{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3641", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 3641, "subject": "Professor Jerry lines 'em up", "messages": 4, "voices": 2, "first": "2002-12-03T00:34:16+00:00", "last": "2002-12-04T20:44:03+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2002-12-03T00:34:16+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Professor Jerry lines 'em up", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Jerry Friedman wrote:\nThanks, Blattid. I probably shouldn't mention that I have a\nPh. D. in physics, since then people might stop arguing with me\nabout physics, and as my students could tell you, I do make\nmistakes." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well call me bushwacked.\n\n\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jerry Friedman", "address": "jerry_friedman at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2002-12-03T23:26:00+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Professor Jerry lines 'em up", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "--- Michael Andre-Driussi wrote:\nJerry Friedman wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Thanks, Blattid. I probably shouldn't mention that I have a\nPh. D. in physics, since then people might stop arguing with me\nabout physics, and as my students could tell you, I do make\nmistakes." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Well call me bushwacked." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I apologize. When I thought about it, I thought that my reasons for\nnot mentioning my Ph. D. were better than my reasons for revealing it,\nso I probably should have stayed \"in the closet\"." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That works, but I still like my suggestion of \"Urth time\" and \"Whorl\ntime\". To me, that's precisely what you're talking about--how long\nit's been according to timekeeping on Urth and on the _Whorl_.\n\nBy the way, we covered S. R. in my Conceptual Physics class today,\nand I used rough approximations to your numbers as an example, with a\nplug for TBotLS. Thanks!\n\n[After they allowed me to escape with a Ph. D., my only association\nwith physics has been teaching it at community colleges, so I'm not\na professor--or a real physicist, as Dan'l called me.]\n\nJerry Friedman" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2002-12-04T17:08:46+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Professor Jerry lines 'em up", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Professor Jerry wrote:\nWhen I thought about it, I thought that my reasons for\nnot mentioning my Ph. D. were better than my reasons for revealing it,\nso I probably should have stayed \"in the closet\"." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I strongly disagree: not mentioning it upfront was what made it a\nback-alley ambush of a housewife by an academician. In the animal kingdom\nthis is predatory camouflage.\n\nI think it is clear that I was addressing a person who seemed to be\nexhibiting Newtonian thought. Without the \"Ph.D. in Physics\" context, the\ntagging of \"Urth time\" and \"Whorl time\" looked non-Einsteinian, and rather\nNewtonian: the poster's unwritten, perhaps even unexamined assumption (like\nblattid's non-Einsteinian initial and secondary estimates of the distance\nbetween Urth and Breen systems) might well be something as simple and clean\nas \"Whorl years are 3 Urth years long,\" since after all, this will\nestablish how 333 years can equal 1000 years. The point of my response was\nto gesture at the wonder of time dilation as an Einsteinian reality (the\ncounterintuitive gulf between the universes of Newton and Einstein) and to\nstate the fact that I did not coin the terms." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Professor Jerry wrote:\nBy the way, we covered S. R. in my Conceptual Physics class today,\nand I used rough approximations to your numbers as an example, with a\nplug for TBotLS. Thanks!" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "You are not welcome. I will strive to avoid similar alleys and people in\nthe future. And you should do your own calculations to avoid the taint of\npseudoscience and other academician nasties.\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jerry Friedman", "address": "jerry_friedman at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2002-12-04T20:44:03+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Professor Jerry lines 'em up", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "--- Michael Andre-Driussi wrote:\nProfessor Jerry wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "When I thought about it, I thought that my reasons for\nnot mentioning my Ph. D. were better than my reasons for revealing it,\nso I probably should have stayed \"in the closet\"." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I strongly disagree: not mentioning it upfront was what made it a\nback-alley ambush of a housewife by an academician. In the animal\nkingdom\nthis is predatory camouflage." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Clearly you're more upset about this than I gathered from your previous\npost. I'm sorry. I had no intention of hurting anyone, certainly not\nyou, someone whose posts I'm often grateful for, and I feel bad that\nthat was the result of what I did.\n\nHowever, I'm not entirely clear on why you feel so strongly about this.\nIs it because if you'd known I'd studied physics, you wouldn't have\nassumed I was responding to you from a Newtonian point of view? I'd\nappreciate clarification if you're interested in providing it. In\nany case, from my point of view there was nothing predatory about it.\nI wasn't thinking, \"Aha, I've trapped Mantis into making a statement\nthat I can correct!\"--or enjoying the \"ambush\" in any other way.\n\nFinally, I don't know whether this is important to you, but I won't do\nthis again in my other mailing-list and Usenet discussions." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I think it is clear that I was addressing a person who seemed to be\nexhibiting Newtonian thought. Without the \"Ph.D. in Physics\" context,\nthe\ntagging of \"Urth time\" and \"Whorl time\" looked non-Einsteinian, and\nrather\nNewtonian: the poster's unwritten, perhaps even unexamined assumption\n(like\nblattid's non-Einsteinian initial and secondary estimates of the\ndistance\nbetween Urth and Breen systems) might well be something as simple and\nclean\nas \"Whorl years are 3 Urth years long,\" since after all, this will\nestablish how 333 years can equal 1000 years." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'm afraid I didn't even think, \"What mistake does he believe I'm\nmaking?\" I can see, though, that if you did want to use \"Urth time\"\nand \"Whorl time\" in that table, you might need to explain those terms\nso people wouldn't make that mistake." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The point of my response was\nto gesture at the wonder of time dilation as an Einsteinian reality (the\ncounterintuitive gulf between the universes of Newton and Einstein) and\nto state the fact that I did not coin the terms." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Indeed, I've seen \"subjective\" and \"objective time\" before in sf, and\nif you were to tell me they've been used in popularizations as well,\nI wouldn't be surprised." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Professor Jerry wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "By the way, we covered S. R. in my Conceptual Physics class today,\nand I used rough approximations to your numbers as an example, with a\nplug for TBotLS. Thanks!" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "You are not welcome. I will strive to avoid similar alleys and people\nin\nthe future. And you should do your own calculations to avoid the taint\nof\npseudoscience and other academician nasties." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "If that's how you want it, I won't use your numbers any more.\n\nJerry Friedman" } ] } ] }