[Ormond Otvos]

Thank you for including the proposed first draft. I’d use will instead of shall, and instead of putting in the characteristics, which don’t include information about Unity, I’d put in a link to the characteristics page.

Good summation of the editorial bias. I wonder if sending the summation to the Wikipedia main editors would help. I don’t presume evil on the part of Wikipedia, just human characteristics in the editors, who I do presume to be cajolable, if not confrontable, to net positive effect.

[Ormond Otvos]

Thanks again. I appreciate the trouble you’re going to collecting these previous efforts. I’ll read up. Can we at least get the focus fusion =>DPF into the first paragraph of Eric Lerner, you think, on that basis, explicated, that there is current progress on his main thesis?

[Ormond Otvos]

Am I correct in assuming that the usual screwed up politics of wikipedia are at work here? Because I’ve followed some of them, and they are worse than useless. I didn’t know about the bad blood, but the splatters are all over the Eric Lerner article.

Perhaps it’s better not to replace the focus fusion article there without some preliminary probing, which I have not the diplomatic chops to do properly.

Guess it’s back to google, etc.

[Ormond Otvos]

Have to disagree, on no other basis than fifty years of talking about technology to the masses, and 14+ years on web forums advocating for such weirdities as yahoo.com, google, cell phones, community wireless, etc.

I know it’s just credentialing, but what do you want to filter for? To keep the forums from being overrun by noobs? To keep site hits down?

I can see filtering forums, but I’m talking about getting site hits, and enthusiastic advocates who force evaluation of a “fad that isn’t”…

[Ormond Otvos]

Well, I’ve seen Al Gore yakking three times this week, and fusion, DD or FF is conspicuously (to me) from his very well rehearsed speeches.

Gore’s level of expertise seems to be stretched, but if someone with a degree and peer backup were to make application to him for funds, not necessarily to get funds, but to pique his interest, pointing out where they are on the Gantt chart, possibly he’d get off his “nuclear=waste” dime, and start thinking about stable plasmas, boron, linear generators, x-ray energy collection, and local burst energy sources feeding ultracaps for transit and charging stations, which seem to me some key hot points right now.

And yet, when Letterman needled him about being the first green energy billionaire, Gore responded starchily that if he didn’t invest, the carpers would call him a hypocrite. Gore is not poor, and he’s heavily invested in startups.

Warren Buffett just paid 34 billion for BNSF railroad, which is now dual track nationwide. Wouldn’t a FF fit in a locomotive, handy peak output for crossing the mountains (6000 hp peak)?

[Ormond Otvos]

Thanks for the corroboration. I accept that global warming exists and is anthropogenic, but I’m sort of a scientist, and most people don’t live their lives scientifically.

Your response is exactly what I’m looking for, and what I think will give focus fusion (FF) credibility and thus funding.

I can also use more evaluations by “peers” pro and con, especially ones that directly address current state of FF art.

Ormond Otvos North Point Richmond CA

[Ormond Otvos]

Thanks. It’s Ormond, all O’s. They were having a 4 for one sale on O’s when I was born.

I’ll start work, and post what I come up with as a draft. Then you can all committee and I shall accept your revisions as I can understand how to fit them in.

I’ll start with a short (it’s done to death) CO2 danger thang, and a raise all boats with cheap energy thang, and then do a little fear of neutrons thang (Probably title it “Aneutronic” Twenty Mule Team power source, or maybe even tie it in with Ronald Reagan to appeal to the righties, and post it on Redstate, the big right wing blog, too. I read most of the big ones, contribute to a few where it looks like it will tend toward the saving of the most important species: us.)

A little detail on how it works, emphasizing lack of bad radiation, and hitting on the technical (ha!) simplicity, mention the fine and advancing work going on (gotta neutralize the “fusion is always fifty years in the future” myth by hammering the aneutronic aspect, and a teeny bit about X-ray capture and conversion to defuse the automatic skeptics, who can be technically quite competent.

I’ll need some links to the strongest arguments against, and also to why FF is the best of the breed. Karl Rove was right, you have to attack the strongest contrary arguments, and then move on. I’m hoping to utilize some of my skills in argument to actually present a solid case that can be adopted by advocates, but won’t be susceptible to honest skepticism. It’s quite a bit harder to disarm the dishonest skeptics. That’s where the comments section of the diary has to be carefully tended. Any of you registered at DailyKos or RedState?

[Ormond Otvos]

Sounds like the peer review and press release path is the one for Focus Fusion. To that end, I’d like to work up what is called a diary for Daily Kos, and post it there for comment, and build on that for a public document. I realize that this site might be thought of as the public document, but the pieces of the story are scattered all over it.

Although I have background in linear accelerator construction from a half-century ago, my real hope is that I am not immersed in the technology so far that I’m unlikely to be able to communicate. I’ve spent my lifetime explaining technical doodads to the consuming public and my hobbyist peers, learning on my end what can and can’t be easily understood by the Average Person, and perhaps even what that average person can get fired up about, and what the level of comprehension of the general public is.

All the while, not overpromising or committing errors in misleading average persons about the likelihood that projects like this will cost them significant (to the average person, again) tax dollars at their level. Sometimes you can explain something in “cups of coffee” or miles traveled more effectively than in megadollars per megaperson. As Doug Hofstadter labors to explain in “I am a strange loop”, over hundreds of pages: we’re built to understand things at our own level, not that of the cosmos, nor the quantum level.

Only a weird few can understand and operate in those realms contemporaneously (should I say “at the same time”?) and we owe much of our science and comfort to them, but explaining what they do before the comfort and convenience occurs from their work is more art than science.

What I’d like to do is start a collaborative effort to put together a thousand-word or so essay, aimed specifically at garnering support from the politically oriented internet types, since they are the coming wave in swaying public opinion. The newspapers, even their internet comment sections, are becoming the shouting mob already. Twitter’s a wonderful idea, but it’s a jab, not a solid punch. Science need focus, just like fusion does, and I’d like to see some combination of words and images, such as a diary with inline images, carefully explaining in one place, as the go-to link (not site, but link!)

It needs to tell the whole story, with pictures, on one scrollable page, with no fancy video player needed, for the vast majority that you need to get your public support to sway the financial and media people. What do you think?

Everything needed is on this site, but it’s not in one place, on one page, and we live in a one-page world. Ignoring the limited attention span of the voters and funders might not be a good idea. They have all the money.

[Author]

Posts