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From: rokhsar@lasspvax.UUCP (Dan Rokhsar)
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: real physics vs junk
Message-ID: <397@lasspvax.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 21-Jul-85 22:26:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: lasspvax.397
Posted: Sun Jul 21 22:26:04 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 25-Jul-85 02:30:22 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: LASSP, Cornell University
Lines: 42

When I subscribed to net.physics, I had hoped for interesting discussions
by people active in physics (like net.math, which is almost always interesting).Instead of physically literate net users, the contributors to net.physics
seem to be (for the most part) confused pseudo-scientists whose knowledge of
the subject appears to be derived from the back of cereal boxes and who are
compelled to post their latest fantasies concerning the physical world.
By now I'm afraid that most serious users have written off net.physics
as a total loss, but occasionally there are interesting articles about more
mundane topics, like the melting of ice and the origin of lightning;    
these are swamped by the latest ravings of lunatics on hidden variables and
quantum reality, or some such nonsense.  This is not to say that these
are not important questions, but the articles all come from people who have 
obviously not derived Bell's theorem or even looked at the original papers; 
they are mouthing off about their own misinterpretations of articles written
for nonscientists that are often inaccurate or confusing in their own right.

 
How about a net.REAL.physics for people who are not interested in
unintelligible (or worse, intelligible and stupid) ramblings concerning
esoteric pseudo subjects like the latest series on the ether.
Unfortunately, (or fortunately, depending on your point of view!), relativity
and quantum mechanics are topics of great importance and should not be banned
from the proposed "net.real.physics", but as it stands it is almost never
worth reading any entry with these words in the title.  When I came back to 
the net after this weekend, there were nearly 50 pieces of junk, and I had to
skip the whole bunch, which makes me wonder whether or not I was missing 
anything actually interesting concerning "boring" subjects like solid state
physics.  Net.music was able to purge the grateful dead groupies by exiling
them to their own newsgroup, and they seem perfectly happy to exchange 
with themselves; perhaps the few serious physicists could band together and
form their own newsgroup with a less inviting title than net.physics, and
the nuts can babble among themselves until the universe again collapses into
a black hole (but black holes have no hair!  Does this mean we can have
tachyons after a black hole collapses?  Oh, goody, we can exchange faster
than light signals to our hearts content, but what ramifications will this
have for the ether?  And will there be quanta of ether-matter obeying
a new quantum general relativity which will be invented by one of our own
net users!  Tune in next week....)

If anyone else feels this way, write to the net or to me:


lasspvax!rokhsar			Dan Rokhsar