Интересное сообщение Рика Кавалларо. Переведите сами.
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| That's funny! At that same time, Derek and I were reviewing the statement of the bet in detail, and trying to make sure it was correct, clear, and testable, crossing our fingers that he did not change his mind. He very EAGERLY agreed to the bet, clearly intending to put a very public smack-down on Derek. He put in writing that every aspect of the bet (except bank account numbers) be made public, and he asked Derek to provide celebrity witnesses. Derek got NDT, Bill Nye, and Sean Carol to agree to be witnesses to the bet. The moment Kusenko came to realize he was wrong, he not only refused to do anything publicly... he even refused to see the exact demonstration he said would be needed to prove him wrong. I had tried calling and emailing him myself (I got my MS from UCLA) to help him understand that either he or I was going to be wrong and be very surprised. I wanted to tell him that I would simply express my complete surprise and thank him for proving it to me if it turned out I was the one that was wrong. I wanted to suggest he take the same approach if it was him that ended up being proved wrong. I felt this is the way either one of us could get out of this thing with our reputations fully intact. But he simply refused my calls. As I'm sure you know, he never did admit he was actually wrong. He claims to have conceded the bet on a technicality. I offered him another $10K bet against his updated theory. This was the only time he ever responded to me. He declined, saying that for him it wasn't about the money. My conclusion is that Kusenko is an idiot and is not even remotely intellectually honest about this. Not because he got it wrong. The whole point of this brain-teaser (like any brain-teaser) was for people to initially get it wrong. But because he made absolutely no attempt to understand it when 10 minutes on Google would have saved him $10K; and refused to ever admit he blew it. It was, and is, depressing to me that a physics professor from my alma mater behaved that way. Sadly, the director of Mechanical Engineering at my other alma mater (GA Tech) did the same thing with equal gusto. |
