Talk-Polywell.org

Other guy: "Your idea will never work."

Dilbert: "At what point did you reject the hypothesis that you're too dumb to understand how good the idea is?"

At times I might be tempted to use that.

Tom, I think there are many people on Talk-Polywell who could claim copyright to that. Does Dilbert read T-P, I wonder?

I recall a joke my father used to tell me about the man from Missouri who takes a dog out duck hunting for the first time. He shoots a duck and tells the dog to fetch it. To his complete amazement the dog walks across the surface of the duck pond, picks up the dead duck, carries it back to his master's feet, then sits down like any regular retriever.

The man rubs his eyes and thinks he must have imagined it. But when he shoots another duck and tells the dog fetch, once again the dog miraculously walks on water then sits back down like an ordinary dog.

After repeating the same performance several more times, the man goes home thinking, how will I convince anyone I'm not crazy telling them my dog walks on water. He decides to invite the most cynical, hard bittten skeptical old grouch in town duck hunting the next weekend.

So he goes out duck hunting with the skeptic, and true to form, when they shoot a duck, the dog walks on water to retrieve it. But the skeptic never bats an eye. Even after many repeat miracle walks by the dog retrieving ducks, not a hint of reaction from the old cynic.

So driving back to town, the man finally gets the nerve to ask the old skeptic, "I wonder if you noticed anything unusual about my dog?" To which the old man replies, "Yeah, he can't swim."

[I believe internet copyright is such that it is ok to link to an external pic, just not to hold a localcopy...]

Chris,

Coward that I am, I usually just give the link. The AnalogSF.com website shut down recently for about a month and has had the ability you use above disabled. Some low-life had posted some most unsavory pictures on the forum.

But thanks.

The argument of the strip cuts both ways, of course. Sometimes it really won't work and the person who thinks it will is too dumb to understand why. I've seen both examples here. I wish we knew which applies to the Polywell. But my response to the strip actually had more to do with my day job.