The h Bar

JamalS

9:00 PM

@Sofia If you're unclear about the meaning of a word, Google 'define: [word].'

ACuriousMind

@JamalS With consistent in 4D you mean the uncompactified target space is only 4D?

JamalS

@ACuriousMind Yes

ACuriousMind

@JamalS Definitely not the best advice in this particular case :P

Danu

@0celo7 Nah, nothing is even close to being that concrete yet

Jimdalf the Grey

@dmckee Are experimenters really "right" most of the time? A theorist comes up with an explanation and makes predictions, so they are right or wrong. An experimenter usually ends up saying "This is data that one can use to make conclusions about a given theory". They are right in that it is acceptable data. But that's trivial. I'd say experimenters reaffirm what we know most of the time and get famous for really discovering something new once

Jiminion

9:01 PM

@Sofia First, I never think about my comments that much, esp. that one. I meant someone upvoting without a lot of critical thinking. Free and easy with my upvoting.

dmckee

@JamalS In this case the urban dictionary might be more useful because [thing]-whore is a pretty modern usage that may bot be in standard dictionaries yet.

JamalS

@ACuriousMind Freddy Cachazo mentioned it. I can't remember what theory it was.

dmckee

@JimdalftheGrey Well, that's the point. An experimenter can be "right" without accomplishing anything important, and a theorists can be "wrong" without doing any harm.

But really big wins from theorists and loses from experimenters stick with them.

You can have a solid respectable career in physics with coming to great attention in either field, but the "easy" way to get remembered is different.

Jimdalf the Grey

@dmckee But an experimenter can get famous for being right. A theorist could only get infamous from being wrong

0celo7

There are quite a new Nobel experimentalists.

dmckee

9:05 PM

@JimdalftheGrey Could and do, but not so often. Name a experimenter who got the Nobel. Name a theorist. Which came to mind faster.

Danu

Last year's nobel

INSTANT

:D

(experiment)

dmckee

Name someone who recently embarrased the whole field. Which kind?

0celo7

Carl D. Anderson

Danu

haha well that's lame thats just cause it's the most recent one

Jimdalf the Grey

@dmckee Other than the really major ones, I don't really know or keep up with who gets Nobels for what

Danu

9:06 PM

@JimdalftheGrey Oh come on, don't you remember the lame LED's getting it? :P

0celo7

Roentgen

dmckee

I can name a couple of experimentors, but only because they are in my field. I can name a bunch of theorists.

0celo7

Did Rutherford get one?

Danu

probably :P

Jimdalf the Grey

@Danu "Remember" implies I was aware of it in the first place

0celo7

9:06 PM

Every high school studtent knows him.

JamalS

I was disappointed by the name LED win

Jiminion

The Blue LEDs? Yeah, why'd they get a Nobel for that? (Like Obama getting the Peace Prize....)

Danu

It only recently dawned on me that the non-science Nobel Prizes are really kind of a joke

I was disappointed

That Obama one is so god damn ironic at this point

ACuriousMind

@Danu Non-science generally is kind of a joke :P

Jimdalf the Grey

@dmckee With all the group Nobels that collaborative experiments get, aren't there more experimentalists with their names on Nobels than theorists?

Danu

9:09 PM

Meh, don't be that guy

I went through a phase like that

I don't think physicists would do much better running the world

dmckee

@JimdalftheGrey The prize goes to no more than three people. Abe got it for Super-K. One guy.

Danu

@dmckee I'm just going to count them now

0celo7

@Danu GL.

alarge

@0celo7 In chemistry. I always found it funny that happened given that he'd said "All science is either physics or stamp collecting."

Danu

Okay here goes

0celo7

9:10 PM

@alarge Chemistry? Why not Physics?

dmckee

These days though, the prize usually goes to a mixture: they folks who thought it up and the folks who did it in the lab. Just not more than three people for each year.

Danu

Wait, should I count by number of people?

Or by prizes

Jimdalf the Grey

Let's count by field, too. I daresay, there's not a lot of cosmologists on the list (because our stuff is untestable)

Danu

I think I'll count by prizes

Kyle Kanos

@Danu Ironic because he did nothing to get it or ironic because he got the peace prize and subsequently started at least 4 wars?

Danu

9:11 PM

and if it's a split I won't count it

@KyleKanos Both

Kyle Kanos

Okay

ACuriousMind

@KyleKanos The former would not be ironic, would it?

dmckee

There was even one prize give for a pure instrumentation advance. Beam cooling in accelerator rings.

Jiminion

@Danu I didn't want to get into Obama per se, but giving anyone the Nobel Peace prize at that stage in their career is really horrid. Dishonors the prize. (It was like they awarded it to him for not being GWB, in their minds.)

Danu

well he did represent a milestone in emancipation of black people in the USA

which is awesome

so I guess he did something

but afterwards he really messed it up

0celo7

9:12 PM

@Danu That wasn't him.

Danu

especially the peace part

dmckee

@Danu Nawh. That's down to the voters. At last.

Danu

...but he represented it

Jimdalf the Grey

@Jiminion Not being GWB is a pretty good reason

Danu

He was the symbol for everyone to rally behind, you can't deny this

0celo7

9:12 PM

The voters should have gotten it if that's your argument.

Danu

It's like saying Ghandi wasn't so important because it was really the Indian people

0celo7

But just voting a black guy into office is not something worthy of the peace prize.

Danu

well that's just BS imo

dmckee

IN any case, the above is the kind of throw-away line that has some surface meaning, but shouldn't be examined too closely.

You can probably say the same thing for any line that starts "Everybody knows..."

It's a channel marker.

Danu

@Jiminion Well that's the thing: Nobel Peace Prize is a total joke

Jiminion

9:13 PM

@JimdalftheGrey You're a cosmologist?

Danu

There is nothing to dishonor

0celo7

@Jiminion Read his bio.

ACuriousMind

@dmckee Ooooh, can I do recursion with that? Everybody knows that you can probably say that same thing for any line that starts "Everybody knows"?

Jimdalf the Grey

@Jiminion How do you know nothing about your king?

JamalS

The recent Nobel prize for peace was a joke as well.

dmckee

9:15 PM

@ACuriousMind ::head explodes:: It turns out the moderator known as dmckee was a robot all along.

ACuriousMind

Ha! That one commenter a while back was right all along!

Danu

Okay

Anyone wanna guess what the distribution experiment-theory was over the 21st century so far?

15 prizes

ACuriousMind

...are the other crackpots also right, then? ::goes looking for tinfoil::

Jimdalf the Grey

6-9

Danu

(there were no split theory-experiment prizes, as far as I could tell)

@JimdalftheGrey Pretty far off

Jimdalf the Grey

9:17 PM

7-8?

Kyle Kanos

12-3

Jiminion

@JimdalftheGrey Have you ever heard of Prof. Quillen?

Jimdalf the Grey

@Jiminion No. Should I have?

0-0?

Danu

@KyleKanos Close

Kyle Kanos

13-2

0celo7

9:18 PM

13-2

Danu

10-5

Jiminion

@JimdalftheGrey I dunno. I went to school with her. She's at ASU. Her dad won the Fields Medal sometime back.

Kyle Kanos

Gah

Danu

twice as much for experimentalists

Ya hear that, @dmckee?

I'll keep on counting

Jimdalf the Grey

@dmckee Question me again!

Jiminion

9:19 PM

Would Hubble be an experimentalist if they had given him one?

dmckee

@Danu But how many do you know.

Jimdalf the Grey

::the user Jimdalf the Grey has been banned for reasons of moderation::

dmckee

Winning the prize and being remembered for it aren't the same thing.

Danu

I honestly think I knew more experimental ones

dmckee

@JimdalftheGrey Hell, no. I like to be proved wrong. I'm just not convinced that I have been.

Danu

9:20 PM

I knew: 1 LEDs, 2 photon traps 3 expansion of the universe 4 graphene

dmckee

@Danu Knew them when you looked at the list, or could name them off the top of your head?

Danu

I also knew 1 Higgs boson 2 asymptotic freedom 3 ehhh

Knew them off the top of my head

dmckee

You are doing better than I am. That stuff mostly doesn't stick in my head.

Jimdalf the Grey

@dmckee So true. For instance, I remember almost none of them. But they all still won it nonetheless

Sofia

@Jiminion take into consideration that there are women here. Also, if it could be that you gave me a +1, after such a discussion I would be grateful if you would withdraw it.

Danu

9:21 PM

LEDs because they're recent, photon traps because I gave a presentation on them, expansion of the universe... because and graphene because of my condensed matter professor

dmckee

@Jiminion Fuzzy boundary, but I'd say yes.

Danu

Anyways, my point being: I don't think experimentalists are being subjected to some more negative bias or anything like that

dmckee

@Danu IF I said that at the lunch-table at Fermilab, everyone nods because no one is thinking about bias: they are thinking about the thing that worries them about their careers.

The theorists need to be first on something. The experimenters just don't want to be embarrassingly wrong.

0celo7

@Jiminion What'd you do to piss @Sofia off?

dmckee

@0celo7 Used a rather banal phrase that includes a "bad" word, I think.

Jimdalf the Grey

9:25 PM

@dmckee Nobody wants to be embarrassingly wrong. It's embarrassing

Danu

@dmckee Yeah, that's true, and I also think it's harder for experimentalists to do many different things: Those projects are big and one cannot simply start doing different types of experiments easily

at least not like us theorists

(I'm stopping the count now, but in the 20th century I was at 15-6)

there are a lot of Nobel Prizes for experiments :)

dmckee

@Danu You can drift around a bit, but it helps to move slowly through connected experiments.

Jiminion

@Sofia I meant no offence by that. If you'd like, I won't use that term again. (I didn't think I was being sexist but.....)

0celo7

If you were to ask tenured physics faculty to name the top 5 physicists of all time, how much variation would there be? Surely Einstein and Newton make it on there...

Jimdalf the Grey

Meanwhile a theorist goes "well, that theory is a bust.... Guess I'll sit on my hands until I get an idea for a new direction"

Danu

9:26 PM

Also, I learned that Bohr's son also won a Nobel

@0celo7 Yeah, that'd be purely theorists I think

but it probably shouldnt

0celo7

@Danu Fermi was both in a sense.

I'd imagine some people have him up there.

Jiminion

@0celo7 I think it was the discussion of the "wh"-word.

Jimdalf the Grey

@Danu Hey, Newton dropped an apple. I believe that constitutes experimental physics

Danu

Could anyone here say what Fermi's main work was on?

'cause I don't know

0celo7

Fission

dmckee

9:28 PM

@0celo7 I don't feel like I know enough people's careers well enough to judge that.

0celo7

@dmckee Are Einstein and Newton on your list?

Danu

@JimdalftheGrey Wrong!

13

A: Hawking on Newton and the famed apple

Of course, the naive description as many heard it (which includes Newton having an apple fall on his head) is not true. There also does not exist any known source where Newton discusses anything about apples, and how they relate to his thoughts on gravitation. However, there are multiple seconda...

dmckee

@Danu He made a lot of appearances early in the development of quantum theory and was then involved in nuclear stuff for both bombs and power.

Danu

@0celo7 Newton is just so hard to judge :(

Jimdalf the Grey

@Danu I said he dropped it, not that it fell on his head. Are you going to tell me he never once dropped an apple in his life?

Danu

9:30 PM

@JimdalftheGrey Wrong!

I just like shouting :)

...but point taken

0celo7

@JimdalftheGrey By that argument, Einstein flipping on a light is experimental physics.

DanielSank

@ACuriousMind FWIW I have never heard a compelling definition of "morally better" that didn't boil down to "improves the survivability of the species."

Jiminion

I think Kepler did more than Newton. If Newton never lived, someone would have figured it out. Leibnitz already was figuring out calculus.

dmckee

@0celo7 The problem isn't that I'm not impressed with those guys, it that I don't know Gibbs and Boltzmann and Betha and ... well enough to start ordering them. Betha have a very broad and long career. So did Gibbs.

Jiminion

Bethe

Jimdalf the Grey

9:31 PM

@0celo7 only if he measured the speed of the light. I'd say Einstein riding a train or an elevator was closer to experimental physics

dmckee

Yeah. Him.

Danu

@DanielSank Morally better is a lame concept to begin with

ACuriousMind

@Danu I said it, not his fault :P

Danu

Yeah, I was mostly agreeing with him

not trying to argue against what he said

dmckee

And Kelvin (AKA Thomson) was pretty good, too, but I know only the barest outline of his work.

And we haven't mentioned Maxwell, yet!

That's my problem: too many candidates.

Danu

9:33 PM

I think I wanna have at least Dirac and Einstein in there

0celo7

Agreed.

Einstein, Newton, Maxwell, Dirac

Boltzmann?

Danu

The true masters of the revolution of the early 20th century

Jiminion

One could argue that Faraday ushered in all the stuff that Maxwell Heaviside, Boltzmann got to chew on.

0celo7

Heisenberg?

Danu

Nah

not Heisenberg

Jimdalf the Grey

9:33 PM

Noether?

Sofia

@JamalS it's not I who were unclear about the word. The issue in all, were clear. This is a public site and needs some decency.

dmckee

And so far we've left out of the mid 20th century condensed matter people, too. That was big stuff.

Jiminion

@0celo7 I'm not certain about him......

Danu

Noether was a mathematician

0celo7

Faraday wouldn't understand the tensor named after him

Jimdalf the Grey

9:34 PM

so was Newton

0celo7

Newton was a polymath

Danu

Nah, he was too early to ahve a clear distinction

dmckee

@Sofia And so you get to define "decency" with a Victorian interpretation of the word? Why?

Jimdalf the Grey

Noether made a significant contribution to physics. That gives her the right to call herself a physicist

2

ACuriousMind

@DanielSank Well, I think my train of thoughts here was rather Kantian - the right things are not the right things if you do them for the wrong reasons. If you're a consequentialist who judges things only by their outcomes, then no concept of moral good will ever make what I said sensible.

Danu

9:35 PM

@JimdalftheGrey I don't agree

0celo7

@JimdalftheGrey Is Hilbert a physicist?

If yes, he could be a candidate.

Danu

certainly not

IMO

Jimdalf the Grey

@Danu I'm willing to listen to a defense

@0celo7 No

Danu

@JimdalftheGrey Hilbert is a good counter-example

0celo7

Hilbert action...

Danu

9:36 PM

for instance

0celo7

That's hugely important.

Danu

also god damn Hilbert spaces

0celo7

Exactly

Danu

like, come on

Jiminion

@Sofia It was a PG term, used in a G-rated context, and referring to myself. And I won't use it again if you so desire.

0celo7

9:36 PM

But that was a math notion imported into physics

Hilbert action is pure physics

Danu

in fact, by this token, you may want to include Levi-Civita as well

Jimdalf the Grey

Not nearly as pervasive or important as Noether's theorem. Conservation laws and currents, etc.

0celo7

Riemann.

Cauchy

dmckee

@Jiminion If you don't, I will. Just to be a grumpy contrarian.

0celo7

Lagrange, Euler

Danu

9:37 PM

@JimdalftheGrey Well it's still an important contribution to physics

dmckee

Not 'cause I actually have much use for the word.

0celo7

@dmckee Is right. Way too many.

Danu

@0celo7 Well.. those fall in the 'too early to distinguish' category again for me

Jiminion

I just saw the F word and the G-D word. Oh well, rules for Minions don't apply to others....

Danu

@Jiminion I'm soooo tempted...

0celo7

9:38 PM

What's the consensus on the best intro to analysis, including some basic measure theory?

Danu

Yeah @dmckee on second thought I agree

I think Rudin's book is good for basic analysis

"baby Rudin"

Jiminion

@Danu ? I didn't mean to annoy Sofia

Jimdalf the Grey

Wait, how many are we putting on the list?

0celo7

Originally 5

Danu

@Jiminion ah, right. I just meant I'm tempted to say something very vulgar

0celo7

9:39 PM

But that's way too little

Make it 10.

Danu

Yeah, maybe 25

10 is still too little

JamalS

On the topic of vulgarity, please see youtube.com/watch?v=Tm0LnZOf_O0 It's worth it :)

Jimdalf the Grey

We have to start with 5 anyway

0celo7

Is @all a thing?

Jiminion

5 physicists?

Danu

9:40 PM

@0celo7 no

dmckee

Man, if we're going to 25 I'm going to have Ray Davis on my list come hell or high water.

Danu

that wouldnt make any sense

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 Yes, a pretty useless one ;)

Jimdalf the Grey

Top 5 physicists I think

Danu

@dmckee Who's that?

(not joking)

0celo7

9:40 PM

Top 5 but you don't have to order them further.

dmckee

Because (a) the experiment is so subtle and (b) he had the cojones to stick by the result for 30 years!

Jiminion

Ray Davies? The Kinks?

dmckee

@Danu Homestake mine. Solar neutrino deficit.

Danu

Raymond Davis, Jr.

Raymond (Ray) Davis, Jr. (October 14, 1914 – May 31, 2006) was an American chemist, physicist, and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate. == Early life and education == Davis was born in Washington, D.C., where his father was a photographer for the National Bureau of Standards. He spent several years as a choirboy to please his mother, although he could not carry a tune. He enjoyed attending the concerts at the Watergate before air traffic was loud enough to drown out the music. His brother Warren, 14 months younger than he, was his constant companion in boyhood. He graduated in chemistry from ...

Wait, was he that guy who spent his whole life to provide the first data on this stuff?

Jimdalf the Grey

What about Gallileo?

dmckee

9:42 PM

@Danu Well, he'd had a pretty good career before Homestake mine, too, but ... yeah.

alarge

@dmckee I think this is a cultural clash of sorts. Things pertaining to sexuality (take for example gay rights) are much more of a taboo in eastern europe than they are in the west.

0celo7

Is Weinberg in the top 10?

Jimdalf the Grey

I don't know anymore

alarge

@JamalS See also this talk by Steven Pinker on language.

Jiminion

@0celo7 I don't think the weak force is really even a force.....

Jimdalf the Grey

9:45 PM

Maxwell?

Jiminion

Is Sofia from E. Europe?

0celo7

@Jiminion Force is the exchange of a boson.

ACuriousMind

@Jiminion The weak force is a force as certainly as the strong force is. Whatever that means.

dmckee

@alarge I wouldn't want you to think that I'm a big fan of rough language in refined company, but I'm highly adverse to people thinking that they can dictate that stuff rather than be a contributor to an organic consensus about it.

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 Don't think in Feynman diagrams!!!!!! (this is really a pet peeve, a force is defined non-perturbatively!)

Jimdalf the Grey

9:46 PM

just look at the name: "Weak force". Ergo, it must be. Just like "The Force" is a force

0celo7

@ACuriousMind FORGIVE ME

How is force defined then?

dmckee

I am still shocked -- shocked I tell you -- that the Mark Twain award people saw fit to censor The Seven Words You Can't say on Television during George Carlin's ceremony.

Jimdalf the Grey

@0celo7 something that accelerates a mass

JamalS

@dmckee Do you like George Carlin?

Jiminion

@ACuriousMind It doesn't do anything. It just explains beta decay and some other stuff. Strong force holds the nucleus together.

ACuriousMind

9:48 PM

@0celo7 In QFT, all forces arise from gauge symmetries (and are, perturbatively, indeed mediated by massless vector bosons).

Jimdalf the Grey

actually, something that causes a change in momentum over time

0celo7

@ACuriousMind What is the gauge group for gravity? $\operatorname{Diff}(M)$?

dmckee

Hmmm ... I consider him one of the least appreciated and most important philosophers of the 20th century.

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 That's why I prefixed that with "In QFT" :D

JamalS

He's always entertaining, that's for sure.

dmckee

9:49 PM

The whole point of that routine was to cast proper doubt on the idea that censoring language somehow makes things better.

0celo7

@ACuriousMind Weak-field gravity is QFT, right?

ACuriousMind

But yes, you can indeed formulate GR in very close analogy to gauge theories, and the Christoffel symbols then are the generalized gauge fields, and the "gauge group" are all diffeomorphisms

0celo7

@Danu How long does it take Rudin to get to Lebesgue?

I don't want to read 200 pages

ACuriousMind

The boson definition is problematic even if it were non-perturbative, e.g. which force corresponds to the coupling to the Higgs?

0celo7

@ACuriousMind The mass force.

ACuriousMind

9:52 PM

Or, in effective theories, do all composite bosons transmit a force?

The gauge restriction makes sure that your fundamental forces have potentials by definition

0celo7

@ACuriousMind Grrr. Fine.

Jimdalf the Grey

Look a force is defined mathematically as a change in momentum over time. So anything that produces a change in momentum over time is, by definition, a force

alarge

@dmckee I completely agree with you here. I was just saying that certain words can be construed quite offensive by people from other cultures. For example, two friends of mine are from brazil, one is white, the other black. Now the white guy always calls the black guy by his nickname, "El Negro". So this one time we ran into an african american soldier in a bar. He was not amused when he heard one of my friends calling out for the other.

ACuriousMind

@JimdalftheGrey Classical heretic! :)

Jimdalf the Grey

@ACuriousMind quantum conformist!

dmckee

9:55 PM

Splitters!

0celo7

@dmckee Pls explain

ACuriousMind

I'm already searching for the obligatory reference

(not a webcomic, this time :D)

dmckee

Sorry.

Monty Python - Life of Brian - PFJ Splitters

►

is better

0celo7

Ocelot spleen :D

Jimdalf the Grey

Einstein, Newton, Feynman, Maxwell, and, let's say, Planck

How's that for a list?

Alfred Centauri

10:06 PM

@Jiminion if the weak interaction were not screened by the Higgs (or some other electroweak charged condensate), the weak interaction would be manifest as a long range force.

0celo7

TFW forgot Dick

@JimdalftheGrey Is Planck really more influential than, say, Dirac?

Jimdalf the Grey

sure

he's got his own units

system of units, that is

also, we're chatting in something called "The h Bar". I'd say Planck was pretty influential

Jiminion

@AlfredCentauri I wondered if there is some other particle decay (not in the nucleus, and I can't think of one right now) that should also be considered a 'force' by the same token.

If we were in the collapsed Dirac bar, we'd all be one person and would only type one letter.

0celo7

I'm surprised @ACuriousMind hasn't chirped in with 't Hooft and Yang/Mills.

Fun fact: $\hbar$ is known as Dirac's constant.

Jimdalf the Grey

or modified (reduced) planck's constant

Jiminion

10:13 PM

was 't Hooft named after a Dune character?

Jimdalf the Grey

How many Max Planck Institutes are there versus the number of Paul Dirac Institutes?

ACuriousMind

@AlfredCentauri Are you sure? The strong force is a non-screened force in this sense, but it is not a long-range force in a good sense, since there are no free objects charged under it.

Jimdalf the Grey

From Wikipedia:

>Max Planck's quantum theory revolutionized human understanding of atomic and subatomic processes, just as Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity revolutionized the understanding of space and time. Together they constitute the fundamental theories of 20th-century physics.

I'm keeping Planck in the list

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 I share Feynman's disdain for "epaulettes", and prefer not to rank scientists in this way.

Jimdalf the Grey

@ACuriousMind You don't like shoulder-worn identifications of rank?

Jiminion

10:18 PM

I think there a rich periods when someone finds a vein and many mine it. So I'd look for the vein finders and not the skilled miners.

Alfred Centauri

@ACuriousMind are you thinking about electroweak confinement?

ACuriousMind

@AlfredCentauri Yep

Jiminion

I think that was his disdain for women name Paulette.....

ACuriousMind

@JimdalftheGrey Indeed

Jimdalf the Grey

Yeah nobody's going to argue against the fact that elitist groupings are annoying. But a listing (not necessarily a ranking) of some of the most influential people in our field isn't bad. So long as we don't progress that to utter worship of them or let it go to their heads while they're alive

Jiminion

10:23 PM

@JimdalftheGrey Right, cuz I'm only to worship you.....

Jimdalf the Grey

In Jim we Trust

Danu

@0celo7 Just damn read Reed & Simon

less than 50 pages

If you wanna learn it bottom up, Lebesgue is more than 250 pages in on any serious book, I think

0celo7

@Danu FINE. No school tomorrow, so I'll have a look at it.

Jimdalf the Grey

16 names so far. I hope everybody has kept up with voting

Danu

@JimdalftheGrey Wait, what?

0celo7

10:28 PM

1 day of school this week.

And it was a two hour delay

Jimdalf the Grey

9

Q: A Jim for all seasons

So there has been a recent influx of new Jims (meaning maybe 2 in a while). Now, we all know that I am the one true Jim, lord of all other Jims, but nonetheless it gets confusing when someone pings Jim and Jim gets pinged as well. But that's just extra fluff. As supreme leader of the kingdom of ...

discussion

^ that voting

Danu

oh I voted on that

ACuriousMind

@JimdalftheGrey 15 names, one worthless comment-answer from your minion, and I am winning.

Jimdalf the Grey

yes, and I get 1 to 2 new name suggestions a day

::secretly hoping he doesn't get stuck with ACuriousJim for the full year::

@ACuriousMind wait, how has the useless comment-answer been downvoted less than two of my actual answers?

ACuriousMind

@JimdalftheGrey Uh, because your answers suck? ;)

Jimdalf the Grey

10:32 PM

not all... Jim the Enchanter

ACuriousMind

Yeah, alright, that one's good

Jimdalf the Grey

And I think Jimdalf the Grey would be doing better if it wasn't already set as my name

hey, another suggestion just went up

ACuriousMind

@JimdalftheGrey And what would your majesty think of bearing the lowly title of Lord?

Jimdalf the Grey

I suppose I could wear such a lesser title for a time

0celo7

We can change usernames?

I'm tempted to go to my real name.

Jimdalf the Grey

10:36 PM

Once a month

0celo7

Anyone in favor of me changing?

Jimdalf the Grey

Not being a Jim, I have no jurisdiction over you. So do whatever you wish

0celo7

Maybe Ryan U.

Can we have punctuation?

Danu

@JimdalftheGrey I downvoted it, ain't gonna lie

Jimdalf the Grey

@Danu But it's so good

I had a picture and everything

0celo7

10:41 PM

@JimdalftheGrey Jimnosperm is pretty genius.

ACuriousMind

@Danu But you do know that it is another Monty Python reference, right?

(Not saying you have to vote up MP references, necessarily)

Jimdalf the Grey

I'm saying that

Danu

@ACuriousMind Yes, I dislike Monty Python

(most of their stuff, anyways)

::awaits shitstorm::

ACuriousMind

Not from me, I don't get all crusader-y about humor.

Danu

Well, that went better than expected

Good: I always find it annoying that people get so furious about me not liking them :P

mmm I found a bunch of new great music

Jimdalf the Grey

10:45 PM

If you do doubt Monty Python or its works, speak no further. For death awaits you with nasty big pointy teeth

2

ACuriousMind

Death and me seem to have the same dentist, then

2

0celo7

@Danu What kind of music do you listen to? I'm partial to most forms of rap, hardstyle and hardcore.

dmckee

In a way, Monte Python is a victim of their own success. Other people have done that kind of humor more subtly since they went off the air and some of their work now looks ... crude.

Actually, The Meaning of Life looked pretty crude at the time, but even ignoring that.

Danu

@0celo7 Experimental electronic mostly

dmckee

None the less, The Life of Brian is genius.

Danu

10:50 PM

I think it's pretty decent

Seventh Stitch - Heart Beats For

►

0celo7

@Danu Have you heard of hardstyle?

HDE 226868

@JimdalftheGrey I've got more LoTR quote physics parodies coming, but it's probably best to hold them before the comments get messy. That said, "Many that get upvotes deserve downvotes. And some that get closed deserve to be re-opened. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to put questions on hold in judgement."

Danu

@0celo7 Yes, but I'm pretty sure I'm not into it

Jimdalf the Grey

@HDE226868 Do not meddle in the affairs of Jims, for they are subtle and quick to anger

HDE 226868

@JimdalftheGrey Here's some fodder, I suppose: goodreads.com/quotes/tag/gandalf

0celo7

11:02 PM

@Danu What's not to like? 150bpm, crazy synths

@Danu How much do I need to read in Reed & Simon to get a decent understanding of Lebesgue integration and $\sigma$ algebras?

Danu

It's in the first chapter

but honestly... Lebesgue integration is kinda...

not-very-concretely-usable typically

especially in physics

0celo7

11:29 PM

Zeidler uses it @Danu

He doesn't bother teaching it though

ACuriousMind

It's integration, be glad he doesn't teach it. I have never gained much insight by being taught the gory details of any integration scheme.

0celo7

@ACuriousMind What is it used for in physics? Distribution theory I imagine.

ACuriousMind

I have never heard a single physicist distinguish between Riemann, Lebesgue or any other kind of integral, but I think that formally, almost all integrals in physics are meant to be Lebesgue

0celo7

@ACuriousMind Every now and then you'll see a physicist write "this blah blah is (Lebesgue) integrable"

ACuriousMind

Yeah, because Lebesgue is the nice kind of integration that commutes with other limits easily. Riemann sucks in this respect, but since Lebesgue and Riemann coincide for the Riemann integrable functions, the distinction is kinda boring (to me)

Danu

11:44 PM

@ACuriousMind Exactly, nobody really cares

0celo7

Is Green, Schwarz, Witten too old?

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