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Those who mock Mr Bush's intellect might be surprised by the following:
The Onion 1 August 2001
[Bush Finds Error In Fermilab Calculations]
BATAVIA, IL--President Bush met with members of the Fermi National
Accelerator Laboratory research team Monday to discuss a mathematical
error he recently discovered in the famed laboratory's "Improved
Determination Of Tau Lepton Paths From Inclusive Semileptonic B-Meson
Decays" report.
"I'm somewhat out of my depth here," said Bush, a longtime Fermilab
follower who describes himself as "something of an armchair
physicist." "But it seems to me that, when reducing the perturbative
uncertainty in the determination of Vub from semileptonic Beta
decays, one must calculate the rate of Beta events with a standard
dilepton invariant mass at a subleading order in the hybrid
expansion. The Fermilab folks' error, as I see it, was omitting that
easily overlooked mathematical transformation and, therefore,
acquiring incorrectly re-summed logarithmic corrections for the
b-quark mass. Obviously, such a miscalculation will result in a
precision of less than 25 percent in predicting the resulting path of
the tau lepton once the value for any given decaying tau neutrino is
determined."
The Bush correction makes it possible for scientists to further study
the tau lepton, a subatomic particle formed by the collision of a tau
neutrino and an atomic nucleus.
Bush resisted criticizing the Fermilab scientists responsible for the
error, saying it was "actually quite small" and that "anyone could
have made the mistake."
"High-energy physics is a complex and demanding field, and even top
scientists drop a decimal point or two every now and then," Bush
said. "Also, I might hasten to add that what I pointed out was more a
correction of method than of mathematics. Experimental results on the
Tevatron accelerator would have exposed the error in time, anyway."
Fermilab director Michael Witherell said the president was being too
modest "by an order of magnitude."
"In addition to gently reminding us that even the best minds in the
country are occasionally fallible, President Bush has saved his
nation a few million dollars," Witherell said. "We would have made
four or five runs on the particle accelerator with faulty data before
figuring out what was wrong. But, thanks to Mr. Bush, we're back on
track."
"It's true, I dabbled in the higher maths during my Yale days," said
Bush, who spent three semesters as an assistant to Drs. Kahsa and
Slaughter at Yale's renowned Sloane High-Energy Physics Lab. "But I
didn't have the true gift for what Gauss called 'the musical language
in which is spoken the very universe.' If I have any gift at all,
it's my instinct for process and order."
Continued Bush: "As much as I enjoyed studying physics at Yale, by my
junior year it became apparent that I could far better serve humanity
through a career in statecraft."
While he says he is "flattered and honored" by the tau-neutrino
research team's request that he review all subsequent Fermilab
publications on lepton-path determination, Bush graciously declined
the "signal honor."
"This sort of thing is best left to the likes of [Thomas] Becher and
[Matthias] Neubert, not a dilettante such as myself," Bush said. "I
just happened to have some time on the plane coming back from the
European G8 summit, decided to catch up on some reading, and spotted
one rather small logarithmic branching-ratio misstep in an otherwise
flawless piece of scientific scholarship. Anyone could have done the
same."
© Copyright 2001 Onion, Inc., All rights reserved.
http://www.theonion.com/
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Carpal Tunnel
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I'm a Bush supporter, but...isn't theonion.com a sattirical publication? (I remember reading something in Reader's Digest - an editor's response to a reader's letter about the Harry Potter author being a Satanist. The reader's source was theonion.com.)
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old hand
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I'm a Bush supporter, but...isn't theonion.com a sattirical publication?
Yes, this article is slander, rather humorous slander, I must admit, but slander nonetheless.
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>slander
and Vernon's subjectification is irony! let's sue him too.
-ron o.
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Carpal Tunnel
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this article is slander
Aside from the fact that you mean libel, can attributing great mental acumen to someone be considered defamation?
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old hand
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can attributing great mental acumen to someone be considered defamation?
When it's obviously extreme sarcasm, yes.
Aside from the fact that you mean libel
Do I? slander - the utterance of false charges or misrepresentations which defame and damage another's reputation I suppose you mean he done did in his reputation himself
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obviously extreme sarcasm
Tone of voice? I didn't use any tone of voice!
the utterance of slander as opposed to a written statement as you will find in the definition of libel.
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old hand
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obviously extreme sarcasm
Tone of voice? I didn't use any tone of voice!
Not you, the Onion article!
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Carpal Tunnel
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the Onion article
They didn't use any tone of voice, either.
Hence, libel v. slander.
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