Luboš Motl, late to the party but in fine form once he arrives, nails down the Motl-Connolley connection at seven degrees of separation, in the process reinforcing the wisdom of my previous use of him as the poster child for coarse discourse. I award extra bonus points for style of presentation.
jfleck at inkstain
A few thoughts from John Fleck, a writer of journalism and other things, living in New Mexico
What was the coarse part of his post?
Ps. Ever go eat Mexican food in Espanolo?
Fortunately moveable type allows me to edit comments, so I’m no longer faced with the all-or-nothing option with Lubos.
Did you know I have a new blog; perhaps its time to update PF? Hint hint… 🙂
EFT – Here’s a hint: look for the place where Dr. M dismisses a particular scientist’s entire body of work with a wave of his hand. Bonus points for Dr. M’s dismissal of an entire field of science.
P.S. Yes, I’ve had Mexican food in Española. I think Angelinas is the name of the place, down near the south end of town. I remember it being good, but that was many years ago.
I still don’t get it. Are you talking about the recent posting? And I think you are using the term, “coarse”, a little improperly. Dismissive is what you mean. Me saying “liberals have no sac” is coarse. Motl is not being coarse. Plus, I agree with him. Listen to those guys try actually getting into the depths of a math argument. Steve M. has them totally outgunned…so that they usually try to avoid real clinches and just shadow-punch. Feynmann would be disgusted with these Mannites. But what do you expect from a physics wash-up (see that is dismissive…not coarse).
I ate some Mexican down there (towards the LA side of town). Remember tears and snot running down my face afterwards. But I was young and macho. NM Mexican is different from regular Mexican. Only damn thing that grows in the state is chilis. All the damn veggies come from Cali.
And now you’re older and still macho. I’d look forward to seeing the figurative expression on the collective face of the M&M “posse” (tip o’ the sombrero to Dano) when the NRC “hockey stick” report come out closely followed by the AR4, but it’s clear enough from the ever more shrill tone of the rhetoric at Climate Audit that they know exactly what’s coming and are dissociating themselves even farther from reality by way of preparation.
Yeah…kind of macho. Not as strong though. I don’t find Steve M. to be shrill. I think you are one of the best of the contrary types if not the best over there…but I would respect you much more if you engaged with Steve on the content rather than going after easy prey like John, etc.
Somebody help me out here. I’m trying to figure out out 4, or 6, or 8 degrees of separation have anything to do with eating lunch together? And not in Española – But yeah, I remember Angelina’s – it was pretty good (might still be for all I know), almost as good as going all the way to Chimayo. Of course Gabriel’s has a mean margarita, and is much closer to SF.
No, I’m talking about Mann and the other Hockeystick … aficionados. Speaking of them, I understand Connolley is a new High Priest at Wikipedia. Congratulations are in order – I guess. He must not have much to do. I wonder if he, Briffa and Osborn celebrated with their own lunch?
It has to do with me acting cool. Got it? 😉
No problem with that. I was trying to figure out how degrees of separation fit in with the H_________ guys eating lunch together.
This is somewhat coarse:
“…namely execution of all those who spread these fears.”
But Motl is really grasping and what a lot of high-energy physicists grasp at: the utter irrelevance of their field.
When he says something like, “When you avoid shaky fields such as climate science, things become much more reliable”
What he is really saying is, “I know my field is nothing but a complete money sink to society, taking lots of resources and really giving nothing of value back, but at least we can calculate the path of psi mesons to eighteen significant digits. Thus dumb oceanographers can only calculate the salinity of seawater to three significant digits, so obvious their entire field is shaky!”
damn, where’s the edit key, John?
So, who here doesn’t think Climate Science is shaky?
Bwaahaahaaa