Buddy

06:01

Anyone interested in reviewing my post? :D

0

A: Explain reflection laws at the atomic level

Recently I wrote a blog post on the topic, that how mirrors reflect in the atomic level - based on this post. Most of your question has already been addressed by the Physics.SE post I linked. Anyways, here goes... In classical electrodynamics, the phenomena can be explained when light is thought...

dj_mummy

06:34

Hey guys. The search engine hasn't narrowed my search much. Can anyone point me to a question that discusses the exact calculation of the refractive index of glass from it's molecular structure (being anistropic and all). Also, why where there so many arguments

dj_mummy

06:44

.* were there so many arguments on MSO? Why did this 'Vanished User' lash out so suddenly? If anything I think the moderators are a little too nice and lenient. But they and many other users are doing an excellent job. I mean they don't even get paid to do this stuff. This website is truly a 'wishing-fountain' which some are taking for granted. :D

2

dj_mummy

06:58

Call me old fashioned, but I think the internet is ruining the social skills of people. Politeness and civility are essential to mental health in the outside world. From what I have seen here, on TRF and on Meta. Dilaton and Abhimanyu PS (just 14 years old and so opinionated) are talented and enthusiastic youngsters, who have the potential to contribute immensely to physics. But they need to understand CIVIL DIALOGUE AND OPEN-MINDEDNESS ARE ALWAYS THE BEST WAY TO GO.

6

ManishEarth

07:09

@dj_mummy Molecular structure? I believe one needs ab initio calculations for that -- calculate the band structure and move on from that

...using le computer

@dj_mummy There's been a portion of the users on this site which disagree with a couple policies and events. There has also been a recent decline in quality, which led to a couple of user leaving. Some users feel that the decline is due to the current style of moderation

Thank you for your belief in us, though.

@dj_mummy Yeah, the Internet and anonymity changes a lot of our expectations.

UV-D

07:33

@dj_mummy well said and in my real-life experience of conferences, academic collaboration, seminars and the like, civility and open-mindedness is crucial to be able to maintain credibility

ManishEarth

@dj_mummy Where do you think we're too nice? If you check out meta there are quite a few constructive discussions going on, if you feel that we should be a bit more hard in a certain aspect of our moderation, feel free to tell me here or in meta. No promises of becoming stricter, but input is good :)

Anonymous

08:08

@dj_mummy nice towards the wrong people. towards trolls and cracks.

ManishEarth

@DImension10AbhimanyuPS Really? Nice towards trolls?

I agree that we don't always delete wrong answers. But you know why.

Crackpottery is different from posting wrong stuff.

dj_mummy

08:59

@ManishEarth I think that you moderators are nice, patient and lenient to everyone when handling bad queries and bad questions. That is wonderful. But at times you over justify yourselves to people too close-minded to understand (especially beginners). This is just a sinkhole for your energies. One should not need to insult and neglect beginners, but one must not repeat explanations all the time. But you guys are beginning to realize this, so it is becoming less of a problem.

ManishEarth

@dj_mummy Ah, I see (again, thanks for the compliment). When a site is in its formative stages, it's usually best to be as helpful and handholdy as possible. I moderate Chemistry as well, and we really try to do that there. On such a site it's not a waste of energy and leads to a very good atmosphere. But as a site grows to a size like Physics, you're right, it does become less and less useful to be extremely handholdy with newbies

Crazy Buddy

@dj_mummy Nah, they don't insult... Insult (in the sense?) o_O

dj_mummy

@DImension10AbhimanyuPS There are no such things as 'trolls' and 'cracks'. It is human nature to justify one's every action and thought. Often people are defend what is foolish and attack what isn't. But they are your fellow human

ManishEarth

@CrazyBuddy I think dj_ is trying to say that while we shouldn't insult users, we needn't be so nice to them either. Middle ground.

dj_mummy

....beings. Treat them with kindness. You don't have to feed their need for attention

Crazy Buddy

09:03

Agreed :)

dj_mummy

.....but you don't have to insult them or disrespect them either. That helps no one.

Crazy Buddy

@ManishEarth I guess our hbar is crowded most of the time, after that event :D

ManishEarth

To be fair, we do regularly get users trying to promote non mainstream theories (sometimes labelled as "cranks"/etc). But we have a very objective way of identifying and handling these things.

dj_mummy

@DImension10AbhimanyuPS Ron was too emotionally invested in his ideas to engage in dispassionate discourse. Try to imbibe his excellent qualities of analysis and understanding, not his poor social skills. 'Frankness' is not rudeness or dismissing of others. It is a careful balance that combines honesty and tact.

dj_mummy

09:19

@ManishEarth I don't like labels like 'cranks' much, but I agree that you guys handle it well.

ManishEarth

@dj_mummy Well, we don't call them cranks. Internally we may use the term kook or something, but externally we just call them non mainstream.

However other users do on meta, and I'm not too bothered by it when the user is indeed posting non mainstream stuff.

UV-D

well said @dj_mummy

Sklivvz

09:44

@ManishEarth I honestly think that's a big problem. Not the weird theories, that's easily dealt with by deleting and eventually sinboxing, but labeling people instead of labeling answers is not correct or useful. While most of them only post shit, and it doesn't make a difference on the general level, it creates a "label" you can use to shut people up by insulting them. E.g. "Don't listen to this guy, he's a crank!" is not the height of reasoned discourse.

ManishEarth

@Sklivvz exactly. This. This. Again, this.

Sklivvz

I am saying this out of experience, at skeptics we do get our large share of weirdos but there's no "crank" calling.

ManishEarth

Actions, not users. Behaviors, not people.

(copied from Shog)

Sklivvz

Also, very very rarely, you actually turn one of them around to the light side.

Nick Kidman

hi

not been here for >6 months I think

ManishEarth

09:48

Oh hey, @Nick! :D

Anything up?

Nick Kidman

I'm up, barely.

ManishEarth

haha

Nick Kidman

had 5 hours of sleep

actually, I said that I hang around in this hackerspace right - I sleep there sometimes

if it's 4o'clock in the morning and I don't want the 1h trip home

ManishEarth

ah

Nick Kidman

and 1 hour ago they kicked me out of the bed because they want it for hacking

Crazy Buddy

09:50

@NickKidman Welcome to the club. We don't sleep at all :D

ManishEarth

I do that sometimes. Many times these days. When in my university I sometimes stay at the department and sleep instead of coming back

Nick Kidman

by which I understand they play counterstrike

ManishEarth

@CrazyBuddy Not sure if you know Nick, but he used to be pretty active. Also was my first interaction on SE

@NickKidman hahaha

Nick Kidman

hehe

Crazy Buddy

@ManishEarth All I know is that he's a user :P

Nick Kidman

09:51

I just asked a statistical physics question 5 minutes ago

I am a user!

of Club-Mate

ManishEarth

@NickKidman heads over with the downvotes

Nick Kidman

but I doubt people know it outside of central europe

ManishEarth

@NickKidman are you sure of that? Do you even know if you exist? :o

@NickKidman I don't

Nick Kidman

semantics

Club-Mate

Club-Mate () is a caffeinated carbonated mate-extract beverage made by the Loscher Brewery (Brauerei Loscher) near Münchsteinach, Germany, which originated in 1924. Club-Mate has 20 mg of caffeine per 100 ml. Club-Mate has a relatively low sugar content (50 g/kg), and low calories (20 per 100 ml of beverage), compared to other beverages such as cola and other energy drinks. Club-Mate is available in 0.33 and 0.5 litre bottles. History Geola Beverages of Dietenhofen, Germany originally formulated and marketed Club-Mate under the name Sekt-Bronte. The drink was only known regionally un...

Crazy Buddy

Computer's hanging often :/

I hit backspace, and it goes outta h-bar sigh (twice)

Nick Kidman

09:53

heads over with the downvotes?

Also, I'm not really much less a user than before

a little bit, but not like I'd not know Crazy buddy

ManishEarth

@NickKidman I was jokingly saying that I am heading over to downvote your question :P

Nick Kidman

btw. it's funny how your names are similar in spirit

ManishEarth

It's a nice one though.

@NickKidman ?

Sklivvz

Pussy (energy drink)

Pussy is a carbonated energy drink produced by Pussy Drinks Ltd in the UK. The drink and brand were created by Jonnie Shearer around 2004. In April 2013 part of the advertising campaign for Pussy was banned in the UK by the Advertising Standards Authority for being sexually explicit. Ingredients Pussy is made from carbonated water, sugar, grape juice, and a mixture of herbs and other fruit. Its caffeine content comes from guarana. Pussy is advertised as "100% natural" as it does not contain artificial additives. History Jonnie Shearer came up with the idea of a natural energy drink afte...

ManishEarth

@Sklivvz O.o

Nick Kidman

09:55

Fucking Hell

Fucking Hell is a German Pilsner or pale lager. It is named after the village of Fucking in Austria. It is brewed by the Waldhaus Brewery located in the Black Forest. The ale's name was initially controversial, as the ale was objected to both by the local authorities in Fucking and by the European Union's Trade Marks and Designs Registration Office. It was eventually accepted and the lager is now sold internationally. Fucking Hell is a Pilsner with an alcohol content of 4.9%. History In 2010, two German businessmen, Stefan Fellenberg and Florian Krause, applied to register a Community...

(I'm from Austria btw.)

Crazy Buddy

Flagging everything as offensive..!!!!

Oh no, I'm surrounded by mods -_-

ManishEarth

hah

Go to the DMZ and start flagging, much better flag food there.

@NickKidman nutella!

Crazy Buddy

@NickKidman Is that you? o_O

Nick Kidman

ya

ManishEarth

his profile says he's an actress though :P

Nick Kidman

09:58

where is the contradiction?

sexist pig

ManishEarth

hah

@NickKidman did you just mix alcohol and nutella?

Nick Kidman

why do you think theres alc in it?

it's a ice tea/soda with much much cofffein

ManishEarth

oh

that makes more sense

Nick Kidman

it's extremely popular with hackers, at least in gemany

ccc, if you know em

Chaos Computer Club

The Chaos Computer Club (CCC) is Europe's largest association of hackers. The CCC is based in Germany and other German-speaking countries. The CCC describes itself as "a galactic community of life forms, independent of age, sex, race or societal orientation, which strives across borders for freedom of information...." In general, the CCC advocates more transparency in government, freedom of information, and the human right to communication. Supporting the principles of the hacker ethic, the club also fights for free universal access to computers and technological infrastructure. Histo...

Sklivvz

Love CCC

Nick Kidman

10:01

where I am right now, it's actually not of the ccc family but another hackerspace

but well, they have a mate-automaton in the kitchen anyway of course

ManishEarth

@NickKidman ccc? I know them, participated in the SIGINT CTF held by CCC a few months ago

Nick Kidman

don't know what that is

can I not delete the pictures here? e.g. the one of me

ManishEarth

@NickKidman sure, I can delete that for you

Nick Kidman

kay

ManishEarth

you can only delete stuff less than 5 minutes old, you have to flag older messages for deletion

(also, done)

Nick Kidman

10:04

I mean I only semi-care, it's too late for privacy in this world now

ManishEarth

11

Q: SIGINT CTF 2013 starts Friday 5 July 16:00 GMT (ended, including write-ups!)

Let's participate in the SIGINT CTF 2013 as team Sec.SE. During this years SIGINT in Cologne the CCCAC will hold it's second CTF. The competition is open to everyone and can be played online. Challenges will be online from July 5, 18:00 CEST until July 7, 18:00 CEST (48h). As always...

discussion ctf

Nick Kidman

I'm not sure what it's about still

>As always, obey the CTF etiquette and don't ruin other player's fun.

what do you play?

also, what do you do in india?

Crazy Buddy

@NickKidman Mario :D

Nick Kidman

so back to business, what are you guys up to?

what do you study?

and is Physics.SE going to hell?

Crazy Buddy

@NickKidman Not today :)

@NickKidman Engineering --> Both of us

Luckily, he's got much Physics -- but, I ain't -_-

Nick Kidman

10:09

Crazy Buddy

Hah..!!!! :D

So, you'll be active in our chat from today?

Nick Kidman

not if it's about posting wikipedia links and gifs

Crazy Buddy

Hey..!!! You're doing that :D

Nick Kidman

that one was just too suitable

ManishEarth

@NickKidman You basically have to hack a bunch of systems in a team

Nick Kidman

10:14

which system

ManishEarth

@NickKidman I'm a sophomore engineering physics student, though the EP program in my college focuses on Physics as do I.

@NickKidman various ones

Capture the flag (CTF) in computer security

Nick Kidman

@ManishEarth Yeah, but do you hack actual systems of other people who don't know

?

ManishEarth

nope

The challenges are set up by the organizers (in this case the CCC-AC)

Nick Kidman

I can't properly code..

when it comes to programming, my interests are on the very extreme theory side of it

like

toothycat.net/~hologram/Turing/HowItWorks.html

ManishEarth

ooh, compsci

Nick Kidman

10:25

I usually call it philosophy

Nick Kidman

10:36

@ManishEarth: >editing my question

Anonymous

11:17

@Sklivvz Nope. I (or anhyone else) have not judged their posts by their other postsd. But it makes sense to call people trolls/cracks, when people refer to the t/c's works which are trolling/crack.

Sklivvz

Right, so you wouldn't mind if I call you a troll then?

Anonymous

Not if you told me why.

Sklivvz

11:30

to troll: "submit a deliberately provocative posting to an online message board with the aim of inciting an angry response."

(according to google)

Nick Kidman

people should use the word crank here

imho

Sklivvz

crank "an eccentric person, especially one who is obsessed by a particular subject." <- that applies too

so @DImension10AbhimanyuPS would you mind being called a crank and a troll? You post provocative messages and are quite obsessive about the site rules, you'll have to admit

Mad Scientist

Ron Maimon is a conspiracy theorist and crackpot, but I never called him that (excluding now). I find pointing out the specific claims that are wrong to be much more useful than labeling the person.

Nick Kidman

Shouldn't! I wanted to say people shouldn't use it.

i.e. not throw it around like that all the time

ManishEarth

@NickKidman haha

Nick Kidman

11:43

>conspiracy theorist

that's social convention

ManishEarth

Some people do, on meta. This is the first time I've ever seen the above two users using it.

Nick Kidman

e.g. some people say that Aids don't exist. that's crazy, essentially. but it's not like I know people with aids, really, and it's not like I have any idea of how it really works. I have school education. if someone has any suspicion that Aids don't exist, then I'd be like "okay", but I don't see a point in offending that person. I don't think it affects anyone - only if many people believe it. But if he makes many people believe it, then I hope it's because there's some truth behind it.

Sklivvz

right, you might feel at home on skeptics.stackexchange.com

Nick Kidman

why would I

I think it's a waste of time

ManishEarth

@NickKidman Skeptics.SE is about getting referenced answers

Nick Kidman

11:49

@ManishEarth: so?

ManishEarth

It's not what the name sounds like :P

Nick Kidman

I don't really like the "skeptics" circle, because it's just a group with their own favorite subject opinions, I feel

ManishEarth

@NickKidman ah

Nick Kidman

I like the idea of skepticism, as written down, but e.g. many american atheists who call themselves skeptics only do so because they live surrounded by non-atheists and so they feel enlightened (by their own inteligence), while not being skeptic further than arriving at atheism

but I don't like to read the word crank here etc., because it's just bullying of the majority

ManishEarth

@NickKidman I feel that way too

Nick Kidman

11:54

When it comes to physics, it's even more complicated. E.g. this "Reformulation instead of Renormalization" guy who posted a lot here a lot 3 years ago - he has his own toy understanding of QFT and gives strange answers. from the reactions, I judge that his ideas are not worthwhile ... but yeah, that's really only because of the way he's treated and also how he behaves - not because I read his work

ManishEarth

@NickKidman Again, skeptics.SE isn't exactly a circle of skeptics. It's a circle of people who want referenced answers. What usually is touted as "conspiracy theories" don't have a place on the site

@NickKidman good point

Nick Kidman

let me put it this way: nobody wanted Boltzmanns crazy ideas of atoms - and he ended up hanging himself, yay

ManishEarth

hah

Nick Kidman

Cantor was given massive amouts of shit too

in fact, I'd go as far as saying I don't want to trade with these giants of science - they were all depressive

being a scientists sucks

unless you write multiple autobiographies about how smart you are and get yourself a reputation of fucking your students - then people like you

ManishEarth

@NickKidman apparently that's pretty common, actually. Not sure of the veracity of that, read it in the papers which always sensationalize things

Nick Kidman

12:01

well I have no students, but we have much in common anyway

e.g. he's an actress too

jinawee

@ManishEarth I read Dimension's question.

Should I avoid this type of comments:

This is just nonsense. — jinawee Jun 16 at 13:56

-1

A: Mass of particle near light speed in a medium

the mass of an object increases closer to the speed of light because you can not pass the speed of light and the more energy you pump in, it will be converted to mass as the equation predicts "E=MC2" and this the cause for time dilation, because gravity is inversely proportional to time.

0

A: Conversion of mass and energy

This is about mass energy equivelance. Which means a body of mass m can have energy E by this relation. The reason why can't we get this from iron is just because it would produce so much heat that is unbearable.

ManishEarth

@jinawee yep.

jinawee

This answer is nonsense. If you could transform iron into energy so easily, iron would be the deadliest weapon in the world. — jinawee Jun 22 at 23:22

ManishEarth

If you think it is wrong, say that it is wrong and explain why. Or just downvote and move along.

jinawee

ok, I'll do that in the future

ManishEarth

12:05

If you think it is non mainstream, tell them something like this:

Nick Kidman

@jinawee: "Should I avoid this type of comment?" ... don't you think it's obvious what answer you'd get

"Mr. police officer, should I wear a helmet or should I just not really care, what is your suggestion?"

ManishEarth

> Unfortunately, we only accept mainstream physics in questions and answers here. See here for more details.

Nick Kidman

If you think it is non mainstream, tell them something like this: "We don't want your hipster scum here"

ManishEarth

hahaha

Note that a wrong answer that claims to work within mainstream physics is OK, just downvotable. If an answer claims to use a theory which turns out to be nonmainstream, flag.

jinawee

@NickKidman Well, I started posting that type of comments because I had seem them here. And I wasn't quite sure if the first answer could be deleted.

Nick Kidman

12:09

I use 4chan regularly, I have a hard time with etiquette

ManishEarth

heh

Nick Kidman

nobody cares there

jinawee

xD

ManishEarth

@jinawee Yeah, that's the kind of problem we try to avoid. A couple of such comments encourage more of them. Thanks for asking me :)

Nick Kidman

boards.4chan.org/sci/res/6126259#p6130302

It's "prove", isn't it.

Well, me no good englisch

jinawee

12:18

Runned a query: data.stackexchange.com/physics/query/edit/145757

Now I understand what people are talking about Ron

Nick Kidman

namely?

jinawee

"This answer is utter crap.", " This is nonsense, -1, and please, please, unaccept it.", etc

Nick Kidman

his 'QM and Renormalization (layman)' answer gives me a hardon

PS: Have you read Rons profiles on different SE pages.

hilarious

Philosophy:

I consider myself a logical positivist, although I have never read the logical positivists. I read a little philosophy from time to time, always by skimming (so as to avoid having an aneurysm from getting pissed off). I believe the field is bankrupt intellectual fraud, with a handful of honest practitioners who didn't achieve any progress, because they are drowned out by impressive sounding political clowns. The honest folks are Russell, Carnap, Dennett, and I can't think of anybody else.

Biblical Hermeneutics: I like translating the Hebrew of the Bible, and I think it can be done accurately and honestly, better than extant translations, so long as you ignore the theologically minded people completely. They generally are not honest enough, you can't trust anything they say.

Christianity:

A Christian would probably say I'm an atheist, and an atheist would say I am religious. I read the new testament, and much of the old-testament. I also translated a few old-testament books from Hebrew to English.

I find Bible literalism repugnant. God doesn't ask you to lie about physics, biology, or history, nor about the textual history of the Biblical texts.

I like Christian theology because I think it is the most progressive of all the old-world religious systems. I am very impressed with the way that Christians can denounce bad past practices, while keeping the core me…

StackOverflow:

Here are some mentally defective things that programmers actually say:

Compilers produce assembly that runs faster than hand coded assembly. (are you serious?)
Amdahl's law. (like Aristotle, simultaneously trivial and wrong)
Goto considered harmful. (Dyjkstra's political crap, no goto no languege, pref. computed goto)
Code should not self-modify or use complicated spaghetti jump tables.

All of these positions come from the following mother-lie:

The measure of a program's quality is how well a human can read and maintain it.

Math:

My mathematical prejudices: 1. I don't accept choice on the continuum 2. I accept choice on countable collections, as well as countable infinity. 3. I don't think of the continuum as small enough to be a set, 4. I think every subclass (subset) of the real line is measurable, 5. I prefer constructions to abstractions. In this, I hope I am following Paul Cohen in spirit.

my dream theorem is a proof of the consistency of ZFC from a countable computable ordinal, as explicitly describable as possible, which plays the same role for ZFC as ϵ0 does for PA. This would complete Hilbert's prog…

ManishEarth

heh

Nick Kidman

he does himself harm by being to honest, sadly. his elaborations are great to read and also his ideas (biology and computation) are intriguing

ManishEarth

12:32

... best if we don't discuss a user that isn't around. At least, not obtain entertainment from it.

Crazy Buddy

Looks like Maimon'ism is going on here... o_O

ManishEarth

true, many of his posts are great reads

jinawee

Did he get banned just here?

Nick Kidman

I should ask him how plantonically serious he is about "I don't accept choice on the continuum"

he's a positivist, but seems to take models so seriously

jinawee

Oh, in Skeptics too

Anyway, it's better to cut off the conversation

ManishEarth

12:34

yep :)

Nick Kidman

Cut off the conversation? I'm for reformulation instead of regularization!

I just came up with a clever line:

On Physics.SE, String Theorists are seemingly just hitting puberty.

ManishEarth

12:51

Let's try to be nice here :/

Nick Kidman

:\

ManishEarth

Sorry, but I don't want to be sitting here and name-calling the STists on the site.

I don't think it's against the chat rules, but it's best ... to avoid it.

sorry

Sklivvz

@NickKidman There's a difference between having an idea and proving it. There are a million wrong Boltzmanns. Some of them literally kill people with their theories.

Nick Kidman

I just wanted to make the joke, I like string theory

>implying Boltzmann didn't kill with his theory

(himself)

Crazy Buddy

14:35

This month, being Novel-writing month - we can expect a lot of nice topics from @DavidZ :D

Well, he has given his words :D

ellipsix.net/blog/2013/11/national-blog-writing-month-2013.html

ShuklaSannidhya

Relation between gravitational field intensity and gravitational potential is
$\vec{E} = -\dfrac{\delta V}{\delta x}\hat{i} - \dfrac{\delta V}{\delta y}\hat{j} - \dfrac{\delta V}{\delta z}\hat{k}$
right?

Is this same thing as $\vec{E} = -\nabla V$ ?

ManishEarth

@NickKidman Oh, ok. That's good :) Thing is, there's already been a lot of hate flowing around these days. I didn't want to unnecessarily exacerbate it. If you were joking, that's great :)

Crazy Buddy

@ShuklaSannidhya Yeah...

ShuklaSannidhya

whoa

TIL, nabla operator is great.

ManishEarth

@ShuklaSannidhya hah

ShuklaSannidhya

14:44

@ManishEarth It squeezes a three inch long expression into an inch or less...

ManishEarth

that's not the beautiful part, wait till it starts cropping up everywhere

That's what I did when I wrote my short notes a couple of semesters ago. A whole section titled Nabla The Great

ShuklaSannidhya

haha

ManishEarth

(beware, I think there's a mistake there -- I'm pretty sure there was mistake that I corrected by pen, not sure if I fixed it in TeX)

ShuklaSannidhya

I am sure my teacher doesn't know about nabla...

But I'll still use it in the exam because ~~I am~~ We are rebels, aren't we?

ManishEarth

You're in 12th or something, right? He does.

be back in 5 mins

ShuklaSannidhya

14:48

11th

@ManishEarth s/He does/She does not/

Kazi arafat Ahmed

what does the word canonical mean?

ShuklaSannidhya

@KaziarafatAhmed The accepted form of something.

Kazi arafat Ahmed

what?

can you explain further?

what is meant by canonically conjugate?

ShuklaSannidhya

@KaziarafatAhmed Yes

ManishEarth

@KaziarafatAhmed what @ShuklaSannidhya said, but in classical mechanics it's thrown around a lot and doesn't really mean anything

Canonically conjugate things are fourier transforms of each other in quantum

Kazi arafat Ahmed

14:57

so, what's your opinion? @ManishEarth

ManishEarth

Usually something that can be written as a generalized momentum is the canonical conjugate of something that can be written as its corresponding canonical coord.

@KaziarafatAhmed On the meaning of "canonical" in "canonical transformation"/"canonically conjugate"? My opinion is that it is meaningless. Just a word they decided to use one bright day.

The transformation/conjugates are pretty important, but I never really figured out why they were called canonical

Though there probably is a good reason for it (@ChrisWhite?)

jinawee

My professor once brought a bambu stick to class

ManishEarth

To whack people with? :>

jinawee

Explained that canonical comes from latin:"stick", because people used the stick as the standard length.

ManishEarth

ohhhh

But that doesn't explain where canonically conjugate/transform comes from.

Well, the transformation is the "standard" one in classical mech

jinawee

15:03

Then he started to trot like he was a knight.

4

Experimentalists...

ManishEarth

But ... the conjugates? Maybe because they come up so much?

@jinawee hahahaha

ShuklaSannidhya

Is nabla inverse of integration of a dot product?

Like $W = \int{\vec{F}.ds} \implies \vec{F} = \nabla W$ ?

ManishEarth

@ShuklaSannidhya eh, sort of.

OK, yes.

Think about it, $\int \nabla W\cdot ds = \sum\int \partial_i W_i ds_i =\sum W_i =W$

Gigi10012

Hi

ManishEarth

@ShuklaSannidhya However, these theorems are more useful. Just like we have the fundamental thm of calculus telling us how to differentiate away integral signs, we have its analogues in higher dimensions.

Green's thm, Gauss' thm, and the king of them all, Stokes' thm

@Gigi10012 'ello

ShuklaSannidhya

15:46

Okay so now I have a weird question about thermodynamics...

$\Delta G = \Delta H - T \Delta S$

right?

also, $\Delta S = {\Delta H \over T}$

Using these relations, $\Delta G = \Delta H - T \times {\Delta H \over T}$

So, $\Delta G = 0$

Sklivvz

Uuhhhh physics naugthy list:data.stackexchange.com/physics/query/…

4

ShuklaSannidhya

How come Gibbs energy is zero always....

I think I'm doing something terribly wrong...

@ManishEarth ?

ManishEarth

@ShuklaSannidhya Who said anything about $\Delta S=\frac{\Delta H}{T}$?

Only for certain reactions.

Sklivvz

DisplayName                    swearwords
------------------------------ ----------
Ron Maimon                     23
Dilaton                        16
anna v                         8
dmckee                         7
Michael Brown                  6
Georg                          6
Kirk Shanahan                  5
DImension10  Abhimanyu PS      5
Chris K                        5
Colin K                        4
Alexander                      4
Luboš Motl                     4
John Rennie                    4

ShuklaSannidhya

@ManishEarth Isn't $q = \Delta H$?

Sklivvz

15:52

tsk tsk @dmckee... 7 times?

ManishEarth

@ShuklaSannidhya $q_p =\Delta H$

ShuklaSannidhya

@ManishEarth So at constant pressure, $\Delta G = 0$ ?

ManishEarth

No

$\Delta S \neq \frac{q}{T}$

ShuklaSannidhya

:O !

ManishEarth

$\Delta S=\int \frac{q_{rev}}{T}$

The rev is important

ShuklaSannidhya

15:54

my life is a lie...

hmm... so what will be $\Delta S$ for an irreversible process?

ManishEarth

@ShuklaSannidhya $\Delta S=\int \frac{q_{rev}}{T}$

$S$ is a state variable

Take the initial state and final state, and choose any reversible path between them

Now integrate.

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