"Cosmic Variance"


“  magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates, dazzles and makes people blind to the underlying errors. The theory is like a beggar clothed in purple whom ignorant people take for a king..., its exponents are brilliant men but they are metaphysicists rather than scientists... " New York Herald Tribune, September 11, 1932 Nikola Tesla.





Comments

Neil Bates said…
Qubit, I don't know what the problem is with the meanies over at Cosmic Variance. Here's what happened to me, worse than a given post deletion: I am sure they have banned me (I was posting as "Neil B."), even though I didn't make derogatory remarks etc. or even make fun of sacred string theory - maybe I just put up too much of my overeager, sometimes semi-informed musings; I don't know. But now, even innocent little remarks about biofuels or nuclear fuel are soon gone (if the IP didn't tip them off right away.) They even pulled some comments I posted from another computer under other names, with just faint hints of who I was. (That means they were taking a chance that it was some other, innocent new commenter/s!)

They never bothered to warn me either, and I want to give by contrast Bee of Backreaction credit for having the courtesy to at least say a post is OT, to watch my step, etc. So I try to take heed. Thats is so much better than the underhanded approach against me at CV. Well, I sent a plea to admin@cosmicvariance.c0m and am hoping for the best. (Oddly, I got a read receipt back, but also keep getting "Warning: message 1Jrl0L-0006uR-00 delayed xx hours": how in the world could it be both?

Note also that Peter Woit made a complaint about the Cosmic Variance blog.) It was about anonymous commenter/s dissing his reputation. I note Bee and other bloggers have pitched in to the discussion of that at Woit's blog and may find your and my experience s at CV interesting for comparison.
4 May 2008 at 23:00
Sean said…
I Asked for that one to be deleted and I did not think it would be. I have been saving all my comments since one of mine was deleted from CV, sometime ago; I thought I had made a good point in the said comment. It was in this post http://cosmicvariance.com/2007/02/23/why-does-emc2/#comments

I explained to mark exactly what i was getting at, as he asked; but he seem to have deleted it, which was not very nice because it explained it. Mark also said he had no idea where the quotes came from, even though they came from Einstein.

As for Peter Woit who was doing a post on string theory and the Emperors new clothes.

http://quantumnonsense.blogspot.com/2008/03/deleted-from-not-even-wrong.html

Seen that I was probably the first person on the planet to realize that String Theory is the Emperors New Clothes; deleting what I said said was a complete insult. I been telling people for ages! I really don't mind too much, because its Einstein who had the last laugh when he came up with E=MC2; because that when the fairytale began.

Let's hope they have better luck with M theory, because to me its looking like Pinocchio.

I think at CV you just have to watch certain words, that a spam filter would pick up on. At "Not Even Wrong" Peter is worse than the news for censorship! All I can say about Peters Blog is "Don't Even Bother"

Qubit
5 May 2008 at 20:40
Neil Bates said…
I note in respect for the administrators at Cosmic Variance, that they have recently restored my commenting rights. BTW it is indeed hard to get taken on Peter's blog. Note that on blogs with rather open policies (spam filters to be sure) like Backreaction, CV, yours (?), the average quality is surprisingly (?) good and not riddled with crank science proposals or OT political harangues etc. Is there some meaning or lesson there?
17 May 2008 at 01:45
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