[Rezwan]

Phil’s Dad wrote: Maybe in the long stretches between mile-stones we can turn the question around.
What have FFS members done today to promote the cause? :wow:

Yes! That guy and the moon, didn’t he also say “ask not what your country can do for you…”

[Rezwan]

AaronB wrote: The more reporting we do, the less work we get done.

Exactly. Like approaching the speed of light.

[Rezwan]

Confusing title. I kept deleting the notifications in my inbox because I didn’t think it related to me.

Using my fabulous administrative powers I am going to change the name of this topic to “Gestation”.

Deal with it.

Brian, you have ADHD. Yes, you should consider the posts closed until further notice. Go on vacation. Come back when we ask you. What have you done for me lately, Brian? Did you get me a Christmas present? Kwanza pie? I didn’t think so.

There’s a lot to report, and a lot of structural work to do, and my circuits are overloaded. For example, they’ve set up the time of flight detectors and were adjusting those. So – should I just twitter “they set up time of flight detectors?” I could. That would be the easiest thing to do. But then you’d badger me about that. Badger badger badger. Nag nag nag.

What is that. What does it do. Can we have a picture. What happened to the shot? I want every data point. Now, free, perfect.

Basically, you think your request is simple. You want me to hang out in the lab and post things, blog style, like a reporter. In fact, I do hang out at the lab from time to time and watch what the guys are doing. Then I ask questions, and this breaks the flow of their work. Although, sometimes it’s very useful, because I provide comic relief which makes work more fun, and because they think out loud and work things out, and it’s always good to have a sounding board. But then – due to my limited knowledge of everything, when I go to write up what we just discussed, I ground to a halt over some gaps. I have a bunch of questions to ask to fill in the details. But by this time, I don’t want to break their focus again just to have them give me elementary physics and engineering lessons. I figure I will do that in my own time. So, I’m doing a lot of reading on these topics. The learning curve is steep.

Upshot: I have a bunch of half, or quarter written articles here, piling up.

The good thing is that, as time goes by, the picture gets clearer, its resolving. Gestating. Each of the articles are taking better form.

I loathe writing something if I don’t understand it completely. I also loathe blogging. By that, I mean that I don’t like to just write things as they come up, in a stream of consciousness and events. I have to have structure. It has to have a place to go. I have to be organized. If things aren’t organized, I simply stop, and organize.

Right now, it’s organization time.

There’s a lot of material that needs to get through, and I am a narrow funnel. So my priority is to set up this website so that other people can do some of this work.

Or, say there are a series of articles to be written about the instruments LPP will be using. I could just write it up in standard blog format with a category. But it occurs to me that this is data, and I should set up a database for it. There are fields to set up for it. name, description, purpose, cost, issues, images.

For the casual user, that’s probably not important. But I’m thinking long term. Tonight (SUNDAY NIGHT! I should be watching TV!) Eric and I discussed how to develop the “Plasma Network” component of the site. We want to make a useful place for plasma physicists to collaborate. That’s great, because I just purchased MSM, the Multi-Site Manager – so we can set up a whole new forum for physicists (we’re trying to keep the rabble off that – although you can see what the pros are posting). Now, this is a crowd that’s going to want more details on equipment and suppliers so they can compare. Eventually the site will evolve into something that can support their discussion of such mundanities.

MSM is not hard to use. But it takes time to set all these things up. And I do a little on several fronts at a time.

Oh, and about user posting. I made some progress there, and ran aground. Note to self, still need to put out a query on the expression engine forum about why this isn’t working. So many facets of it to iron out. And they WILL be ironed out, because it’s just code. But I never studied computer science. I am self-taught here (I guess everyone is). So it takes quite a bit of focus to track down why something isn’t working. Take a look at this test of the SAEF for a logo submission. Is logo submission a high priority? No. But the steps I have to go through to set up the SAEF and get it to work for users is important. The same steps will be used for every other type of thing we set up to allow users to post. With various permissions. Member management. Because eventually, we want a lot of pros posting. Quality stuff.

If you look at this draft – never mind the formatting. The trouble I’m having is that as an admin, it works perfectly. But when I log out and log back in as a mortal, it doesn’t work. Actually, it did work at first, when I set it to upload to the main upload directory – to an extent. I could upload an image and words, preview the screen, but when I submitted, nothing showed. Later, as admin, I saw that the post was, indeed, made, and I was notified, but the status was “closed”. So admin had to “open” it. But in the logical place where you put permissions, I have told it to be open, and to allow posts. It should have done so automatically.

Then I changed the folder for images – since I noticed the “upload” window that opens gives a bit too much info to people and may confuse them – and I don’t want to find where that even comes from or how to edit it… Then, on the page where you can view the images the comments don’t show – but they should as I haven’t changed anything.

These are just a couple of examples. Each of these things is a perplexing problem. And I have to solve it. And that takes focus. And meanwhile you just want your fix.

[Rezwan]

Rezwan wrote:

Confidence: Those who should be doing something about X are doing so.

LPP is doing its bit, but on a limited budget, which could prove to be an obstacle. Anti-gov sentiments aside, government & humanitarin orgs need to kick in their support. Many more people need to be concerned with this question, intrigued by this approach. Because it’s important, and we’re committed. All those who should be doing something about it – are not.

My point being that, no, I am not confident that all those who should be doing something about this are.

But…I’m confident we could be doing better!

Seriously, though, Government needs to kick in. I guess that takes us back to #1 & 2, concern and commitment. Which falls back on pre-1, which is education, since most people don’t even know this option exists.

Which brings me back to this website, and the members of this organization. Site supports members, members go and get the concern and commitment to happen.

But at this moment, the priority is to make a cheesecake.

[Rezwan]

Since we can’t be wishful, I guess that leaves us with “grim determination”. :blank:

Wait! Here’s a better grim smiley: :coolmad:

[Rezwan]

I just finished reading Seife’s “Sun in a Bottle…the science of wishful thinking”. He has 0% confidence for conventional fusion. Tears them down. Utterly. Since pB11 fusion is much harder to achieve, would that make us wishful thinkers of wishful thinkers? Like “king of kings”.

My confidence is not totally deflated, because he doesn’t address the DPF. Hasn’t heard of it.

In fact, his book echoes our own critique of conventional fusion – you can’t control the instabilities. he also validates our whining: I worry that we sound like whiners because we aren’t with the “in crowd” of fusion scientists. But Seife paints such an unflattering picture of the mainstream and their own infighting – makes us look good & justified in comparison.

Finally, he drives home the point that it’s effectively impossible to control the instability of unpredictable plasmas, as the mainstream seeks to do. Thus, Focus Fusion is outside the scope of his critique, because it works with the instabilities, instead of trying to control them. We’re not written off.

But, will it work? I’d like to hope so, but, according to Seife, that’s the worst thing I could do. Hope. Optimism. Just another flavor of “delusional wishful thinking.” Per Seife, we must banish it from the process.

Consider the confidence monitor approach: it has four components: concern, commitment, optimism and confidence.

Seife’s book annihilates optimism. Optimism/delusion itself is the problem in fusion. Literally. His concluding sentence:

The promise of a fusion reactor a few decades away has been a cliche for a half century. Every time it is repeated, it just illuminates how generation after generation of scientists, drunk with the promise of personal glory and unlimited energy, keep forgetting the hard lessons learned by their predecessors. The quest to put a star in the bottle is intoxicating. Fusion might be the energy source of the future. If fusion scientists are unable to rid themselves of their intemperate self-deception, it always will be.

He doesn’t like it when people get excited about fusion. Best to approach things with a flat, unemotional tone.

His book keeps asserting that wishful thinking has predominated fusion, and has led to all these scandals with bad data (but he only produces a few examples, like the cold fusion debacle, and that other one.) I suspect that many other fields of science are full of scandals – equivalent in the short cuts and the delusional thinking – but with less media impact because it doesn’t get the whole world excited.

That’s a tu quoque argument, of course, and ultimately I don’t want to excuse bad scientists – but it appears the method worked. I mean, they debunked the cold fusion guys. And in fusion you can’t fake it. You can generate some hype for a while, but if your gizmo doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. Everyone will soon enough know.

So, then his argument seems to be that these fraudulent, delusional fusion scientists simply don’t deserve money. Any money spent in pursuit of a grand dream is a swindle.

I’m going to have to take another tu quoque moment here. Consider undeserved $. If we were to develop some sort of “corruption index” for science, economics and politics, or, let’s call it a “delusion index” – something which could quantify how many decisions are made from corruption or delusion, would fusion scientists, even in the most profligate experiment, rank poorly? The tens of billions of dollars spent on fusion energy so far have advanced our understanding of the problem – certainly our appreciation for it. A lot of this money has come from the defense industry, especially with NIF as Seife himself points out, because it isn’t even about fusion, it’s a cover for something nefarious and defense related. So, I don’t even think we should budget that under fusion.

Tens of billions (need a ref) total, for conventional fusion so far, with no fusion results, although knowledge has been advanced (can you put a price on knowledge?). Are the scientists fraudulent and undeserving? How about the 700 billion for the economic bailout, in just a few short years. A lot of economists and people in the banking industry are certainly undeserving. Very dramatic. And going to war in Iraq based on non-existent weapons of mass destruction, 500 billion? 8 years? $/year?

And here is Focus fusion, asking for a few million. When I spoke to the folks on capitol hill, they said “that’s a lot of money.” We need to prove the idea can work, before they’ll give us the money to prove the idea can work. Because we’re not with the “in crowd” (not desirable company per Seife, but still). and that makes us deluded wishful thinkers, rejected by debunked wishful thinkers, who, to be fair, as a class are no less deluded, wishful, or fraudulent than most of the professionals in most industries that make up our glorious economic and scientific establishment.

Deep sigh.

Arguing about optimism is frustrating. So, let’s look at those other factors – concern, committment and confidence.

Start with confidence. In light of this surreal hyper-optimism, hyper-pessimism, and weird accounting practices (swallowing camels of economic bailouts and wars in Iraq and giant reactors, but choking on the tiny $2mil dense plasma focus) – are we doing enough to make this happen?

Confidence: Those who should be doing something about X are doing so.

LPP is doing its bit, but on a limited budget, which could prove to be an obstacle. Anti-gov sentiments aside, government & humanitarin orgs need to kick in their support. Many more people need to be concerned with this question, intrigued by this approach. Because it’s important, and we’re committed. All those who should be doing something about it – are not.

[Rezwan]

Thanks! Those are great links! I’ve posted them on the glossary page.

[Rezwan]

Aeronaut wrote: While the site “ain’t broken”, I think the word would spread a lot faster if first timers saw a clean design with the Assembled Multitude of Content (anything in this vast library) less than 4 clicks from the landing page, setup to teach the vocabulary needed to use search effectively.

So, how does the new menu work, then? I’ve put everything on the top nav bar, instead of on the side. Also using drop down menus.

Still developing this nav system. I’m not sure if I should get a button out there for “conventional fusion”. As is, conventional fusion is buried under: “how hard is it >> conventional challenges” and “Fusion Race >> contenders (a sub category here)”

The “Learning Center” can have a glossary – oops, I guess we need a glossary. That means setting up a new weblog called “glossary”, since it has specific fields.

Learning Center will direct people to finished materials (pdf’s, powerpoints, films, etc.) that they can print out or download for spreading the word. But the logic of our site needs to come out in the set up of the nav bar and in a more concise explanation of each section when you get to the page.

I’m working on that now.

[Rezwan]

As for using ranking in contests – I suppose we could set up a unique “weblog” for each contest, and a SAEF (stand alone entry form) for this weblog so that people could submit entries – multiple entries even. Then we could add the ranking feature there. We could try this with the logo. OK. this is doable. OK…first a few other things with the main site structure.

[Rezwan]

Phil’s Dad wrote: I hope we will see lots of logo ideas; maybe even a contest.
You could use it to try out your ratings software.

Not sure how to use the ranking thing for forums, to have the contest here. See https://focusfusion.org/index.php/forums/viewthread/397/ for discussion.

[Rezwan]

jamesr wrote: Weren’t you talking about trying out some of the solspace addons a while ago that enable ratings etc. This way the good posts get tagged up or down etc and earn the poster ranking points.

See https://focusfusion.org/index.php/forums/viewthread/397/

[Rezwan]

FYI, 45.7% of our users are on firefox. 29.3 on explorer. Per google analytics.

[Rezwan]

why all the empty space on the left?

Well now. Just had a chance to see the page in explorer. I have firefox myself, and things show up differently sometimes.

Indeed, more empty space on the left than I had thought. Explorer isn’t showing a few images. I wonder why.

Oh well. Coffee by my side. Once more into the breach.

[Rezwan]

Phil’s Dad wrote: The test page is much cleaner but why all the empty space on the left?

The “space dividend”. Don’t worry, we’ll find stuff to fill it up with. I kind of like some space to breathe easy.

The logo looks good. You’re a fan of letters, I see.

[Rezwan]

Brian H wrote:
Attempting to recruit the fruit and nuts crowd into the discussion is asking for high-velocity tooth and brain decay.

Fruits and nuts are high in antioxidants. Allegedly good brain food.

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