tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post8283323517428337377..comments2024-03-28T18:18:37.133-07:00Comments on CONTRARY BRIN: Faithless electors? Revisiting the Electoral CollegeDavid Brinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comBlogger104125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-22088501079612747342020-08-09T10:55:45.670-07:002020-08-09T10:55:45.670-07:00onward
onward
onward<br /><br />onward<br /><br />David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-4634851975993151502020-08-09T08:04:33.708-07:002020-08-09T08:04:33.708-07:00By now, you ought to know how to uninstall McAfee ...<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKgf5PaBzyg" rel="nofollow">By now, you ought to know how to uninstall McAfee Antivirus.</a>TCBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08153506222271955110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-89830327614014361472020-08-09T07:16:07.479-07:002020-08-09T07:16:07.479-07:00In other news, someone recently brought up the ide...In other news, someone recently brought up the idea of a Trump "enemies list". Fortunately, should that be a real concern, I've been sent an Executive Membership Card from the "Trump Make America Great Again Committee". It has Trump's illegible signature on it. There's even a number to call for a replacement card should it be missing or damaged!<br /><br /><i><br />Mr. Hart, you have earned this card due to your exemplary dedication to our nation combined with your willingness to fight for our timeless American values.<br /></i><br /><br />So when DHC comes knocking on my door, if my plan-A of whispering "Hail Hydra" to the arresting agent doesn't work, I can show them this card.Larry Harthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01058877428309776731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-63231048400746718592020-08-09T06:51:05.561-07:002020-08-09T06:51:05.561-07:00@Zepp Jamieson,
My McAfee software is now giving ...@Zepp Jamieson,<br /><br />My McAfee software is now giving me weekly warnings that I have visited your "potentially dangerous" blog site. Just FYI, you might want to look into what that's all about. I'm not going to worry about it until something bad happens to my computer, at which point you'll hear from my lawyers. :)<br />Larry Harthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01058877428309776731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-48081948267278127452020-08-09T00:02:25.445-07:002020-08-09T00:02:25.445-07:00Jon and Zepp
Any idea how much was GRRM paid for ...Jon and Zepp<br /><br />Any idea how much was GRRM paid for that speech?<br /><br />It's a valid question - <br />If it was in the tens or hundreds of thousands then it would warrant the sort of studio work that Jon is talking about<br /><br />It it was "for the honour" or few a few hundred - then it would NOT warrant the studio work <br /><br />Our host may be able to tell us the sort of sum that is "customary" duncan cairncrosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14153725128216947145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-4757323641148414722020-08-08T19:16:00.976-07:002020-08-08T19:16:00.976-07:00Jon S: Yes, that was amateurish. That makes him i...Jon S: Yes, that was amateurish. That makes him inept and perhaps clueless, but not a villain.Zepp Jamiesonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16261339498383415026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-21809442477706721702020-08-08T18:55:53.707-07:002020-08-08T18:55:53.707-07:00Zepp, if GRRM lacks the studio experience to edit ...Zepp, if GRRM lacks the studio experience to edit and retake (as I do, for that matter), he should not have been doing it without the assistance of a crew (who need not have been in the same room, or indeed on the same continent). The World Science Fiction Society isn't exactly a one-room operation of inexperienced amateurs.Jon S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/13585842845661267920noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-26780259728413079652020-08-08T15:54:29.066-07:002020-08-08T15:54:29.066-07:00Dr Brin:
LH stunning hypocritical rationalization...Dr Brin:<br /><i><br />LH stunning hypocritical rationalization in that quote<br /></i><br /><br />The one about capitalizing "Black", but not "white"? Maybe, but I do see a big difference between the NAACP and the NAAWP (there is such a thing), the former being dedicated to equal rights for a subgroup, and the latter dedicated to enshrining <b>superior</b> status for a subgroup. Grammatically, they might be the same thing, but one is in fact the opposite thing.<br /><br /><i><br />Indeed, the only way to thwart the truly mad extreme lefty fringe...<br /></i><br /><br />Whatever else you may think of the guys at Electoral-Vote.com, they are not lefty fringe. Until Trump's election, they strove for a very neutral editorial voice on everything they reported on. They started getting snarky after Trump with an implicit point being "This is <b>too</b> egregious for us or anyone to pretend it's just normal politics." And I applaud them for that. If they sometimes go a bit overboard in that direction, well, extremism in opposition to Trump is no vice. :)<br />Larry Harthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01058877428309776731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-21467033888503168412020-08-08T15:39:03.447-07:002020-08-08T15:39:03.447-07:00Jon S
Someone decided not to do retakes
You are ...Jon S<br /><br />Someone decided not to do retakes<br /><br />You are I believe assuming too much in the way of "studio skills" and experience<br /><br />If I was asked for a recorded speech I could do one - editing it is a skill I don't have - why would you assume GRRM would have the skill and the software and the time to faff about editing a speechduncan cairncrosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14153725128216947145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-82307056718883103582020-08-08T13:27:52.661-07:002020-08-08T13:27:52.661-07:00Jon S: GRRM should have cleaned up prononciations...Jon S: GRRM should have cleaned up prononciations but we live in an age of Yo-Semite, so I can't condemn him for that. Zepp Jamiesonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16261339498383415026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-59036272971326111752020-08-08T12:02:12.399-07:002020-08-08T12:02:12.399-07:00Jon S. Indeed. CITOKATE. Even I, the perpetrator ...Jon S. Indeed. CITOKATE. Even I, the perpetrator of that aphorism, often just blab before the filters are in. David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-17054887715912900252020-08-08T12:00:27.227-07:002020-08-08T12:00:27.227-07:00LH stunning hypocritical rationalization in that q...LH stunning hypocritical rationalization in that quote. But I won't rave about it because the DIRECTION we need to go in can withstand some egregious rationalizing excess. Indeed, the only way to thwart the truly mad extreme lefty fringe is to rob them of recruits by showing progress is real and inexorable.David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-55087116808875071482020-08-08T11:51:53.076-07:002020-08-08T11:51:53.076-07:00Zepp, it should be kept in mind that GRRM wasn'...Zepp, it should be kept in mind that GRRM wasn't live with those presentations - the whole thing was prerecorded. Someone <i>decided</i> not to do retakes with correct pronunciation, nor to edit out the long, rambling, irrelevant asides. It was a <i>choice</i>, and one of the prime suspects for making that choice would appear to be GRRM himself.Jon S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/13585842845661267920noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-54933382871118815202020-08-08T08:04:23.529-07:002020-08-08T08:04:23.529-07:00It's about time someone said something like th...It's about time someone said something like this out loud...<br /><br />https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2020/Pres/Maps/Aug08.html#item-1<br /><i><br />Q: You wrote that you switched from "black" to "Black" when referring to people of that ethnicity, because the former "implies something that is merely descriptive, whereas the capital implies a shared culture or identity." I read your site daily and don't recall when you've capitalized "white" the same way, even when the adjective is in the same sentence as "Black." Why? J.X., Suzhou, Jiangsu, China<br /><br /><br />A: There are two reasons, and they are highly correlated. The first is that white people do not have a shared experience or a shared identity in the way that Black people do. Indeed, until fairly recently (the last century or so), it would have come as a surprise to a Russian, a German, and a Frenchman to learn that they are all the same race.<br /><br />The second reason is that white supremacists argue that white people do have a shared experience and identity, and that identification should be just as important a signifier as "Black" or "Latino" or "Asian" or "Jewish" or "American." Consequently, the white supremacists do capitalize "White." As a general rule, we try to do the opposite of what the white supremacists think is correct.<br /></i>Larry Harthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01058877428309776731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-41811109249513605602020-08-08T05:55:17.756-07:002020-08-08T05:55:17.756-07:00In the 2000 election, Florida's governor Jeb B...In the 2000 election, Florida's governor Jeb Bush and his Secretary of State Katherine Harris removed so many rightful likely-Dem voters from the rolls that an illegitimate president (his brother Dubya) was installed by his family friends in the Supreme Court. In addition, many who voted did not get their votes counted:<br /><br /><a href="https://www.gregpalast.com/one-million-black-votes-didnt-count-in-the-2000-presidential-election-rnits-not-too-hard-to-get-your-vote-lost-if-some-politicians-want-it-to-be-lost/" rel="nofollow">Florida's Gadsden County has the highest percentage of black voters in the state — and the highest spoilage rate. One in 8 votes cast there in 2000 was never counted. Many voters wrote in “Al Gore.” Optical reading machines rejected these because “Al” is a “stray mark.”</a><br /><br />His study of the 2000 election, in collaboration with the BBC, indicated that a clean and honest Florida count would have given that state to Gore. <a href="https://www.gregpalast.com/florida-by-the-numbersal-gore-won-florida-in-2000-by-77000-votes/" rel="nofollow">Palast says as many as 77 THOUSAND Florida Gore votes ended up in the garbage.</a> <br /><br />January 2020 interview with Greg Palast: <a href="https://www.nationofchange.org/2020/01/21/how-trumps-going-to-steal-the-2020-election-palast-with-kpfas-sabrina-jacobs/" rel="nofollow">How Trump’s going to steal the 2020 election</a>.<br /><br />Here's an important thing to understand, that few people really do: how Republicans steal elections is NOT one method. They do not do This One Amazing Trick. That would be too obvious; that's how you get caught.<br /><br />Imagine you want to steal a truckload of sliced bread from a large guarded warehouse. Do you drive right in and load it up? Busted.<br /><br />Now imagine you have a clever gang of thieves and your mastermind figured out a way to steal once slice unnoticed from every loaf in the warehouse. You drive away with multiple truckloads and nobody even knows what happened! Unless someone starts weighing the loaves. This is what the do. They Jim-Crow minority voters, install plenty of machines here and very few there, they hack the machines, and there are about five other methods they've used. Each ploy may prevent thousands from voting, thousands more from being counted, or switch just a few hundred votes in a close election. Like bread slices. You can't prove that this one or that one made the diff. Taken together, however, they put Trump in the White House and Brian Kemp in the Georgia governor's mansion.<br /><br />That's how Republicans steal Florida in 2000, Ohio in 2004, several close states in 2016, and maybe America 2020.<br /><br />P.S. <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/07/friday-night-massacre-us-postal-service-postmaster-general-major-trump-donor-ousts" rel="nofollow">Louis DeJoy just did a Friday Night Massacre of Postal Service management.</a> Look for R ballots to get delivered and D ballots to get lost until the counting is done.TCBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08153506222271955110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-64459409986766969162020-08-08T04:18:07.363-07:002020-08-08T04:18:07.363-07:00Alfred Differ:
This is why I kept pushing for you...Alfred Differ:<br /><i><br />This is why I kept pushing for you to hold back a bit.<br /></i><br /><br />I understand your position, and formally, I even agree with it. It just disturbs me that we seem to be the frog in the cooking pot, accepting incremental degrees of warming without noticing that we're being boiled. There's a meme going around showing two gravestones, presumably deaths from COVID, congratulating each other for "owning the libs!" I don't want to be those two gravestones congratulating ourselves that we were right all along how bad a Trump presidency would get.<br /><br /><i><br />As for Katherine Harris, I'm of the opinion that she made the Florida count illegitimate in the 2000 election. ...We have a procedure for that at the level of the EC and then again when the House validates the EC's choice. Unfortunately, we improvised with the SCOTUS. It should have stayed with the Florida high court...<br /></i><br /><br />And it would have, had the Florida Supreme Court been Republican. Since it was majority-Democratic instead, the idea was pushed that the (Republican) State Legislature (representing "the will of the people") had the final say and the state Supreme Court could not overrule them. Even though that is the exact opposite of the way the analogous institutions work at the federal level. Then, the US supreme court made their infamous ruling in Bush v Gore which included text to the effect that their ruling should not be taken as precedent for anything else. In retrospect, those were the first rumblings of evidence that the Republican Party was operating under the <i>1984</i>-ish principle that Reality was whatever the Party said it was, even if what they said was nonsense.<br /><br />20 years later, here we are.Larry Harthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01058877428309776731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-37536562666639138882020-08-07T21:19:12.308-07:002020-08-07T21:19:12.308-07:00Larry,
Alfred probably comes over to my side befo...Larry,<br /><br /><i>Alfred probably comes over to my side before Ilithi Dragon would…</i><br /><br />He (I'm assuming male) better be the last one to come over while he's active duty. There is no soft middle ground between silence and accusing your commanding officer of issuing an illegal order if he uses an active voice. Shade? Yes. Passive resistance? Yes. Saying some decision was illegitimate? No.<br /><br />This is why I kept pushing for you to hold back a bit. Let the commander have a bit more rope to hang himself in their eyes. Betrayal instead of illegitimacy. You'll get the first thing from them long before the second. They know what betrayal means and have ways to cope with that.<br /><br />As for Katherine Harris, I'm of the opinion that she made the Florida count illegitimate in the 2000 election. I suspect Gore still lost by a very slim margin, but she destroyed the legitimacy of the vote. That does NOT make GWB's win illegitimate, though. We have a procedure for that at the level of the EC and then again when the House validates the EC's choice. Unfortunately, we improvised with the SCOTUS. It should have stayed with the Florida high court and then gone through the EC and House procedures. SCOTUS should have dodged the opportunity to say anything at all. We would have been upset, but they would have preserved their own legitimacy. Instead, they weighed in politically. Dumb.<br /><br />WE can have a continuum for legitimacy, but I don't recommend it. I'm much more inclined to treat it as a phase transition where the transition temperature varies or is unknown. You are either in a liquid or solid state, right? Heh. That metaphor fails, though, and in an epic fashion. Lots of solids flow under enough pressure. So… when we get to the bottom of things, I'd rather just call them cheaters and explain which rule(s) they break.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-57695568436409154652020-08-07T20:32:37.402-07:002020-08-07T20:32:37.402-07:00A DEVASTATING COMPARISON: Most Foxite narratives w...A DEVASTATING COMPARISON: Most Foxite narratives would implode if any dem-pol or pundit had a clue how to use FACTS as surgical weapons*. Take the Red incantation:they’re more moral than city dwellers and Democrats, a line pushed by Trump, drawing mostly lame responses. Many MAGAs claim he’s the “flawed but devoted instrument of God, ‘chosen’ to restore moral life to America.” Sure, the Obamas, Clintons and Bidens all recited the Apostle’s Creed by heart at Bush Sr’s funeral while Two Scoops and Melania didn’t even try to read it. But it’s not about him anymore. Because simple stats indict the entire GOP political caste! Take this never-used observation:<br /><br />Among 9 official heads of the Republican Party since 1980, holding top executive or Legislative office - Reagan, Bush Sr., Newt Gingrich, Dennis Hastert, Bush Jr., J.Boehner, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump - we count:<br />marriages: 16<br />divorces: 7 <br />Felony prison sentences involving sexual predation on minors: 1<br /><br />Among 7 official heads of the Democratic Party, holding top executive or Legislative office since 1980 - Tip O’Neill, Jim Wright, Tom Foley, Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer - we count:<br />Marriages: 7<br />Divorces: 0<br />Felony prison sentences involving sexual predation on minors: 0 <br /><br />Zero is a pretty strong number.<br /><br />I'll happily take wagers on relative rates of child predation and serious sexual perversion among GOP vs. Dem politicians. <br /><br />Or compare Red vs. Blue states in metrics of moral turpitude from STD rates to teen sex/pregnancy, to domestic violence, addiction, gambling… and yes, parasitical dependence on taxpayer largesse. The contrast gets huge when we remove outliers like deeply-moral Utah and problematic Illinois. The gambling thing especially bites - wasn’t that sinful, in olden times? (Now casino lords own the party.) Along with relentless lying? Tsunamis of proved lies.<br /><br />*The failure of any dem-politician to show any eye for tactical streetfighting is why I wrote Polemical Judo… which has gained zero traction anywhere. Alas. <br /><br />http://davidbrin.com/polemicaljudo.htmlDavid Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-64323224834522297512020-08-07T08:34:39.473-07:002020-08-07T08:34:39.473-07:00Darrell E:
I may indeed be misunderstanding what ...Darrell E:<br /><i><br />I may indeed be misunderstanding what you are asking. Or it may be that I see a line given less provocation than others. Or it could be something like the difference between "soft illegitimacy" and "hard illegitimacy," analogous to soft power vs hard power.<br /></i><br /><br />That's probably what I'm getting at. I'm pretty far to the side willing to call "illegitimacy" for things like Katherine Harris winning Florida for Bush by not doing her job (stopping the recount), and it sounds like you're even further on that side. What I'm trying to establish is when the line gets crossed for those with <b>less</b> of a hair trigger. At what point does the Republican gaming <b>of</b> the rules make it clear that their victories are illegitimate, despite their not technically <b>breaking</b> the rules?<br /><br />I suspect there's a continuum. Alfred probably comes over to my side before Ilithi Dragon would, and Tim W would be even harder to convince. Just trying to get a feel for what the continuum looks like in my head.<br /><br /><i><br />I think many of the things the Bush Jr. administration did qualify as subverting the democratic process, such as running a maskirovka on the houses and the public to establish a pretext to take us into a war that was unjustified, unnecessary and just plain stupid (except as a means to enrich Cheney and his pals). And then there's all the various successful gambits to take power away from the other branches of government and gather it to the executive, such as having sycophants in the justice department produce judgements saying the executive had the legal authority to snatch anyone they wanted and hold them for as long as they wish with no due process or oversight, and as a cherry on top to torture them too. I think "subvert the democratic process" rather precisely fits all that.<br /></i><br /><br />I know what you're saying, but to me that's not "subverting the democratic process" <b>of elections</b> in the way Trump is doing. It certainly counts as undermining the way our Constitution is supposed to work.<br /><br />Republican grabs for executive power are at least usually tempered once a Democrat would be the one holding that power. In Wisconsin, it was blatant and right out front. A Democrat won the governorship, at which point the gerrymandered Republican legislature decided that Scott Walker must have gone way too far in grabbing authority for himself, so it was time to "remedy" that by stripping the governorship of its powers. Walker signed that bill into law. <br /><br />It reminds me of the "Simpsons" episode where Sideshow Bob runs against Mayor Quimby, saying that Quimby is so soft on crime that he even let Sideshow Bob out of prison.Larry Harthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01058877428309776731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-40031083256922743602020-08-07T07:26:33.776-07:002020-08-07T07:26:33.776-07:00GRRM didn't actually offend by making points. ...GRRM didn't actually offend by making points. To quote the blog reporting all this, "Many people watching worldwide, including finalists and winners, were horrified by Martin’s hosting, in which he repeatedly mispronounced names, waxed rhapsodic about exalted figures from SFF past who are now rightfully called out for their racism and sexism, made “gender essentialist” jokes, and in general rambled on past the three-hour mark." He was apparently guilty of "90% of what i've heard so far is him praising... ye olde racists robert silverberg and john campbell and noted sexual harassers harlan ellison and isaac asimov??" And worst of all, he apparently mispronunced the name of "FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction."<br />Doctor, would I be remiss in assuming you've had some of this sort of verbiage aimed at yourself?Zepp Jamiesonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16261339498383415026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-54899146937645948182020-08-07T06:46:12.718-07:002020-08-07T06:46:12.718-07:00Larry Hart said...
"It's been decades si...Larry Hart said...<br /><br />"<i>It's been decades since I felt the Republican Party became anti-American and evil, but that in itself doesn't subvert the democratic process. If anti-American, evil politicians win fair and square, what can we do (except blame the voters)?</i>"<br /><br />I think many of the things the Bush Jr. administration did qualify as subverting the democratic process, such as running a maskirovka on the houses and the public to establish a pretext to take us into a war that was unjustified, unnecessary and just plain stupid (except as a means to enrich Cheney and his pals). And then there's all the various successful gambits to take power away from the other branches of government and gather it to the executive, such as having sycophants in the justice department produce judgements saying the executive had the legal authority to snatch anyone they wanted and hold them for as long as they wish with no due process or oversight, and as a cherry on top to torture them too. I think "<i>subvert the democratic process</i>" rather precisely fits all that.<br /><br />"<i>I was asking about something very specific--when they went out of bounds to the point that their electoral wins no longer counted as legitimate.</i>"<br /><br />I think the Bush Jr. campaigns went way out of bounds and I'm still not sure that his 1st electoral win was legitimate or "fair and square" even just in terms of the voting. But how should we measure "fair and square?" I could argue pretty well that none of the presidential elections from Bush Jr. through Trump were fair and square. Does it have to be an overt highly visible specific incident to qualify? How about numerous not so visible incidents, like termites dining, that individually might not seem very serious, might be put off as just playing hardball or dirty politics as usual, but cumulatively they result in the perpetrators winning more often when they lose the vote compared to winning when they win the vote?<br /><br />I may indeed be misunderstanding what you are asking. Or it may be that I see a line given less provocation than others. Or it could be something like the difference between "soft illegitimacy" and "hard illegitimacy," analogous to soft power vs hard power.<br /><br />To my mind our system of government was designed to deal with a certain amount of illegitimacy without breaking, as it were. The problem becomes determining when illegitimacy becomes such a problem that it threatens to break the system and deciding when it becomes ethically permissible to take action not within the normal bounds of what the system allows in order to try and save the system.<br /><br />In real life what tends to happen is that while people wait around for some specific incident that demonstrates illegitimacy to a degree that passes that line they've drawn the myriad smaller illegitimate behaviors they said "not quite, let's wait and see" about, cumulatively they have seriously undermined and damaged the system. In some cases in history fatally. Even worse is that doing something drastic, something outside the rules of the system, to remove an illegitimate ruler or group itself quite often severely damages or breaks the system. Damned if you don't, damned if you do.<br /><br />The best way to prevent a dictator from taking over your government is working within the rules preemptively, i.e. not letting things get that far in the first place. Some people seem to think that calling a president illegitimate is a no no unless the degree of illegitimacy is so high that rebellion is warranted if they aren't removed from office. I think that view is dead wrong. Illegitimate behavior / people in government is normal. The people who designed our government knew this well. We need to call it when we see it <i>all the time.</i> I think that is our duty as citizens of a society with a government that is supposed to be for the people and by the people. It is also supposed to be a major function of the press, which duty they seem to have abdicated.Darrell Ehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14054311762477388637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-8995359054496992020-08-07T04:45:51.849-07:002020-08-07T04:45:51.849-07:00duncan cairncross:
If you invite a 71 year old to...duncan cairncross:<br /><i><br />If you invite a 71 year old to do something like that you are going to get HIS or her viewpoint<br />That is what you have asked for!!<br /></i><br /><br />Kinda like when Rush Limbaugh was made an announcer on Monday Night Football, only to be removed after one week for making racist comments. I mean, anyone who tuned in <b>because</b> Rush was announcing would have been disappointed if he <b>didn't</b> make racist comments.Larry Harthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01058877428309776731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-34772719046153639962020-08-06T22:21:00.728-07:002020-08-06T22:21:00.728-07:00Tony Fisk,
I'll try to keep short since I'...Tony Fisk,<br /><br />I'll try to keep short since I'm way off topic now. If you want more, we can pick up the topic on my blog instead.<br /><br />In a nutshell, Clifford's approach is about making geometry algebraic. Vector spaces have a few rules and two operations. Scalar multiplication and vector addition. Clifford's algebras have one more. Multiplication. Not the inner, outer, or cross products people are taught with vectors, but something closer to matrix multiplication.<br /><br />As a result, it is possible to multiply vectors to get things of higher rank. Multiply two non-parallel vectors and you get the plane segment described by the parallelogram you already draw to add them. With three vectors, you get volume segments. With addition, though, you can add these things and get mixed rank sums. For example, a quaternion is really the sum of a scalar and three plane segments.<br /><br />Going down this path requires one to be rather formal about what we mean by tangent spaces, but we already know how to do that from differential geometry. In fact, if you know that subject, you'll recognize many things in a geometric algebra. What you won't recognize, though, is a mixed rank sum. They are REALLY useful, though.<br /><br />What we did with gravitation was stay formal and try to write 4-currents with all our options open. From quantum theory, we had already been looking at multi-ranked 'charges', so my advisor got curious about what each piece might do on its own. Scalar charges lead to theories that look like E&M when done in an algebra with a 3+1 (or 1+3) signature. Nothing new there. When the 'charge' is a vector, though, weird things happen. Gravitational mass is usually treated as a scalar, but for slow speeds it is indistinguishable from the temporal component of your 4-momentum. What if the momentum was the actual charge being carried by a current? The current density would be symmetric exactly as GR requires.<br /><br />One of my prof's students worked out the related theory a little before my arrival at grad school. My friend worked on it more trying to create a linearized version of it to test better. At slow speeds, the theory is very Newtonian as it has to be. At moderate speeds, though, there is a 'magnetic' component to forces that has nothing to do with E&M. It's just enough to correctly predict apsidal precession for Mercury. *Without space-time curvature. It also gets light to bend around gravitation objects. Both have 4-momenta, so they interact classically.<br /><br />I got to work on the theory for a tri-vector charge carried by the current density. Never found any physical evidence for it, but if it's out there I offered a couple of predictions. Things with 'spin' would couple classically. It would enable us to try a classical model for the shock front of supernovae. All those neutrinos. 8) <br /><br /><br />*We weren't try to ditch curvature. Gravitation has to be non-linear since its 'field' carries the charge. What we noted is that there were options to be considered that simply hadn't been considered.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-47033522081685726382020-08-06T21:41:29.519-07:002020-08-06T21:41:29.519-07:00Could someone describe to me GRRM's point in m...Could someone describe to me GRRM's point in maybe 5 sentences? I have known him for 30 years, back when he didn't have lunch money. I love the guy but have no interest in actually watching or reading the speech.<br />David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-44051811575178482822020-08-06T20:52:10.258-07:002020-08-06T20:52:10.258-07:00Duncan. No argument there. I'm perpetually p...Duncan. No argument there. I'm perpetually puzzled over the people who are outraged by attempts to ban Mark Twain or TKAM, yet simultaneously want to punish and even ban people like JK Rowling or GRRM for disagreeing, even if mildly, with present-day heterodoxy. If I could implant a germ of wisdom in the youngsters on that blog, it would be "At least a third of your most cherished beliefs are things you'll regard as arrant nonsense fifty years from now, should you be so lucky to live that long. Nothing you believe is Holy Writ. Especially not stuff believed to be Holy Writ."Zepp Jamiesonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16261339498383415026noreply@blogger.com