Study: Swiss glaciers mostly melted before industrialization began

Hundreds of papers are being published that show that the "anthropogenic climate change" paradigm is incorrect, at least in its strong forms. But I think that the following paper is rather cute because it's so careful and it discusses one of the most obvious symptoms of "global warming" – the melting glaciers.



Six days ago, Michael Sigl and 5 co-authors finally published the paper

19th century glacier retreat in the Alps preceded the emergence of industrial black carbon deposition on high-alpine glaciers (PDF)

in The Cryosphere, a peer-reviewed journal about the frozen things on Earth. The paper was originally submitted as a "discussion paper" in February. It went through a peer review with 3 referees who looked at the paper rather carefully, wrote detailed reviews, and caught some missing commas, among other things. You may see the history of the paper if you click at the title above.

Trouble with Saudi Arab allies

It took me some time to figure out why the media were full of Jamal Khashoggi (JK), a disappeared U.S.-based journalist of Saudi origin. This confusion may be partly blamed on the many days it took to become sufficiently convinced that JK was murdered in an operation that was organized by some powerful people in Saudi Arabia – although it remains uncertain whether the Crown Prince was personally involved.

JK, a critic of the Saudi leaders when it comes to the approach to Yemen, human rights, and other issues, knew that he couldn't return to the Saudi Arabian territory because he could be easily murdered by the regime. Sadly, he failed to realize that the Saudi embassies are a part of the Saudi Arabian territory. He went to the Saudi embassy in Turkey – to get some paperwork in order to marry his Turkish fiance – and that was enough for him to be murdered.

Wolchover, Ball face armies of brainwashed anti-quantum NPCs

Nine and two days ago, the Quanta Magazine posted the following two articles that were "sort of negative" about some "alternative interpretations" of quantum mechanics:

October 11th: Famous Experiment Dooms Alternative to Quantum Weirdness (Natalie Wolchover)

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October 18th: Why the Many-Worlds Interpretation Has Many Problems (Philip Ball)

Ball's article is an excerpt from his book Beyond Weird which is problematic but it's the least problematic book among the 10 or so "books on interpretations of quantum mechanics" that I detected and mentioned in the recent 5 years or so.



On this photograph, you may see the real Bohr (Niels, left) along with son (Aage, center) and grandson (Tomas, bottom). If you asked why the baby was writing Navier-Stokes equations on that blackboard, it's because the baby was going to become a fluid mechanic. And now, Tomas Bohr – along with George W. Bush's twin brother John Bush and others – discussed a weird paradigm that was hyped in recent years, namely that "oil droplets jump just like quantum mechanics".

Electron dipole moment: lessons

If you missed the second season of Young Sheldon and 12th season of The Big Bang Theory, it's about 2x 5 episodes to fill the gap. The S02E05 episode of Young Sheldon has a title involving "Czechoslovakian pastries" – Sheldon's dad eats some koláče from a wedding at the beginning (Texas and Nebraska are a top destinations for 19th century Czech emigrants) – and Sheldon and Missy undergo some twins testing under Dr Pilsen. A good greeting to the viewers and Sheldon's inspirers who live in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia. ;-)

A few days ago, you could see reports about the new measurements of the electron electric dipole moment: Google News. The ACME II experiment published its findings in Nature

Improved limit on the electric dipole moment of the electron

and the upper bound is about 10 times smaller (more constraining) than measured a year earlier, namely\[

|d_e|\leq 1.1 \times 10^{-31} e\ {\rm m}.

\] The dipole moment has the units of "charge times distance" and with the natural charge factor of \(e\), the electron charge, the distance is just some 10,000 times the Planck scale! This distance is heuristically the separation between the electron's center-of-mass and its center-of-charge-distribution.

Are NPCs catchy enough to supersede SJWs?

In recent days, a meme became very popular among people who are approximately right-wing, conservative, or pro-Trump and who want to mock the incredible knee-jerk mindlessness of the responses by... and the amazing group think of the far left, the SJWs – social justice warriors. The latter began to be called NPCs.



What is an NPC? It is a "non-player character", an entity in games whose decisions aren't determined by an actual human being with free will. They first appeared in Dungeons and Dragons, a 1974 tabletop game. But such NPCs are a part of most 3D video games today. They talk to you but what they say is scripted. The Wikipedia page nicely explains that these characters don't usually have real artificial intelligence, however (although true AI characters – a rare class – are mostly considered a subset of NPCs).

So there is a straightforward program/code that determines what they tell you when you play a game on your PC or smartphone. And to some extent, it feels like you're playing against other characters that look like they could be controlled by other human players – but they are not. Some work has been done to create the program but because that program is simple enough, it fails to emulate an intelligent behavior of a human being perfectly and the difference becomes strikingly obvious in some situations, see e.g. these awkward NPCs in Mafia II. Does it remind you of someone?

Cheeky girl demands moonwalker, geologist to shut his mouth on geology

Everyone can live his or her American dream in America, it's a country of great possibilities and amazing upward mobility. Some people say it's no longer the case but in some negative sense, I think it's still true. In particular, I am often shocked by the arrogance of some American nobodies. Many things are worse in Europe than in America but the arrogance of deluded American Niemands surpasses that of the European counterparts.

Willie Soon sent me the partial transcript and video of a panel discussion, Apollo Plus 50. For an hour, 3+1 panelists discussed the motivation for space research and various relationships between Americans' and Unamericans' curiosity and financial and other interests in various projects in the outer space – in the history, now, and in the future.

Petition urges CERN to rehire Strumia, end totalitarianism

Edwin has pointed out that two German pro-free-speech groups, Agens Die Miteinander and Cuncti (and Tom Todd of Hamburg is usually signed in the e-mail), have launched a petition at Science Censored:

CERN: Return Prof. Strumia to office!

It's formally a letter to CERN's General Director Ms et Dr Fabiola Gianotti which claims that there can be no research or freedom of expression when people are being existentially threatened for simply expressing their opinions. The signatories want Strumia to return to his CERN office as soon as possible. (See previous articles on Strumia.)

How the feminists proved the exact opposite of what they claimed

By now, the manifesto ludicrously titled Particles for Justice – a neo-Marxist edition of 100 Scientists Against Einstein – has collected over 4,000 signatures of left-wing activists and bullies (some of them are already very far from particle physics, however) who decided to team up and try to scare not only Alessandro Strumia but also the whole scientific community.

The number 4,000 isn't increasing too much anymore. Strumia has over 40,000 HEP authors in his database and because by now, even grad (and some undergrad) students etc. have been forced to subscribe to the pamphlet, you see a great confirmation of my previous estimate that 10% of the HEP community actively agrees with similar far left activities. It's a minority but not quite a negligible one – and a very aggressive one.

(Gender Taliban is also going to have an official arm in hard sciences, MeTooSTEM. Some folks behind this ugly brand are just completing their fundraiser to become an NGO. I urge all bosses in STEM to fire everyone who participates in this activity before she or he writes at least 5 papers and collects at least 100 citations – or you will become a victim of one of their Nazi pogroms soon.)

You, a high-energy physicist, have to parrot our lies, otherwise we will make a hell out of your career, as we're trying to do with Alessandro Strumia's, these aßholes are telling everybody. Despite this backlash, almost no one has gone through Strumia's actual arguments. Sabine Hossenfelder may surprisingly be considered a marginal counterexample. Along with a collaborator, she tried to address at least one graph by Strumia.

The first woman on the Moon

Czech feminist šitstorms are way more relaxed

A few days ago, the host of a Czech science Facebook group has posted the following cartoon:



It's the picture of the "first woman on the Moon". It's a joke which is funny because there's no atmosphere on the Moon which is why an engine based on a pressure deficit couldn't operate there! ;-) I needed to explain the joke right away to make the readers sure that there's nothing sexist about the joke – especially to please female readers who aren't trained in aerodynamics unless they are good at the blowjob.

A wonderful Catholic sermon against cultural Marxism

Less than 15% of Czechs are associated with a religious organization or church – and even most of these 15% are rather lukewarm. You don't expect Czechia to be the source of brave and inspiring sermons or a source of the truly conservative priests. But maybe you should.



On September 28th, the Day of Czech Statehoood and the anniversary of the murder of Good King Wenceslaus, our national patron, a very experienced priest [and linguist, Bohemist, and former minister of schools at a government led by Klaus] Prof et Mons. Petr Piťha delivered a sermon in the country's most recognizable church, the St Vitus Cathedral at the center of the Prague Castle, and the sermon turned out to be explosive.

You would expect such an old man to give another boring speech. You could think that such an experienced man is going to be excessively careful. But the speech gets truly powerful. John Archer may feel as a moderate sissy at some moments. ;-) Archbishop of Prague Dominik Duka has already defended Mons. Petr Piťha – while some Catholics have left the church in the middle of that sermon and some cultural Marxists, e.g. the Templeton-funded "priest" Mr Tomáš Halík, have attacked Mons. Piťha in the media. The priest has already been sued for "fearmongering" by a far left group (ČŽL, Czech Women's Lobby), too.

Analyzing a spooky anti-quantum article from Poland

Jitter informed us about a short popular article published on Thursday:

The Spooky Reality Behind the Quantum Universe –“We Haven’t a Clue What It Is” (Daily Galaxy)

Jitter has summarized the text as saying that "it's claimed that quantum mechanics is no longer required for a single particle" – a clearly incorrect claim.

Let us look how stupid the claims are. Most of the irrational statements are actually being included in a majority of similar anti-quantum and spooky quantum articles.

Mathematics is the "human right" not to deal with cases one by one

Cafeinst has commented on the previous blog post about the alleged supersymmetric proof of the Riemann Hypothesis. There can't be a proof of the Riemann Hypothesis, we are told, because there are infinitely many roots of the zeta function and we don't have infinitely many workers who would check all of them, he basically told us.

In fact, it wasn't the first time. Cafeinst made the analogous point about the Collatz conjecture as well. There are infinitely many sequences to check, so it is an undecidable statement, he taught us. Holy cow. Niki di Giano either shares Cafeinst's misunderstanding of mathematics – or he was just mocking him – when he added a similar comment. No proof by induction may work because there is an infinite amount of work with each of them. I am eagerly expecting an explanation from Niki whether he was joking or whether he is Cafeinst's soulmate. (Update: Niki's comment was ironic, good news.)

I can't believe that some children – e.g. Cafeinst – were left behind so completely. On the other hand, I feel that among non-readers of this blog, such basic misunderstandings of mathematics and rational thinking is very widespread and probably dominant. And I believe that some "methods to teach mathematics", including Hejný's method that I've been fighting against for some time, encourage this misunderstanding actively. Facts must be solved, computed, and internalized one by one, it's the only politically correct method to teach according to this ideology. The "amount of mathematics wisdom" is measured by the Marxist theory of value, "thinkers" such as Mr Hejný preach.

Make the kids happy by repeating some low-brow problem of recreational mathematics many times (and never dare to correct them or teach something to them) – and they will become great humans and intellectuals. No, they won't.

Das, Kalauni claim to have a 3-page SUSY proof of Riemann Hypothesis

Cafeinst has pointed out that one week ago, Ashok Das (Rochester) and Pushpa Kalauni (Oklahoma) have published a 3-page preprint

A simple derivation of the Riemann hypothesis from supersymmetry

on the math.GM arXiv. So I immediately opened it. And yes, you can immediately see that the authors are less than 89 years old.

No one listens to the IPCC fearmongering anymore

The boys have cried wolf too many times

A decade ago, I would probably read the press release in its entirety – plus several pages of the full report that I would pick as important or representative. The climate hysteria was already perfectly understood to be pseudoscientific hogwash promoted by left-wing activists. But there was still something new in it, something that provoked us, something we were afraid of.

I am no longer reading this garbage – and neither does an overwhelming majority of the people. There's absolutely no true, useful, or original content in this stuff. Almost identical predictions have been proven incorrect hundreds of times. Self-described "climate scientists" and their public faces such as Al Gore have been predicting the end of the world for 2000, 2009, 2010, 2015, and every other year. Jehovah's Witnesses can no longer compete in the number of these failed predictions of the end of the world. Nothing that would even remotely resemble their doomsday predictions has ever materialized.

These days, similar claims are on par with the spam about penis enlargement. Who was interested in such things has probably undergone the procedure, whatever it is. Others just treat it as the pollution in their mailboxes, newspapers, and on TV screens.

First dominant pure Czech bank may be being born

For centuries, Czechs have been savers who were conservative when it came to their finances. A consequence was that they trusted "our" currencies, preferred all payments and savings to be done in the domestic currency, and the currency was correspondingly stable. Relatively to our communist comrades, we had a hard currency during communism, too. Westerners have usually no clue about the huge differences between the individual post-communist countries. For example, Hungary has accumulated a huge debt and their forint has always been inflating and weak; Czechoslovakia has never had these problems.



Air Bank, the standardized interior

Our beloved emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria introduced the crown in September 1892, as 1/2 of the "gold coin" that had been a nearly stable unit of wealth since the Middle Ages. (As of 2018, Czechs still use the ironic term "pětka", or "the number five", for the 10-crown coin!) In 1918, exactly 100 years ago this month, Czechoslovakia kept the name of the currency and after 1927, Czechoslovak crown, which was introduced at par. After 1927, it was the only successor state of the monarchy that still kept the crown.

Men who missed out on the Nobel prize

A woman shared the 2018 physics Nobel prize for laser tricks, 55 years after the previous (2nd after Curie) woman, Maria Goeppert-Mayer, who was celebrated in 1963 for the nuclear shell model. (The number of Nobel prizes given for applications of lasers is just pathologically high, and I've been saying it long before this new addition. Note that neither Einstein nor Bose have even gotten the prize for the Bose-Einstein statistics.)

Before the committee has made its choice, the media were full of requests that "this time, a woman must be there" and the Nobel committee was surely under amazing pressure. There's no good reason to think it was temporary – so we may conclude that the physics Nobel prize has been downgraded to an ideologically driven and politically abused farce, much like the peace Nobel prize and others were some decades earlier.

Dr Donna Strickland is nice, modest, and she is not really responsible for this feminist Nobel insanity – which also included a selective worshiping of her as a hero as well as the media stories in which her senior collaborator, Dr Gerard Mourou, was painted as a sexist pig because he recorded a music video with much younger female lab coat dancers in 2010. These double standards are really insane given the very likely fact that she couldn't have had a chance to win such an award without Dr Mourou.

Municipal elections: our only oligarch loses Prague, shock, and awe

One-half of the TRF readers are American citizens where the two-party system is alive and kicking. I think that all of the Yankees must be puzzled about the following map of the results of our local elections that took place between Friday 2pm and Saturday 2pm:



This is Czechia (in the heart of Europe), not Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia split up in 1993 because Slovaks didn't drink enough beer. In the "eye of the Bohemian fish" on the left side, you can see the blue Prague. In general, the map shows the political party that won the largest number of votes in each district. The "number of votes" may be a rather confusing quantity, however, because the number of representatives at the local city halls as well as the number of candidates that were running for a party may affect it.