A little survey

[jwgh]

The phrase 'stingy bastard' came up today, and I was reminded of this nifty rant by George Hammand, which just might be his best post ever.

So my survey question is: What will you do when your theories of physics are proven to be correct?

I think I'll rob a bank.

Comments

Ahem!

[vardissakheli.livejournal.com]

I will have a perfect 36-24-36 figure!
I will create inverse-space universes with my MIND!
I will recover some vague memory of what the fuck a Brillouin Zone is.

[schwa242.livejournal.com]

No-one will be allowed to eat of my nougat bosons, photons, or bonbons, but will be forced to eat stinky anti-nougat particles instead.

The Sun will continue beaming infantile radiation at the Teletubbies, though it will no longer give them that skin cancer that makes their flesh all felt-like.

It will be understood that not only did God create the Universe in six days around six thousand years ago, along with fossils and oil reserves and supernovas, and whatever other miracles of so-called nature placed there to make the system complete and try and trick us into Satan's maw, but he destroyed it all five minutes later and everyone just continued pretending that everything still existed because lifeforms are really stubborn that way.

Gravity will no longer warp time and light but will instead give them a pleasing hazelnut aftertaste.

-- Schwa ---

[muffyjo]

I will finally figure out how to get anti-gravity implants to hold by bodacious curves up on their own without a bra.

[jwgh]

The links to the original posts no longer work, so I thought I would post something I wrote about the whole George Hammond peer review dustup at around the time it happened, which was in 2002. (I admit that my reaction now is 'That was only 18 years ago?' USENET seems so ancient now.

Anyway here's my relevant post about noted physics crank George Hammond, who I would occasionally get into arguments with online.

------------------
While in some ways I most enjoyed [HAMMOND]'s 'typed-out sinister
laughter' period, which freaked everyone the hell out the first time
they saw it, I would instead like to briefly touch on Mr. [HAMMOND]'s
most recent experiences with the peer review system.
We know of course that [HAMMOND]'s pioneering work on psychometrics,
where he discovered everyone has a cubical brane, was published in _New
Ideas In Psychology_ in 1994, but other than that this sort of
recognition was long denied him.

All this seemed to be about to change in January of 2002, when he posted
a message which began:

| My new paper, reporting the discovery of a scientific proof of
| God entitled:
|
| SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE THAT GOD IS
| A CURVATURE IN PSYCHOMETRY SPACE
|
| has presently been out for review for a month and a half by a leading
| international academic journal. Hopefully they have sent it to the
| Pontifical Academy of Sciences for review.

This ushered in a new, more relaxed era for [HAMMOND], where he could
afford to sit back and relax while he waited for the inevitable
publication of his paper after the Pontifical Academy of Sciences had
finished reviewing it. He briefly stopped issuing KOOKIE KUTTERS, he no
longer seemed as quick to lose his temper, and he published some new,
more playful ideas, like the one that the United States should conquer
all of Africa using African-American troops, and the idea that time
passes differently for different people, or something, because of, um,
gravity differences or something? Whatever.

Alas, this happy state of affairs couldn't last. At the end of
February, he revealed that the publication that he had submitted the
paper to, Zygon (described by [HAMMOND] as the 'premier journal in the
flunk out field of Science-Religion academia') finally wrote back to him
with a brief rejection letter. This made him extremely angry until,
after a few days, he decided that, actually, looked at from a certain
perspective, it was HE who had rejected THEM:

| I was rolling on the floor laughing so hard I almost died laughing
| after I got their letter. I can see the apoplectic faces of the
| reviewers studying the thing for 10 weeks now... aaaahhh hahahaha Nice
| to see somebody like them get a pink slip for a change.

Psychic order was restored, and he proceeded to get into a flamewar with
Xcott.

My favorite [HAMMOND] post comes from this time period. Here it is
reproduced in its entirety. Note in particular the last seven lines,
but really I like the whole structure of these particular rantings.

| Message-ID: <3C7AA9BA...[Bad username or site: mediaone @ net]>
| From: George Hammond <gham...@mediaone.net>
| Newsgroups: sci.physics.relativity,sci.skeptic
| sci.physics,alt.religion.kibology
| Subject: Re: If God=g_uv then is Life After Death a Black Hole?
| Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002 21:09:30 GMT
|
| ==============KOOKIE==KUTTER=========================
| NOTE: The original target article which this thread
| refers to may be seen at:
|
| http://people.ne.mediaone.net/ghammond/Black-Hole.html
| ==========IGNORE==INTERNET==HECKLERS==================
|
| BlackWater wrote:
| >
| > What drugs do you have to take in order to
| > dream-up bullshit of this elaborate caliber ?
| > They were never availible when *I* was in
| > college, dammit.
|
| [Hammond]
| Hey... I'll admit it... while God=g_uv is a provable
| fact (and I'm willing to kick the ass of ANY scientist
| who thinks he can demonstrate otherwise)... the suggestion
| that Life After Death may be a Black Hole IS SPECULATIVE.
| I don't necessarily believe in Life After Death, even
| though I have PROVEN that there is a God. It's simply
| the fact that it turns out that God=g_uv, i.e. that
| God is caused by the spacetime metric, and the most
| OUTSTANDING discovery about the spacetime metric happens to
| be the fact of BLACK HOLES. It's really the only thing
| of TOTALLY UNEXPECTED PROPORTIONS ever to be discovered in
| Einstein's theory. It seems suspicious to me that if
| PSYCHOMETRY SPACE is caused by SPACETIME (which my discovery
| proves), that the phenomena of BLACK HOLES wouldn't show up
| in PSYCHOMETRY SPACE somewhere....... but where??? And that's
| when you get the idea it might have something to do with
| DEATH. Certainly BTW, I'm not the first one to suspect this.
| There is a famou7s letter on file in Einstein's archive where
| a Chinese philosopher wrote to Einstein and asked him if it
| might be possible that when you died you went into a black hole
| and emerged in another world.... Christ, that was written in the
| 1930's.... and Einstein answered the guy too... I can't remember
| what he told him.. probably something like "we just don't know" or
| the usual noncommittal stuff.
| Frankly, the idea has gotton me a little nervous... I mean,
| I never believed in God, and most people don't (actually)..
| I mean most of the world is Agnostic.... that is until I
| stumbled on the explanation of what God is, and hence the
| PROOF that there is a God, in fact that God=g_uv, then I
| was stunned to find out there IS.
| So....the religious people (who nobody listens to) were
| actually RIGHT.... there is a real God just like the Bible
| says.... christ.. you could have blown me over with a feather
| when I discovered it. So..... if they were right about the
| EXISTENCE of God..... they just might be right about Life
| After Death for christ's sake.... that's what's got me nervous,
| especially where God=g_uv and we have this BLACK HOLE surrealistic
| phenomena staring us in the face.... it's all the Relativity
| guys ever talk about... is BLACK HOLES. What the fuck man,
| I'm going to shit if there's life after death. I'm going to
| email so many bastards and call so many SOB's on the phone and
| tell them I TOLD YOU SO YOU MISERABLE STINGY SON OF A BITCH..
| I'll be two days on the telephone just calling people! Then
| I'm going out and get fuckin drunk and arrested for disorderly
| conduct! I don't know what in the fuck I'll do.
|
[.sig, etc. redacted]

-jwgh

--
"When then meatbot revolution comes, you will be the first against the
grill of the House of the Future's indoor barbecue."
--Brian 'Jarai' Chase on alt.religion.kibology 3 September 2002