I think you really should call this thread something like the timeless gems of the grand inquisitor(s) of empirical phyiscs in cyberspace. :)
I'll have round up of a few of my all time favorites for you as I get time Charles. I can start with one of Nereid's recent posts at JREF:
Deirendopa>>Introductory remark: in exchanges of posts with MM (they really couldn't be called a discussion, or a dialog), one reason why it was hard to understand what he was saying was that he had his own, private, idiosyncratic definitions of a great many standard terms. No matter how often he was pressed, he rarely explained what he meant, and in the rare cases where he did, the explanations were usually inconsistent.
That's an incredibly ironic statement all things considered. The last melee of a conversation that I had at JREF was on the topic of 'magnetic reconnection". Clueless Clinger kept insisting that the magnetic reconnection could be achieved in a vacuum and plasma was optional in the magnetic reconnection process. According to Clinger, magnetic reconnection takes place inside of a magnetic null in a pure vacuum using a few cheap quadrapole magnets.After *months* of listening to Clinger's absolute utter nonsense, I finally went to the WIKI definition of 'magnetic reconnection" and posted it, a definition that is *entirely* consistient with all the plasma physics textbooks that I've ever read on the topic of magnetic reconnection:
"Magnetic reconnection is a physical process in highly conducting plasmas in which the magnetic topology is rearranged and magnetic energy is converted to kinetic energy, thermal energy, and particle acceleration."Now of course the *definition* of the term "magnetic reconnection" is clearly spelled out in the first sentence. It's a process that occurs *IN* plasma, a process in plasma that converts magnetic field energy into particle acceleration. It's not unlike the concept of induction in terms of the basic theory. No particles, no magnetic reconnection process in plasma, and no particle acceleration. It's just that simple. Like induction, you still need a conductor (plasma) and you still need particles to accelerate (plasma).Clinger and the rest of the EU haters were apparently peddling their *very own* definition of the term 'magnetic reconnection". To this very day, each and every single one of them is convinced that individual magnetic lines are disconnecting and reconnecting inside a magnetic NULL in a pure vacuum! They're entirely clueless about plasma physics, clueless about magnetic *fields* which form as a full continuum, not descrete lines, and they make up their own definition of terms to suit themselves. I've personally even watched them modify a WIKI page on magnetism during our debate because it said bluntly stated that magnetic lines have no beginning and no end, just like every other basic EM physics textbook on the planet!That particular spin doctoring by Nereid was absolutely*hysterical* all things considered. EM fields don't even form as individual lines, they form as a *full continuous field*. Even the concept of individual magnetic 'lines' is a gross oversimplification of what's actually happening. Magnetic fields form as an entire field, not in tiny little lines that appear on simplistic paper drawings.Alfven called their beliefs in magnetic field line reconnection pure 'pseudoscience" because they don't even understand basic EM theory. Alfven's double layer paper makes the whole concept of magnetic reconnection theory utterly obsolete in any and all current carrying environments. The mainstream really is clueless about plasma phyiscs. Alfven tried to explain it to them, and yet they refused to listen. They continue to dumb everything down to magnetism, and they pretend that magnetic lines have substance, a source and a sink. They have none of those things.That particular statement by Nereid will go down in history as one of my all time favorites, if only due to the shear audacity of the claim after that magnetic reconnection debate with Clinger at JREF.