6 ms·

Clever, touching and funny ... but I'm not sure that "a jar of chlorauric acid, formed by dissolving the gold from two Nobels in aqua regia" quite counts as "No

by gjm11 16y ago

Clever, touching and funny ... but I'm not sure that "a jar of chlorauric acid, formed by dissolving the gold from two Nobels in aqua regia" quite counts as "Nobel prizes" any more, never mind "in plain sight".

Muzza 16y ago
Poetic license, ever hear of it?
- eavc 16y ago
  Unfortunately, there's a sizable segment of the HN crowd that foams at the mouth to practice pedantry.
  - Natsu 16y ago
    Computers themselves are very pedantic, so we wouldn't be very good at using them if we weren't good at being technically correct. The compiler won't forgive you for missing a semicolon or mismatched parentheses. So I strongly suspect that our programming ability is related to our capacity for being pedantic, as annoying as that may be socially.
    - Zev 16y ago
      So I strongly suspect that our programming ability is related to our capacity for being pedantic, as annoying as that may be socially. Just like all tall people are good at basketball? Being a pedantic nit has nothing to do with one's ability to write code. Regardless, this is a pretty cool story.
      - comex 16y ago
        But people that are good at basketball do tend to be tall, and people that are good at programming quite possibly tend to be pedantic nits.
        Zev 16y ago
        The inverse isn't always true. Correlation isnt causation, more than two points to a line, etc etc.
        Natsu 16y ago
        I never said that one caused the other, only that pedantry is necessary when writing correct computer programs. Huge bugs can come from small mistakes. The bug that tripped up Colin and ended up as a story on HN a while back was nothing more than a missing ++ in his code. Yet that tiny mistake screwed up the security of his cryptography.
      - dasil003 16y ago
        "capacity for being pedantic" I doubt one would get very far in any kind of serious debugging session without the ability to be pedantic. It doesn't mean we can't judge the time and place for it.
    - tudorachim 16y ago
      The capacity for being pedantic isn't the socially annoying part; rather, it is the curious unwillingness of some nerds to exercise restraint that is.
  - bartonfink 16y ago
    Literally?
  - sbierwagen 16y ago
    They literally foam at the mouth? That sounds implausible. You should edit your comment.
    - lsb 16y ago
      They weren't actually foaming at the mouth, they were literally foaming at the mouth. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ly1UTgiBXM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ly1UTgiBXM [NSFW/profanity]
    - eavc 16y ago
      Why are there two comments essentially saying this? My comment never included that word.
  - gjm11 16y ago
    I take it you think I was "foaming at the mouth to practise pedantry". Well, I certainly wasn't foaming, and it doesn't seem to me especially pedantic to want to distinguish between "hiding X in plain sight" and "doing something else that enables X to remain hidden", however clever that something-else may be -- because real Purloined-Letter-style "hiding in plain sight" is a different sort of trick, exploiting different human failings. Suppose, for instance, that instead of dissolving the Nobels de Hevesy had incorporated them into something that looked like a satirical picture mocking von Laue and Franck, and hung it on the wall. And suppose that had worked, in that the Nazi authorities never noticed that the picture had real Nobel prizes in it. That, to my mind, would have been clever-and-touching-and-funny in a different way to what de Hevesy actually did. Do you really think it's mouth-foamingly pedantic to want to have different terminology available for describing those different things?
    - eavc 16y ago
      I'm sorry for the harshness of the earlier reply, but yes, I imagine that it was a kind of eager, if sincere, pedantry. I get where you are coming from, and again, the harshness was more aimed at the community's collective tendency.
- JonnieCache 16y ago
  I lost my poetic licence for taking a caesura too fast and failing to stop at an enjambment whilst under the influence of Auden. Never again. - Stephen Fry
Natsu 16y ago
It's more like hiding the gold from Nobel prizes from the Nazis in plain sight. Still, it's a very interesting way to hide gold that most non-chemists would never think of. But it does give an interesting exercise: how else could you hide gold in a chemistry lab in such a way that at least the gold is retrievable? I can imagine submerging the prizes in various dangerous chemicals, but getting them clean enough to be safe afterward would be worrisome.
- kurtosis 16y ago
  if I was in that situation I would have likely just melted the gold and poured it into a hallowed out brick or something..
- Create 16y ago
  LFTR should be worth all the prizes and money :) (Wigner and Teller were more hawkish) https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/LFTR https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/LFTR
ars 16y ago
The Nobel prize is not the medal or the gold, it's the honor. They saved the gold, but the prize did not need saving.
- Create 16y ago
  ...look at all the Peace in Afghanistan and Iraq. Pre-emptive war along with a pre-emptive prize. How encouraging for peace.
Create 16y ago
Counting "Nobel prizes" can go a long way[1]: if somebody was on a ship from Stockholm, and would be smart enough to win several Nobel prizes (on poker from drunk passengers)? [1] actually, it is from a novel https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Rejto_Jeno https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Rejto_Jeno

by gjm11 16y ago

Muzza 16y ago

Poetic license, ever hear of it?

eavc 16y ago
Unfortunately, there's a sizable segment of the HN crowd that foams at the mouth to practice pedantry.
- Natsu 16y ago
  Computers themselves are very pedantic, so we wouldn't be very good at using them if we weren't good at being technically correct. The compiler won't forgive you for missing a semicolon or mismatched parentheses. So I strongly suspect that our programming ability is related to our capacity for being pedantic, as annoying as that may be socially.
  - Zev 16y ago
    So I strongly suspect that our programming ability is related to our capacity for being pedantic, as annoying as that may be socially. Just like all tall people are good at basketball? Being a pedantic nit has nothing to do with one's ability to write code. Regardless, this is a pretty cool story.
    - comex 16y ago
      But people that are good at basketball do tend to be tall, and people that are good at programming quite possibly tend to be pedantic nits.
      - Zev 16y ago
        The inverse isn't always true. Correlation isnt causation, more than two points to a line, etc etc.
        Natsu 16y ago
        I never said that one caused the other, only that pedantry is necessary when writing correct computer programs. Huge bugs can come from small mistakes. The bug that tripped up Colin and ended up as a story on HN a while back was nothing more than a missing ++ in his code. Yet that tiny mistake screwed up the security of his cryptography.
    - dasil003 16y ago
      "capacity for being pedantic" I doubt one would get very far in any kind of serious debugging session without the ability to be pedantic. It doesn't mean we can't judge the time and place for it.
  - tudorachim 16y ago
    The capacity for being pedantic isn't the socially annoying part; rather, it is the curious unwillingness of some nerds to exercise restraint that is.
- bartonfink 16y ago
  Literally?
- sbierwagen 16y ago
  They literally foam at the mouth? That sounds implausible. You should edit your comment.
  - lsb 16y ago
    They weren't actually foaming at the mouth, they were literally foaming at the mouth. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ly1UTgiBXM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ly1UTgiBXM [NSFW/profanity]
  - eavc 16y ago
    Why are there two comments essentially saying this? My comment never included that word.
- gjm11 16y ago
  I take it you think I was "foaming at the mouth to practise pedantry". Well, I certainly wasn't foaming, and it doesn't seem to me especially pedantic to want to distinguish between "hiding X in plain sight" and "doing something else that enables X to remain hidden", however clever that something-else may be -- because real Purloined-Letter-style "hiding in plain sight" is a different sort of trick, exploiting different human failings. Suppose, for instance, that instead of dissolving the Nobels de Hevesy had incorporated them into something that looked like a satirical picture mocking von Laue and Franck, and hung it on the wall. And suppose that had worked, in that the Nazi authorities never noticed that the picture had real Nobel prizes in it. That, to my mind, would have been clever-and-touching-and-funny in a different way to what de Hevesy actually did. Do you really think it's mouth-foamingly pedantic to want to have different terminology available for describing those different things?
  - eavc 16y ago
    I'm sorry for the harshness of the earlier reply, but yes, I imagine that it was a kind of eager, if sincere, pedantry. I get where you are coming from, and again, the harshness was more aimed at the community's collective tendency.
JonnieCache 16y ago
I lost my poetic licence for taking a caesura too fast and failing to stop at an enjambment whilst under the influence of Auden. Never again. - Stephen Fry

Natsu 16y ago

It's more like hiding the gold from Nobel prizes from the Nazis in plain sight. Still, it's a very interesting way to hide gold that most non-chemists would never think of. But it does give an interesting exercise: how else could you hide gold in a chemistry lab in such a way that at least the gold is retrievable? I can imagine submerging the prizes in various dangerous chemicals, but getting them clean enough to be safe afterward would be worrisome.

kurtosis 16y ago
if I was in that situation I would have likely just melted the gold and poured it into a hallowed out brick or something..
Create 16y ago
LFTR should be worth all the prizes and money :) (Wigner and Teller were more hawkish) https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/LFTR https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/LFTR

ars 16y ago

The Nobel prize is not the medal or the gold, it's the honor. They saved the gold, but the prize did not need saving.

Create 16y ago
...look at all the Peace in Afghanistan and Iraq. Pre-emptive war along with a pre-emptive prize. How encouraging for peace.

Create 16y ago

Counting "Nobel prizes" can go a long way[1]: if somebody was on a ship from Stockholm, and would be smart enough to win several Nobel prizes (on poker from drunk passengers)? [1] actually, it is from a novel https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Rejto_Jeno https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Rejto_Jeno