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Obliscence, Theories of Forgetting and the Problem of Matter, found here. Ages and Dispensations, by Charles Larkin, found here. And Planet Kolob and environs, found here.
Which chart is a sincere attempt to explain a set of beliefs? Which is an irreverent but accurate depiction of a serious belief system? And which one is a parody of the making of charts like these?
New year, new lurkers crawl out of the webwork.
Would that be B, C and A?
Harriet
whose New Year's Resolution is to participate more in my favorite online lurking groups in '03
Happy new year, Harriet, and congratulations on coming out from behind the wainscoting. B, C, A is not the order; but then, the charts were chosen for their inscrutability.
Obliscence is a parody, Ages and Dispensations is a sincere attempt to explain a set of beliefs, and Planet Kolob and environs is an accurate depiction of a serious belief system, irreverently depicted on a web site that also enables you to print your own temple pass.
(Have been to the Museum of Jurassic Technology -- is that cheating?)
No. We've been there too. And you're right on all three guesses.
I'm glad the Museum didn't disqualify me, or having skimmed the Book of Mormon and seen similarly weirdly stfnal concepts therein would probably keep me out, too.
I think that one would conclude that the Ages and Dispensations chart was authentic on the face of it. Parodies are rarely given so much care in their construction. So I suppose that if one were privileged to see the diagram of the Planet Kolob system as drawn by and for high-level Mormons it would seem less like a satire from the Toike Oike. But not much less.
Thanks for the welcome, Teresa. It's a rough life, growing up unduly influenced by books, and not knowing whether to model oneself after Harriet Vane or Arrietty, the Borrower, but somebody's got to do it :-)
Harriet
>Happy new year, Harriet, and congratulations on coming out from behind the wainscoting.
Obviously I wasn't paying enough attention when I visited the Museum -- I thought Sonnabend's theory was quite plausible, considering that he was totally mad.
David, it took me a while to decide that it wasn't real. The Museum is a wonderful piece of something like "immersion art," and even now I half expect someone to prove to me that it's all real at any moment. Heady stuff, but I'm pretty sure that the mind which hooked that conic section diagram up to human dimensions of the universe signed somebody else's name to it and might not in fact have been delusional.
It is interesting how the style of the graphics tells such a large part of the story. Of course, it also helps to know that the drawing with "Obliscence" is a common drawing used to explain ellipses as conic sections. :-) The carelessness of "Kolob" indicates irreverance; it's obviously quickly assembled in some vector drawing program. And the carefully-ordered, even partly concealed, asymmetry of "Ages and Dispensations" indicates its seriousness; it probably took much effort to prepare--I think it was carefully assembled from type, bits of leading, and wood.
Not to walk on all fours, that is Obliscence. Are we not men?
I'm not sure Obliscence is meant to be understood.
