On Tue, 11 Oct 2022 15:30:39 -0700 (PDT), Robert Carnegie
<rja.carnegie@excite.com> wrote:

>On Tuesday, 11 October 2022 at 20:39:28 UTC+1, Joe Pfeiffer wrote:
>> Paul S Person <pspe...@old.netcom.invalid> writes:
>> > On Mon, 10 Oct 2022 18:13:15 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
>> > Heydt) wrote:
>> >
>> >>In article <6WV0L.111440$OR4c....@fx46.iad>,
>> >>Scott Lurndal <sl...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>>Has "Piled Higher and Deeper" become no longer fashionable?
>> >>
>> >>(Hal Heydt)
>> >>It works as a definition, but lacks the utility of a single
>> >>syllable for daily use.
>> >>
>> >>I wonder how much of the use of "phud" is derivative of its use
>> >>in "Yellow Submarine".
>> >
>> > Oh, about 100% would be /my/ guess.
>> >
>> > Unless the Beatles got it from somewhere else, perhaps.
>> I would expect it to have predated the Beatles. Pronouncing initialisms
>> as acronyms is a habit that's been around for a long, long time (my wife
>> works for White Sands Missile Range, or WSMR, universally pronounced
>> wizmer).
>
>To be sure; "Wrens" were or are members of
><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_Royal_Naval_Service>

It's a lot easier when the intialism (which "Ph. D" is not, BTW,
because the "h" is not an initial) was chosen /precisely/ to be
pronouncable. IIRC, I have at least one animated film that includes
some unlikely title whose initialism can be easily pronounced -- and a
joke based on how hard it must have been to come up with it.
--
"In this connexion, unquestionably the most significant
development was the disintegration, under Christian
influence, of classical conceptions of the family and
of family right."

On Tue, 11 Oct 2022 22:10:13 -0600, Joe Pfeiffer
<pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> wrote:

>Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> On 9/28/2022 7:12 AM, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
>>> It's "The Guardian", so there's that, and I have no way to say yea or nay
>>> about the content, but it's an entertaining article:
>>> Imagine you go to a zoology conference. The first speaker
>>> talks about her 3D model of a 12-legged purple spider that
>>> lives in the Arctic. There's no evidence it exists, she
>>> admits, but it's a testable hypothesis, and she argues that
>>> a mission should be sent off to search the Arctic for
>>> spiders.
>>> The second speaker has a model for a flying earthworm, but
>>> it flies only in caves. There's no evidence for that either,
>>> but he petitions to search the world's caves. The third one
>>> has a model for octopuses on Mars. It's testable, he stresses.
>>> Kudos to zoologists, I've never heard of such a conference.
>>> But almost every particle physics conference has sessions
>>> just like this, except they do it with more maths. It has
>>> become common among physicists to invent new particles for
>>> which there is no evidence, publish papers about them, write
>>> more papers about these particles' properties, and demand
>>> the hypothesis be experimentally tested. Many of these tests
>>> have actually been done, and more are being commissioned
>>> as we speak. It is wasting time and money.
>>> www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/26/physics-particles-physicists
>>
>> Oh my. It is actually worse than the race for a working fusion reactor.
>
>Didn't see Ted's post, so I'm responding to Lynn's -- while there's no
>observational evidence for the particles being proposed so furiously,
>they do make the math work out better. Whether that's evidence is at
>the heart of the question of whether physics has gone off the deep end,
>or if the critics just aren't good enough at math (and to be clear,
>I realize they're immeasurably better than me).

Or the critics may simply be jealous that /their/ papers aren't being
published.
--
"In this connexion, unquestionably the most significant
development was the disintegration, under Christian
influence, of classical conceptions of the family and
of family right."

On Wednesday, October 12, 2022 at 12:10:17 AM UTC-4, Joe Pfeiffer wrote:
> Lynn McGuire <lynnmc...@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > On 9/28/2022 7:12 AM, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
> >> It's "The Guardian", so there's that, and I have no way to say yea or nay
> >> about the content, but it's an entertaining article:
> >> Imagine you go to a zoology conference. The first speaker
> >> talks about her 3D model of a 12-legged purple spider that
> >> lives in the Arctic. There's no evidence it exists, she
> >> admits, but it's a testable hypothesis, and she argues that
> >> a mission should be sent off to search the Arctic for
> >> spiders.
> >> The second speaker has a model for a flying earthworm, but
> >> it flies only in caves. There's no evidence for that either,
> >> but he petitions to search the world's caves. The third one
> >> has a model for octopuses on Mars. It's testable, he stresses.
> >> Kudos to zoologists, I've never heard of such a conference.
> >> But almost every particle physics conference has sessions
> >> just like this, except they do it with more maths. It has
> >> become common among physicists to invent new particles for
> >> which there is no evidence, publish papers about them, write
> >> more papers about these particles' properties, and demand
> >> the hypothesis be experimentally tested. Many of these tests
> >> have actually been done, and more are being commissioned
> >> as we speak. It is wasting time and money.
> >> www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/26/physics-particles-physicists
> >
> > Oh my. It is actually worse than the race for a working fusion reactor.
> Didn't see Ted's post, so I'm responding to Lynn's -- while there's no
> observational evidence for the particles being proposed so furiously,
> they do make the math work out better. Whether that's evidence is at
> the heart of the question of whether physics has gone off the deep end,
> or if the critics just aren't good enough at math (and to be clear,
> I realize they're immeasurably better than me).

Lynn is surprisingly late on this bandwagon. I replied to this silly article two weeks ago.

Among other things, one might note that we had to wait twenty six years after the
neutrino's prediction before it was discovered. During that period, a generation long,
scientists continued to work in the field, accepting for the most part that neutrinos
existed. Had there been YouTube at the time, I'm sure there would have been
plenty of videos on the topic of how time was being wasted, and modern
physics merely science fiction.

Duplicate for quarks, the Higgs, and Darwin's Hawkmoth.

William Hyde

On Wednesday, 12 October 2022 at 17:57:55 UTC+1, Paul S Person wrote:
> On Tue, 11 Oct 2022 15:30:39 -0700 (PDT), Robert Carnegie
> <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>
> >On Tuesday, 11 October 2022 at 20:39:28 UTC+1, Joe Pfeiffer wrote:
> >> Paul S Person <pspe...@old.netcom.invalid> writes:
> >> > On Mon, 10 Oct 2022 18:13:15 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
> >> > Heydt) wrote:
> >> >
> >> >>In article <6WV0L.111440$OR4c....@fx46.iad>,
> >> >>Scott Lurndal <sl...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >> >>>
> >> >>>Has "Piled Higher and Deeper" become no longer fashionable?
> >> >>
> >> >>(Hal Heydt)
> >> >>It works as a definition, but lacks the utility of a single
> >> >>syllable for daily use.
> >> >>
> >> >>I wonder how much of the use of "phud" is derivative of its use
> >> >>in "Yellow Submarine".
> >> >
> >> > Oh, about 100% would be /my/ guess.
> >> >
> >> > Unless the Beatles got it from somewhere else, perhaps.
> >> I would expect it to have predated the Beatles. Pronouncing initialisms
> >> as acronyms is a habit that's been around for a long, long time (my wife
> >> works for White Sands Missile Range, or WSMR, universally pronounced
> >> wizmer).
> >
> >To be sure; "Wrens" were or are members of
> ><https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_Royal_Naval_Service>
> It's a lot easier when the intialism (which "Ph. D" is not, BTW,
> because the "h" is not an initial) was chosen /precisely/ to be
> pronouncable. IIRC, I have at least one animated film that includes
> some unlikely title whose initialism can be easily pronounced -- and a
> joke based on how hard it must have been to come up with it.

There was the time in British sci fi comedy _Red Dwarf_
when a personality-altering monster attacked. As a result -
I think - Arnold Rimmer wanted to be /nice/ to it, and he
tried to recruit the rest of the crew into a "Committee for
the Liberation and Integration of Terrifying Organisms and
their Rehabilitation Into Society." In spite of what that
coincidentally spells - not because of.