http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Massif
A collective term for a large number of people, bigger than the regular crew or posse.
Majority of people, tends to refer to the working class.
Often used by organisers (particularly revolutionaries) as the term for the large numbers of people who will be joining the cause (they just might not know it yet).
Often heard chanting "This is what democracy looks like..."
Organiser 1: Lets go stop this GE in our food.
Organiser 2: I'll go get the massif
A short time later - 10,000 people (the massif) march down Aucklands Queen St to show their dissent at GE. (cue: Govt ignore massif)

Well, well ..... learn something new every day.

Carry on at this rate and who knows what you might achieve! (**** ***)

I think I have discovered the secret of dealing with
The unprincipled
The ignorant
And the easily lead
It is
That
You lose.

(Apologies to mod for mangling text for (comedic?) effect.)

Thank you, RPenner, for taking the time to reply in a serious manner.

From the standpoint of offensiveness, it is rather surprising to me that you would compare overlong sentences to some of the terms people use upon this forum, especially when you went so far as to change the name of a thread at one point in time because of the ugliness of the language contained therein.

It's as if you are fine with such abusive language as long as you don't have to see it every day when you come to "work" at the Forum.

Others upon this forum do have to see that language constantly and you are quite simply wrong if you believe such psychological abuse (and it is abuse) can just be ignored when it is shoved in your face thusly.

And by and large, the people who have to see such language on a daily basis within the domain of this "tyranny" once called the PhysOrg Forums, tend to be those who question conventional wisdom or attempt to propose out of the box ideas.

I am quite glad you acknowledged that this forum is not a Democracy (subject to tyranny of the majoriity). Neither is it a Federation (which protects the rights of the minority as well as the majority)

Rather this forum is a Tyranny, in which, then, yes, by definition, First Amendment privileges do not apply.

But, given that scientific advancement tends to flourish in an environment amenable to the open and free exchange of ideas (try looking up the definition of "forum" some time...) -- perhaps because this is the only way that outside of the box thinkers are able to air their views (and outside the box is from whence arrive the best ideas...) -- then such an admission begs the question:

=====================================
Is this forum then not also anti-advancement of science?
=====================================

Imagine if Johann Balmer had presented upon this forum his formula 3.6564*10^-7 * (n^2 - 4) = B*(n^2 - 4), which was based upon but four visible light wavelength values related to the emission spectrum of the hydrogen atom.

He would have been badgered and ridiculed without end and you, I take it, would have no problem with this. In fact, you might well redline his post (you REALLY consider yourself hands off?!?) as unscientific and preposterous speculation.

Meanwhile, Neils Bohr's model of the atom only came about because of the insights he came to after happening upon this formula. The Balmer formula, generalized by the Rydberg Formula, as I am confident you are aware, is key to predicting energy release (the "quantum jump") when electrons jump between shells.

Thank goodness the Balmer formula did not have to make it past you first, RPenner, and thank goodness Balmer made his formula known to the world, something he might not have done were his only two choices to remain silent or to post upon this forum.

To personalize the above, one can only imagine if Balmer himself even realized that 36456 is the difference in the maximal number of regions created by inscribing a 1 and a 32-sided polygon in a circle and connecting all the dots (this also gives the number of volumes in a 4-space divided by p-1 hyperplanes), a formula given by:

=====================================================
x = 1/24 (k^4 - 6k^3 + 23K^2 - 18k + 24)
=====================================================

... and one you will find on page 98 of Marcus du Sautoy's book "Symmetry" (2008) http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780060...etry/index.aspx . The progression begins 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, but the next number is not 32, as one might guess, rather it is 31. du Sautoy mentions that formula as a "warning" to himself to never assume that he knows what number comes next.

Science moves forward when people make connections that have never be made before; when people think things like:

=====================================================
"Wow! 32! That's the maximal number of electrons in an orbit and you can derive the Balmer Constant exactly (scaled down by 10^11) by subtracting the first five values of row 0 (including 0's) from row 31 of Pascal's triangle." Shrodinger substituted waves for particles. What if the average of each of those waves could be viewed as the edge of an n-sided polygon equal to 2*n^2 up to n =4? What might then follow?
=====================================================

Sautoy's formula is one I know well, RPenner, because it is also related to the maximal number of points, intersections, areas and connections of an n-sided polygon (2x -1), a formula I posted on the "Let's Define Numerology" thread some time back, well before I realized that (2x + 2k - 1) -- where k is the number of edges of a polygon -- yields the following prime values for k = 1 through 7:

3, 7, 13, 23, 41, 73, 127

In order, where K = Kissing Number:

K_1 + 1
K_2 + 1
K_3 + 1
K_4 - 1
K_5 + 1
K_6 + 1
K_7 + 1

One can furthermore only speculate in allo-historical and allo-physical fashion if scientists would now be so dismissive of Bode's Law had he used the Sautoy formula mentioned above for x rather than 2^n in his equation (3x + 4)/10, given that by doing so he would have been off on his prediction of Neptune by a mere 4/100 ths of an AU (30.06 actual vs. 30.10 modified "prediction"), rather than by more than 8 AU, and also given that the sum total of the first 9 terms (including 2.8 AU) total 69.0 versus the total empirical mean AU distance of the planets from the Sun of 70.389 (Bode's terms sum to 80.1 AU).

Now, are these above observations, relating one well known geometrically precise number progression anchored in Pascal's Triangle (related to Probability, Set theory, the Mathematical Constants, Prime Divisibility, etc.) to the very big, the very small and everything in between (i.e. Quantum, Celestial and Kissing spaces), at all meaningful?

I don't know. But I do know A ) that these relationships are surprising, and B ) that breakthroughs tend to be made in science when observations like these are made and when questions like these are asked in an environment where Federation, not Tyranny is the rule and the law of the land and where civility is viewed by those who lead such Federations as a public virtue worthy of protection.

Best Regards,
Raphie

P.S. You might, I hope, appreciate the irony of my referencing Bode's Law (which I learned about from you), given that I was looking at Bode's Law earlier this past week by way of providing an example of "Bad Numerology" to contrast to the "Good Numerology" of the Balmer Formula.

No.


Here is why...


1. The free exchange of ideas is a fine idea... but it needs structure. Let's examine why...

For every problem there is...

A. A finite set of solutions.
B. An infinite number of possible ideas.

Here's an example.

I want to build a more efficient electric motor. Some people will make suggestions based on experience with electric motors, some will make suggestions based on a knowledge of electrical science in general... and some will suggest that I need to use psychic waves to power the car... and some will suggest that I get all my information on electric cars from "bigbreastednurses.com".

Should we consider all these ideas equally?

How long do you want to spend considering all possible ideas?

Do you have an infinite amount of time?



2.

QUOTE

But, given that scientific advancement tends to flourish in an environment amenable to the open and free exchange of ideas (try looking up the definition of "forum" some time...), perhaps because this is the only way that outside of the box thinkers are able to air their views (and outside the box is from whence arrive the best ideas...), then such an admission begs the question: ===================================== Is this forum then not also anti-advancement of science? =====================================