asciilifeform: any who are inclined, as mircea_popescu seems to be, to think that 'any idea can be tested and developed in your cellar' should study the history of semiconductor
asciilifeform: fact is, 'basic science' is -ev when viewed through the lens of a typical human lifespan
asciilifeform: and why they might like to throw it into a strongly -ev pit
asciilifeform: it is also not entirely clear to me where the 'better men' are to get the $b
asciilifeform: р, и тем более — людям, которые, вообще отстав в развитии от европейцев лет на 200, до сих пор еще не совсем уверенно застегивают свои собственные штаны!'
asciilifeform: займется чисткой сараев — прямым своим делом, — разруха исчезнет сама собой. Двум богам служить нельзя! Невозможно в одно время подметать трамвайные пути и устраивать судьбы каких-то испанских оборванцев! Это никому не удается, докто
asciilifeform: азруха не в клозетах, а в головах. Значит, когда эти баритоны кричат «бей разруху!» — Я смеюсь. […] Клянусь вам, мне смешно! Это означает, что каждый из них должен лупить себя по затылку! И вот, когда он вылупит из себя всякие галлюцинации и
asciilifeform: вечер, начну у себя в квартире петь хором, у меня настанет разруха. Если я, входя в уборную, начну, извините за выражение, мочиться мимо унитаза и то же самое будут делать Зина и Дарья Петровна, в уборной начнется разруха. Следовательно, р
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: 'Что такое эта ваша разруха? Старуха с клюкой? Ведьма, которая выбила все стекла, потушила все лампы? Да ее вовсе и не существует. Что вы подразумеваете под этим словом? […] Это вот что: если я, вместо того, чтобы оперировать каждый
asciilifeform: something like 'decay isn't this old witch who walks around, it's you and i having bad aim and missing the pisser'
asciilifeform: there's a great ru line from, i think, 'dog's heart'
asciilifeform: and only feel the least bit comfortable eating the recycled kind
asciilifeform: my brain melted the first time i learned that many folks in usa can't really make themselves eat actual food
asciilifeform: fred 'fred on everything' reed mentioned it in his books
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: the observation that usa tends to 'follow' the expats wherever they happen to congregate en masse, is an old one
asciilifeform doesn't publicize so much as a fraction of a percent of what he spends time on
asciilifeform: i'll point out that publishing -everything- one does is generally a habit of mediocrities desperate for attention
asciilifeform: what al does in his cellar, only the devil knows
asciilifeform: and so tries to carve some corner for himself in the shadow of the seemingly-invincible thousand-year reich
asciilifeform: his problem, like al's, is quite arguably: that he hasn't fully accepted death yet.
asciilifeform: ^ from mr mold's old post, dropped here for the record
asciilifeform: and more palpably a Soviet restaurant.'
asciilifeform: 'A money-losing economy, like a money-losing restaurant, sucks. It sucks in all kinds of ways that have no apparent connection to finance. The entire dining experience is grim. This, indeed, is the experience of the entire "old economy" outside the little bubbles of Silicon Valley and Wall Street. My in-laws live in Columbus. Columbus sucks. Even with Chairman Ben's 85-billion-a-month bond-buying "recovery." It is more
asciilifeform: the one i very nearly ended up participating in, is described (roughly) in earlier link
asciilifeform: gabriel_laddel: there were two proposed experiments.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: the conclusive test requires the torsion rotor
asciilifeform: except if the difference only becomes palpable a few $b and decades later, it does't really exist to the naked eye
asciilifeform: it isn't really a concept he finds digestible
asciilifeform: al actually spent years battling idiots who 'forked physics' and 'forked chemistry' on usenet, in much the same style as mpoe-pr battled btc sc4mz0rz
asciilifeform: that is, if one day we simply exterminate them, he still hasn't really won, just sat down in lysenko's throne
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: for some reason i thought you had a handle on the 'provenance' thing - that is, that al doesn't win unless his opponents actually lose by their own rules and surrender by their own free hand
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: let's gedankenexperiment. say we build the thing and it runs as predicted (see the last chemistry.stackexchange link for what we'd be doing, roughly)
asciilifeform: the legitimacy of the whole shebang is at stake
asciilifeform: and certainly not a 'crackpot'-predicted boojum
asciilifeform: if it doesn't exist, they'd rather not turn up anything
asciilifeform: aha see they are only interested in finding effect predicted by the usg-sponsored paper machine
asciilifeform: incidentally, he mentioned that other folks also offered to arrange, and he held off for same reason
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: he thought (as of our last at-length exchange, ~3 yrs or so) that he still had a chance to make the torsion balance owners see the light
asciilifeform: the actual matter here is 'what's one physical effect vs hundred thousand respectable careers of respectable people (tm)'
asciilifeform: or rather, the question of nonexistence as 'settled'
asciilifeform: gabriel_laddel: the interesting thing, and important to explain mircea_popescu's puzzlement, is that the enemy has been studiously arranging experiments to avoid actually testing the effect in question and declaring it 'settled'
asciilifeform: anyone who still gives a damn - read the paper.
asciilifeform: and, incidentally, there are other chiralanes possible (you can generate them as computer model, that is. there is, afaik, no known synthesis for any of them)
asciilifeform: but is optically non-superimposable on its mirror image
asciilifeform: actually my explanation is off, the center is topologically unique. but the thing meets none of the ochem textbook graph-theoretical definitions for chirality
