You know whats funny about this "SCIENCE" forum?

[swansont]

Trash the politics section.

Is someone forcing you to visit the politics section?

[Phi for All]

I think that was Martin who I mentioned earlier. Martin used the same avatar in both forums but with different usernames; Martin in SFN.The avatar was a famous cheeky schoolkid from old. Can't remember the character's name.

Alfred E. Neuman, MAD Magazine's "What, me worry?" Kid.

 

It appears Martin has died. Shame. Very accessible and informative fellow. Gem.

A body at rest.

 

We'll miss him sorely.

 

Martin was such a passionate cosmologist. He also had a charming way of dealing with the crackpots, where he simultaneously encouraged their wonderment and imagination, AND gave them multiple helpful links to a dozen hours of study.

[StringJunky]

Alfred E. Neuman, MAD Magazine's "What, me worry?" Kid.

 

 

A body at rest.

 

We'll miss him sorely.

 

Martin was such a passionate cosmologist. He also had a charming way of dealing with the crackpots, where he simultaneously encouraged their wonderment and imagination, AND gave them multiple helpful links to a dozen hours of study.

That's him, the MAD kid. Yes, he was passionate about cosmology and I hope that his forum contributions will be a memorial to his knowledge and generosity far into the future. It's easy to forget that forums are archives as well as in-the-now spaces for communication; our chat today is someones research tomorrow.

[Delta1212]

As long as we're analyzing this scientifically, might I put forward the hypothesis that the politics section getting so much traffic is a relatively recent and quite possibly transient phenomenon with a direct cause of at least set of causes?

 

This is an English-language site. This year has been, for various reasons, very politically tumultuous for the two most prominent English-speaking nations in the world. There has also been quite a bit of difference between what has happened all during the course of the year and what one typically expects to happen in politics along with a run of major forecasting misfires not just on a punditry level (which always happens) but even down to polling and modeling. In both countries this has lead, directly or indirectly, to an unexpected change in leadership.

 

That all comes together to make for a lot of discussion fodder both on an opinion level as far as how people feel about the changes that have taken place or, really in most cases, are set to take place and what they will mean long-term, but also what all the events that have taken place mean overall from a political science perspective, and how do we incorporate and account for all the things that have happened in future modeling and conceptualization of political events, and also what historical events might give us a better guide as to what is going on right now both at home and abroad.

 

This is pretty much a peak time for political discussion so I'm not surprised that the political forum has gotten a lot of traffic this year and especially in the last couple of weeks.