Yeah sorry, I didn't mean it to say that free electrons in the IG plasma experience the Compton effect, only that free electrons cannot absorb or emit photons.

I wouldn't in my wildest dreams call myself a physicist, but I have a question. How does the photon loose energy to the plasma? I think I understand how your rebounding mechanism works, but I don't understand how the energy is lost, or where it goes. Considering the photon output of your average galaxy, I would have thought that the amount of energy being dumped into this IG plasma would be enormous!

No, you are wrong. You are a physicist with questions like this.
The energy lost is re-radiated as the CMB. that is why there more CMB photons than any other.
Cheers,
Lyndon
PS tell me where to send the cheque!

It's not anything. The whole effect is sheer invention, borrowing conflicting notions from different process. No such effect is ever seen.

The effect of photons bouncing from a recoiling electron is called Compton effect. It scatters the photon, so can't explain cosmological redshift. The Lyndon effect borrows redshift from the Compton effect.

The Mossbauer effect involves electrons very tightly bound into a lattice, so that there is no recoil. It's a remarkable effect allowing detection of photons with exactly the right frequency to excite bound electrons and leave nothing over for recoil. There is no scattering... and no redshift. The Lyndon effect borrows no scattering from the Mossbauer effect.

Transmission of light in a transparent medium involves the passage of light being slowed by interaction with the medium. The nature of interaction is sometimes thought of as electrons holding the photon momentarily before releasing it to continue. This glosses over a few bits of the usual quantum mechanical weirdness, but it's a fair analogy for a starting explanation. The light slows, but there is no redshift since the frequency remains the same, and light returns to the same wavelength on leaving the medium. The Lyndon effect borrows straight line transmission from transparent mediums, and also the lack of a strong frequency dependence seen in Mossbauer effect.

The transparent medium gambit is used by other tired light advocates as well, conflating the instantaeous change in velocity on entering the medium with the gradual and cummulative loss of energy in a tired light model.

There's no physics in any of this. Redshift by a loss of energy requires a transfer of momentum as well; and since momentum is a vector this means scatter. The only way to have no scatter is for the electron to be confined to move in exactly the same direction as the photon. This does not happen for electrons in a very thin plasma, with one electron every cubic meter or so.

Cheers -- Sylas

Yes, energy loss occurs when the direction of propagation of the scattered photon changes.
If it does not change, there is no energy loss.


The Compton effect you mention happens with X-rays.
Photons in X-rays are energetic enough and localized enough to resolve the structure of an atom.
These photons can "see" the electrons in an atom as distinct particles. Also, the high energy makes the binding energy of the electrons to the nucleus much less relevant (the energy of an X-ray photon is of the order of the ionization energy of an atom).
This does not happen for photons of visible light: the wavelength is orders of magnitude larger than the size of an atom, and electrons cannot be resolved. And the energy is typically too low to compete with the binding energy.

__________________
papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

"...because the logic of the lines traced from reality is as poor of aesthetic value as it is strict in consistency. " - Paolo Bozzi (Naive Physics - free translation)

Go ahead and provide quantitative estimates that show that the interaction energy between charged particles in a low-density plasma is comparable to the kinetic energy of the particles.

Hint: the interaction energy is much less than the kinetic energy, otherwise the particles in a plasma would recombine into neutral atoms.
The fact that it is a plasma already tells you that the motion of the particles is dominated by the kinetic energy (and this is Newtonian Mechanics 101), and the interaction energy is too small to have any relevant effect (the other particles are too far away).
The only effect of the long-range Coulomb interaction are the plasma oscillations.

No, it happens only in glass.
And these "scattering" events are just absorption-emission of photons, where the electromagnetic wave polarizes temporarily neutral atoms.


"Systems of electrons" bound to nuclei.
Every single source you refer explains this, but you keep missing it.

You "think"?
Where is the evidence?

You are trying to evade the point.
The main parameter in your "tired light effect" is the number of scattering events.
Shows us that the red-shifts observed agree with the statistics of these scattering events.

So, you cannot explain.
How did you work it out?

Wrong!
In a plasma, the motion of an electron is dominated by its kinetic energy: it is not oscillating back and forth about a "mean position".
The only thing oscillating is the charge density (not the charge carriers).


You miss the point of the analogy.
The analogy is limited to:

air molecules --> charge carriers
air density --> charge density

That's it, it does not go any further.

Wrong.
As has been explained to you many times, in plasma you can distinguish what happens to single charge carriers (electrons) from what happens to the charge density.
The electrons fly around free as birds, the charge density oscillates.


(Undergraduate students get the distinction between charge and charge carriers.)

__________________
papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

"...because the logic of the lines traced from reality is as poor of aesthetic value as it is strict in consistency. " - Paolo Bozzi (Naive Physics - free translation)

From page 6 of that paper, where it starts Basic properties of a plasma:What do you think "free charged particles" means?

By the way, I think I already explained in the other thread where I do not agree with Mursula's explanations.
Not making a clear distinction between charge carriers and charge can give rise to confusions (as happens with Ashmore).


Why?
The Debye length has to do with screening (relatively short-range).
Plasma oscillations have to with long-range collective behavior.


Why do you think so?
If Coulomb interaction is long-range, how would you confine the oscillations?
Mind that the Debye sphere is just a volume around each particle.


Why not?

__________________
papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

"...because the logic of the lines traced from reality is as poor of aesthetic value as it is strict in consistency. " - Paolo Bozzi (Naive Physics - free translation)

I don't get what you are trying to say here. Most nearby galaxies are several million light years away. The Hubble flow is not restricted to a small area but is a general principle. And most nearby galaxies have cosmological redshifts (or are you using a different definition?).

This is a nice and easy basic explanation: The expanding universe.

__________________
Knowledge is a curse, but ignorance is worse

Ashmore needs these oscillations for the electron to lose energy while it is "scratching its head" with the photon in his pocket.
Of course he does not explain how that would work, since the time it takes for the electron to "re-emit" the photon is very short compared to the typical time-scales of plasma oscillations.

By the way, what is the context of the quote from me?

__________________
papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

"...because the logic of the lines traced from reality is as poor of aesthetic value as it is strict in consistency. " - Paolo Bozzi (Naive Physics - free translation)

You have to consider conservation of both energy and momentum.
Ashmore needs some external force in order for the electron to lose energy, otherwise the photon comes out with the same energy.

__________________
papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

"...because the logic of the lines traced from reality is as poor of aesthetic value as it is strict in consistency. " - Paolo Bozzi (Naive Physics - free translation)

So you should not have problems in calculating the spectrum of CMB.
Well, where is it?

__________________
papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

"...because the logic of the lines traced from reality is as poor of aesthetic value as it is strict in consistency. " - Paolo Bozzi (Naive Physics - free translation)

No, For galaxies to be in the ‘Hubble flow’ and follow v = Hd etc they have to be several million light years away otherwise it doesn’t work.
I believe this is part local gravity and part statistical. I wish I could find the reference (I will have to look) but this is one of the first thing that set me off on an alternative Bb theory. There was this set of spectra from galaxies further and further away, and what happened was the lines were more distinct the further away the galaxies were. The only thing that does this is statistics.
Cheers,
Lyndon

Oh yes it has. It is called redshift.

Are you saying that light travels through glass by repeated Compton scatering? Who is the crank here?

Fine so bound electrons do not recoil. So loosely bound electrons in a plasma will recoil. exactly my point Sylas. Glad we got that sorted. Lyndon effect, yes, I like that.

Good we are getting somewhere Sylas says there is a delay between absorption and re-emisssion as I keep saying. But they do not recoil because as Sylas said above they are tightly bound electrons in glass Hence Mossbauer. In IG space the energy is lost in the electrons recoiling so it can't return to its original wavelength.

This is because it is correct and happens all the time. In Tired light we do not need any 'new physics' as it is all around us when light travels through glass.
Come off it, Sylas, even you must have heard of conservation of linear momentum which happens here.
Cheers,
Lyndon

Like I said I don't know much about this side of physics so please understand if I'm asking questions that have obvious answers.

By what process does the photon loose energy to the electron? Does the electron just say I'll have some of that, strip the electron of some energy, and send it on its way? If this is right, then when does the electron blip out some microwave (CMB) energy?

Or is it lost in the 'rebounding' part where some momentum is transfered into the matrix of plasma electrons*? In that case how is the energy then re-emitted as microwave energy?

Where does the SHM motion of plasma electrons come from? Is it because a displaced electron will want to slide back to a point of zero net electric force (terminology ops?

Again I don't know all that much about physics so I might be making some terrible assumptions and misjudgements ops:

*I use the term loosely to describe how I understand your model of plasma electrons. It seems like Papageno's model is like air molecules travelling freely at huge speeds (while the net speed is much less), while yours sounds more like raisins in some jelly.

Ah, so 'nearby galaxies' = the Local Group, and the Hubble Flow starts several million lightyears away. From the link you gave:
Things would be easier if you wrote a bit clearer, Lyndon. I guess you can appreciate me saying this as you were so kind to point me to some 'technical term' yesterday as a translation for a term I hadn't even used. I will not call it 'sloppy work', as you don't seem to like that very much...

__________________
Knowledge is a curse, but ignorance is worse

Which is still a vector operation Lyndon. It just happens to occur in a one dimensional system (two if you include time). Unfortunately, we live in a four-dimensional universe (time included) so this special case really can't apply here. As others have pointed out you give no mechanism that constrains the electrons in the plasma to move only in this single dimension.

__________________
"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

No its fine Eta C, you forget that there are restraining forces acting on our electrons in the plasma from other charges in the plasma which restrict sideways motion. That is the restoring forces that we are talking about that enable it to perform SHm stop it moving sideways.
Even your beloved Compton scater allows the photon to come back on itself - conservation of linear momentum
Cheers,
Lyndon
Trust me on this one.

I have no expectation of convincing Lyndon of anything here. I don't regard this as a debate. I am content for Lyndon to think whatever he likes, and to place my position on the table for comparison.

Lyndon's effect is not called redshift. It is purported to lead to a redshift, but the Lyndon effect is a particular kind of interaction between photons and electrons that does not exist in real life.

The crank here is the person who simply invents non-sequiturs. I said nothing here about glass. Electrons in glass don't recoil, and this is why the photons emerge from glass with their original energy; no redshift, and no recoil, and no Compton scattering.

Yes, electrons in plasma recoil. That's why you get the Compton effect.

In real physics, interactions with plasma involve redshift, recoil and scattering, as in the Compton effect. And in a rigid lattice you can have have transmission with no redshift, no recoil, and no scattering, as in the Mossbauer effect.

Lyndon invents a new physically impossible reaction by combing Compton-like redshift with Mossbauer-like scattering (no scattering). But I am intrigued that Lyndon actually says that the electrons in the plasma recoil in this alleged reaction. The physical implications of this are violation of basic conservation laws.

And there you have it. Lyndon takes the properties he needs from interactions in a rigid lattice... no scattering... and transfers with to a highly rarified plasma without any justification. The reason you get straight line transmission in a real Mossbauer effect is precisely because of the lack of recoil. As soon as you move to the plasma, you get recoil, and hence scattering. This can't be avoided due to the need for conservation of momentum and energy.

It is precisely because I have heard of and actually understand and apply the conservation of momentum and energy that can I recognize immediately why the Lyndon effect is a violation of basic school level physics.

The Lyndon effect cannot conserve momentum, or it cannot conserve energy. To prove this, assume a Lyndon interaction between a photon and electron with conservation of energy and momentum, and derive a contradiction.

You have an initial photon, with frequency f, and hence with energy hf and momentum hf/c.

There is some kind of interaction with an electron, from which the photon emerges redshifted to frequency F. This means that the electron must have a boost in energy of h(f-F), to conserve energy.

In the Lyndon effect, there is no scattering of the photon, so the direction for the photon is as before. The recoil in the electron must be along the same line, or else conservation of momentum is violated.

Consider a case where the electron is initially at rest. You can always reduce to this case by a simple change of reference frame. By conservation of energy, the electron ends up with a small amount of kinetic energy E equal to h(f-F). Since there is no scatter and everything is straight line motion, we can also infer that the momentum difference in the photon is the momentum p of the electron, being h(f-F)/c.

Hence E = pc.

For those used to Newtonian physics, which would actually apply here for small velocities, we have E = mv^2/2 and p = mv, where v is the electron velocity.

E = pc becomes mv^2 = 2mvc, or v*(v-2c) = 0. That is, either v is zero (no recoil, no redshift) or v is twice the speed of light (not possible).

If we use relativity, we use the total energy equation to get
(mc^2)^2 + (pc)^2 = (mc^2 + E)^2 = (mc^2 + pc)^2
and hence
0 = 2mpc^3
Hence p is zero. The final electron must have zero momentum; no recoil, no redshift.

This isn't hard. It's very elementary. But I don't think Lyndon even understands the equations, and years of attempts to explain it to him have had no effect.

Cheers -- Sylas

OK Fram, sorry about not being clear. I will type this slowly to help you read it.
A single photon of light will make one collision every 70,000 light year or so. In 5 million ly it will make about 75 collisions and this is when the stats start to work. interestingly enough this distance 5 million ly is equivalent to the 'blooming' on your camera lens. That works ok so the tired light theory works ok at this distance.
Cheers,
Lyndon.
PS sorry about the typing slowly bit - couldn't resist it!

Provide quantitative estimates for these "restraining forces" and show that they make an electron oscillate about a position.

And don't come up with out-of-context quotes from sources that deal with high-powered laser in high-density plasma, as you have done before.

__________________
papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

"...because the logic of the lines traced from reality is as poor of aesthetic value as it is strict in consistency. " - Paolo Bozzi (Naive Physics - free translation)

I haev a feeling we will never understand one another. What is the equivalence between a distance and 'blooming' on my camera lens?

__________________
Knowledge is a curse, but ignorance is worse

OK... papageno I have quietly followed this discussion through many incarnations and have to ask; does he listen to anything you say?? I only ask because the longer this goes on the more it seems that you are having to repeat the same ideas over and over in different words.

Actually he does not listen.
You might have noticed that Ashmore has not changed his arguments since the beginning of the other thread.
He uses the same quotes, even though the context has been explained to him in excruciating detail.

Instead of actually trying to understand the criticism, he prefers the "broken record" tactic, hoping that critics will get tired and leave.
He probably is convinced that he actually knows what he is talking about, despite the fact that on this board have pointed out and tried to correct his mistakes.

The only reason I am not giving up, is for people that have not followed this thread and might think that there is something to Ashmore's ideas (as akirabakabaka, apparently).

__________________
papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

"...because the logic of the lines traced from reality is as poor of aesthetic value as it is strict in consistency. " - Paolo Bozzi (Naive Physics - free translation)

I hope you have at least read Ashmore's paper describing his theory?

He is making an analogy here (which he explained several posts ago). Since Ashmore's tired-light mechanism is based on light hitting electrons in IG plasma, he calculated how often this would happen. It turns out that it happens every 70,000 lightyears or so, depending on the density of the IG plasma.

In his ill-fated analogy, he is equating the number of collisions of photons with particles. He has calculated that the lens of a camera is about equal to 5mly worth of low density IG plasma in this respect.

Therefore to observe Ashmore's effect, you need a sample of light which has travelled sufficiently far to have had enough collisions to make a noticeable redshift. This agrees with observation to a certain degree. (read his website, all of this is explained!)

__________________
there is no governor anywhere

I did read it.
Unfortunately it has only the appearance of a scientific paper, not the substance.

Unfortunately for Ashmore, IG plasma is nothing like glass (plasma has free charged particles, glass has neutral atoms bound in a lattice).
So his analogy is inappropriate.

Except that he assumed a uniform density of particles, and that the red-shift is the same for each collision.
Both are over-simplified assumptions.

Since the number of collisions is the important parameter, we do not need IG plasma to test this "effect".
We just need a sufficiently dense plasma in a lab (or even a piece glass, if you believe Ashmore), shine light through it and measure the red-shift.
Unfortunately for Ashmore, such red-shift has never been observed in experiments (and that's not because they were not accurate enough).

Ashmore's explanations are wrong, as has been explained many times on this board.
He does not accept that he is wrong and won't get rid of his misconceptions.
I suggest you read carefully the sources of the quotes he provides (he has a bad habit of quoting sources out of context, with the result of misrepresenting them).

__________________
papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

"...because the logic of the lines traced from reality is as poor of aesthetic value as it is strict in consistency. " - Paolo Bozzi (Naive Physics - free translation)

Let's take another stab at the heart of oscillating electrons, eh?

I don't believe anyone ever responded to me about this from my page1 post:

I cannot find a description of 'plasma frequency' which does not say that the electrons themselves are oscillating. I'll put another nail in the coffin with http://www.plasmaphysics.org.uk/ which explains 'plasma frequency' as a collective electron displacement. Can we finally agree that electrons oscillate in plasma?

Also note the reference at the end to SHM in a 'cold plasma', where the initial velocities of the electrons can be ignored. I believe lyndonashmore has already cited several experiments which show SHM of electrons in lasers, or 'relativistic hot plasma'. Here is another one I randomly googled (there's lots). I have not seen any specific studies of SHM in non-relativistic hot plasma, but I don't see any reason to believe why they wouldn't react just as in the other conditions at each end of the relativity scale.

I could have explained all of this from plenty of other papers already cited in these discussions, but papageno has apparently dismissed them all?

Regarding the claim that kinetic energy of hot plasma 'free' electrons dominates their motion, isn't is true that electron temperature provides the magnitude of their velocity but the direction is limited by the charge of nearby ions? (could the charge density be at equilibrium otherwise?) It is within this limited range of mobility that they are 'free'.

Any disturbance that causes the electron to move outside of this boundary disturbs the charge density and causes an oscillation of electrons. The restoring (Coulomb) force eventually restores the electrons into a distribution of equilibrium (not necessarily near where they started in a hot plasma). If the entire plasma's charge density were to oscillate, the entire plasma cloud would become polarized and would no longer be a plasma.

__________________
there is no governor anywhere

papageno, were you playing coy in pretending to not understand the analogy at all? You seem to have quite a good grasp of it!

The analogy has nothing to do with the mechanism of how light propagates, just the number of collisions involved.

This is a good point, and is specifically taken into account on Ashmore's website.

It has been explained to death why the redshift in Ashmore's model does not appear in either glass or dense plasma. The mass/density is too great for the photon to have much effect on it, so little energy is lost in the collisions.

I would love to believe everyone who keeps telling me this issue is resolved, but if we are still claiming that electrons don't oscillate in plasma, then we have a long way to go!

__________________
there is no governor anywhere

Let me point out "charge density".

Let me point out "If one displaces by a tiny amount all of the electrons with respect to the ions".

So, how does Wikipedia entry support Ashmore's idea of "restraining forces" in a plasma?

Let me point out "to form a gas".
How do particles in a gas oscillate about an equilibrium position?
Particles are not bound to fixed position as in a crystal lattice.

Now, how do make the quote you provided agree with Wikipedia?
Are you sure Kurth is not referring to the overall charge densities when he says where these "equilibrium positions" refer to the barycenter of positive and negative charge (which is what you find in textbooks).


Let me point out "collective electron displacement".
It means that the whole lot of electrons are displaced at the same time.
This is nowhere near Ashmore's "effect", where a photon interacts with a single electron at a time.

As I already explained, the experiments that involve high-powered laser in high-density plasma are completely irrelevant to Ashmore's "theory", because he deal low-power light in low-density plasmas.


I can see a reason why ultra-relativistic plasma has nothing to do with Ashmore's "theory".
The IG plasma is nowhere near of being relativistic., hence you cannot expect to act the same way.
If you think it does, provide evidence.

Wrong.
I checked them, and found out that they do not agree with Ashmore' claims.
The fact that he keeps citing references that do not agree with him, only shows that he has no clue about what he is talking about.

How "nearby" are these ions?
How strong do they affect the motion of an electron?
Provide quantitative estimates instead of jumping to conclusions.

And what happens when the electron is inside the boundaries?
What's the scale of IG plasma volumes?

Wrong.
Plasma oscillations are exactly oscillation in the charge density over length-scales comparable to the size of the plasma volume.
The whole plasma acts as a big honkin' electric dipole that oscillates.
Unfortunately for Ashmore, these oscillations do not affect the scattering of single photons on single electrons.

__________________
papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

"...because the logic of the lines traced from reality is as poor of aesthetic value as it is strict in consistency. " - Paolo Bozzi (Naive Physics - free translation)

Ashmore does not make an analogy between glass and plasma: he says that the mechanism is exactly the same.

How?

Why would the mass/density be too great?
Ashmore's point is that the electron loses energy while it keep the photon in his pocket.
The higher the density, the larger the energy loss to the other particles.


Unfortunately Nature does not care about Ashmore's misconceptions about plasma.

__________________
papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

"...because the logic of the lines traced from reality is as poor of aesthetic value as it is strict in consistency. " - Paolo Bozzi (Naive Physics - free translation)

I tried. I always have a hard time with numerology.
No. The blooming of the camera lens just appears here out of nowhere (the 5 million ly was mentioned before when he needed to clarify what he meant by nearby galaxies, as he again was very unclear), and comparing a visual effect with a distance is wrong. Lyndon clearly has a huge problem when it comes to explaining things in a comprehensible and logically consistent way, which is rather sad for someone trying to have a paradox and unit named after him.

Take this quote from his press release:
Where have all the units gone? Only the seconds are left!
Oh, I see, because he pulls the same trick in the next line,
This is plain gibberish and pure numerology, and thus hardly fit as the basis for a scientific theory. Add to this that the mechanism he describes is equally ridiculous (papageno explains this way better than I ever can), and you get an idea of why I have a problem with Ashmore's Hat of Tricks and with the way he expresses his ideas.

EDIT: I've put a space between the 8 and the ), becasue otherwise you get this smiley 8)

__________________
Knowledge is a curse, but ignorance is worse