Does this sound familiar to anyone else? (Yikes.)

Back to physics. I ran across this dreck on the blog Cosmic Variance, which is spearheaded largely by (relatively) famous physicist - and popularizer thereof - Sean Carroll. It's a post about the recent Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe results. Non sequiturs abound, but here's the best quote:

The WMAP folks have produced an elaborate cosmological parameters table that runs the numbers for different sets of assumptions (with and without spatial curvature, running spectral index, etc), and for different sets of data (not just WMAP but also supernovae, lensing, etc). Everything is basically consistent with a flat universe comprised of 72% vacuum energy, 23% dark matter, and 5% ordinary matter.

Emphasis mine. The universe is flat? How can physicists say on the one had that spacetime (odious concept) is curved (also ridiculous) on the one hand, and then turn around and try and convince us that the universe is flat? It sounds familiar... Hmm... Christopher Columbus anyone?

Sometimes they try too hard.

The Jehovah's Witnesses dropped by again today. I did my usual thing of not answering the door despite my lights being on and the TV going. It always amazes me that they come through our heavily gay-populated neighborhood. I can't believe that there are many gay JWs.

Note to self: get a sticker for the front door that says, “No Solicitation. This includes the ideological kind. Takeout menus okay.”

I, crackpot? Not compared to this.

I'm sure all three of my readers are terribly bored by my political rantings of late, so I'm going try ranting in a different direction here. And I mean ranting.

It's due to this mind-blowing article in the New York Times. (I was tipped by this clear-thinking blog. Seconded by a sensible neuro-scientist.) I'll wait while you read it. Try not to let incredulity overwhelm you. And don't let your eyes glaze over. That will only cheat you out of the full wonky experience.

Okay. How was it for you? Did you follow it? Understand it? Believe it? Probably not and good for you.

Unfortunately, this is a fine example of the state of theoretical physics. (If I didn't know that they were dead serious, I'd cry “Sokal hoax!”) And people call me a crackpot for thinking that this and this are better answers. Really, based on that article, I think that the gatekeepers of high-level physics are now fully prepared to don their Voodoo headdresses and drop a LSD tab for old-time sake. I say that merely to be funny. I have nothing against these folks personally. I'm sure they are accomplished thinkers and are merely attempting to build 11-dimensional houses of cards on top of the worst possible logical and epistemological foundations. This stuff is ridiculous. Needless indeterminism abounds. When is enough enough for these people? When are they going stop and say, “Hmm... that's a bit far-fetched - maybe we should rethink this”? After reading about possibly being a random protuberance and/or a disembodied brain, I'm thinking it's past time for re-examination of cosmology in its current cosmogonic guise.

Not only do we all need to yell 'shenanigans' on this, we need to get them to follow the trail back through string theory, 11 dimensions, spacetime foam, all the way to Einstein's Special (more than one three-dimensional space? No!) and General (space bends? Not!) Relativity. That's where this whole thing got off got off on the wrong foot. That's when theoretical physics became the piquant wackadoo nutjobbery that we all get to enjoy today.

More on this later. I'll let you all recover first.