Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Sunday, October 28, 2012

PLAYFUL WEEKEND MINIATURES




1-Damoc’s birthday present.

My archenemy, Damoc see:
 http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2012/10/my-third-rate-encounter-with-efficiency.html
has again sent me his special motivational suggestion. The attached DVD was the opera Lakme by Delibes. Listen please to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmYRQWYlDbM

This opera too ends with a suicide; avoiding dishonor, Lakme eats
a very poisonous flower, from a species of Datura according to some sources and dies successfully, singing. I have to consult Pierre Loti’s original novel for the details.

So for this birthday of 2012 it was OK, for the next one –if it will be a next one, Damoc could use e.g. Khovanschina by Mussorgsky. This opera ends with a regular mass suicide from religious reasons. I hope Damoc will send his birthday present in 2013 too.

2- The Hell is connected to the Internet.

My God, I prefer the Hell if it is connected to the Internet!
(Valeriu Butulescu)

Yes, dear Valeriu, you are right, we are no more able to imagine an Internetless existence, this or the next one. It is a mystery how could Mankind including our younger selves survive without e-mail, WWW, search, discussion groups and so many other elementary things.”Extra WWW-am non est vita, si est vita, non est ita” Communication is in the very core of the human nature. We deserve free and unlimited communication for our entire life…and beyond. The Internet is a new dimension of life.”

Is this a returning dream or a real memory-bit?
Somewhere in 1990 I have received a strange phone:

"Hello, Peter. Tim speaking, TimBL from CERN. How are you?

- Fine. And you?

- Peter I know that you are crazy for fast information and you are wasting many hours in the library You are obsessed by Borges’s infinite library. I have decided to invent something better for maniacs like you. It will be called www or something like that, still don't know.. Just watch the Internet. And promise me that you will learn to use it!

-Thank you, Tim! I promise that I will be the best of the searchers.
So has it started. I keep my word and my promises.

However, Valeriu, your enchanting aphorism has some unexpected negative consequences- that is a two way connection, the Hell is also connected to the Internet and sends us myriads of evil creatures- viruses, spyware, Trojans, tons of idiotic and dirty spam, bullies, trolls, scammers, crooks, thieves, criminals who practice ill-will and sabotage from simple sadistic pleasure, nasty LENR negationists untouchable by the best proofs we have- horror !



3- Hannibal and Roberto Germano think in similar ways about LENR.

History will remember that Cold Fusion, later LENR, now HHENI was an extraordinarily difficult problem, first much more a source of disillusions than of excess energy.
In such cases it is chanceless to apply a priori old wisdom to solve such a problem. However it is very handy to use these wise sayings a posteriori, when the solution was already sketched at least.
The great Carthagenese warrior speaks about an option:

"I will either find a way, or make one". (Hannibal)

23+ years show that you cannot find a way, DGTG’s example
show that you must make a way.

I find it interesting that a good friend, Roberto Germano- well known for his cultural and genuinely Italian book “Cold Fusion: A Modern Story of Inquisition and Alchemy” (Roberto Germano) Edizion Bibliopolis, Napoli, 2000 (I was honored to write a presentation of it in “Infinite Energy” No 48) – but also an excellent author of aphorisms has told:

You have to evaluate the risks carefully! If you are doing what nobody does, you have to think it over 2 times. If you do what everybody does, you have to think it over 5 times! (Roberto Germano)

A subtle idea telling that it is better to find new ways. Old ways have greater chances to be dead ways. It seems the way to the Inferno is paved with palladium and splashed with heavy water.   (I am telling this, not Roberto!)

4- Mark Gibbs has not pointed out the difference.

I was over-optimistic and naïve writing: http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2012/10/mark-gibbs-points-out-differences.html Mark Gibbs did not want to start a constructive dialogue with me and now he wrote a new paper: “Cold Fusion, a year later.” http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2012/102612-backspin.html?page=1
The paper and the fact that Gibbs has not answered my friendly messages demonstrate that I was in serious error he has actually not understood the difference s between real and useful, excess heat and an energy source and technology and applied science. Regrettable he has more readers and commenters than me. I have told him sincerely my opinion- in this new paper he tries to kill cold fusion inclusive Rossi and Defkalion. He has used a single reference of an old CF critic; Kirk Shanahan who has his standard premises and arrives to the conclusion that CF is inexistent, avoiding masterfully any contact with reality.

The author has not responded, however I got a bunch of questions from the most active ant—CF troll of the post Rossi era, Mary Yugo. I don’t know if this is her real name or she is George X, anyway the feminine of the word troll is too offensive. I am feminist so I will let Mary-or-on the contrary to tell what she wishes. In one opportunity I have observed that she had a human reaction- not everybody on the Web has. And I am a feminist.

I have told Mary that I see she has a difficult role on the Web, that of a stubborn CF negationist who cannot know what she says for sure. Without absolute certainties it is difficult to play this role, however she seems to still enjoy it. Let’ see Mary speaks mainly about Rossi and Defkalion.

I want to share with you a part of my message (corrected and stylized- this is for you not for Mary):

“I understand what is Defkalion doing and I am convinced they are on the best way to have a competitive energy source soon... I don't understand what Rossi is doing, however I think he has obtained excess heat in his E-cats and if he gets the help of good engineers he will also have success. You seem to be a technologically educated person; can you imagine how Rossi has faked some 12 experiments with some completely inactive cores?
Possibly he has 'amplified' his results more or less but he definitely has excess heat and can control it in good extent.

Explaining the delays is easy- the problem is VERY difficult, the ways to solutions are damned narrow and need time. may I ask you what was the most difficult problem you have solved, as person and/or team?

Back to the start and an obsession: Truly Independent Testing- is a bureaucratic concept not a technical one. It has limited application.

Suppose- you are poor, I am poor. You need a bike and I will sell my bike. I give it to you, you test it perfectly independently both up-hill and down-hill it is OK. You buy my bike.

Suppose- you are upper middle class, I am the same. I want to sell my Ferrari and your folks consider you deserve a Ferrari. I see you have eyeglasses, you are not renowned as good driver (you could be) so you drive during the test but I am sitting in the car too and give you instructions.
A Ferrari is a Ferrari and...you buy it.
BTW, Defkalion’s process was called a Ferrari forced to go on a bad gravel road- it has a huge potential of development.

Suppose you are a billionaire I am an other billionaire. (Nice idea, isn’t it?) I want a new personal jet and will sell my old jet to you. It cannot be any discussion about independent testing, a jet is not a bike or a car- My pilot will drive it, your acts as co-pilot.
A week and hundreds of miles flights are spent for testing testing.

The Hyperion is complex like a jet but is based on a creative scientific-technological thinking structure. In a few months it will be both downgraded and upgraded to a bike, from the point of view of testing, I bet


5- Just two classical quotations, both good for LENRists too

I am learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma.
(Eartha Kitt)

Besides learning to see, there is another art to be learned - not to see what is not.  (Maria Mitchell)

Friday, October 26, 2012

It is a mystery why this is not read by everybody


At Newsweek, Ending Print and a Blend of Two Styles:
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/newsweek-will-cease-print-publication-at-end-of-year/

Probing the Brain’s Chemistry:
http://web.ncsu.edu/abstract/science/sombers-probe/

Samsung Chromebook review: Google's new $249 computer:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9232599/Samsung_Chromebook_review_Google_s_new_249_computer?source=CTWNLE_nlt_

How to Make a Meme (Hint: Read Darwin):
http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/how-to-make-a-meme-hint-read-darwin


The 20 Weirdest Religious Beliefs. Test your knowledge of which strange belief belongs to which religion:
http://www.alternet.org/belief/20-weirdest-religious-beliefs?akid=9563.112117.o0A5zy&rd=1&src=newsletter730187&t=4

Goodness, Gracious, Great Balls of Lightning!:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121019102800.htm

Science Reveals the Power of a Handshake: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121019141300.htm

The Oppressive Psychology of Poverty:
http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/the-pernicious-psychology-of-poverty

Researchers Map Neurons for Specific Brain Functions
http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/researchers-map-neurons-for-specific-brain-functions

Turning Memes into Gold: An Interview with Ben Lashes, the World’s Premier Meme Agent:
http://bigthink.com/amped/turning-memes-into-gold-an-interview-with-ben-lashes-the-worlds-premier-meme-agent

Why Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Change the World:
http://bigthink.com/rewire/why-small-moves-smartly-made-can-change-the-world

Artificial Photosynthesis Effort Takes Root:
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/429681/artificial-photosynthesis-effort-takes-root/

The Fittest Species: Who is Winning the War for Survival?:
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/scaruffi20121021

Consciousness: Solving its Mysteries Promise Safer, Healthier Lives:
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/pelletier20121020

The Art of Sustainable Development:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121019130606.htm

The perils of positive thinking:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=u5um8QWWRvo#! With thank to Vlad Plesa.

Why we can’t solve big Problems:
http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/429690/why-we-cant-solve-big-problems/

Clearer Picture of How Assassin Bugs Evolved: Entomologists Reconstruct the Evolutionary History:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121025174635.htm
\
H.L. Mencken on elections, politics, government
http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/10/h-l-mencken-on-elections-politics-government/

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

MY THIRD RATE ENCOUNTER WITH EFFICIENCY.




I am listening Rigoletto...Tito Gobbi sings. Beyond some technical imperfections, his voice is of a hypnotic beauty, bright, unique… I am shivering when he tells: “Quel vecchio maledivami” that old man has cursed me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1gcw0Ja0Mw
The buffoon knows that he was cruel, bad and his sin will be eventually punished. The feeling of guilt is terrifying that unhappy creature, He knows subconsciously that he deserves his fate.

 Besides my total affinity with Verdi’s music (I consider this composer the Model of Creativity) - I have one reason more to be so impressed. A strange story, far from reason and common sense. Incredible, however true...

It has happened some 15 years ago. I held a course of Management of Technology to some directors and other leaders. A course for grown-ups (some very…) in a totally open and democratic spirit, first name calling, and collegiality, friendship... The students were asked to contribute as much as they could with their on ideas, suggestions, questions- maximum interactivity... Pleasant but also difficult because many of them were genuine specialists in their fields, good professionals and I had to tell them new smart things about what they were living and creating on a day by day basis.

My lessons about quality had limited echo despite my deep experience in the complexity of the concept- they were educated more bureaucratically than me.
I have succeeded much better with the lessons-discussions about productivity, competition and coopetition, business- intelligence including real and virtual reverse engineering that received a formidable impetus from the World Wide Web. Also, we had positive exchanges of ideas re the organization of the research and development activities and company departments. I had a clear success speaking about invention and patents- principles and practice. I was very enthusiastic when I spoke about effectiveness and efficiency- what you have to do and how in order to obtain increasingly good results technically and financially.
The sincere enthusiasm is contagious but very selectively.  After this presentation, one of the students- who had a very strange unique first name-Damoc has asked me for a personal discussion. I didn’t him well- he was older than his colleagues and actually was fired by his employer which has paid in advance for this course. They did not found somebody to replace him= and he had relatives at whom to stay in our town, so Damoc was still a participant. He was a taciturn and solitary, and from a fragment of discussion I have understood: “he is dizzy and when he is in a state of Damoc (amuck) it’s wise to beware from him”

During my life, I had many memorably unpleasant and nasty discussions with evil, and what are worse, powerful, stupid and arrogant people. I want to mention that when I have asked for a hearing at the Party’s first secretary of Ramnicu Valcea where I was living/working then, because I was invited by a Western German company to see how they have solved the problems caused by the cancerigen effects of vinyl chloride and I needed his approval for travel.
That Party secretary was toxic and impolite and unjust- he told there are greater, much smarter experts than me and I should stay home and work seriously, not traveling at the capitalists on the State’s money. He was adamant and ill-willed.
I leaved angry like hell, wishing him every bad luck possible.
It happened that a few years later, when he was acting as a Party Secretary in an other county, a peasant has stabbed him to death
because he raised the price of the bread in that county. However I am convinced there is no causal relationship between this murder and my bad wishes. I do not believe in curses and blessings. (I have to add that a few months later when the technological problem became critical I have made that travel to Wacker Chemie, where suspension PVC was “invented” a year before I was born. And the problem was eventually solved.

However, Damoc was aggressive like a mad honey badger that attacks lions and other animals twenty times greater and stronger, and he told me a lot of injurious, offensive things- all triggered by my praise of  effectiveness and efficiency. I have now the very difficult task to report you what has  Damoc said however he was far from being coherent and I have to censor his discourse from the few porno-sexual, scatological and blasphemous expressions he has used a lot of times; he was very repetitive as drunk or crazy people use to be. Anyway, let’s say, this was it:

“Can you imagine why is the Earth is revolving so fast? I tell you- to throw down from its back, to get rid from the limited, stupid and fanatic technocrats like you!? How do you dare to sing odes to such evil and destructive and inhuman concepts as effectiveness and efficiency that pervert, degrade and destroy our world? Your technophoria – your confidence that 
technology can solve all the problems, is idiotic wishful thinking.
I was fired for the sake of efficiency; I am a victim of efficiency!"

“Are you not able to see the obviously dreadful cruelty of profitable capitalistic efficiency and the imbecile sadism of the fake socialist efficiency?
Do you know that in the name of efficiency there are organized all the time, overtly or in the hypocritically hidden mode- genocides, ginocides, paupericides, invaldicides, senilicides whatever? Inefficient people are systematically annihilated.”

“Do you know the criminal activities of the champions of efficiency, of efficiency in destruction, of our Moneytheistic world? (then I heard first this name): Big Money, Big Weapon, Big Oil, Big Ag, Big Pharma, Big Crime, Big Lie? All are very efficient I could write entire libraries of the Congress about the evil they bring about the poor oppressed people.”

He seemed to be unable to come out from his primitive interrogative style;

- why dictatures are so efficient and democracies so inefficient?
- why kleptocracy is the most natural government everywhere?
- why intellectuals are seen as soooo inefficient?
 - do you know something more efficient than good old corruption in modern forms?
- why greed is good, violence is useful and fast and stupidity has to be encouraged because it breeds efficient workers and disciplined citizens;”

A cascade of questions followed, and I cannot guarantee that I remembered all or I can tell in which order Damoc has asked them, but perhaps you can grasp their virulent idiocy from the following condensed form:

“Who are/is more efficient and accepted or loved by our Society? 

- people who consume a bit and produce a lot or people who consume beyond limits and produce almost nothing?
- the school, the hospital or the church?
- art or kitsch?
- quality or empty shining?
- education or counter-education?
- lies or truth?
- the sensational or the true?
- populism or serving the people?
- miracles or reality?
- altruism or egoism?
- generosity or avarice?
- harmony or penetrant ugly noise?
- Beethoven or Michael Jackson?
- dogma or fresh independent thinking?
- independent thinking or groupthink?
- astrology or astronomy?
- initiative or passivity? Laissez faire?
- memes and prejudices or unbiased investigations?
-  good manners or gross rudeness?
- human rights or superhuman privileges?
- simple symbols or a complex realities?
- selling fear and hope or naked facts?
- the parasite or its host-victim?
- a pet or a child?
- to ask permission or to err and apologize?
-  to live all days quite well or most of the days in misery and
    a few days in celebration and gastronomic orgies?
- efficiency or freedom, welfare, happiness, human dignity

He spoke then about how financial efficiency dominates and replaces economic and functional efficiency and this is deadly danger for the future. He claimed that the so called efficient society is unsustainable and sooner or later will collapse and this was a genuinely moronic idea I felt an ardent desire to  give him a couple of punches in his nasty face.
“No society can carry so many destructive evils – children of efficiency. Those who promote and support this malign efficiency should be stopped and punished.”
He ended with:

Who seeks and adores efficiency, by efficiency will perish! Do you will learn this and will regret in pain what you have said us”
I hate you and I hate all those who had fired me in the name of sacred efficiency. You will all pay for that but especially you, the ideologist of efficiency, and the guru!

This sounded like a perfidious warning and as the equivalent of a curse.

He stopped, trying to take his breath. It was my turn; I am educated i.e. able to cope with any and all life situations and have a very broad and diversified. Experience, including fights and disputes.
Actually his killer discourse was just Barbie-style friendly chat, compared to the negotiations for quality standards between the Romanian polymer and the plastics industry, the manufacturers of raw materials and their users. These were at least ten times ruder than any meeting of gangsters or the extreme Machiavellisms in practice. (6 cases of infarct and 3 of suicide of the participants in 5 years, old engineers weeping hysterically etc. good school!)
I started immediately the counterattack, but I spoke very politely, taking care to not hurt the feelings of that psychopath:

“Damoc, you triple distillated damn fool, you brain- damaged mean rascal! You cannot understand that I spoke about technology and only about technology? You were the fool who extended the subject to the human, social, economical and financial life where the concept cannot be applied and you alone had hurt yourself. Look, moony boy, you buy an efficient stove and the coal you were able to buy will suffice till spring and you will not freeze in February as with our dirty old stove... What harm makes you a car able to go two times more with the same quantity of gas? A new fridge will save you from being depressed by any bill of electricity. You can paint a much greater surface than before with the new efficient paint, what’s the trouble with this?”

“Damoc try to activate your last pair of functional neurons, think and believe me this is a solid, well built perfectly functional society and never but really never a serious Crisis will come again.  Not for the next 50 years, I put my head and eat it if we will see even micro-crises in our lifetimes we will be more and more prosperous year by year. Toddlers understand how the omnipotent forces of the markets work, repair the few flaws, and assure continuous irresistible progress for long term. Be an optimist like me. Like all rational people.
 The European Union is a perfect organization,, a creation of the European genius and we Romanians will join it too- and it is a guarantee that no member state will ever have the slightest economic problem- as soon they appear the other States will come to help, or will anticipate it. The problems are solved and your pessimism is completely unfounded and tragically stupid. Think normally, my friend!
This is a healthy Society. There are obvious things you are not allowed to replace with your sick dark, opaque fantasies!”

My nice words were wasted, due to his psychiatric problems probably, he has not changed his opinion and became more and more noisy, hyperactive and aggressive, I am very resilient and after two more hours, Damoc became completely confused losing all nouns and verbs from his sentences, Two student colleagues had to help him going home. During the rest of he course he made me no more trouble but looked me with killer eyes and I could read on his lips that he was mumbling about a terrible vendetta.


Three years later I have retired and I have received a surprise phone calling from Damoc: “Hey Peter, you will see how inefficient, and ineffective and alone and unhappy you will be starting from tomorrow. All your comrades and accomplices in efficiency will abandon you, will erase your phone numbers from their agendas and will delete your e-mail address on their PCs and forget you for ever, lightning fast!”

I have to disappoint him, only 93.6%, not all my friends have forgotten me, and thanks to me and my continuing activity I was able to get new friends as good as the old ones or much better, - perhaps I have not lost completely this vital ability

 But his retaliation is more perfidious. The madman knows that I love opera music- he sends me selected CDs or DVD’s or You Tube addresses for my birthdays, the word SUGGESTION is always appended; I have lots of final scenes from Aida, Othello, Norma, Madame Butterfly- all these end with
more or less direct suicides. Recently (2010, 2011) he has found two new “suggestions, one from Ponchielli’s Gioconda:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3a_bGrhn7s
 and this from Gounod’s Sapho
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB75tcVKd48
For all my birthdays he sends the same message
:
“You are XY today, you will die soon. But it is a more efficient way for you: suicide!” One good point, the music is really beautiful

I have verified on the Web these are really all the known scenes/arias describing suicides from operas:
http://voices.yahoo.com/saphos-o-ma-lyre-immortelle-soaked-sound-drowned-3814186.html

What a humorless sadistic monster to send me such arias! At my age suicide is highly inefficient and not recommended.

You can imagine how he has jubilated in 2009 when the Crisis had hit our country too!!! I reckon, that time he was more efficient in the high art of invectives than me, I could not believe it. I am getting old.

(I know this was horrific, if you want to relax and calm down a bit , please read  :The Horla” by Guy de Maupassant or/and “Vyi” by Nikolai Gogol


Post scriptum:

As soon as I have published this, I got a message:
“Peter, it is not horrific at all, it is simply horrible. 
How can you prove that I exist?
Hatefully yours,
Damoc”

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

MARK GIBBS POINTS OUT THE DIFFERENCES.



My meta-comments to a paper

Dedicated people are workaholic, therefore a Cold Fusion paper that appeared Sunday (Oct. 21, 2012) had strong echoes on the Web, some 7 long discussion threads on the LENR groups have appeared in less than 12 hours.
It is about the paper “Cold Fusion Gets a Little More Real" by Mark Gibbs from Forbes:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2012/10/20/cold-fusion-gets-a-little-more-real/
This publication of this paper was triggered in great part by the third part reports recently published by Defkalion Green Energies on their Forum site.

The title speaks about “real”, in the body of the paper, Gibbs speaks about his hope that cold fusion or LENR exists in a form that is actually useful.  And he has confessed on the Web that his
interest has always been in useful cold fusion.

The same idea was expressed in the Motto of my ineffective Open Letter to ICCF-17

“I will believe you that Cold Fusion exists when you will show
me a boiler for two eggs, working with Cold Fusion”. 
(Prof Ioan Silberg, R.I.P!)

On my turn, I confess that I have a total empathy for this idea. From the very start, Cold Fusion was presented as the dominant energy source of the future, not as an earth-breaking scientific discovery revealing some deep secrets of the Universe.

The comments coming from our communities have emphasized that the very existence of Cold Fusion –now LENR- is beyond any doubt, an existing bunch of phenomena – excess heat being definitory for them. I agree 100% with this. The word useful was not very welcome. In some way implicitly it is considered that excess heat if it exists and can be measured reliable – it is good for something anyway...
It was also stated that the results that have now impressed positively the author, are actually surpassed by many results from the glorious past of cold fusion- and that is still discussed.

I mention here that recently – in my paper about Efficiency and LENR I have expressed some doubts about the realism of the “Science First” approach to the problems of LENR.  Similar fields do not have a complete theory, empirical data cannot be eliminated and it is not well understood how those phenomena work.
An essential difference –say to HTSC- is that it is rather well known how when and why it does NOT work- when this bad thing happens. For CF/LENR this is a complete mystery and the low reproducibility has no causal explanation except my poisoning hypothesis that is ignored on a large scale for good reasons. It is not possible in practice to choose the ideal solution- establish first science, work out a perfect theory for LENR and then, use the predictive and the guiding powers of this theory improve the results- as intensity, reliability, controllability etc. till you have a fine energy source. If this is not possible, then scientific discovery has to be combined with trial and error, science has to be mixed with technology developed with incomplete science...

The world progresses many time via negative discoveries and the Gibbs paper helps us to re-discover three of them:

1) Real is NOT always useful

2) Excess heat is NOT an energy source. It is much less.

3) Technology is NOT applied science. It is much more

Let’s examine what these ideas mean for LENR.
.
Useful needs additional, chosen characteristics or features beyond existence. I have told many times that Pd- D cold fusion in electrolytic cells is not useful, it will not lead to a technology and even will not contribute much to the understanding of what happens in/on the cathode. I was not lynched for that and this is so encouraging that I will repeat the statement.
Usefulness is a concept oriented toward humans. Defkalion, the company that caused the Gibbs paper is very much interested in science but they want to make heat generators for the people, diminishing the energy bills to values orders of magnitude (1, 2?) compared to the present values.
And nobody will call them populists if and when they succeed to do this on a planetary scale. Useful is more important than real.
For solving this problem they use as much science they can, but also technological principles and engineering rules and products, old and new. And a lot of mathematics including in the control part.
In the real world it happens that for obtaining, maintaining developing and diversifying the useful, this must be profitable too.

Excess heat: during the relatively old times when Andrea Rossi
has made a series of experiments I have written a lot- on this blog about why excess heat is a necessary but not sufficient condition to be an energy source. You can find easily all these here: http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2012/05/my-way-to-lenr-truth.html
But it is a lot to read, therefore better have a fictive discussion
with your home heater and ask it: what are you able to do?

Technology is not (only) applied science: in this case this means that if I am in total shameful error and tomorrow a genius comes and builds a flawless theory- “The LENR Science” we still will need many kind of knowledge added to it..
See please my paper:
http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2011/08/technology-mon-amour.html and understand that I am very fond of technology
and I want that it should be appreciated at its real value, not as something intellectually inferior to science.
If you agree, OK, if not than you have probably never worked in the development of a technology and please read these:
http://www.christianhubert.com/writings/technology.html
http://www.creatingtechnology.org/eng/apply.htm

If you create a technology, buy one or have to learn one at your workplace and will be paid according to how well you can use and, perhaps, improve it, you will meet and have to understand the followings, LENR being seen as a special case:

Know Where: for the majority of “normal” technologies ‘where’ is obvious or trivial but for LENR it is the clue and the start of science I am proud to being the first to claim “Topology First”
However the where problem is not settled, surface vs. bulk, matter vs. voids, special places called NAE (nuclear active environment) have both supporters and deniers. A good word for this situation is the antinomy of consensus...
Good signs for the future: Ed Storms is constantly improving his theory of good active voids and has published yesterday a paper
Describing the application of the Scientific Method to demonstrate the theory. Defkalion speaks about vacancies as the place where the nuclei can be put to work if you treat them brutally enough.

Know What: usually this is the most scientific factor of a technology. The phenomena that are exploited and put to generate some value are described by the adequate science
giving a realist model. Applied science starts here- if it can.
Experiment and actual practice verifies and re-verifies the scientific truth. Value is human; truth is more abstract both are human endeavors. In our world saturated with insoluble problems value has priority, we need more and faster fine Hyperions than elegant and bright equations. But on longer term we need both.

Know How: typically this is what we had added to science, from healthy good practices to little, sometimes dirty tricks. Experience is decisive here; the good technologist is a fast, serious, creative
builder of the specific know-how. Many times you learn to fly during fall from the nest. A steep learning curve is the mark of the expert.
To tell that the field of scientific/technical research is disputed between those who know and those who learn, is an exaggeration. However it is actually a Pareto type truth, 80% real, and 20% inapplicable or false.
The Fathers of the Certainties vs. the Sons of the Questions.
Two different species, however hybridizable. I am an almost “pure” learner and it is my pleasure to tell that I am happy that I could survive and function with a minimum amount of certainties, mostly ethical ones, with secular roots.

The situation in the LENR field forces all of us to be learners of the know-how. This was especially true for Defkalion’s scientists, genuine newcomers who succeeded to convert a temporary and transient ignorance in a competitive advantage. Again this leads to the idea that for LENR Know How Not is more important than its positive counterpart.

Know Why- that is the peak of science-in-technology, the proof of deep causal understanding. The aim of both science and technology, a title of noblesse. It will be attained for LENR to
But I don’t dare to predict when.

Please do not forget Know Who- the people who do the job. When you get a revelation of this, even as partial and sill uncertain as had Mark Gibbs when he wrote this paper, let the world know it because the human factor is decisive for all technologies but especially for the revolutionary ones.

Peter

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

A GOOD OPPORTUNITY TO READ INTERESTING THINGS


Sleeping Brain Behaves as If It's Remembering Something:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121007134729.htm

Atheism’s growing pains:
http://www.alternet.org/belief/atheisms-growing-pains?akid=9507.112117.ppMdYN&rd=1&src=newsletter723791&t=9

Education: Get With the Computer Program:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121005134641.htm

Bioenergy: The Broken Promise:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121009121446.htm


Biofuels Benefit Billionaires:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121011085340.htm


Ten websites for bookworms: http://websearch.about.com/od/enginesanddirectories/tp/booksearch.htm?nl=1

.
Is a paperless office really possible?
http://askbobrankin.com/is_a_paperless_office_really_possible.html?awt_l=4jAx_&awt_m=IoA_7gWCK8P6SL


The truth about workaholics:
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/truth-about-workaholics?akid=9531.112117.OPfyeg&rd=1&src=newsletter726768&t=5


Between Cliché and Creativity: The Psychology of Expectations in Story:
http://bigthink.com/insights-of-genius/between-cliche-and-creativity-the-psychology-of-expectations


Principles of Networked Unmanagement:
http://www.jarche.com/2012/10/principles-of-networked-unmanagement/


Dangers on the Web:
http://www.hoax-slayer.com/issue-141.shtml

Old Adage 'Sleep On It' Is True -- But Only If It's a Really Difficult Problem,
Study Shows:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121012074741.htm\

Measuring the information Society 2012:
http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/publications/idi/material/2012/MIS2012_without_Annex_4.pdf


Twitter fiction: 21 authors try their hand at 140-character novels
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/12/twitter-fiction-140-character-novels


A Chemist Comes Very Close to a Midas Touch:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/16/science/modern-day-alchemy-has-iron-working-like-platinum.html?pagewanted=all


World Food Day 2012: Food Scientists Working to Find Sustainable Solutions to World Hunger:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121015182432.htm


How do touch-screen monitors know where you're touching?:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question716.htm


Flaws in the "Organic Food" Study:
http://ecogeek.org/component/content/article/3816

Sunday, October 14, 2012

SEQUEL TO THE “EFFICIENCY” PAPER First part.





MOTTO:

There are things you cannot do stepwise; you must do them at once and completely.
(from my lecture “Advices to young researchers and young married, 1986)

Good Motto, perfectly true for some decisions in research and war and in sex. Not always applicable; and… my fatal attraction to immediacy and ‘bis dat qui cito dat” has put me many times in trouble, because there are cases when exactly the contrary is true.
Haste for the sake of haste and of speed makes you like detergents- superficial. Complex problems have to be decomposed in smaller problems and these have to be solved one by one and finally you have to make a synthesis and improve it as long as it is necessary. Efficiency has more facets and my readers have had the generosity to contribute to the extended more precise and dynamic vision of LENR’s efficiency. It is about messages, publications, events and nascent memes- one of them possibly has to be aborted or downgraded. Unfortunately!
But I have a few things more to tell about LENR and efficiency.

Decisions.

Asking a bit rhetorically, what decisions should the LENR warriors take in order to make the field both effective and efficient? Thinking again, the question divides in two and the new question is who should/could/has to take the decisions and – by whom- could these decisions be enforced?
The cold fusion/LENR community is united mainly and perhaps only by the opinion that this source of energy exists and can, has to be, used for a very important energy source. But actually it is much dispersed geographically and conceptually and financially.  A real, manageable collective does not exist. No leaders or strong authorities. Who makes the decisions and who implements them?
In the disciplined way? Who has the privilege, chance and responsibility? The situation of decisions is pretty chaotic; however there exists intense communication between many members of this professional group and this is a reason for hope...

How to be more efficient? Who can tell us?
Do you know somebody really inerrant in the group? And not suffering from the Cassandra’s Syndrome?


An old rule of life and of all activities says:
“The irrationality and inefficiency of consuming, spending, using it is proportional to the scarcity of a resource” This is the causal explanation of the ancient but rather surprising Matthew’s Principle well known from the Bible: "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer"
Just ask the 1% from the top and the 1% from the bottom!
Isona, (not Themis!) the genuine Goddess of Equality is a skinny lady, desperately weeping all the time, the poor girl!

Anyway the situation of CF/LENR was characterized by strong scarcity therefore the funds were spent more on measurement than on intensification, creativity was forced to find simple explanations and to reject complex but realist ones, a very expensive rare metal was preferred to more mundane ones as the cheap “devil”, and, by bad chance, the story started with
the more costly isotope of hydrogen in an inherently poisoned sensitive electrolysis cell. Only a miracle could make this work efficient.
As I have shown it:  the situation has to be changed.
Everything could change if the field attracts big money and Matthews curse is removed. Perhaps.

Just these days marked by the US elections it is ‘comme il faut’ to cite smart American Presidents, ergo:
In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing. (Theodore Roosevelt) 
Good decision, bad decision, no decision- my colleague, discussion partner and friend Abd-ul Rahman Lomax has excellent plans for LENR, however no entity, no institution can
decide. Asking again, who can and shall decide? A basic question –how to start the necessary paradigm shift?

Man is but a reed, the feeblest thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. (Blaise Pascal)
You know the author the wise guy with the wager re existence of God.  Re. this famous wager, the decision depends much on how does look and how is managed a 5-star Paradise in Heaven Thinking, research, reading, secular music, humor, drinking, sex, travel- are recommended, tolerated or strictly prohibited? If we make the choice warmly supported by Pascal we have great chances to go in such a place after dying.  I will take the decision only if I know exactly these facts- and I think this is not a singular attitude. Otherwise as the song says it;”che sera, sera!”
As my friend Butulescu says “I prefer the Hell if it is connected to the Internet.”
This thinking reed thing is a bit of exaggeration and over-generalization; quite precise statistical data show that:

Two percent of the people think; three percent of the people think they think; and ninety-five percent of the people would rather die than think. (George Bernard Shaw)

“We” belong to the upper 2%! Fortunately the extreme challenge of the LENR field- very similar to: “old age it is not for sissies” (guess the author) we all think because we have too. Therefore my colleagues have furnished me ideas we may discuss here.

The most powerful idea: let’s start with the understanding of  LENR.
Being an old, dry, weak, curved back reed, still trying hard to think- I have greeted the idea with enthusiasm: we are superior beings, rational and creative creatures with insight, courage, fantasy and power of anticipation. That the method, based on cognition!
Abd says: “Understanding LENR is a must and the highest priority.”
We will create first an image of what LENR is and how LENR works. This idea is a wannabe meme.
At a certain point, my reader friend Alain called my attention to something great, unpopular and usually oppressed: critical thinking! Isn’t this idea too noble, too beautiful? Openness- that one of the secrets of efficient thinking, let’s take a look to the
happier neighbors or relatives of LENR.
And here it is: High Temperature Super Conductivity, three years older than LENR. People like me, with a technophoric vein, were overly enthusiastic when the Bednorz-Mueller paper:
http://www.w2agz.com/Library/HTSC%20History/(1986)%20Bednorz%20-%20Mueller,%20Z%20Phys%20B%20(CM)%2064,%20189.pdf
was published. We thought this is just a start, in a few years we will have new materials superconducting at room temperature and even in boiling water and our electricity bills will shrink to say 10% of what they were in 1986. And obviously this progress will be based on a bright, perfectly predictive theory of HTSC. The reality was different and rather disappointing. Limited applications, material problems, slower progress and no good theory yet... See please the “fastest” Web information re HTSC theory

High-temperature superconductivity at 25: Still in suspense
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110720/full/475280a.html
Two quotations from the paper:
A quarter of a century after the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity, there is still heated debate about how it works. 
and
It's not that there's no theory; there are lots of theories — just none that most people agree on. This sounds quite LENR-like! The vital difference is that the HTSC experiments are reproducible, powerful and do not generate nasty problems.

An other example following Daniel Rocha’s metaphoric idea
is photosynthesis. Overly complex, and it seems each bacteria, alga or superior plant species uses its own variant of photosynthesis. Similar to LENR as inner complexity but working
well for beings lacking understanding- plants are functional and survive in their ways. For hundreds of million years.
Not very encouraging for the idea.
.
Can you please give some convincing counter-examples, cases in which theory is the guide, leader and counselor of the experiment?
Perhaps nuclear fission and, in part hot fusion- but LENR “wants” to differentiate from these.
But not totally demoralizing- just we have to accept that we will work with a less or more approximate and incomplete and still developing theory.
More important, as part of the coming paradigm change it is necessary to abandon the idealistic view It has to be replaced with the 3 effective antonyms of idealistic: - materialistic (efficiency of resources), pragmatic (efficiency of actions) and realistic (efficiency of knowledge)

- To be continued-
Peter

Thursday, October 11, 2012

EFFICIENCY OF/IN COLD FUSION/LENR RESEARCH.




Motto:

The ideal city becomes infernal city by simply closing the gates. (Author unknown) It refers first of all to thinking.

Please first read the Relevant Quotations- down the page at the end.. Thanks!


Aquila non capit muscam- in practice this means: old eagles don’t catch easy prey. And I am an almost tri-optimal age eagle, you know that medicine, philosophy and employers agree that 25 years is the best age, we still don’t know: the best for what?

Writing about a rather pleasant and popular (in our circles) subject, my contribution to problem solving will be sub-minimal. Treating simple and clear issues will not lead to more understanding or new knowledge. Efficiency- is a difficult subject per se, actually it has to be redefined and refined for each case. The trouble starts usually from the necessity to make a sharp, even rude distinction between effectiveness- that rules and has priority and efficiency that is simply the ratio efforts/results
But both terms have to be judged wisely.


Outside effectiveness.

LENR is a special case. As a problem it is extremely difficult, it is very probable that solving it, huge efforts are necessary, the expected results are formidable, but will they be obtained indeed?
I have stated that Cold Fusion is at the Right Side of the Medawar
Zone:
http://www.geocities.jp/hjrfq930/FTEssay/Essays/Gluck.htm
That means- it exist a high risk that LENR research will have a very low effectiveness. For a young researcher whose career depends on her/his fast early successes, it is a too adventurous choice.
Therefore LENR has a rather low outer effectiveness and attracts only special young people, in the best sense of this word- genuine heroes and we, older LENR people, have to do our best to not disappoint them. They are our future.

Inside effectiveness.

This is about choosing the right wall to climb  i.e. to establish which of he many variants of LENR has to be followed and lead to a useful application or/and to a solid understanding of what happens.
However, LENR has an unusually long prehistory; its genuine history will start in the very moment when the phenomena are understood or go commercial as an energy source, whichever comes earlier. If you don’t accept this rude analogy think
about childhood and maturity- but the real situation is exactly the same
Anyway, CF/LENR’s cradle was the Fleischmann-Pons electrolysis cell, palladium cathode, platinum anode heavy water and this is still popular. A very long series of experiments based on nanotechnology- say from Piantelli and Arata to Ahern and Celani. Please consult Edmund Storms’s excellent review papers for the global developments and the situations in the field.

 As I have written many times, the effectiveness of the different devices created for LENR differs, however very unfortunately it seems that all have a low efficiency- great efforts are made for obtaining excess heat- the very promise of usable energy- but the results are at a low level, are not repeatable –for many experiences of a series have a zero efficiency and even the best ones do not last for long. Not a very happy situation. In the same time, there are modest but successful experiments, it is a certainty that the phenomenon exists so the hope that one day it will save the world from energy hunger and from harmful and/or expensive energy sources is motivated and stimulates the researchers.

“Negative” has many facets – the experiments without measurable heat effect are clearly negative, however negative discoveries (in the spirit of Daniel Boorstin’s essay “The Age of Negative Discovery” are essential. That is, if we can establish that one variant is inherently inefficient and to work with it is a closed way, then efficiency can be sought in other, more fertile devices and experiments. I have concluded that the original Pd-D cell
has absolutely no chances  to be scaled up to a usable energy source, even a small one. But because it is the very origin of the cold fusion phenomena, many of my colleagues consider that this cell is the place where we can discover and understand the
essence of this process. I consider that it was a historical misfortune of LENR that it was discovered in this inefficient system poisoned or ill, technologically speaking.

Effectiveness, efficiency and the Good Fairy Hypothesis.

I am not in a position to make long range bets, however if the negative discoveries presented above are real, than even great money as such cannot save LENR. It is sad and well known that the field is oppressed, chronically lacks funding and many of our colleagues pay their own money to do research. Suppose this changes, here comes the Good Fairy and she knows that LENR is now as important and urgent as the Manhattan Plan was during WW-2, ergo LENR research will receive the same sum of money as had the atomic bomb research- that is 25.8 billion 2012 US dollars. Hundreds of scientists, the best scientific instruments- a researcher’s Paradise. The Good Fairy respects tradition and she imposes only one condition- everybody must use the genuine, original Pd-D system with electrolysis.
Five, ten glorious years have elapsed and what has happened?
You can guess my answer easily, please write me you answers.

The proper atmosphere for LENR research.

We believe that LENR’s situation will be improved soon – that is
a semi-prediction because in part it is already done- and a very important issue is to create the proper atmosphere (working atmosphere) for research.
A useful analogy helps: creativity is the oxygen of research but realism is its nitrogen and the best, most efficient mixture has a similar composition to that of our standard air i.e. 4:1. If you search more, forcing this analogy, you can find the mental analogies of the rare gases and of the harmful greenhouse gases too.
Non-optimal composition of this atmosphere affects research efficiency in two ways:

a) for UNDERSTANDING –excess of creativity- the atmosphere is too rich in oxygen- too many elegant and unverifiable theories that do not explain what happens and does not tells what to do for being efficient; we have to import or manufacture realism. Realism means inter alia to clearly distinguish between possible and impossible.

b) for APPLICATION- lack of creativity-of technology, the atmosphere is too inert, really great, radical ideas had been missing at least till the near past. Can we use the word efficiency for this action?

INTERMEZZO: Two huge lost opportunities.

During the awfully long prehistory of LENR there had been at least two great opportunities to increase the efficiency of research and to find new promising directions, very positive changes.

Francesco Piantelli was very fast- he discovered that Ni-H can also generate excess heat 115 days after the Fleischmann-Pons
Conference. Unfortunately, due to the language barrier, his first paper appeared in a less known, difficultly accessible journal:
F. Piantelli, Atti Accad. Fis., Serie XV, Tomo XII, pag. 89-96 (1993) and the first real information was this:

S. Focardi, R. Habel and F. Piantelli, “Anomalous Heat
Production in Ni-H Systems”, Nuovo Cim. Vol. 107 A, pp
163-167, 1994 (damn the counterproductive, anti-meritocratic
habit to put the authors in alphabetical order!)

This paper and the other news regarding Piantelli’s fundamental discovery have not triggered an epidemic. Ni-H was grosso modo
ignored due to the dominant postlogical (authority based) thinking most researchers remained loyal to the Pd-D cells.
There had been only two groups who tried to reproduce the Piantelli process with limited understanding of it and therefore with no success.
This is illuminating a bad research strategy- and not only in LENR. A new process is discovered and described say as completely as possible, in the scientific literature. Other teams
try to reproduce it exactly as the initial author has done. They can miss easily some critical details or cannot eliminate completely some of their own ideas or tricks and then reproducing is not
reproducing- failure! The global efficiency of reproduction tests in the LENR camp is rather low
The alternative to this is a more courageous approach- rediscovering, redoing from scratch the IDEA. You discover the same way or a completely new way, more efficient than the first one. As – “an Italian scientist has discovered that you can get anomalous heat –let’s try to do or achieve the same result.” If it is posiible for them, it is possible for me!
This was done by Defkalion after the abrupt divorce from Andrea Rossi.

Piantelli has remained a solitary long distance runner and has discovered essential principles of making progress in LENR save one decisive step. Nobody has helped him for so many years.

A lot of bad things can be told about efficiency and inertia, and few good things about efficiency and agility.

Leslie Case has arrived in the 9th year of our CF/LENR era. He has discovered catalytic cold fusion; see please this paper from Infinite Energy:
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MalloveEreproducib.pdf
I have greeted Leslie as a hero because I have written in my 1992 Topology Paper:

“What the nature, size and dynamism of the active sites are is an open question.  A very rapid and massive information influx from the field of science and technology of catalysis could be useful to get the answer(s).”

And Leslie has shown that a catalyst can do the job. The trouble was that the shadow of the Pd-D cell has been present in these experiments too; he and his few followers have worked mainly with a premium Pd/active carbon support catalyst. Leslie has abandoned fast this line of research. He has told me that his dream is to buy a winery in Australia. He has died in 2010, R.I.P.!
He has fast abandoned work and nobody has thoroughly tested say, Ni/metal oxides catalyst so the Rossi effect was discovered only years later - you guessed it, by Rossi.

Opportunities missed, efficiency was not able to grow up.

For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, 'It might have been'. (John Greenleaf Whittier)

LENR crisis and paradigm change.

Crisis “is” when the effectiveness and the efficiency of a group, unit, society- a collective whatever, are much too low for longer time periods and their trend is still downwards. Crises are natural for the world of humans, are both ubiquitous and almost everlasting.
Can be alleviated, not removed completely and are coming back in new forms. Are very diverse and generate a lot of interestingness- see:
http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2011/01/my-favorite-i-word.html
 ‘All great crises are first crises of thinking’- says one of my Septoes, but so are actually all of them. Inefficient thinking that is their basis. .
Crisis is a natural state a problem multiplex, paradigm change is the natural solution to it. Let’s remember how it has happened.

My ancestor, Glu, the caveman tribe chief said: “Fellows, mammoth hunting is increasingly ineffective, there are few mammoths, running fast, many of them are eaten by the saber-tooth tiger-lion, you need half ton of stones to kill one. This cannot last long, Should we also disappear as our regretted cousins from the Neander Valley? We have no choice, my friends
a great paradigm change is necessary. We have to change radically our life style and start agriculture and animal husbandry. Otherwise…

Later:  a journalistic document was found around Troy. It says
“Κύριοι, δεν μπορούμε να λύσουμε έτσι το πρόβλημα! Χρειαζόμαστε άμεσα μια αλλαγή παραδείγματος!’
In English; “Gentlemen, we cannot solve this problem. A paradigm change is necessary, fast!”
It was discovered that it is part of Odysseus’s speech when the ancestors of Yannis (from DGTG) have stated that the long siege of Troy lasts obscenely much, the few Trojans being resilient and apparently invincible.
Both Crisis and Paradeigm are old Greek words, so Odysseus was immediately understood. You know the rest of the story. In case you have problems with the modern, Kuhnian meanings of the word, please look here:  http://www.taketheleap.com/define.html
 or here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift
Habent sua fata verba!

LENR’s  paradigm change.

I do not consider necessary to explain why we need a paradigm change in LENR research. Crisis seems to be endemic here.
Also it is highly unnecessary to emphasize that paradigm shifts/changes are terribly difficult, slow, hesitant and really painful. Because the most vivid analogy for a paradigm change is breaking the bones of your logic and rearranging them in new, better ways; it is much destructiveness in any paradigm change.
It is known from Glu’s times that: ‘desperate illnesses need desperate remedies’.

There had not been many paradigm shifts in LENR

Rossi has found indeed an entirely new line of research, but paradigm change is first of all about thinking. Nobody (possibly Rossi included) knows his theoretical thinking, his modest patent description seems to be based on older, traditional thinking, and while his over-loquacious Blog speaks a language I don’t understand well. The question remains unanswered.

DGTG’s LENR paradigm shift.

However DGTD’s R&D Team has recently presented us their paradigm change. I think he has succeeded due to his special thinking skills in complexity and non-linear approach, but also
due to the fact that he has taken LENR seriously only due to the
Rossi DGTG deal somewhere in 2009/2010. In his case despite a very serious study of the LENR literature, mainly to know what to Not do, it was Not about a real paradigm shift with bone breaking but even more difficult, but not so painful, paradigm building. A competitive advantage, but also a drawback for somebody less creative than him.

I will try to show here the defining features of the new paradigm and I hope Yannis and his colleagues will help with comments.

It is the holistic approach, both outer and inner:

Outer: a part of the solution has to be found outside the problem. Not only Nuclear Physics but other scientific fields as chemistry, nanotechnology, astrophysics, plasma physics, mathematics, volcanism etc. etc. are inspiring, he thinks a closed group cannot acquire the necessary knowledge to solve he problem. Very interesting and deep idea- is the reverse of the motto true? Opening the gates as such does not transform the bad city in a good one but it is a necessary condition.

 Inner: they have early described the process as a dynamic system of the multi-stage set of reactions. It is not only about passing the Coulomb barrier; it is not allowed to isolate the reaction(s) from their complex environment. It is about accepting and mastering complexity. You must have a vision of the whole in action- and here comes the third, decisive clue:

You have to manage the action! It is about forms of experimental violence, both hydrogen and nickel have to be radically changed as nature and behavior in order to react intensely in an upscalable and controllable manner.


I have great positive expectations from LENR future. I have asked my grandson Rudy to inform me by unusual ADN related channels to the downstairs world when the hyper-effective (not needing any other energy even at start-up) and hyper-efficient (working sustainably ad infinitum) generators, probably Hyperions type 15 or 16, will conquer the world market.

Peter



RELEVANT QUOTATIONS
Effectiveness and Efficiency.

The best quotations belong to Peter Drucker:

Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.

Efficiency is doing better what is already being done.

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

Do not believe that it is very much of an advance to do the unnecessary three times as fast.

Efficiency tends to deal with Things. Effectiveness tends to deal with People. We manage things, we lead people.

 Other authors:

Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall. (Stephen Covey).

Efficiency is intelligent laziness.. (David Dunham).

Laziness is the mother of efficiency (Marian Propp).

Progress isn’t made by early risers. It’s made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something. (Robert A. Heinlein).

Obviously, the highest type of efficiency is that which can utilize existing material to the best advantage. (Jawaharlal Nehru).

The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency.  (Eugene J. McCarthy).

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.  Bill Gates.

If you see a snake, just kill it - don't appoint a committee on snakes.  (H. Ross Perot).

To increase your effectiveness, make your emotions subordinate to your commitments (Brian Koslow).

Men, like nails, lose their usefulness when they lose their direction and begin to bend. (Walter Savage Landor).

To me success means effectiveness in the world, that I am able to carry my ideas and values into the world - that I am able to change it in positive ways. (Maxine Hong Kingston).

There are only 2 qualities in the world: efficiency and inefficiency, and only 2 sorts of people: the efficient and the inefficient.”. (George Bernard Shaw).

Don’t tell me how hard you work. Tell me how much you get done (James Ling).

There can be economy only where there is efficiency. (Benjamin Disraeli)

Disorganization can scarcely fail to result in efficiency (Dwight D. Eisenhower)

I don't like a man to be too efficient. He's likely to be not human enough.  (Felix Frankfurter)

Secrecy is the enemy of efficiency, but don't let anyone know it.
(Ric Ocasek) [22]

Whoever today speaks of human existence in terms of power, efficiency, and ''historical tasks'' is an actual or potential assassin.”
(Albert Camus)

More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency (without necessarily achieving it) than for any other single reason - including blind stupidity. (W.A. Wulf)

The worst enemy of life, freedom and the common decencies is total anarchy; their second worst enemy is total efficiency.  (Aldous Huxley)

By concentrating our efforts upon a few major goals, our efficiency soars, our projects are completed, we are going somewhere. (Michael Korda)

Sunday, October 7, 2012

WHY SO MANY FRIENDS WILL IGNORE THIS?


The State of the Internet:
http://www.businessinsider.com/state-of-internet-slides-2012-10?op=1


The Nuanced Relationship Between Language and Different Types of Perception:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120928125300.htm


Neil Gaiman’s  8 Rules of Writing:
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/09/28/neil-gaiman-8-rules-of-writing/


Why Money No Longer Makes Us Happy:
http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/why-money-no-longer-makes-us-happy


Why We Get the Facts Wrong, Even in the Information Age:
http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/why-money-no-longer-makes-us-happy


Intelligence Is in the Genes, but Where? Most Genes Thought to Be Linked to Intelligence Probably Have No Bearing On IQ:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121002150027.htm


50 writing tools- the quick list:
http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/newsgathering-storytelling/writing-tools/76067/fifty-writing-tools-quick-list/


Rationality in Action: Look at a Problem as an Outsider:
http://bigthink.com/big-think-tv/rationality-in-action-look-at-a-problem-as-an-outsider


Are You Solving the Right Problem?::
http://hbr.org/2012/09/are-you-solving-the-right-problem/ar/1


Mozart: Good For What Ails Ya, Cognitively Speaking:
http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/mozart-good-for-what-ails-ya-cognitively-speaking


Misconduct, Not Mistakes, Causes Most Retractions of Scientific Papers: http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/10/misconduct-not-mistakes-causes-m.html?ref=em


For Some Primates, Survival of the Nicest:
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/10/for-some-primates-survival-of-th.html?ref=em


What Number Is Halfway Between 1 and 9? Is It 5 -- Or 3?:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121005123817.htm


The Dangers of Being Normal:
http://bigthink.com/against-the-new-taboo/the-dangers-of-being-normal


Increasing complexity requires increasing agility:
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/increasing-complexity-requires-increasing-agility

Thursday, October 4, 2012

ANALYZING THE SHUTDOWNROSSI.COM SITE




More friends have called my attention to the website of Gary Wright and have expressed a rather large spectrum of opinions
from ‘Wright is right’ to ‘beware from this killer’.
Gary himself has commented at my blog a few times and I had some e-mail dialogues with him- I have nothing to complain- a young (?) gentleman with a reasonable behavior and polite wording, despite his very strong convictions.
I have decided to explore “sine ira et studio” his famous (in our circles) website: http://shutdownrossi.com/ Actually he is the second after Steve Krivit to demonstrate systematically that Rossi is a fraud- without any real scientific and/or technical merits and that all E-cat type generators are fakes, tricks, perpetuum stabiles without commercial future.
The site has a strong rhetorical flavor; “shut down Rossi” sounds
as realistic as “stop greed,”, “eradicate corruption,” “live healthy” or as the 11th Commandment, to name just a few.

My first reaction to SHUTDOWNROSSI was envy. Double envy.

I envy Rossi- he is so important, so influential, that somebody- or even more individuals consider necessary to make him to shut up and cease to work with LENR based generators, or even plead guilty and arrange himself to be punished.
On the contrary, no one wants me to shut up and shut down my blog Ego Out despite the liberal, freethinker, negativist, secularist, anti-Moneytheist, pessimist, cold-fusionist, really dangerous ideas expressed there. And even my LENR colleagues do not react with anger to my palladiumphobic, nanostructures-critical non-conformist ideas being much too tolerant with the many perfidious, heretical statements. Some do this even after reading indeed what I have published on the Ego Out blog.

I envy even more Gary Wright who seems to belong to a much happier human species than myself. Reading his blog I have achieved something very rare in my life:  certainty. The certainty
that he is sincere and wants very sincerely to shut down Rossi
because Rossi does harm – first of all will ruin completely the reputation of LENR. LENR’s reputation is not high; can you please help me with a decent metaphor replacing the ugly Hungarian one “under the frog’s ass” that cannot appear here
from obvious reasons?

Gary writes about the opinions of many people and about what can be considered facts – but these http://shutdownrossi.com/?page_id=1342 are his own thoughts.
It seems Gary has more certainties regarding Rossi than me, and I think these are not based on a better documentation- on much more facts and on more direct information re Rossi than I have. And I have confessed already more than a year ago that Rossi is an insoluble IQ test for me. And he remained so up to today, incognoscible- kind of stressing puzzle- he and his many kinds of E-cats.

(I have delayed a few days the publication of this paper due to
http://www.ecatworldnews.com/?p=195- an other publication on the same subject- I don’t want to write in the seemingly “me too” style.)

O.K. Gary Wright is describing Rossi in the most definite “black or white”,” evil or good” approach- and Rossi is black and evil for him, beyond any doubt. Rossi’s past is accusing him, his present is dim, just lies and dirty tricks, data and mass manipulation. He has no future and has to be stopped, shut down as sooner, as better. Certainty, no doubts, everything is measured and settled.

Gary Wright even does not consider the black and white variant of Rossi being a scammer and a real inventor in the same time and the same person. He is not usimg parallel lines of thinking.

My mode of thinking (see the writings in this Blog) is very different from Gary’s especially my relationship with the certainties.
To tell it openly, I am a counter-champion in matters of certainties. I am not dependent on certainties- except those related to my family. My other certainties are incomplete, local, temporal, not truly irreversible, weakened by iffyness. More moral than factual. They are much more related to methods, principles and rules than to results, truths and symbols. Even more important, my certainties are vectorial –they have a direction and are not scalar- about a fixed aim or value. I am much more certain about what has to be done than about what was, is, or will be done. And, definitely< I have much more negative pseudo-certainties than positive ones.
Related to this is my inability to believe in weird things and my high degree immunity to strong and sticky memes (if you are interested why, please read the writings labeled BISINIS on my
Blog)

P.S Wanting to help me- because certainly the Web likes my efforts – it sends just now a relevant book:

Ginger Campbell
Are You Sure? The Unconscious Origins of Certainty
http://www.virginiacampbellmd.com/blog/2012/6/12/are-you-sure-now-out-for-kindle.html

However, actually I am not sure the Web loves me, it could be a
simple coincidence. But it is a book with an important message
and you can listen to the basic ideas here:
http://secularbuddhism.org/2012/06/30/episode-124-ginger-campbell-are-you-sure-the-unconscious-origins-of-certainty/

This is also not encouraging for the certainty lovers:
http://reason.com/archives/2012/10/02/half-of-the-facts-you-know-are-probably

For an even better view of the Certainty concept, see please the Quotations appended to this writing.


BUT NOW I DON’T WANT TO MAKE ONLY THE THEORY OF CERTAINTY!

I think there are very serious reasons for Gary and the “good boys” who share his certainty that Andrea Rossi is a scammer and nothing (good) more, to think over what they believe/tell and to find solid proofs for their opinion.

Their certainty that Rossi is a scammer in such an extent that he has to be shut down and the e-Cats have to be disassembled and the pieces to be used in honest projects, must be based on an other certainty: Rossi is NOT able to obtain any excess heat, his method is totally impotent and all energy he ever obtained in his experiments was entirely faked, stolen from the grid, coming from some hidden batteries or from other occult sources.

Gary Wright is right that no experiments by truly independent E 3rd part testers were publicly made with Rossi\s generators. however a long series of experiments- 12 to 14 were made and
the people who assisted could not be all Rossi’s accomplices or victims mesmerized by Rossi. There were no quality experiments
but it needs a very good imagination to think that the tests were
faked-all- completely- with totally inactive “active” cores.
There is not only one way to be a scammer; if Rossi cannot obtain
any excess heat, he is a 0 = 2 absolute scammer and then he has to be stopped or much better ignored and forgotten.
If he is a 2 = 8 scammer i.e. he gets some excess heat and makes arrangements in order to demonstrate that he has much more heat than he really has, then he has to be forced to tell the truth. This is in theory because his defensive, secrecy lines are well built and he is doing what he wants. His actions are chaotic, unpredictable, he generates a mixture of information and disinformation- much smoke.
For those having the certainty of the total scammer idea it could be a good mental exercise to

a) Imagine and describe how has he faked the experiments;

b) Explain how will he sell E-cats that do not catch a Watt of energy mice.

Telling it again- it is awfully difficult to imitate excess heat at kW levels. But from excess heat to a practical energy source it is a very long way to go.

I think it is a higher probability of the 2 =8 scam and this means that later Rossi himself or other people –good engineers- will be
able to achieve 80, 800 and so on i.e. intensification, scale-up and control. See please what I have written about Rossi here: http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2012/05/my-way-to-lenr-truth.html
I have been one of the naives, who have tried to convince Rossi to perform one perfect, i.e. very reliable experiment, but he did not wanted such a test and perhaps he couldn’t do it- probably due to the lack of control. I have no certainties but I am not changing my opinion if it is worked out based on facts, step by step.

Rossi laments a lot about he authorities which are delaying the approval of his patent, thus obliging him to protect his epochal invention by unorthodox methods. and misleading secrecy.
It is known that Focardi has transferred a part of the Piantelli know-how to Rossi. The patent http://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/WO2009125444 is not well written (I am sure I will win the next contest of euphemistics too), and speaks about 150 to 5000 deg C- while nickel boils around 3300 C and is ab ovo beaten by Piantelli’s masterfully conceived patents, My hypothesis was and remained- Rossi does not want a
real patent because what he has discovered is a rather simple thing as some additives. These change the game, but it is not easy at all to play really well. The additives are a necessary but not sufficient condition to achieve practical LENR+.
I hope that the solution found by Rossi is real and – personal ambition!- related to the predictions of my 1992 “Topology first”
paper. From time to time, Rossi says he has a Theory and gives miniature fragments of it. Recently he has said his famous catalyst is not a chemical catalyst. This is a new example of his practice to do and not do things in the same time- in this case to give information and not give information.

However Rossi is in any case a kind of human LENR catalyst. IMHO the worst scenario is this: Rossi is a science-fiction (or techno-fiction) author and he has imagined how has LENR come out of its long stagnation as a technology. Life and LENR are much more interesting with Andrea Rossi as without him. I am actually very grateful to him. At 10 Jan 2011 I became jobless
for the first time in my adult life and 4 days later the first Rossi
experiment took place at Bologna University., the LENR world has changed and became more interesting and promising. It is not so fatally relevant that the promises are not still kept- or other people will make them a reality.
Therefore I am for a site http://givechancestorossi.com
Let the e-Cats speak for him; it is possible the first, the fat, the hot Cats are not good, but the agile cats will be. Or not, who knows?
I think, and this can play the role of a certainty that Rossi has invented or has imagined he has invented a new way in LENR.
In historical perspective, both cases are beneficial.

Peter



Relevant quotations.

A reasonable probability is the only certainty. (E.W. Howe)“

The one unchangeable certainty is that nothing is unchangeable or certain. (John Fitzgerald Kennedy)

There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing. (Robert Burns)

One of the few certainties in life is that persons of certainty should certainly be avoided. (Willy Russell)

In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted. (Bertrand Russell)

Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.
(Benjamin Franklin)

If it is true that we need a degree of certainty to get by, it is also true that too much of the stuff can be lethal (Terry Eagleton),

Let go of certainty. The opposite isn't uncertainty. It's openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow.  (Tony Schwartz)

At the core of all well-founded belief lies belief that is unfounded. (Ludwig Wittgenstein)

Certainty makes you blind to the obvious. (Srinivas Pakalapati)

Yet it is unassailably true that so long as we lack omniscience and do not know all of the future, all our generalizations are fallible or only probable. And the history of human error shows that a general consensus, or widespread and unquestioned feeling of certainty, does not preclude the possibility that the future may show us to be in error. (Morris F. Cohen)

Certainty is the most vivid condition of ignorance and the most necessary condition for knowledge. (Kedar Joshi)

In some cases, I am able to respect what so many call bigots. Such people have a more solid foundation for drawing their lines when it comes to the security of their ways and quite possibly the security of mankind. They rely on something that has worked to get man this far without placing ideals blindly driven by emotion first; they have a sure line and they say, 'No.' That, in a sense, is something I find to be highly respectable. (Criss Jami)

People don’t want knowledge, but certainties. (Bertrand Russell)

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts. (Bertrand Russell)

Inquiry is fatal to certainty. (Will Durant)

Our best built certainties are but sand-houses and subject to damage from any wind of doubt that blows (Mark Twain)

Creativity can be described as letting go of certainties.
(Gail Sheehy)

All business proceeds on beliefs, or judgments of probabilities, and not on certainties. (Charles W. Eliot

A great literature is chiefly the product of inquiring minds in revolt against the immovable certainties of the nation. (Henry Louis Mencken)

The public, with its mob yearning to be instructed, edified and pulled by the nose, demands certainties; it must be told definitely and a bit raucously that this is true and that is false. But there are no certainties. (Henry Louis Mencken)

In essence we have become addicted to the certainty, sureness or sense of security that our faith provides. (Leo Booth)

There are very few certainties that touch us all in this mortal experience, but one of the absolutes is that we will experience hardship and stress at some point. (James C. Dobson)

I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me. (Simone de Beauvoir)

Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.  (Eric Hoffer)