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News Briefs 26-01-2011

Big news on the ‘alien abduction’ meme brewing, stay tuned to TDG.

Mucho thanks to Kat & RPJ.

Quote of the Day:

Looking at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map. Why, I ask myself, shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?

Vincent Van Gogh

  1. Nick Redfern
    Nick Redfern’s interview can be found here.

    Like Joey Ramone used to say to his fans “if you don’t like this song, don’t worry: next one begins in 2 minutes” Nick seems to be the sort of author who says “if you don’t like this new book, don’t worry: next one gets published next month” 😉

  2. Cold Water as a Lubricant
    Re: Pouring cold water on cold fusion claims by Italian scientists.
    http://io9.com/5742290/no-italian-scientists-have-not-discovered-cold-fusion

    The story links back to io9.com, which had become something of a pleasure to read from time to time. I don’t really need to agree with everything that I read to appreciate a well written article or opinion.

    As for the subject matter; cold fusion, immediate skepticism is nothing new. It has become something akin to the perpetual motion machine. The general opinion of mainstream science is that it is impossible.

    Of course, shortly after the Wright Brothers announced they had achieved powered, heavier-than-air flight, there were many in the science community that scoffed at the possibility. And that’s basically what I offered as a comment to the article.

    From what I have been able to gather from the news stories on this subject, the inventor demonstrated his invention and was witnessed to work as described. So the next argument was that the process had not been submitted through the proper channels within the official scientific community.

    (que: harp music – fade to B&W)

    I can see old man Edison screwing in an incandescent bulb and watching it light… and then hear that same community deny his invention because it had not been properly approved. That the thing lit up is unimportant. That it was not rubber stamped and then run through granny’s bureaucratic wringer-washer was the problem.

    (que: full-scale keyboard pound on piano – snap back to real time)

    Anyway, after a few hours, I returned to io9.com to see what responses to my comment, if any, awaited. It was then that I found out that my comments were not going to be published to begin with… until I had passed an ‘audition’.

    Audition? Oh, come on now… this is really silly as hell.

    I have since written a letter of inquiry to the website but don’t expect to pass whatever test they are giving… or really, even getting a reply to the email.

    Old rusty buckets don’t fit well alongside elitist table decor.

    So, in a nutshell, you can screw in the conceptual light bulb and illuminate a room with thought but… if the bulb has not been submitted through proper channels, approved and signed in triplicate, you might as well join that infinite troop of monkeys banging away on that infinite number of typewriters…

    *sigh*

    As for the cold fusion device? Probably nothing. Inventing is most likely just a little like auditioning.

    1. Cold showers and cold fusion
      It’s that kind of aversion to radical claims what’s forced scientists to study that “cold fusion” claims in a very hush hush way. They probably don’t even call it by that name, but I’m pretty sure several laboratories are performing experiments on it as we speak.

      Could that help us make a better battery? Maybe, maybe not. But it sure could help us advance our understanding on the laws of Nature.

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