Talk:Things that Wikipedians like to discuss

Naked Short Selling

And to add to that, I thought naked short selling was selling shorts to naked people.

Cold Fusion

Abd ul-Rahman Lomax likes to discuss Cold Fusion at length. Devouring the voluminous and humorless writings of Abd ul-Rahman Lomax is an obscure Sufi ritual known as the Feast of Unleavened Dread.

Yeah I try not to read things like that. Too many great books I've never touched, and tv is good too. Auggie 18:26, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

My personal blog typically draws about 25 hits a day, and yesterday was no exception.

Yesterday morning, I wrote a whimsical blog post on the topic of Steampunk. It drew four direct hits from referrals on Facebook and on one other site where I mentioned it in a discussion thread.

That's par for the course. Almost no one ever reads my blog, even when I mention on my social networking sites that I've written a new post.

By mid-afternoon yesterday, my whimsical blog post on Steampunk had become the 8th ranked Google hit for "SPAWAR Cold Fusion Cell" even though the US Navy's work on that device has been out there for years.

Does that tell you anything about the popularity or importance of the Navy's work on its SPAWAR Cold Fusion Cell?

Moulton 13:44, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Eh, yeah I'm glad the Navy is doing research. Can't hurt to try. Auggie 02:44, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

• Alas, it's hard to figure out what they are doing research on. I naively presumed they were doing research on Cold Fusion Systems and Technologies. But Abd corrected me, asserting that SPAWAR was not doing research on Cold Fusion and also was not doing any theoretical work, either. So I'm left wondering just exactly what they're doing (besides playing with really cool steampunk toys). Moulton 12:55, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Whatever it is, I'm sure they they'll need more money to do it this year than last year. Auggie 04:28, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

• Evidently Storms has sufficient private funding to live quite comfortably in Santa Fe. Moulton 10:49, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Abd, like Cold Fusion itself, is Measureless.

In Fusion bold did Abd's plan
A lengthy dreadful tome decree:
Where Bleagh, the sacred drivel, ran
Through text walls measureless to scan
Down to a surly spree.

Moulton 18:06, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

What's the deal here? Is one of you pro cold fusion and the other is anti? I don't get it. Auggie 22:00, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

• Abd is one of the "true believers" in Cold Fusion. He is convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that the phenomenon is real and that it has has been conclusively demonstrated. I have noticed that Abd is one of a very small camp of perhaps a few dozen "true believers." The rest of mainstream science has concluded (long ago) that Cold Fusion is a mix of sloppy experimental design, measurement errors, and wishful thinking. What fascinated me was how it could be that one (small) group of researchers believed one thing, while so many other scientists came to opposite conclusions. What I found was that the small group of "true believers" were not employing the scientific method (as I understand it), but departing from it in specific ways that explained why there were arriving at dissimilar conclusions. Moulton 03:35, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh ok. It makes a little more sense now. I think you should already know why there are always a few freaks with a different opinion. Sometimes it's an honest disagreement, sometimes it's a need for attention, or a way to get money, or a quest for newness. There's nothing sexy about reporting that cold fusion doesn't work. Auggie 14:24, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

• What's interesting is how the Cold Fusion Story fits into other comparable episodes in the History of Science, where a handful of scientists arrived at incorrect results or incorrect theories that were eventually overthrown by better experiments and more successful theories and models. Moulton 18:23, 26 December 2010 (UTC)