A birthday anagram:
YEN. SENSE. LEARN. EDIT. AH!
In regard to the trampling of rights, here's a link to a This American Life radio segment about Guantanamo Bay, that aired a few days ago.
http://www.thislife.org/pages/descriptions/06/310.html
If there should be a problem with this URL, one can get to the broadcast via the more normal way, via www.thislife.org.
This thread brings back memories of working in the telecom field, where there was the occasional Dilbert-like incident. One time, management asked a colleague and me to put together some interface volume estimates. They had no particular reason for asking, but they insisted it was urgent. So in the abstract, we stated, "This document meets a critical but nebulous need." No one ever asked us about this.
Stephen King will appear on Voice of America tomorrow (17 February) between 1600 and 1700 UTC, which corresponds to a starting time of 1100 Eastern.
David Goldfarb: As for the idea that the planet Venus (1) spontaneously burst forth from out of Jupiter, (2) played silly buggers with the Earth's rotation, and (3) showered mana down upon the Israelites...(4) no, that's not a heresy. (I added the numbers for ease of reference. - DHL)
No argument about (1) - Velikovsky was wrong.
Regarding (2): considering the effect of the moon on our oceans to create tides, it wouldn't surprise me if a considerably larger body (say Venus), coming within (say) a few hundred miles of Earth, and sweeping by our planet (rather than being in a circular or near-circular orbit about our planet), might shift our land masses. I'm not saying I believe it happened, but rather that I can't say it was impossible.
I'm not sure where you came up with (3). Velikovsky talked about hot rocks and gases coming to Earth, but I don't recall anything about manna.
In (4), I'm not sure why you brought those things into the discussion, since I didn't claim they were heresy. All I was saying was that the notion of Venus's entering our solar system relatively recently (which Velikovsky contended), clashed violently with the doctrine of our Solar System's planets having been created in concert billion of years ago. I feel it's no stretch calling the latter a "doctrine," because the idea has persisted for half a century despite contradicting evidence, such as the variation in the planets' chemical compositions, and Venus's retrograde rotation, i.e., that it rotates on its axis in the opposite direction of Earth and the other planets. Perhaps you could provide an explanation for how Venus's rotation came to be retrograde, which incidentally Velikovsky had predicted.
CHip: Velikovsky's purpose was not to discover fact but to prove the complete accuracy of the Old Testament, particularly some of the more bizarre claims such as the sun standing still for Joshua. That makes him a nut, regardless of any facts that turned up in his work.
You make it sound so sordid. Here's what Velikovsky actually wrote in the Preface to Worlds in Collision: "...I came upon the idea that in the days of the Exodus, as evident from many passages of the Scriptures, there occurred a great physical catastrophe, and that such an event could service in determining the time of the Exodus in Egyptian history or in establishing a synchronical scale for the histories of the peoples concerned."
Essentially, Velikovsky consulted the ancient writings of many peoples to try to reconcile their calendars, using the "great physical catastrophe" as the unifying event. Is what you find "nutty" about this, that he relied on evidence that was thousands of years old? Don't anthropology, geology and astronomy (among others) do that also?
Greg London: I don't think "constructive criticism" versus "personal attacks" is something decided by DNA. I think we have the mental capacity that we could give constructive criticism, but we don't all necessarily have the training of what is science.
What kind of training do you have in mind? We all learn the "Scientific Method" in school. The problem is that many scientists (such as those who attacked Velikovsky from 1950 to the present) seem to have forgotten the part about being prepared to have your theories blown out of the water by new data, which I think is why they couldn't stand the idea of Venus's being a new planet.
We don't need to evolve genetically anymore than we are. We just need to teach the difference between magic and science, because a lot of people don't really know.
Can you explain, if the planets all formed from the same process, why their compositions are so different, or why Venus has a retrograde rotation? Failing that, can you cite evidence for the planets having formed at the same time? If not, then doesn't the idea that the planets formed at the same time, seem more magic than science?
Xopher: Greg, leaving aside the point that worshipping idols can, in fact, get you things you can't get any other way (except maybe years of therapy), I'd just like to point out that because of our language and technology, our species is capable of evolving without changing our genetics as such.
Which is pretty much what you're saying. Personally I'll think our species has evolved when everyone who reads Velikovsky laughs aloud in scorn.
So I take it that since you feel that way about Velikovsky, that you're convinced that the planets formed at the same time, that this belief must rest on firm evidence, and that therefore you can explain Venus's retrograde rotation?
Also, I'll note that 'heresy' has become a term that people use to describe something of which they approve...when they know themselves to be in the minority. The hope seems to be to associate the idea with Galileo or someone.
I believe I made clear in what way I considered Velikovsky to be a heretic. And as I implied earlier in this post, I don't approve of everything Velikovsky claimed. There are also many claims of his of which I have yet to form an opinion.
I guess I'm not sure how calling someone a "liar," "nut," or "quack" helps us gauge the validity of what the person is saying.
From reading some of Velikovsky's work, my feeling is that it has been pilloried not because it wasn't scholarly, but because it was. For him to propose that a planet, i.e., Venus, might have entered our solar system only a few thousand years ago, instead of being formed at the same time as the other planets, was (and still is) considered heresy.
Back in the 50s, prominent scientists who freely acknowledged not having read his manuscript, nonetheless invoked the interests of science in imploring MacMillan not to publish it. (I've read the text of some of this correspondence, and it can turn one's stomach.)
There were some scientists, including Einstein, who felt that Velikovsky's ideas should be given a fair hearing, but they were seldom heard. Velikovsky continues to be battered today, even though some of his predictions about our solar system have been verified by satellite data.
What I find sad is that today's creators of new paradigms don't seem to be treated with any more respect than those from thousands of years ago. Instead of their work being constructively scrutinized, they are the target of personal attacks from those who insist they're being "scientific." If this should change, I'll take it as a sign that our species has truly evolved.
In French anagrams, would an "e" with an accent aigu be considered distinct from an unadorned "e" (or from an "e" carrying a different mark)? I could see not wanting to deal with that in an emergency.
I was too little to remember the event. 30-odd years later, I came upon "Rush to Judgment" and "Plausible Denial," both by Mark Lane. The former was based on his examining the volumes of evidence collected by the Warren Commission, and finding that they do not support the conclusions in the Warren Report.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2006 | 7 |
| 2005 | 2 |
Total: 9 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Dave Levin:
Show all comments by Dave Levin.