I think the "Declaration of Reasonable Doubt" has got its answer

[tom....@gmail.com]

Well, they've always wanted to be taken seriously by the academic establishment.

TR

Shakespeare Beyond Doubt: Evidence, Argument, Controversy, edited by Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells, The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust
Cambridge University Press, 5 b/w illus. Not yet published - available from May 2013, $80 hardback, $28.99 paper.

Did Shakespeare write Shakespeare? The authorship question has been much treated in works of fiction, film and television, provoking interest all over the world. Sceptics have proposed many candidates as the author of Shakespeare's works, including Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe and Edward De Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford. But why and how did the authorship question arise and what does surviving evidence offer in answer to it? This authoritative, accessible and frequently entertaining book sets the debate in its historical context and provides an account of its main protagonists and their theories. Presenting the authorship of Shakespeare's works in relation to historiography, psychology and literary theory, twenty-three distinguished scholars reposition and develop the discussion. The book explores the issues in the light of biographical, textual and bibliographical evidence to bring fresh perspectives to an intriguing cultural phenomenon.

Table of Contents

General introduction Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells
Part I. Sceptics: Introduction to Part One Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells
1. The unreadable Delia Bacon Graham Holderness
2. The case for Bacon Alan Stewart
3. The case for Marlowe Charles Nicholl
4. The life and theatrical interests of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford Alan H. Nelson
5. The unusual suspects Matt Kubus
Part II. Shakespeare as Author: Introduction to Part Two Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells
6. Theorizing Shakespeare's authorship Andrew Hadfield
7. Allusions to Shakespeare to 1642 Stanley Wells
8. Shakespeare as collaborator John Jowett
9. Authorship and the evidence of stylometrics MacDonald P. Jackson
10. What does textual evidence reveal about the author? James Mardock and Eric Rasmussen
11. Shakespeare and Warwickshire David Kathman
12. Shakespeare and school Carol Rutter
13. Shakespeare tells lies Barbara Everett
Part III. A Cultural Phenomenon: Did Shakespeare Write Shakespeare?: Introduction to Part Three Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells
14. 'This palpable device': authorship and conspiracy in Shakespeare's life Kate McLuskie
15. Amateurs and professionals: regendering Bacon Andrew Murphy
16. Fictional treatments of Shakespeare's authorship Paul Franssen
17. The declaration of reasonable doubt Stuart Hampton-Reeves
18. 'There won't be puppets, will there?': 'Heroic' authorship and the cultural politics of Anonymous Douglas M. Lanier
19. 'The Shakespeare establishment' and the Shakespeare authorship discussion Paul Edmondson
Afterword James Shapiro
A selected reading list Hardy Cook.

http://www.cambridge.org/us/knowledge/isbn/item7099141/?site_locale=en_US

[marco]

$c

even pseudo sceptics have to eat,
i guess

this is how the whole nonsense began,
like the newspaper publisher needs an audience,
the writer needed to come up with something interesting

marc

[book...@yahoo.com]

Sir Walter Raleigh gets "short shrift": too bad. Leaving Raleigh out
is a mistake, because his colorful role in so many Elizabethan
missions is enlightening. His response to Marlowe in the poetry
contest, alone, is enough to rank him with Shakespeare, perhaps as a
collaborator, and his association with Spencer and Essex is
intriguing.

But I say be fair to The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust for their
significant contribution to the Shakespeare Authorship Attribution
Controversy, unless this $80 tomb serves only to muddy the waters.

[Arthur Neuendorffer]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Episode_V:_The_Empire_Strikes_Back

[David L. Webb]

In article
<6645e5f1-caae-47ca...@n9g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>,
Arthur Neuendorffer <acne...@gmail.com> (aka Noonedafter) wrote:

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Episode_V:_The_Empire_Strikes_Back

Use the Farce, Art!

Incidentally, Art, Yoda is a Jedi GRAND MASTER!

[Bob Grumman]

Nice of these mediocrities to let Dave Kathman write something for their book. But, who knows, perhaps twenty years after my book on the subject they may come close to equaling it, so far as the authorship argument is concerned.

--Bob

[Robin G.]

On Saturday, October 6, 2012 9:05:00 AM UTC-7, Bob Grumman wrote:
> Nice of these mediocrities to let Dave Kathman write something for their book. But, who knows, perhaps twenty years after my book on the subject they may come close to equaling it, so far as the authorship argument is concerned.
>
>
>
> --Bob

Bob,

Today you believe Will Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. Based on the above comment, you are as delusion as Art, Paul and the many others who believe it didn't. You are a legend in your own mind. Your mediocrities comment is a classic example of projection.

[John W Kennedy]

On 2012-10-06 00:07:02 +0000, book...@yahoo.com said:
> Sir Walter Raleigh gets "short shrift": too bad. Leaving Raleigh out
> is a mistake, because his colorful role in so many Elizabethan
> missions is enlightening. His response to Marlowe in the poetry
> contest, alone, is enough to rank him with Shakespeare, perhaps as a
> collaborator, and his association with Spencer and Esse

Oh dear God, no! One competent, mildly bawdy lyric could not make
anyone comparable to Shakespeare, no matter how well it rhymes or
scans. Even I can approach closer to Shakespeare's strengths than that.

--
John W Kennedy
"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and
Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes.
The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being
corrected."
-- G. K. Chesterton

[Bob Grumman]

Ah, Robin, nice to know you've read my book and therefore are competent to state that what I wrote about it in comparison to the estabniks' book is delusional. Nonetheless, if you were a responsible critic of such as I, you really ought to show evidence in support of your contention.

Oh, unless my delusion was in believing that such mediocrities might equal my book, so far as the authorship debate is concerned.

(By the way, you might work on your clarity; I'm pretty sure I know what you were trying to say, but you didn't do a very good job of it. For instance, am I as delusional as Art because "Today I believe Will Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare?" In any case, I consider being delusional far better than being stupid.)

--Bob

On Saturday, October 6, 2012 4:59:53 PM UTC-4, Robin G. wrote:
> On Saturday, October 6, 2012 9:05:00 AM UTC-7, Bob Grumman wrote:
>
> > Nice of these mediocrities to let Dave Kathman write something for their book. But, who knows, perhaps twenty years after my book on the subject they may come close to equaling it, so far as the authorship argument is concerned.
>
> >
>
> >
>

> Bob,
>
>
>
> Today you believe Will Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. Based on the above comment, you are as delusional as Art, Paul and the many others who believe it didn't. You are a legend in your own mind. Your mediocrities comment is a classic example of projection.

[book...@yahoo.com]

On Sat, 6 Oct 2012 21:48:50 -0400, John W Kennedy
<jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:

>On 2012-10-06 00:07:02 +0000, book...@yahoo.com said:
>> Sir Walter Raleigh gets "short shrift": too bad. Leaving Raleigh out
>> is a mistake, because his colorful role in so many Elizabethan
>> missions is enlightening. His response to Marlowe in the poetry
>> contest, alone, is enough to rank him with Shakespeare, perhaps as a
>> collaborator, and his association with Spencer and Esse
>
>Oh dear God, no! One competent, mildly bawdy lyric could not make
>anyone comparable to Shakespeare, no matter how well it rhymes or
>scans. Even I can approach closer to Shakespeare's strengths than that.

Love to see your effort in that poetry contest--a maiden's reply, if
you please. Come even close to evoking Raleigh's sound and sense
management, point-by-point argument with feminine memes, and I would
be more impressed than a tongue-in-cheek scholarly send up.

That would be worth an "A" for the attempt. Imitate Marlowe's
shepherd and it would still get an "A-", because his poem, while
commendable and memorable, is a little less contrived and stumbling,
IMO.

[Sneaky O. Possum]

On Oct 7, 5:37 pm, Bob Grumman <bobgrum...@nut-n-but.net> wrote:
> Ah, Robin, nice to know you've read my book and therefore are competent to state that what I wrote about it in comparison to the estabniks' book is delusional.  Nonetheless, if you were a
> responsible critic of such as I, you really ought to show evidence in support of your contention.

Robin showed just as much evidence of your delusional state as you
showed to demonstrate that Charles Nicholl, MacDonald P. Jackson, Kate
McLuskie, Alan Nelson, Carol Rutter et al. are "mediocrities." But no
doubt you've read everything they've written, yes? You can cite
chapter and verse of Nicholl's work to demonstrate his mediocrity?
Please do so.
--
S.O.P.

[John W Kennedy]

I did not say that I could write a tinkly and trivial lyric written to
seduce some ideal Phyllis dancing with her lambs. Rather, I said that I
could approach near Shakespeare's blank verse when he is writing at his
best, or if not quite so very near, at least nearer than that! (Indeed
the last time I essayed to write some dialog at high pitch, I found to
my chagrin that it emerged in verse I had not in the least intended.)

--
John W Kennedy
"There are those who argue that everything breaks even in this old dump
of a world of ours. I suppose these ginks who argue that way hold that
because the rich man gets ice in the summer and the poor man gets it in
the winter things are breaking even for both. Maybe so, but I'll swear
I can't see it that way."
-- The last words of Bat Masterson

[book...@yahoo.com]

On Sun, 7 Oct 2012 22:35:26 -0400, John W Kennedy

Essaying to write poetry sounds difficult; must be those poetry
contestants could get into a pastoral mood and play with it.
Surprising to me that Raleigh could do that.

Oh well, if you won't get down with tinkly lyrics, maybe I'll search
the Internet for a famous attempt or two. Must be some beside Donne
who contributed to the pastime?

[book...@yahoo.com]

My brief search results in the findings that:

1) Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love," touches one of the
deepest chords of poetry, because it's a song
(http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nap/passionate_shepherd_to_his_love_christopher.htm);

2) Shakespeare has a few lines of Marlowe's poem sung by a character
in The Merry Wives of Windsor;

3) in 1996 a film of Shakespeare's R III turns Marlowe's poem into a
1930s torch song;

4) the editor at the above site opines about re-creation of the poem,
that: "Nowadays we talk about one group "covering" another group's
song, and that certainly happened to "The Passionate Shepherd to His
Love." When it works, we don't exactly get a new song, but we don't
just hear the old one either."

5) American poet William Carlos Williams has a poem agreeing with
Raleigh instead of Marlowe:

Raleigh Was Right

We cannot go into the country
for the country will bring us no peace
What can the small violets tell us
that grow on furry stems in
the long grass among lance shaped leaves?

Though you praise us
and call to mind the poets
who sung of our loveliness
it was long ago!
long ago! when country people
would plow and sow
with flowering minds and pockets at ease —
if ever this were true.

Not now. Love itself a flower
with roots in a parched ground.
Empty pockets make empty heads.
Cure it if you can but
do not believe that we can live
today in the country
for the country will bring us no peace

— William Carlos Williams

[John W Kennedy]

What with living in a bustling metropolis like Sherborne and all.

--
John W Kennedy
"...when you're trying to build a house of cards, the last thing you
should do is blow hard and wave your hands like a madman."
-- Rupert Goodwins

[book...@yahoo.com]

On Sun, 07 Oct 2012 20:41:16 -0800, book...@yahoo.com wrote:

As an aside, I wonder if 1) there was a secret pastoral society in
London for gentlemen to play lasciviously about as shepherds in the
woods; 2) the mysterious society continues in the US as the secret
club for the rich and famous (Henry Kisenger) that meets periodically
in some private grounds in California, where they cavort about and can
do anything they like? Place could be named "Arden"?

[Sneaky O. Possum]

On Oct 8, 11:48 am, bookb...@yahoo.com wrote:

> On Sun, 07 Oct 2012 20:41:16 -0800, bookb...@yahoo.com wrote:
> >On Sun, 7 Oct 2012 22:35:26 -0400, John W Kennedy

> ><jwke...@attglobal.net> wrote:

>
> >>On 2012-10-08 01:07:16 +0000, bookb...@yahoo.com said:
>
> >>> On Sat, 6 Oct 2012 21:48:50 -0400, John W Kennedy

> >>> <jwke...@attglobal.net> wrote:

The answers are "no" and "no," respectively. Elizabethan gentlemen
preferred the stews of London when they were in the mood to play
lasciviously, and the latter-day "secret club for the rich and famous"
alluded to - i.e., the Bohemian Club - was created by San Francisco
newspapermen in the 1870s as a club for local journalists, artists,
and similarly disreputable types (hence "Bohemian"): eventually it
expanded its membership to include socially prominent San Franciscans,
and once they got their foot in the door the nobs took over, as nobs
do. In its present incarnation the Bohemian Club bears more
resemblance to Camp North Star than the Countess of Pembroke's
Arcadia. One wonders what Henry George, who was one of the founders,
would make of that.
--
S.O.P.

[book...@yahoo.com]

I may have been carried away by fancying an imaginary woods where one
plays pastoral, acting out behaviors of rustic shepherds, probably as
an excuse to flit naked from tree to tree and encounter dancing
shepherdesses, willy-nilly. Wouldn't be surprised if the rich and
famous didn't get up to that. Because pastoral tradition mixed hetero
and homo tendencies from the get-go, this ambiguity would continue to
play, I'm sure.

[Sneaky O. Possum]

"Flit naked from tree to tree"? Are you sure you're not confusing
"rustic shepherds" with "bats"?

> and encounter dancing shepherdesses, willy-nilly.

Lord. The Elizabethans were subject to the whims of the weather, and
at that time the climate was in a phase now known as the "Little Ice
Age." Even nowadays the weather in England is rarely conducive to
naked frolics in the woods, but in Shakespeare's day, parading about
in the buff in the English weather was an effective way to show that a
character was out of his bloody mind.

Arcadia was (and is) a region of Greece, which famously has a much
warmer climate than northern Europe. When Shakespeare wanted to depict
young, scantily-clad lovers running about in the woods, he preferred a
Mediterranean setting such as the Athens of "A Midsummer Night's
Dream": compare the enchanting forest scenes in that play to
Falstaff's comeuppance in Windsor Forest in "The Merry Wives of
Windsor" - the English countryside was no place for enchantment.

>  Wouldn't be surprised if the rich and famous didn't get up to that.

They had their quirks, but as I said, they preferred an indoor setting
for their sex games.

>  Because pastoral tradition mixed hetero
> and homo tendencies from the get-go, this ambiguity would continue to
> play, I'm sure.

What ambiguity?
--
S.O.P.

[book...@yahoo.com]

Pastoral poetry as it originated with the Greeks was evidently
alternately homosexual and heterosexual, and AIUI, has followed
several traditions since, sometimes idealizing a more biblical type,
such as David with his sheep and lyre, or allegorical figures they
used in satires of the court, and so on. Lots of ways Shakespeare has
to play on this, which he does in the sonnets.

When Spencer dedicated Colin Clout Come Home Again to Raleigh in 1591,
he explains that he needs defense from the consequences of associating
his Faerie Queene with Elizabeth, which evidently was being read as a
satire. The site at http://www.bartleby.com/213/1116.html explains
that

(quote)
in the form of an allegorical pastoral, called Colin Clout’s Come Home
Again, he gave expression to his views about the contemporary state of
manners and poetry. While exalting the person of the queen, with
imagery never surpassed in richness, and paying noble compliments to
those of her courtiers who had duly appreciated the beauties of The
Faerie Queene, he reflects severely, through the mouth of Colin Clout,
on the general state of courtly taste, especially in respect of love
poetry:

Not so, (quoth he) Love most aboundeth there.
For all the walls and windows there are writ,
All full of love, and love, and love my deare,
And all their talke and studie is of it.
Ne any there doth brave valiant seeme
Unlesse that some gay Mistresse badge he beares:
For with lewd speeches, and licentious deedes,
His mightie mysteries they do prophane,
And use his ydle name to other needs.
But as a complement for courting vaine.
(unquote)

[tom....@gmail.com]

Actually Bob's book, although it has a few holes, is quite good. He could have used the services of a good copy editor (and if he had done so it would have been publishable by a mainstream press), but his arguments are clear and his style is a lot breezier than his sometimes convoluted and hard-to-follow HLAS style.

That his criticism of mainstream scholars is juvenile and obviously motivated by a good deal of resentment and jealousy does nothing to besmirch his work at all--I look at it as the authorship version of Ezra Pound's idiotic views. There is nothing mediocre about the work of any of those named above.

The refreshing feature of the book is his willingness to call insane thinking what it is. The part he could have left out is his idiosyncratic general theory of human psychology, but I suspect that without that he wouldn't have written it.

TR

[John W Kennedy]

I know not whether the website or the original is to be blamed, but
that text is mangled beyond comprehension.

     And is loue then (said Corylas once knowne
In Court, and his sweet lore professed there?
I weened sure he was our God alone,
And only woond in feilds and forests here.
Not so (quoth he) loue most aboundeth there.

     For all the walls and windows there are writ,

All full of loue, and loue, and loue my deare,

And all their talke and studie is of it.

Ne any there doth braue or valiant seeme,
Vnlesse that some gay Mistresse badge he beares:
Ne any one himselfe doth ought esteeme,
Vnlesse he swim in loue up to the eares.
But they of loue and of his sacred lere,
(As it should be) all otherwise deuise,
Then we poore shepheards are accustomd here,
And him do sue and serue all otherwise.
For with lewd speeches and licentious deeds,

His mightie mysteries they do prophane,

And vse his ydle name to other needs,

But as a complement for courting vaine.

So him they do not serue as they professe,
But make him serue to them for sordid vses.
Ah my dread Lord, that doest liege hearts possese;
Auenge thy selfe on them for their abuses.

--
John W Kennedy
If Bill Gates believes in "intelligent design", why can't he apply it
to Windows?

[Sneaky O. Possum]

On Oct 8, 7:12 pm, tom.re...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Sunday, October 7, 2012 9:35:22 PM UTC-5, Sneaky O. Possum wrote:
> > On Oct 7, 5:37 pm, Bob Grumman <bobgrum...@nut-n-but.net> wrote:
>
> > > Ah, Robin, nice to know you've read my book and therefore are competent to state that what I wrote about it in comparison to the estabniks' book is delusional.  Nonetheless, if you were a responsible critic of such as I, you really ought to show evidence in support of your contention.
>
> > Robin showed just as much evidence of your delusional state as you
> > showed to demonstrate that Charles Nicholl, MacDonald P. Jackson, Kate
> > McLuskie, Alan Nelson, Carol Rutter et al. are "mediocrities." But no
> > doubt you've read everything they've written, yes? You can cite
> > chapter and verse of Nicholl's work to demonstrate his mediocrity?
>
> > Please do so.
>

> Actually Bob's book, although it has a few holes, is quite good. He could have used the services of a good copy editor (and if he had done so it would have been publishable by a mainstream press), but his arguments are clear and his style is a lot breezier than his sometimes convoluted and hard-to-follow HLAS style.
>
> That his criticism of mainstream scholars is juvenile and obviously motivated by a good deal of resentment and jealousy does nothing to besmirch his work at all--I look at it as the authorship version of Ezra Pound's idiotic views. There is nothing mediocre about the work of any of those named above.
>
> The refreshing feature of the book is his willingness to call insane thinking what it is. The part he could have left out is his idiosyncratic general theory of human psychology, but I suspect that without that he wouldn't have written it.

If one agrees that people who pursue phantom "real" Shakespeares are
guilty of "insane thinking," then I suppose one might enjoy Mr.
Grumman's book. I personally find that the term "insane thinking"
lacks utility. To be sure, some of the anti-Strats have also been
insane - but some people who believe in God have also been insane. The
majority of believers in both cases are quite sane. Indeed, that's
what makes the anti-Strat persuasion (and belief in God!) interesting:
the unsolved puzzle of how people's minds can perceive the world more
or less as it is in most respects and yet fail completely in certain
areas.
--
S.O.P.

[Sneaky O. Possum]

On Oct 8, 5:29 pm, bookb...@yahoo.com wrote:
> On Mon, 8 Oct 2012 16:28:22 -0700 (PDT), "Sneaky O. Possum"
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

There's nothing ambiguous about that: it's plain as day that some of
the sonnets are addressed to men and others to women. Indeed, in his
sonnets Shakespeare carefully avoids ambiguity with regard to sex
roles - the poet mourns the fact that he cannot love the fair youth
physically. The sonnets' power would dissipate if Shakespeare had made
the poet and fair youth's relationship ambiguous.
--
S.O.P.

[book...@yahoo.com]

Then I wonder how you understand MND, its pastoral setting, several
masques on the theme of weddings, and extreme identity confusion
between man and animal? Do you think the court masques of Elizabeth
and James, with court taking part, were not bi-sexual, James's labeled
homo-erotic?

[book...@yahoo.com]

If you had participated in discussions at h.l.a.s. some time ago, you
would be aware that many do find the sonnets ambiguous about
Shakespeare's orientation in several regards, including his
bi-sexuality. If you look at his sonnets about the Dark Lady, you see
some enthusiastic play on ambiguity, IMO.

127

In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were it bore not beauty's name:
But now is black beauty's successive heir,
And beauty slandered with a bastard shame,
For since each hand hath put on nature's power,
Fairing the foul with art's false borrowed face,
Sweet beauty hath no name no holy bower,
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black,
Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem,
At such who not born fair no beauty lack,
Slandering creation with a false esteem,
Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe,
That every tongue says beauty should look so.


And, if you were a student of English literature of later periods, you
would be able to trace the continuing re-creation of similar
gypsie-like objects of reverie by poets, from the "nut-brown" girls of
the ballads, to "jolly-brown" girls, to more generalized fancies for
exotic girls and living like a gypsie.

[Paul Crowley]

On 09/10/2012 18:38, Sneaky O. Possum wrote:

> it's plain as day that some of the sonnets are addressed
> to men and others to women.

Care to list a few? Let's say from the first 20.
And from 126 to 135.

A crucial problem that you'll encounter is that
when a writer addresses someone as 'you' or
'thou' there is no obvious way of determining
gender. And unless there is a 'you' or a 'thou',
it's tricky to even begin to guess to whom a
poem might be addressed or 'addressed'.

Of course, in practice, Elizabethans would
rarely have had such a problem. From the
age of ~10 (or certainly by 15) males and
females lead such different lives, with wildly
divergent interests, that it was almost always
very easy to determine the gender of an
addressee. Females never had careers; they
were not allowed in the professions, or able
to be apprentices. They could take no part in
military activities. They could hold no office,
nor acquire any title in their own names. Nor
could they travel overseas (except in rare
instances, and then only with their husbands).
Never-married females almost never owned
property, or were allowed to control it. And so
on and on. Every aspect of male and female
lives was so different, that they were almost
different species.

So readers of the Sonnets should not have
the slightest problem in stating which sonnets
were addressed to a male and which to a
female.

UNLESS, or course, the poet was playing
games -- and being ambiguous. But you say
that he never did that. So, for you, it's a task
that is going to be easy-peasy.

> Indeed, in his sonnets Shakespeare carefully avoids ambiguity
> with regard to sex roles -

Oh, so so easy . . . . .

> the poet mourns the fact that he
> cannot love the fair youth physically. The sonnets' power would
> dissipate if Shakespeare had made the poet and fair youth's
> relationship ambiguous.

God help us! There should be laws preventing
people like you from reading poetry -- or any
Elizabethan literature.


Paul.

[Paul Crowley]

On 09/10/2012 18:19, Sneaky O. Possum wrote:

> If one agrees that people who pursue phantom "real"
> Shakespeares are guilty of "insane thinking," then I suppose
> one might enjoy Mr. Grumman's book. I personally find that the
> term "insane thinking" lacks utility. To be sure, some of the
> anti-Strats have also been insane -

And so have many Strats. Most of us know (and
have known) several people suffering from forms
of dementia.

> The majority of believers in both cases are quite sane. Indeed,
> that's what makes the anti-Strat persuasion (and belief in God!)
> interesting: the unsolved puzzle of how people's minds can
> perceive the world more or less as it is in most respects and
> yet fail completely in certain areas.

OTOH, while Stratfordian beliefs can in themselves be
described as 'insane' (e.g. the belief that an illiterate
was the Great Bard), no one would suggest that Strats
are so. Nor will they be seen to be so in future times
-- no more than believers in Flat Earth theories, or in
a stationary (and non-revolving) earth, or in fixed
continents or in a Creation on a Saturday morning in
4004 B.C.

Strats will just be seen as amazingly stupid.
They were sold a truly absurd story, and they
bought it.


Paul.

[Sneaky O. Possum]

On Oct 9, 2:03 pm, bookb...@yahoo.com wrote:
> On Tue, 9 Oct 2012 10:38:17 -0700 (PDT), "Sneaky O. Possum"

And I wonder what definition you're using for the word "ambiguity."
--
S.O.P.

[book...@yahoo.com]

I like Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity, basically understanding that
there are usually several meanings going on, some of them between the
lines. But in this case, I would say you seem to wilfully
misunderstand my point, and that's another kind of ambiguity or irony.

[Sneaky O. Possum]

It would seem that Mr. Crowley agrees with you, for all that that's
worth.
--
S.O.P.

[book...@yahoo.com]

PC is adroit at "dragging his coat," a term Empson employs in
describing how critics bait each other, and he does seem to exemplify
an advanced practitioner. But he also is a corrective in some ways,
at least in making one unsure of one's grounds.

You sound like you're dragging your coat, too.

[Sneaky O. Possum]

On Oct 9, 2:42 pm, bookb...@yahoo.com wrote:

> On Tue, 9 Oct 2012 10:38:17 -0700 (PDT), "Sneaky O. Possum" wrote:
> >There's nothing ambiguous about that: it's plain as day that some of
> >the sonnets are addressed to men and others to women. Indeed, in his
> >sonnets Shakespeare carefully avoids ambiguity with regard to sex
> >roles - the poet mourns the fact that he cannot love the fair youth
> >physically. The sonnets' power would dissipate if Shakespeare had made
> >the poet and fair youth's relationship ambiguous.
>
> If you had participated in discussions at h.l.a.s. some time ago, you
> would be aware that many do find the sonnets ambiguous about
> Shakespeare's orientation in several regards, including his
> bi-sexuality.  If you look at his sonnets about the Dark Lady, you see
> some enthusiastic play on ambiguity, IMO.

I am of course well aware that many people read both autobiography and
bisexuality into the sonnets. Were you under the impression that I
habitually bowed to the weight of other people's opinions? Is that
something you yourself do?

If you believe there is evidence that Shakespeare expressed his
bisexuality in the sonnets, it would be helpful if you could set out
that evidence and explain your reasons for interpreting it so. Merely
waving a hand towards what "many" believe suggests a resort to
argumentum ad populum - but alas, fifty million Frenchmen can indeed
be wrong.

> 127
>
>   In the old age black was not counted fair,
>   Or if it were it bore not beauty's name:
>   But now is black beauty's successive heir,
>   And beauty slandered with a bastard shame,
>   For since each hand hath put on nature's power,
>   Fairing the foul with art's false borrowed face,
>   Sweet beauty hath no name no holy bower,
>   But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
>   Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black,
>   Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem,
>   At such who not born fair no beauty lack,
>   Slandering creation with a false esteem,
>     Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe,
>     That every tongue says beauty should look so.
>
> And, if you were a student of English literature of later periods, you
> would be able to trace the continuing re-creation of similar
> gypsie-like objects of reverie by poets, from the "nut-brown" girls of
> the ballads, to "jolly-brown" girls, to more generalized fancies for
> exotic girls and living like a gypsie.

Which has nothing to do with your previous claims, and is not in any
way ambiguous.

By the way, if either you or Mr. Crowley understood me to be claiming
that there is no ambiguity whatsoever in Shakespeare's sonnets, you
were grievously mistaken. Shakespeare, like most of his fellow poets,
loved ambiguity, and deployed it quite well in his work.
--
S.O.P.

[book...@yahoo.com]

If BG is interested in getting a quick take on his book, possibly he
could do what I heard one professional say, that he post to us the
first page of his book. Supposed to be enough there to show some
lights. I'm sure one result of weighing in at h.l.a.s. for so long is
Teflon armor against us back-biters. bookburn

[Nomen Nescio]

In article <ddd763bd-959c-47a6...@googlegroups.com>
Bob Grumman <bobgrum...@nut-n-but.net> wrote:
>
> Ah, Robin, nice to know you've read my book and therefore are competent to =
> state that what I wrote about it in comparison to the estabniks' book is de=
> lusional. Nonetheless, if you were a responsible critic of such as I, you =

> really ought to show evidence in support of your contention.
>

> Oh, unless my delusion was in believing that such mediocrities might equal =
> my book, so far as the authorship debate is concerned. =20
>
> (By the way, you might work on your clarity; I'm pretty sure I know what yo=
> u were trying to say, but you didn't do a very good job of it. For instanc=
> e, am I as delusional as Art because "Today I believe Will Shakespeare wrot=
> e Shakespeare?" In any case, I consider being delusional far better than b=
> eing stupid.)
>
> --Bob



Speaking of Estabniks, this should warm your heart:
http://observer.com/2012/10/junot-diaz-is-winning-the-author-
collects-awards-like-his-characters-bag-women/

Here are some samples of his "writing":

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

"No matter what its name or provenance, it is
believed that the arrival of Europeans on
Hispaniola unleashed the fuku on the world,
and we've all been in the shit ever since."


"And what about fucking Kennedy? He was
the one who green-lighted the assasination
of Trujillo in 1961, who ordered the CIA
to deliver arms to the island. Bad move,
Cap'n."

"He was our Sauron, our Arawn, our Darkseid,
our Once and Future Dictator, a personaje so
outlandish, so perverse, so dreadful that not
even a sci-fi writer could have made his ass
up."

This Is How You Lose Her

"I'm not a bad guy. I know how that sounds -
defensive, unscrupulous - but it's true.
I'm like everybody else: weak, full of mistakes,
but basically good. Magdalena disagrees
though. She considers me a typical Dominican
man: a sucio, an asshole. See, many months
ago, when Magda was still my girl, when I
didn't have to be careful about almost anything,
I cheated on her with this chick who had tons
of eighties freestyle hair."

Fucking Genius!
(of MIT that is, to get all those connections on
the MacArthur committee)

[Tom Reedy]

On Oct 9, 12:19 pm, "Sneaky O. Possum" <sneakyopos...@gmail.com>
wrote:

You might want to respond to what I wrote instead of what you think I
wrote.

Anybody who is aware of the evidence on this page:
http://shakespeareauthorship.com/howdowe.html and who then says, " "If
he were the man from Stratford, there would be some evidence. That
there is none, speaks volumes," is guilty of insane thinking. Whether
that person is insane or not is another question entirely.

TR

[Bob Grumman]

On Sunday, October 7, 2012 10:35:22 PM UTC-4, Sneaky O. Possum wrote:
> On Oct 7, 5:37 pm, Bob Grumman <bobgrum...@nut-n-but.net> wrote:
>
> > Ah, Robin, nice to know you've read my book and therefore are competent to state that what I wrote about it in comparison to the estabniks' book is delusional.  Nonetheless, if you were a
>
> > responsible critic of such as I, you really ought to show evidence in support of your contention.
>
>
>
> Robin showed just as much evidence of your delusional state as you
>
> showed to demonstrate that Charles Nicholl, MacDonald P. Jackson, Kate
>
> McLuskie, Alan Nelson, Carol Rutter et al. are "mediocrities." But no
>
> doubt you've read everything they've written, yes? You can cite
>
> chapter and verse of Nicholl's work to demonstrate his mediocrity?
>
> Please do so.
>

> --
>
> S.O.P.

I was expressing an opinion, a polemical opinion. No need to defend it. I suppose I should clarify, though. First off, my definition of mediocrity is not yours, I'm sure. Most of these people are competent, valuable academics. For me, though, a non-mediocrity needs to do more than add a new fact or two to the received understanding of his subject. None has, although I'm not sure how I could "prove" that--except by asking others to tell me what any of them has done that does more than Nicholl does to improve what we know about Marlowe (which I've read and enjoyed), for example.

Secondly, I over-generalized in calling them mediocrities when I really meant they were mediocrities in the authorship question, not one of them coming up with more than one or two very belated contributions to the subject.

I am alarmingly admiring of my own efforts for some reason, so offer as strong evidence of these people's mediocrity in the authorship discussion the fact that they completely ignore my contributions to it. I do have absolute evidence that Shapiro is a mediocrity in the acuthorship question: his paltry, superficial "theory" for the existence of anti-Shakespeareans, that Biblical scholars were making the questioning of famous texts fashionable, and that bardolators had turned a lot of people against Shakespeare because he was less than they made him out to be.

Am I fairly describing his view? Probably not, but it's close enough. What's mediocre about it? That it takes us nowhere. It doesn't explain why some people did not turn against Shakespeare. It doesn't explain the reasoning of the wacks--why, in particular, they are immune to evidence. Now, I get criticized for saying the anti-Shakespeareans are what they are because they are insane. If I said that, I would be doing what Shapiro does (except perhaps slightly worse). I would be saying they are wrong because they are nuts. Which is true, but takes us nowhere . . . unless we can say in detail in what way they are wrong, and what neurophysiologically sets them up to be wrong.

I have a detailed theory about that, which makes me NOT mediocre. Even if it's wrong. Because it indicates I'm after an answer of substance, which Shapiro isn't (and he's superior to all the other academics who have tried to say why the wacks are wacks).

I would add, SOP, that you are clearly a mediocrity. Evidence? That you require me to have read everything these academics have written to be qualified to evaluate them. In other words, you have no idea of non-mediocre thinking, which uses a minimum of empirical academic dwarfery to build large understandings. A key is the ability to generalize, which none of these people these people show much of.

--Bob

[Paul Crowley]

What did you say that was worth responding to?

> Anybody who is aware of the evidence on this page:
> http://shakespeareauthorship.com/howdowe.html and who then
> says, " "If he were the man from Stratford, there would be some
> evidence. That there is none, speaks volumes," is guilty of
> insane thinking. Whether that person is insane or not is another
> question entirely.

Your desperation to find 'insanity' is transparent.
The 'quote' you found was some highly-edited
snippet (no doubt of some part-sentence) joined
up with other snippets, all as part of a sales
pitch -- of the sort that fills TV screens in swing
USA States during Presidential elections.

That you regard as good evidence what is to be
found on that crap Stratfordian website shows
only that you are highly partisan -- almost to the
level of insanity.

Paul.

[Bob Grumman]

I was finishing a rather lengthy reply to Tom's post when I hit the side
of a wrong key--and totally lost the post, thanks to the imbecilic way this
site works, and my own imbecilic inability to learn that I, at least, must cut HLAS posts I want to reply and paste them into my word-processer where I can constantly save them until they're done and I can cut&paste them back to HLAS.

--Bob

[Dominic Hughes]

> >http://shakespeareauthorship.com/howdowe.htmland who then

> > says, " "If he were the man from Stratford, there would be some
> > evidence. That there is none, speaks volumes," is guilty of
> > insane thinking. Whether that person is insane or not is another
> > question entirely.
>
> Your desperation to find 'insanity' is transparent.

Nobody is "desperate" to find insane thinking here at HLAs since you
provide copious examples of insane thinking. Whether you are, in
fact, insane is another question entirely.

> The 'quote' you found was some highly-edited
> snippet (no doubt of some part-sentence) joined
> up with other snippets, all as part of a sales
> pitch -- of the sort that fills TV screens in swing
> USA States during Presidential elections.

You have actually found a couple of acorns for a change. Yes, the
insane thinking exhibited in the assertion that there is "no evidence"
indicating the author was the man from Stratford is very similar to
some of the lies and irrational trash that pass for campaign ads in
this country. In addition, you have correctly identified the fact
that the Oxenfordian mission is a public relations campaign, with a
sales pitch aimed at confusing the rubes. Congratulations.

A final point on this idiocy...the Oxenfordian allegation that there
is no evidence ["That there is none, speaks volumes."] is contradicted
by the Oxenfordian theory that a conspiracy existed and took concrete
steps to provide just such evidence linking the Stratford man to the
works.

> That you regard as good evidence what is to be
> found on that crap Stratfordian website shows
> only that you are highly partisan -- almost to the
> level of insanity.

That you are unable to ever address that evidence in an intelligent
and reasoned manner, and your constant cries of "Fake! Forgery!
Conspiracy! Joke! Mickey Mouse!" are not intelligent or reasonable,
reveals that you have reached a level of irrationality that may amount
to insaqnity, at least where this issue is concerned. Whther you are
actually insane is another question entirely.

Dom

[jaelsheargold]

> >http://shakespeareauthorship.com/howdowe.htmland who then

> > says, " "If he were the man from Stratford, there would be some
> > evidence. That there is none, speaks volumes," is guilty of
> > insane thinking. Whether that person is insane or not is another
> > question entirely.
>
> Your desperation to find 'insanity' is transparent.
> The 'quote' you found was some highly-edited
> snippet (no doubt of some part-sentence) joined
> up with other snippets, all as part of a sales
> pitch -- of the sort that fills TV screens in swing
> USA States during Presidential elections.
>
> That you regard as good evidence what is to be
> found on that crap Stratfordian website shows
> only that you are highly partisan -- almost to the
> level of insanity.
>

> Paul.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -


You're just a disillusioned old Trot, aren't you Crowley? Don't
entirely blame you, but there was no need for it to become a mania.


SB.

[Dominic Hughes]

On Oct 9, 6:04 pm, Paul Crowley <dsfdsfd...@sdfsfsfs.com> wrote:
> On 09/10/2012 18:19, Sneaky O. Possum wrote:
>
> > If one agrees that people who pursue phantom "real"
> > Shakespeares are guilty of "insane thinking," then I suppose
> > one might enjoy Mr. Grumman's book. I personally find that the
> > term "insane thinking" lacks utility. To be sure, some of the
> > anti-Strats have also been insane -
>
> And so have many Strats.

What Stratfordians have been found to be insane?

> Most of us know (and
> have known) several people suffering from forms
> of dementia.

You probably find them right outside your room.

> > The majority of believers in both cases are quite sane. Indeed,
> > that's what makes the anti-Strat persuasion (and belief in God!)
> > interesting: the unsolved puzzle of how people's minds can
> > perceive the world more or less as it is in most respects and
> > yet fail completely in certain areas.
>
> OTOH, while Stratfordian beliefs can in themselves be
> described as 'insane' (e.g. the belief that an illiterate
> was the Great Bard),

This is an example of your irrationality, if not insanity. No
Stratfordian believes that the author was an illiterate. Here, you
are stating your opinion that William Shakespeare of Stratford was
illiterate as unequivocal fact, even though that is not so, but that
is because you are so delusional that you believe that what you
believe is unequivocal fact. You are the nutter here.

> no one would suggest that Strats
> are so.  Nor will they be seen to be so in future times
> -- no more than believers in Flat Earth theories, or in
> a  stationary (and non-revolving) earth, or in fixed
> continents or in a Creation on a Saturday morning in
> 4004 B.C.

Stratfordians should never be seen as insane, or lumped in with flat
or young earthers or other similar groups due to the fact that they
rely on actual, physical evidence -- something that you simply don't
understand.

> Strats will just be seen as amazingly stupid.
> They were sold a truly absurd story, and they
> bought it.

That prediction would come true only if Stratfordians ever bought your
amazingly stupid, absurd story, but that will never happen no matter
how much you try to sell it.

Dom

[Bob Grumman]

Thanks for the suggestion BB, but I'bve posted entire chapters of my book at HLAS, and have samples of it at a site I created for it, although I'm not sure it still exists. Peter Farey responded to my main sample chapter here quite effectively for someone against my point of view about the authorship. A few others may have posted remarks about it, I'm not sure. BCD, I'm pretty sure it was, gave my book a nice review.

Incidentally, I want to say that one reason the authorship argument part of it was as good as it was, is due to what I stole from others a HLAS, with permission a few times. Like Terry Ross and Dave Kathman.

What the heck: here is the preface to the third edition (2006), as it appeared in the book:


PREFACE


Whoever William Shakespeare really was, it was during the late 1500’s and early 1600’s that he composed the poems and plays attributed to him. Only a few of the era’s other writers commented in print on “The Ouevre,” as I will most of the time be calling those works. What they had to say about it was generally favorable, but only once or twice exceptionally so, and for several decades after Shakespeare’s death, Ben Jonson—in the view of most of his countrymen—was the greatest of recent English writers, not William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare steadily gained in popularity, though. By the middle of the
1700s, he was widely considered to be for England what Homer had been for Greece, Virgil for Rome. Unfortunately, his reputation rose even higher. By the middle of the next century, he had become one with the gods for many of the culturati of his native country (and America). It was at that point that it began to seem implausible to some that “William Shaksper,” a haphazardly-educated commoner from the small, out-of-the-way town of Stratford-on-Avon, could have had anything significant to do with the plays and poems so long ascribed to him. The most committed of these anti-Stratfordians, as they have come to be called, began writing articles and books advancing their theories.

They have not stopped. And they seem to be gaining respect: in recent years; there have been several highly-visible articles about who really wrote Shakespeare in such publications as Harper’s (April 1999), Time (15 February 1999) and History Today (August 2001). Moreover, in January 2002, the Shakespeare Folger Library’s Gail Kern Paster debated anti-Stratfordian Richard Whalen on the authorship question under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institute—an event that occasioned an article in the The New York Times (10 February 2002). At about the same time, Michael Rubbo’s movie about the question, Much Ado About Something, was released nationally. Just about all the articles mentioned have been slanted against poor Will, the Times article particularly so. Much Ado About Something unabashedly advanced Christopher Marlowe as The True Author. More recently, in November 2008, Hal Whittemore spoke about his book on Shakespeare’s sonnets, which he believes the Earl of Oxford wrote, at the Globe Theatre in London. And Concordia University in California opened a $15,000,000 Shakespeare Authorship Research Center in the fall of 2009, the first of its kind in academia. It is directed by another who believes the Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare’s works, Professor Daniel Wright. In short, those opposing Shakespeare have definitely been on a roll.

Do they have a case? No. The authorship question has been answered for over four hundred years. Nonetheless, I am treating it at length in this book. Why? Partly to help those who haven’t time to study the question sufficiently to see how wrong the anti-Stratfordians are. But chiefly to try to settle a question that interests me far more: how seemingly sane people can go off the rails when it comes to question of who wrote Shakespeare’s works. My answer? Because certain defects of temperament make them either what I call “rigidniks” or followers of rigidniks. In the last third of this book, I will explain the psychology of each of these in detail according to a theory of temperament types I’ve developed over the years (as part of a full-scale theory of psychology). As I do so, I will show how their cerebral dysfunction compels them, each in a different way, to become unhinged where Shakespeare is concerned. (The first two-thirds of the book will demonstrate beyond rational doubt exactly how irrational the anti-Stratfordian belief system is.)

Before getting to all that, I want to comment on the one statement that, of all the statements that have been made about The Ouevre, bothers me the most. It is that it doesn’t matter who was responsible for it, the works themselves are what count. While I can understand the impatience of some for the intrusion of scholarly and pseudo-scholarly intrusions

[Good grief, how'd I let that one by?]


into what should be untroubled encounters with story and verse, I find it short-sighted. Not only does it matter who wrote The Oeuvre, it matters significantly. First of all, it’s only fair that the person responsible for a body of work be given credit for it. This is no abstract sentimental gesture toward a person long dead who is unlikely to care much, but an encouragement to present-day writers who, human, want to know that they will get credit for what they write—and keep it. At least as important, the identity of the author of any work of literature is part of history, and history matters, even literary history. Where would studies of creativity be without it, for instance? Nor should the ability of knowledge of who wrote what to give later would-be writers accurate role-models to emulate and be inspired by be sneered at. Then, too, there is such knowledge’s ability to add to readers’ appreciation of literature by clearing up the cloudier sections of particular works, and adding colors to its surround to make it not just literature, but literature and a place, time and human being.

In short, I have no qualms about devoting an entire book to the Authorship Controversy rather than to Shakespeare’s plays and poems. That the latter, in themselves, are clearly more important than how they came to be does not mean that how they came to be is a trivial question.

Note: I have set up a website in conjunction with this book at
http://bobgrumman.com/Shakespeare-and-the-Rigidniks/Index.html. Occasionally, on the pages that follow, I will refer to essays and other writings “on the Internet” having to do with this book. These, the reader will be able to find there. I will also take comments and discuss the book there, and list corrections to it, and otherwise try to keep it an up-to-date extension of this book.


**** Yeah, It could use a bit of editing.

--Bob

[Bob Grumman]

> If one agrees that people who pursue phantom "real" Shakespeares are
>
> guilty of "insane thinking," then I suppose one might enjoy Mr.
>
> Grumman's book. I personally find that the term "insane thinking"
>
> lacks utility.

Of course it does if that's where the explanation ends. But in my book I show in detail how wacks think, and how their screwed-up neuro-endocrinological causes them to think as badly as they do.

> To be sure, some of the anti-Strats have also been
>
> insane - but some people who believe in God have also been insane. The
>
> majority of believers in both cases are quite sane. Indeed, that's
>
> what makes the anti-Strat persuasion (and belief in God!) interesting:
>
> the unsolved puzzle of how people's minds can perceive the world more
>
> or less as it is in most respects and yet fail completely in certain
>
> areas.

That is the question my book is most about, and Shapiro's purports to be about but goes nowhere to explain.

--Bob

>
> --
>
> S.O.P.

[Bob Grumman]

> Strats will just be seen as amazingly stupid.
>
> They were sold a truly absurd story, and they
>
> bought it.
>
> Paul.

Tell me, Paul, do you think anyone will try to figure out
what made the "Strats" so stupid--and how it is that geniuses
liked you escaped whatever it was? Why are you unable to say
what keeps people like me from understanding that the literacy
of a person's parents will determine his level of literacy?
Yes, you say we just believe whatever our professors tell us,
but you don't explain why we are so suggestible, and you not.

Compare yourself to me in this: I've written three or four
chapters of a book explaining what makes people "think" the
way you do, you have written next to nothing explaining what
makes people think like I, or refuting my explanation of your
thinking. True, my explanation may be wrong, but am I not
far superior to you inasmuch as I've tried for an explanation
while you haven't?

--Bob

[Bob Grumman]

>Actually Bob's book, although it has a few holes, is quite good.

Thanks for the defense, but I’d much rather get an attack that said what the “few holes” were.

>He could have used the services of a good copy editor (and if he had done so it would have been publishable by a mainstream press),

The third edition has less errors, but still way too many. Not really a problem, though, because no mainstream publisher would want anything to do with a book on this subject by a non-academic, much less one with an original theory of character.

>but his arguments are clear and his style is a lot breezier than his sometimes convoluted and hard-to-follow HLAS style.

True—because a lot of my stuff here is first draft material I use HLAS to try out.

>That his criticism of mainstream scholars is juvenile

Not at all.

>and obviously motivated by a good deal of resentment and jealousy

True, but more motivated by the obviousness of how establishments come about and stay in power.

>does nothing to besmirch his work at all--I look at it as the authorship version of Ezra Pound's idiotic views. There is nothing mediocre about the work of any of those named above.

According to your definition of “mediocre,” not by mine, which isn’t all that foolish. Can you tell me how any of these people have stepped a significant step away from the received understandings of their field? Can you tell me how any non-mediocrity can be satisfied to write about someone hundreds of books have been written about rather than about someone no books have been written about? Nay, rather than about a school of authors no books have been written about?

>The refreshing feature of the book is his willingness to call insane thinking what it is. The part he could have left out is his idiosyncratic general theory of human psychology, but I suspect that without that he wouldn't have written it.

Correct. As I’ve said many times at HLAS, I have always considered the authorship debate trivial except as a way to analyze the thinking of wacks—and because, amusingly, I thought an intelligent, original theory would appeal to the general public, even if wrong—the way many previous such theories have—Sheldon’s based on body-type, for instance.

(Note: I find it interesting how many tenth-raters like Robin and Sneaky so often post a vote against something someone's written, with no argument in support of the vote to speak of, but then when their vote is challenged disappear . . . until they have a chance to make another vacuous vote against
someone.)

--Bob

[marc hanson]

there's much psychological going on here,
maybe even Mass psychology

I think if I had it to do over again [school]
I would minor in psychology,
and maybe I/we could have helped Paul out...

marc

[Paul Crowley]

On 11/10/2012 15:51, Bob Grumman wrote:

>> Strats will just be seen as amazingly stupid.
>> They were sold a truly absurd story, and they
>> bought it.
>

> Tell me, Paul, do you think anyone will try to figure
> out what made the "Strats" so stupid

No particular explanation is necessary, as
I have told you on numerous occasions.
Why are there Creationists? Why did the
Vatican (and most others between 1545 and
1700) continue to believe in a stationary
earth? Why do millions of new students
every year hear utter garbage from the likes
of Groves that whole nations of farming
people regularly changed their language
for no reason and at the drop of a hat?

> --and how it is that geniuses liked you escaped
> whatever it was?

Most people find thinking hard and disagreeable,
and are cowed into believing that academics
like Groves know that they are talking about.

> Why are you unable to say what keeps people like
> me from understanding that the literacy of a
> person's parents will determine his level of literacy?

No one claims that any 'determination' is
involved. It's a matter of probability. In 99.9%
of cases in history, since writing was invented,
illiterate fathers had illiterate sons and literate
fathers had literate sons. Of course, there were
rare exceptions and you want to claim that the
greatest writer of all time was one of them.

But even that is not good enough. It takes
generations for GOOD literary ability to grow,
and even more generations for GREAT writing
to be possible. That's why authors (of almost
any quality) almost invariably had not just
literate fathers and literate mothers, but all
four grandparents were literate as well.. And
great writers usually had ancestors who were
very good writers, going way way back.
A literary tradition can grow only slowly, and
historically it did so within families.

> Yes, you say we just believe whatever our
> professors tell us, but you don't explain why we are
> so suggestible

You're human. It pays to be suggestible.
Raising awkward questions in (say) classes
run by Peter Groves is going to get only one
definite result -- large piles of abuse dumped
on your face. And you'll be very unlikely to
get a pass on that course.

> and you not.

I work very hard; I'm not afraid to be wrong,
and I'm lucky. I have learnt that academics
(and the like) are nearly all pure bullshitters.
It's a lesson that you seem to have missed.

If you want to pursue this topic, focus on the
language thing. There you may have less of
a closed mind -- than the one you have on the
Shake-speare authorship issue. Note how
Groves (and Kennedy, et al) cannot answer
any of my questions. All they can do is raise
strawmen, and dish out crude abuse.
[..]


Paul.

[BCD]

On 10/11/2012 11:21 AM, Paul Crowley wrote:
> [much snippage]

> On 11/10/2012 15:51, Bob Grumman wrote:
>>
>> Tell me, Paul, do you think anyone will try to figure
>> out what made the "Strats" so stupid
>

> [...]Why do millions of new students

> every year hear utter garbage from the likes
> of Groves that whole nations of farming
> people regularly changed their language
> for no reason and at the drop of a hat?

***Well, what does Paul mean?--that people found in particular districts
one year would necessarily be speaking the same language as the people
found in the same particular districts in another year? Let's ask
Gibbon to supply an instance or two to address that. Though Paul’s
short attention span will bridle at the following lengthy remarks, those
who actually wish to understand the subject will, I think, find the
following to be apposite: “The arts and religion, the laws and
language, which the Romans had so carefully planted in Britain, were
extirpated by their barbarous successors [*referring to the Saxons and
their allies*]. […] The language of science, of business, and of
conversation, which had been introduced by the Romans, was lost in the
general desolation. A sufficient number of Latin or Celtic words might
be assumed by the Germans, to express their new wants and ideas; but
those *illiterate* Pagans preserved and established the use of their
national dialect. Almost every name, conspicuous either in the church
or state, reveals its Teutonic origin; and the geography of *England*
[*Gibbon, by emphasizing “England,” is pointing up the fact that it was
now the land of (among other Teutons) the Angles rather than of the
Britons*] was universally inscribed with foreign characters and
appellations. The example of a revolution, so rapid and so complete,
may not easily be found; but it will excite a probable suspicion that
the arts of Rome were less deeply rooted in Britain than in Gaul or
Spain; and that the native rudeness of the country and its inhabitants
was covered by a thin varnish of Italian manners. This strange
alteration has persuaded historians, and even philosophers, that the
provincials of Britain were totally exterminated; and that the vacant
land was again peopled by the perpetual influx and rapid increase of the
German colonies. Three hundred thousand Saxons are *said* to have
obeyed the summons of Hengist; and the entire emigration of the Angles
was attested, in the age of Bede, by the solitude of their native
country; and our experience has shown the free propagation of the human
race, if they are cast on a fruitful wilderness, where their steps are
unconfined and their subsistence is plentiful. […*Meanwhile, as to the
original Britons, who had fled west and to Armorica (Brittany):*] The
independent Britons appear to have relapsed into the state of original
barbarism, from whence they had been imperfectly reclaimed [*by the
Romans*]. Separated by their enemies from the rest of mankind, they
soon became an object of scandal and abhorrence to the Catholic world.
[…] The use of the Latin language was insensibly abolished, and the
Britons were deprived of the arts and learning which Italy communicated
to her Saxon proselytes. In Wales and Armorica, the Celtic tongue, the
native idiom of the West, was preserved and propagated; and the *Bards*,
who had been the companions of the Druids, were still protected, in the
sixteenth century, by the laws of Elizabeth […]” —from towards the end
of Vol. 4, Chapter XXXVIII of Gibbon’s *History of the Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire* (not respecting paragraph breaks, nor including the
copious footnotes), where he is addressing the years 455-582 AD.

> [...]

> If you want to pursue this topic, focus on the
> language thing. There you may have less of
> a closed mind -- than the one you have on the
> Shake-speare authorship issue. Note how
> Groves (and Kennedy, et al) cannot answer
> any of my questions. All they can do is raise
> strawmen, and dish out crude abuse.
> [..]

***"Crude abuse." Mark that.

Best Wishes,

--BCD

[book...@yahoo.com]

------------------------------

I find the Preface makes an honest attempt to show where you're coming
from, starts engagingly in medias res, before getting into the meat of
your subject with questions, but is too complicated. Supposed to be
some variation on 1) saying what you will do, 2) doing what you said,
and 3) saying what you did, as I understand the simple approach
(KISS).

Must be a clever way to be engaging and trustworthy that you can use
in presenting your subject and point of view. I think you should help
the reader a bit more with use of terms like "The Ouevre" and sort of
manage a first person point of view as well as cite the silly scholars
who are over the top.

If I was doing this, I would make it fun for myself.

Just my comment, no real criticism. bookburn

[Bob Grumman]

> > Tell me, Paul, do you think anyone will try to figure
> > out what made the "Strats" so stupid
> No particular explanation is necessary, as
> I have told you on numerous occasions.

Sorry. I so take it for granted that any even
slightly intelligent person tries to explain things,
that I forgot that you're content with the belief
that those who don't believe as you do about
Shakespeare are stupid, and that they are
stupid because they're stupid.

> Why are there Creationists?

Because they realized that the only solid evidence for
their belief was the Bible. Hence, if that could be
shown to be invalid about important matters like the
age of the earth, there was no reason to believe it
valid about the existence of God.

Some could allow the Bible to have errors by simply
deciding that faith trumped material evidence.
Creationists can't--because, I go on further to try
to demonstrate, they are psituational psychotics,
hyper-rigidniks like you, Paul, to be exact. I have
described in some detail here at HLAS how certain
persons' innate neurophysiology makes rigidniks of
them, and have listed, with explanations for, the
mental defects it afflicts them with, such as an
to assimilate data disagreeing with their narrow
outlook concerning what they as psitchotic about,
and much else.

Get my book if you want to learn more. Or, better,
get someone to subsidize the improved edition I've
been working on for the past few years, irregularly:
it will apply my thoughts concerning rigidnikry to
creationism and other delusional systems besides
Oxfordianism.

> Why did the Vatican (and most others between 1545 and
> 1700) continue to believe in a stationary earth?

I'm not sure what exactly they believed in, but
many have believed in a stationary earth because
it makes sense. The simple evidence against it
is mostly unnoticeable, and is countered by the
extreme counter-intuitiveness of the idea of an
earth in motion. We don't feel the earth's motion,
so why should we believe in it.

Another factor is that it was not important.

> Why do millions of new students
> every year hear utter garbage from the likes
> of Groves that whole nations of farming
> people regularly changed their language
> for no reason and at the drop of a hat?

For they same reason that you believe Oxford
was born on Mars, Paul. The ghost of Charlton
Ogborn told you he was.

(Note: if you think Groves is so wrong, why do you
feel the need to misrepresent his thinking so
incredibly badly? Even after many times being corrected?)

>
> > --and how it is that geniuses liked you escaped
> > whatever it was?

> Most people find thinking hard and disagreeable,
> and are cowed into believing that academics
> like Groves know that they are talking about.

Why are most people like that? Why are you not like that?

> > Why are you unable to say what keeps people like
> > me from understanding that the literacy of a
> > person's parents will determine his level of literacy?

> No one claims that any 'determination' is
> involved. It's a matter of probability. In 99.9%
> of cases in history, since writing was invented,
> illiterate fathers had illiterate sons and literate
> fathers had literate sons. Of course, there were
> rare exceptions and you want to claim that the
> greatest writer of all time was one of them.

You’re playing with words, so I’ll repeat my question
With a slight alteration: what keeps me from accepting that
“it’s a matter of probability” that the son of illiterates
Could not become a great writer?

> But even that is not good enough. It takes
> generations for GOOD literary ability to grow,
> and even more generations for GREAT writing
> to be possible. That's why authors (of almost
> any quality) almost invariably had not just
> literate fathers and literate mothers, but all
> four grandparents were literate as well.. And
> great writers usually had ancestors who were
> very good writers, going way way back.

How is it that you know this to be true whereas
I consider it absolute nonsense? How is it that my
understanding of epistemology makes me believe
that once a person learns to read and write, his
ability to read and write will tend to become as good
as his innate intelligence allows?

What do you know about how people acquire literacy, anyway?

> A literary tradition can grow only slowly, and
> historically it did so within families.

> > Yes, you say we just believe whatever our
> > professors tell us, but you don't explain why we are
> > so suggestible

> You're human. It pays to be suggestible.

You’re human, too, why are we aware that it pays to be
suggestible, and you’re not? Or, if you know that it pays
but don’t care, how is it possible for you to be superior
to caring about something that pays when we cannot?

> Raising awkward questions in (say) classes
> run by Peter Groves is going to get only one
> definite result -- large piles of abuse dumped
> on your face. And you'll be very unlikely to
> get a pass on that course.

Don’t be absurd. Groves has detectives check up on those
applying for admittance to his classes. He’s able to identify
all those likely not to be 100% suggestible and keep them out.
Some, I’m sure, he has killed—the ones likely to make a stink.

However, believe it or not, it’s not that hard to go along with
a teacher to get your grade, without changing your mind about
the subject he teaches. There’s also the absolute fact that most
teachers are not autocrats. Very few of mine were. I even got
one to change her mind about something. The only college teach I
had who was completely intolerant was a sociology professor believing
in the kind of baloney you do. But for all I know, she might have given
me an A in spite of my opposition to just about she believed. Heck, she
may not have wanted to damage me with an F.

There’s one other possibility: not bothering with formal education. A degree is
still not mandatory for writers. Stoppard became famous long before he bothered
to get a degree.

> I work very hard; I'm not afraid to be wrong,

How is it that you can work hard and not be afraid
to be wrong and I, apparently, cannot?

> and I'm lucky. I have learnt that academics
> (and the like) are nearly all pure bullshitters.

> It's a lesson that you seem to have missed.

Right, Paul. But why? What made you able to learn the truth about
nearly all academics? What prevented me from doing the same?

>
> If you want to pursue this topic, focus on the
> language thing. There you may have less of
> a closed mind -- than the one you have on the
> Shake-speare authorship issue. Note how
> Groves (and Kennedy, et al) cannot answer
> any of my questions. All they can do is raise
> strawmen, and dish out crude abuse.

I’m afraid I find that Groves answered your questions. Kennedy
may have understandably thought them not worth bothering with.
But forget that. I am right now slowly reading both books that Peter
recommended to me and enjoying them. I’m finding so much in them
that I find your theory, as I poorly understand it, fails to account for, I’m
getting confused.

I would like to understand your theory better, but need to look at it one
Topic or so at a time. I think the authorities and you agree that around 450
A.D. three kinds of Teutonic started to become established in England. The
Books I’m reading say (if I’ve got them right, and that will never be sure) they
were very similar and were the basis of Anglo-Saxon, or Old English.

Do you agree so far? If not, what do you disagree with, and why do you
disagree with it?

This language, which I prefer to call Anglo-Saxon, was spoken throughout
England until around 1100. The scholars seem to agree with you that we know
This almost entirely from written records, some of them quite meagre.

I will continue when you’ve responded to this.

--Bob

[Sneaky O. Possum]

Bob Grumman <bobgr...@nut-n-but.net> wrote in
news:256256f4-3d34-43a3...@googlegroups.com:

> On Sunday, October 7, 2012 10:35:22 PM UTC-4, Sneaky O. Possum wrote:
>> On Oct 7, 5:37 pm, Bob Grumman <bobgrum...@nut-n-but.net> wrote:
>>
>> > Ah, Robin, nice to know you've read my book and therefore are
>> > competent to state that what I wrote about it in comparison to the
>> > estabniks' book is delusional. Nonetheless, if you were a
>> > responsible critic of such as I, you really ought to show evidence
>> > in support of your contention.
>>
>> Robin showed just as much evidence of your delusional state as you
>> showed to demonstrate that Charles Nicholl, MacDonald P. Jackson,
>> Kate McLuskie, Alan Nelson, Carol Rutter et al. are "mediocrities."
>> But no doubt you've read everything they've written, yes? You can
>> cite chapter and verse of Nicholl's work to demonstrate his
>> mediocrity?
>>
>> Please do so.
>

> I was expressing an opinion, a polemical opinion. No need to defend
> it.

So why not extend the same privilege to Robin?
--
S.O.P.

[Sneaky O. Possum]

Tom Reedy <tom....@gmail.com> wrote in
news:7bda8a88-71b6-4746...@z8g2000yql.googlegroups.com:

> On Oct 9, 12:19 pm, "Sneaky O. Possum" <sneakyopos...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> On Oct 8, 7:12 pm, tom.re...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>> > The refreshing feature of the book is his willingness to call
>> > insane thinking what it is. The part he could have left out is his
>> > idiosyncratic general theory of human psychology, but I suspect
>> > that without that he wouldn't have written it.
>>
>> If one agrees that people who pursue phantom "real" Shakespeares are
>> guilty of "insane thinking," then I suppose one might enjoy Mr.
>> Grumman's book. I personally find that the term "insane thinking"
>> lacks utility. To be sure, some of the anti-Strats have also been
>> insane - but some people who believe in God have also been insane.
>> The majority of believers in both cases are quite sane. Indeed,
>> that's what makes the anti-Strat persuasion (and belief in God!)
>> interesting: the unsolved puzzle of how people's minds can perceive
>> the world more or less as it is in most respects and yet fail
>> completely in certain areas.
>

> You might want to respond to what I wrote instead of what you think I
> wrote.

And you might want to do the same, no?

> Anybody who is aware of the evidence on this page:
> http://shakespeareauthorship.com/howdowe.html and who then says, " "If
> he were the man from Stratford, there would be some evidence. That
> there is none, speaks volumes," is guilty of insane thinking.

And as I said, I find that the term "insane thinking" lacks utility. It
explains nothing. Now, it seems that Mr. Grumman imagines that he does
have an explanation, but it also seems that you reject that explanation,
although you seem happy to accept the attendant pejorative terminology.

All my experience leads me to conclude that we are all "insane thinkers"
in one way or another - that is to say, that we all have some beliefs,
somewhere in our minds, that are manifestly false, and yet we will deny
their falsity so long as there is breath in our bodies. Moreover, I
think all people (and yes, I include myself) NEED to believe in
something that cannot be shown to be true.

Anti-Stratfordianism provides an interesting example of this need
because the belief is not very common (unlike, for example, belief in a
Close Personal Saviour) and the evidence for its falsity is so manifest.
--
S.O.P.

[Bob Grumman]

On Saturday, October 6, 2012 9:05:00 AM UTC-7, Bob Grumman wrote:
> Nice of these mediocrities to let Dave Kathman write something for their book. But, who knows, perhaps twenty years after my book on the subject they may come close to equaling it, so far as the authorship argument is concerned.
>
>
>
> --Bob
Bob,

Today you believe Will Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. Based on the above comment, you are as delusional as Art, Paul and the many others who believe it didn't. You are a legend in your own mind. Your mediocrities comment is a classic example of projection.

.
I merely called a bunch of academics “mediocrities” to make the point that they will soon have a book on the authorship question possibly equal to my book of twenty years ago, a polemical opinion too large for Robin to deal with, even if he could come up with anything against it. Instead, he grabbed my minor act of impoliteness to make what seem to me major assertions about my mental health, assertions personal enough and extreme enough to require any responsible writer support them. So I responded to him as I did, and he, as ever, said nothing back, clearly unable to show his diatribe against me was even close to the truth.
.
Again unlike trivial morons like Robin, I did go on to clarify and defend my statement about the academics.
--Bob

[Paul Crowley]

On 11/10/2012 21:52, Bob Grumman wrote:

>>> Tell me, Paul, do you think anyone will try to figure
>>> out what made the "Strats" so stupid
>>
>> No particular explanation is necessary, as
>> I have told you on numerous occasions.
>
> Sorry. I so take it for granted that any even
> slightly intelligent person tries to explain things,
> that I forgot that you're content with the belief
> that those who don't believe as you do about
> Shakespeare are stupid, and that they are
> stupid because they're stupid.

Sure -- stupidity, especially credulousness,
is the default condition of the human race.
I can't see what is wrong, or even remotely
contestable, about that.

>> Why are there Creationists?
>
> Because they realized that the only solid evidence for
> their belief was the Bible.

Not so. They've accepted the Bible (and
other Holy Books) as the only reliable source
of knowledge for the past 2,000 years or more.
Why change?

>> Why did the Vatican (and most others between 1545 and
>> 1700) continue to believe in a stationary earth?
>
> I'm not sure what exactly they believed in, but
> many have believed in a stationary earth because
> it makes sense. The simple evidence against it
> is mostly unnoticeable, and is countered by the
> extreme counter-intuitiveness of the idea of an
> earth in motion. We don't feel the earth's motion,
> so why should we believe in it.
>
> Another factor is that it was not important.

A universe (with billions of different galaxies each
with billions of different suns and star-systems) is
a very different entity from one single planet
surrounded by 'crystal spheres'.

>> Why do millions of new students
>> every year hear utter garbage from the likes
>> of Groves that whole nations of farming
>> people regularly changed their language
>> for no reason and at the drop of a hat?

> (Note: if you think Groves is so wrong, why do you
> feel the need to misrepresent his thinking so
> incredibly badly? Even after many times being
> corrected?)

What is the misrepresentation?

>>> --and how it is that geniuses liked you escaped
>>> whatever it was?
>
>> Most people find thinking hard and disagreeable,
>> and are cowed into believing that academics
>> like Groves know that they are talking about.
>
> Why are most people like that? Why are you not like that?

Stupidity is the default condition. In one or
two slight instances, I am ahead of the mob.
No doubt, in others, I am a laggard.

>>> Why are you unable to say what keeps people like
>>> me from understanding that the literacy of a
>>> person's parents will determine his level of literacy?
>
>> No one claims that any 'determination' is
>> involved. It's a matter of probability. In 99.9%
>> of cases in history, since writing was invented,
>> illiterate fathers had illiterate sons and literate
>> fathers had literate sons. Of course, there were
>> rare exceptions and you want to claim that the
>> greatest writer of all time was one of them.
>
> You’re playing with words, so I’ll repeat my question
> With a slight alteration: what keeps me from accepting that
> “it’s a matter of probability” that the son of illiterates
> Could not become a great writer?

I really have no idea. You seem to have no
grasp whatever of the concept of probability
(unfortunately a common disability). Don't
ever go to Las Vegas or play poker for money.

>> But even that is not good enough. It takes
>> generations for GOOD literary ability to grow,
>> and even more generations for GREAT writing
>> to be possible. That's why authors (of almost
>> any quality) almost invariably had not just
>> literate fathers and literate mothers, but all
>> four grandparents were literate as well.. And
>> great writers usually had ancestors who were
>> very good writers, going way way back.
>
> How is it that you know this to be true whereas
> I consider it absolute nonsense? How is it that my
> understanding of epistemology makes me believe
> that once a person learns to read and write, his
> ability to read and write will tend to become as good
> as his innate intelligence allows?

List your great writers (say the top 100) and
see how many were not from a literary family.

[..]

>> If you want to pursue this topic, focus on the
>> language thing. There you may have less of
>> a closed mind -- than the one you have on the
>> Shake-speare authorship issue. Note how
>> Groves (and Kennedy, et al) cannot answer
>> any of my questions. All they can do is raise
>> strawmen, and dish out crude abuse.
>
> I’m afraid I find that Groves answered your questions.

I'd like to know when and where. I will make
a separate post showing his 'responses'.
He does not deign to answer my questions,
merely insisting that I must first somehow
demolish every sentence in some long article
he has written on 'language change' or some
such thing. As I have told him I don't want to
contest any of it, any more than anyone (that
I know, at least) would want to contest the
detail of the works of Archbishop Ussher when
he proved that the world was created on a
Saturday morning in 4004 BC. Much in such
works is sound. But overall drift is nonsense.

> I would like to understand your theory better, but need to look at
> it one Topic or so at a time. I think the authorities and you
> agree that around 450 A.D. three kinds of Teutonic started to
> become established in England. The Books I’m reading say (if
> I’ve got them right, and that will never be sure) they were very
> similar and were the basis of Anglo-Saxon, or Old English.
>
> Do you agree so far?

I agree IF we are talking only about the military
ruling class -- although I deplore the use of the
term 'Old English'. Anglo-Saxon had about as
much connection with Chaucer's English as did
Latin, or the language of the Druids.

> This language, which I prefer to call Anglo-Saxon, was spoken
> throughout England until around 1100.

Sure -- in much the same way as Latin was spoken
in England up to about 400 A.D, or as Norman-
French was spoken after 1066 -- by a small ruling
minority.

> The scholars seem to agree with you that we know This almost
> entirely from written records, some of them quite meagre.

No one says anything about the language spoken
by the great bulk of the population, the peasants,
villeins, slaves, farmers. Since they were all
illiterate, and had no power, they had no existence
for the 'scholars' -- neither then nor now.

And that's the problem. They, of course, spoke
English, right through the whole period, as the
military gangs who controlled all the power and
wealth swept in, lasted a few centuries, and were
then swept out by the next gang.

Without a grasp of this basic fact, you can't
understand the history of England, or its culture,
nor those of the societies to which it gave birth.


Paul.

[Paul Crowley]

On 13/10/2012 07:06, Sneaky O. Possum wrote:

> All my experience leads me to conclude that we are
> all "insane thinkers" in one way or another - that is
> to say, that we all have some beliefs, somewhere in
> our minds, that are manifestly false, and yet we will
> deny their falsity so long as there is breath in our
> bodies. Moreover, I think all people (and yes, I
> include myself) NEED to believe in something that
> cannot be shown to be true.
>
> Anti-Stratfordianism provides an interesting example
> of this need because the belief is not very common
> (unlike, for example, belief in a Close Personal
> Saviour) and the evidence for its falsity is so
> manifest.

"Anti-Stratfordianism" is not a belief -- any
more than is "anti-Christianity" or "anti-
Atheism" or "anti-Republicanism", There
cannot be evidence for "its falsity" in any
one of these cases.

You are merely re-asserting your Faith in
Stratfordianism.

What makes Stratfordianism so manifestly
true --- other than, of course, that salary
check you get each month ?


Paul.

[Bob Grumman]

On Sunday, October 14, 2012 9:18:13 AM UTC-4, Paul Crowley wrote:
> On 11/10/2012 21:52, Bob Grumman wrote:
>
>
>
> >>> Tell me, Paul, do you think anyone will try to figure
>
> >>> out what made the "Strats" so stupid
>
> >>
>
> >> No particular explanation is necessary, as
>
> >> I have told you on numerous occasions.
>
> >
>
> > Sorry. I so take it for granted that any even
>
> > slightly intelligent person tries to explain things,
>
> > that I forgot that you're content with the belief
>
> > that those who don't believe as you do about
>
> > Shakespeare are stupid, and that they are
>
> > stupid because they're stupid.
>
>
>
> Sure -- stupidity, especially credulousness,
>
> is the default condition of the human race.
>
> I can't see what is wrong, or even remotely
>
> contestable, about that.

You don't see that you are merely saying
that they are wrong because they are wrong?

Forget that, just tell me what makes them
stupid and you not.

>
>
>
> >> Why are there Creationists?
>
> >
>
> > Because they realized that the only solid evidence for
>
> > their belief was the Bible.
>
>
>
> Not so. They've accepted the Bible (and
>
> other Holy Books) as the only reliable source
>
> of knowledge for the past 2,000 years or more.
>
> Why change?

I'm saying they could not accept evolution because
it contradicted their sacred books, and they could
not allow their sacred books to be contradicted because
those books were their only evidence for the central
beliefs. They accepted many new things because they
didn't contradict the Bible, or they didn't think they
did. They would have accepted evolution if it did
not contradict Genesis.

I will repeat what I went on to say to indicate that
the above is only one small part of the explanation for
creationists: "Some of themcould allow the Bible to

have errors by simply deciding that faith trumped
material evidence. Creationists can't--because,
I go on further to try to demonstrate, they are
psituational psychotics, hyper-rigidniks like you,
Paul, to be exact."

One thing this means is that they can't take complexity:
God did it must, for them, be the explanation rather
than the complex causes of human eyesight, say. Another
thing it means is that they can't stand gaps in
knowledge: everything must be explained by "God
did it." They, like, you, refuse to accept that
some details will never be finally explained because
of lack of data. Their wiring makes them believe
that in imperfect theory is wrong just as you refuse
to accept the (minutely) imperfect theory that
Shakespeare was Shakespeare, preferring the perfect
Oxfordian theory you favor, because it is a conspiracy
theory and thus can explain any anomaly.

There are many other reasons, given in my book, why
rigidniks will believe something as absurd as
creationism of Oxfordianism.

>
> >> Why did the Vatican (and most others between 1545 and
>
> >> 1700) continue to believe in a stationary earth?
>
> >
>
> > I'm not sure what exactly they believed in, but
>
> > many have believed in a stationary earth because
>
> > it makes sense. The simple evidence against it
>
> > is mostly unnoticeable, and is countered by the
>
> > extreme counter-intuitiveness of the idea of an
>
> > earth in motion. We don't feel the earth's motion,
>
> > so why should we believe in it.
>
> >
>
> > Another factor is that it was not important.
>
>
>
> A universe (with billions of different galaxies each
>
> with billions of different suns and star-systems) is
>
> a very different entity from one single planet
>
> surrounded by 'crystal spheres'.

You've ignored my answer. Except, I'm guessing, to
suggest they also preferred a simple earth-centered
solar system (they had no knowledge of a larger
universe that I know of) to one that seemed more
complex to them, and--as has been stated zillions
of times--seemed to displace mankind from its center.

The need to be central is an interesting need I
wish I had time to explore in some detail. I don't.
I would add, though, that the idea that we are not
central is extremely counter-intuitive even now, and
would have seemed much more counter-intuitive back
in Gallileo's time. We are the beneficiaries' of
sun, after all. We seem to be in control of
crops and superior to the animals we eat. Each of
us is literally the center of everything going on
around him that he can perceive. Etc.

>
> >> Why do millions of new students
>
> >> every year hear utter garbage from the likes
>
> >> of Groves that whole nations of farming
>
> >> people regularly changed their language
>
> >> for no reason and at the drop of a hat?
>
>
>
> > (Note: if you think Groves is so wrong, why do you
>
> > feel the need to misrepresent his thinking so
>
> > incredibly badly? Even after many times being
>
> > corrected?)
>
>
>
> What is the misrepresentation?

Groves has never stated anything close to the idea that:

whole nations of farming people regularly changed their language. I don't
know what he said, but am sure I'm not severely wrong in saying that he
believes PARTS of various tribes, communities, and other groups almost surely
consisting of much more than farmers GRADUALLY changed their language

He most certainly doesn't believe that they changed languages "for no reason and at the drop of a hat?" nor does anyone else in the real world, because the idea is insane. Linguists ALWAYS advance reasons for changes, whether valid or not--OR admit to not knowing a reason because of lack of data (no written manuscripts or tape recordings).

> >>> --and how it is that geniuses liked you escaped
>
> >>> whatever it was?
>
> >
>
> >> Most people find thinking hard and disagreeable,
>
> >> and are cowed into believing that academics
>
> >> like Groves know that they are talking about.
>
> >
>
> > Why are most people like that? Why are you not like that?
>
>
>
> Stupidity is the default condition. In one or
>
> two slight instances, I am ahead of the mob.
>
> No doubt, in others, I am a laggard.
>

You can't answer the question, can you. Why can't
you admit to being unable to do so?

I'll try again: how is it that you are ahead of
the mob in the one or two instances you claim to be?
How is it that I am not? Indeed, how is it, that
according to you I am not ahead of the mob in ANY
instance, being simply a puppet repeating what
professors have told me?

>
> >>> Why are you unable to say what keeps people like
>
> >>> me from understanding that the literacy of a
>
> >>> person's parents will determine his level of literacy?
>
> >
>
> >> No one claims that any 'determination' is
>
> >> involved. It's a matter of probability. In 99.9%
>
> >> of cases in history, since writing was invented,
>
> >> illiterate fathers had illiterate sons and literate
>
> >> fathers had literate sons. Of course, there were
>
> >> rare exceptions and you want to claim that the
>
> >> greatest writer of all time was one of them.
>
> >
>
> > You’re playing with words, so I’ll repeat my question
>
> > With a slight alteration: what keeps me from accepting that
>
> > “it’s a matter of probability” that the son of illiterates
>

> > could not become a great writer?

>
>
>
> I really have no idea. You seem to have no
>
> grasp whatever of the concept of probability
>
> (unfortunately a common disability). Don't
>
> ever go to Las Vegas or play poker for money.
>

I know that odds against the occurrence of something
are irrelevant if actual evidence is available. If
I drop a pill, and find it twenty feet from where I
dropped it, the fact that the odds against my finding
it at that exact spot were millions or more to one
does not mean I didn't find it there. Similarly,
all the evidence for Shakespeare make him the author
the sane say he was in spite of your proposed odds
against him (even if valid, and they are far from
that, being based on invalid data and insufficient
data)

Tell me, Paul, what are the odds for a non-poet who
has never published anything indicating any knowledge
of poetry, and has no adherents--the case with you
so far as your interpretation of the sonnets is
concerned--will be right about what the sonnets say?

You will tell me all the evidence that you've invented
to support your thesis counts; the odds are irrelevant.
Unless you dodge the question.

> >> But even that is not good enough. It takes
>
> >> generations for GOOD literary ability to grow,
>
> >> and even more generations for GREAT writing
>
> >> to be possible. That's why authors (of almost
>
> >> any quality) almost invariably had not just
>
> >> literate fathers and literate mothers, but all
>
> >> four grandparents were literate as well.. And
>
> >> great writers usually had ancestors who were
>
> >> very good writers, going way way back.
>
> >
>
> > How is it that you know this to be true whereas
>
> > I consider it absolute nonsense? How is it that my
>
> > understanding of epistemology makes me believe
>
> > that once a person learns to read and write, his
>
> > ability to read and write will tend to become as good
>
> > as his innate intelligence allows?
>
>
>
> List your great writers (say the top 100) and
>
> see how many were not from a literary family.
>

Are you really that ignorant? How about Keats, Shaw and Dickens? Joyce's father was a sort of story-teller, I believe but certainly not "literary." I'm too tired to try to remember the families of any other favorite authors. And if neurophysiological studies show that "once a person learns to read and write, his ability to read and write will tend to become as good as his innate intelligence allows," your requirement will become irrelevant.

> [..]

Yes, "[..]," which you so often insert when you can answer questions like "What do you know about how people acquire literacy, anyway?" and "How is it that you can work hard and not be afraid to be wrong and I, apparently, cannot?" and "What made you able to learn the truth about nearly all academics? What prevented me from doing the same?"

>
> >> If you want to pursue this topic, focus on the
>
> >> language thing. There you may have less of
>
> >> a closed mind -- than the one you have on the
>
> >> Shake-speare authorship issue. Note how
>
> >> Groves (and Kennedy, et al) cannot answer
>
> >> any of my questions. All they can do is raise
>
> >> strawmen, and dish out crude abuse.
>
> >
>
> > I’m afraid I find that Groves answered your questions.
>
>
> I'd like to know when and where. I will make
>
> a separate post showing his 'responses'.
>
> He does not deign to answer my questions,
>
> merely insisting that I must first somehow
>
> demolish every sentence in some long article
>
> he has written on 'language change' or some
>
> such thing.

Why not just show one thing wrong with the paper?

> As I have told him I don't want to
>
> contest any of it, any more than anyone (that
>
> I know, at least) would want to contest the
>
> detail of the works of Archbishop Ussher when
>
> he proved that the world was created on a
>
> Saturday morning in 4004 BC. Much in such
>
> works is sound. But overall drift is nonsense.
>

Many many people have contest Ussher, as well they should have. You don't have to refute anything in detail, just give a sane overview of what you think your opponent is saying, and show how it is wrong at the core. An example: I say
Shakespeare was Shakespeare because of his Stratford monument. You give your argument against that. Do the same with Groves.

>
> > I would like to understand your theory better, but need to look at
>
> > it one Topic or so at a time. I think the authorities and you
>
> > agree that around 450 A.D. three kinds of Teutonic started to
>
> > become established in England. The Books I’m reading say (if
>
> > I’ve got them right, and that will never be sure) they were very
>
> > similar and were the basis of Anglo-Saxon, or Old English.
>
> >
>
> > Do you agree so far?
>
>
>
> I agree IF we are talking only about the military
>
> ruling class -- although I deplore the use of the
>
> term 'Old English'. Anglo-Saxon had about as
>
> much connection with Chaucer's English as did
>
> Latin, or the language of the Druids.

Okay, (1) you agree that the 3 Teutonic languages were becoming established in England in some way. You seem not to consider them Anglo-Saxon or Old English. Question: what were they?

(2) You imply that one or more other languages were already established and continued to be used. Question: were they only spoken or spoken and written?
Question: what were they?

Let's leave the question of how close any of these languages was to the language of Chaucer until later. Let's try to start at the beginning and go slowly. I'm reading several books at once (as I generally do) and have a lot of writing deadlines to meet, so am only up to a vague notion of what my authorities say about languages in England to Alfred's time.

>
> > This language, which I prefer to call Anglo-Saxon, was spoken
>
> > throughout England until around 1100.
>
>
>
> Sure -- in much the same way as Latin was spoken
>
> in England up to about 400 A.D, or as Norman-
>
> French was spoken after 1066 -- by a small ruling
>
> minority.

Okay, I have a lot of questions about this but would prefer to get
my earlier questions out of the way before proceeding.

>
>
> > The scholars seem to agree with you that we know This almost
>
> > entirely from written records, some of them quite meagre.
>
>
>
> No one says anything about the language spoken
>
> by the great bulk of the population, the peasants,
>
> villeins, slaves, farmers. Since they were all
>
> illiterate, and had no power, they had no existence
>
> for the 'scholars' -- neither then nor now.
>

But they spoke a language close to the English Shakespeare spoke, right? How do you know this?

Snip of what seems to me irrelevant material, at least to what I want to discuss, which is the beginnings of the language of Shakespeare.

--Bob

[metri...@gmail.com]

On Monday, 15 October 2012 00:18:13 UTC+11, Paul Crowley wrote:
> On 11/10/2012 21:52, Bob Grumman wrote:
>

[...]

>
> >> Why do millions of new students
>
> >> every year hear utter garbage from the likes
>
> >> of Groves that whole nations of farming
>
> >> people regularly changed their language
>
> >> for no reason and at the drop of a hat?
>
>
>
> > (Note: if you think Groves is so wrong, why do you
>
> > feel the need to misrepresent his thinking so
>
> > incredibly badly? Even after many times being
>
> > corrected?)
>
>
>
> What is the misrepresentation?
>

It's sad to see what poteen will do to the brain. The point is, of course, that people don't change their language: language changes, with each generation. It is a hugely complex system of rules that infants must deduce from the (flawed) verbal behaviour of their parents: they don't 'receive' these rules, like the explicit rules of chess, but unconsciously deduce them, with (as in evolution) an inevitable accretion of change. The poor old eejit Crowley cannot see the connection between Old English "Min nama is Beowulf" and Modern English "My name is Beowulf" -- or perhaps he thinks it's a coincidence.

To take a small example: sometime in the early fifteenth century, children stopped hearing the heavily attenuated inflexional distinction between "a good man" and "the goode man" (and plural "goode men"), and reinvented English as a language without adjectival inflexion (which German, of course, still retains). Without this distinction, however, many of Chaucer's lines no longer scan, which is why the skill of writing pentameter disappeared in C15 England.

Peter G.

[Paul Crowley]

On 14/10/2012 16:32, Bob Grumman wrote:

>>> Sorry. I so take it for granted that any even
>>> slightly intelligent person tries to explain things,
>>> that I forgot that you're content with the belief
>>> that those who don't believe as you do about
>>> Shakespeare are stupid, and that they are
>>> stupid because they're stupid.
>>
>> Sure -- stupidity, especially credulousness,
>> is the default condition of the human race.
>> I can't see what is wrong, or even remotely
>> contestable, about that.
>
> You don't see that you are merely saying
> that they are wrong because they are wrong?

Take most 'doctrines' -- those ideas which
have dominated human minds throughout
history. Most have been wrong, and not
merely marginally wrong, but ridiculously so.

> Forget that, just tell me what makes them
> stupid and you not.

It's genetically maladaptive. (It nearly always
pays humans to emulate sheep.) So it could
be a genetic defect, or maybe an infection by
a parasite.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/03/how-your-cat-is-making-you-crazy/308873/?single_page=true

[..]

>>>> Why do millions of new students
>>>> every year hear utter garbage from the likes
>>>> of Groves that whole nations of farming
>>>> people regularly changed their language
>>>> for no reason and at the drop of a hat?
>>
>>> (Note: if you think Groves is so wrong, why do you
>>> feel the need to misrepresent his thinking so
>>> incredibly badly? Even after many times being
>>> corrected?)
>>
>> What is the misrepresentation?
>
> Groves has never stated anything close to the idea
> that: whole nations of farming people regularly
> changed their language.

Of course not. For him, and other 'scholars'
languages exist (and change) in their own
dimension. They somehow forget that real
people use them.

> I don't know what he said, but am sure I'm not
> severely wrong in saying that he believes PARTS of
> various tribes, communities, and other groups
> almost surely consisting of much more than farmers
> GRADUALLY changed their language

Eh? We are talking mostly about England
and its supposed predominant language
from around 100 AD to around 1400 AD.
Where do these 'parts' come in?

> He most certainly doesn't believe that they changed
> languages "for no reason and at the drop of a hat?"

He has never indicated otherwise.

> nor does anyone else in the real world, because the
> idea is insane. Linguists ALWAYS advance
> reasons for changes,

Sorry, you are plain wrong. I doubt that they
would regard that as a sensible question.

> whether valid or not--OR admit to not knowing a
> reason because of lack of data (no written
> manuscripts or tape recordings).

I'd be very surprised to see any such admission.

> I'll try again: how is it that you are ahead of
> the mob in the one or two instances you claim to be?

I could speculate. But I'm not going to bother.
However, I would not be here unless I felt
that I had something distinctive to say.
Someone else would be doing this job.
Maybe you'd have only Art N.

> How is it that I am not?

Why should you be? You're a sheep and
apparently proud of it.

> Indeed, how is it, that according to you I am not
> ahead of the mob in ANY instance, being simply a
> puppet repeating what professors have told me?

Maybe you are in some field. But the great bulk
of people are sheep.

>> I really have no idea. You seem to have no
>> grasp whatever of the concept of probability
>> (unfortunately a common disability). Don't
>> ever go to Las Vegas or play poker for money.
>
> I know that odds against the occurrence of
> something are irrelevant if actual evidence is
> available. If I drop a pill, and find it twenty feet from
> where I dropped it, the fact that the odds against my
> finding it at that exact spot were millions or more to
> one does not mean I didn't find it there.

A perfect illustration of your inability to grasp
probability. The pill has to finish up at SOME
spot. The phrase 'millions to one' makes no
sense unless there is something very special
about that spot -- identifiable before the pill
landed on it. Maybe it was uniquely stained in
some vital manner that would have solved a
crime. Only then could you sensibly put 'millions
to one' into a sentence.

> Similarly, all the evidence for Shakespeare make
> him the author the sane say he was in spite of your
> proposed odds against him (even if valid, and they
> are far from that, being based on invalid data and
> insufficient data)

You STILL fail to grasp the Oxfordian argument.

IF there was a cover-up, then a Monument (or
the like) was essential. 'To prove the Strat case,
you need to show that the Stratman was praised
or commended (or castigated and talked about)
in a way that would not have occurred to the
government agents -- or where that likelihood
was too remote. That would be a very simple task
for nearly all real authors, and especially for any
as famous and prolific as Shake-speare. No one
could doubt the existence of (say) Philip Sidney,
or Spenser or John Donne or Dryden or Milton.
[..]

> Why not just show one thing wrong with the paper?

Would 'one thing wrong' about Archbishop
Ussher's book demonstrate anything useful?

>> As I have told him I don't want to
>> contest any of it, any more than anyone (that
>> I know, at least) would want to contest the
>> detail of the works of Archbishop Ussher when
>> he proved that the world was created on a
>> Saturday morning in 4004 BC. Much in such
>> works is sound. But overall drift is nonsense.
>
> Many many people have contest Ussher,

No one AFAIK did it in his lifetime nor for many
decades after. (Although the fact that Chinese
genealogies went back a lot further was thought
potentially embarrassing.)

> You don't have to refute anything in detail, just give a
> sane overview of what you think your opponent is
> saying, and show how it is wrong at the core.

I've said it frequently. How could a widely dispersed
farming community (in large isolated houses in
largely isolated parishes) manage to change their
language totally in a few generations?

> An example: I say Shakespeare was Shakespeare
> because of his Stratford monument.

One of the silliest arguments of all time. It's like
saying the Soviets could not have killed any
Polish soldiers at Katyn, because Joe Stalin
denied it. But what else was he going to do?

>> I agree IF we are talking only about the military
>> ruling class -- although I deplore the use of the
>> term 'Old English'. Anglo-Saxon had about as
>> much connection with Chaucer's English as did
>> Latin, or the language of the Druids.
>
> Okay, (1) you agree that the 3 Teutonic languages
> were becoming established in England in some way.

As I said -- among the new German ruling
class.

> You seem not to consider them Anglo-Saxon or Old
> English.

The language was 'Anglo-Saxon' and the term
'Old English' is hopelessly misleading. It was
NOT English. Its grammar was completely
different. Some words were similar, but so
are they now between German and English.
You might as well call German 'Old English'.

> (2) You imply that one or more other languages were
> already established and continued to be used.
> Question: were they only spoken or spoken and
> written?

English was spoken, but not written.
Welsh was spoken in Wales, but not written
AFAIK until ~1200.

> Let's leave the question of how close any of these
> languages was to the language of Chaucer until later.

Silly. For most languages we can only observe
how they exist now, and try to estimate how far
back they go. Curiously, almost all recorded
languages still flourish today, and in more-or-less
the form they were first recorded. So you'd think
it would be logical to say that languages generally
changed at the pace we see for those languages.

But no. Before they realised how old these
languages were, the linguists had already
decided that most existing languages had
changed at a much more rapid pace. Altering
their opinions was, of course, out of the
question. If the first "professional linguists"
had been Chinese, or even Greek, we'd have
a quite different set of theories. But they were
British and Western European and had
inherited a set of really bad ideas about the
'history of the English language' and 'the
origin of the Romance languages'.

So what else could they conclude? But that
the fact that a language had been recorded
drastically slowed its rate of change.

>> No one says anything about the language spoken
>> by the great bulk of the population, the peasants,
>> villeins, slaves, farmers. Since they were all
>> illiterate, and had no power, they had no existence
>> for the 'scholars' -- neither then nor now.
>
> But they spoke a language close to the English
> Shakespeare spoke, right? How do you know this?

Without a time machine we don't know. They
might have spoken something like Mandarin.
But to assume a rate of change similar to that
identified in every place where one can be
identified is to make the safest assumption.


Paul.

[Paul Crowley]

On 15/10/2012 01:45, metri...@gmail.com wrote:

>> On 11/10/2012 21:52, Bob Grumman wrote:
>>>> Why do millions of new students
>>>> every year hear utter garbage from the likes
>>>> of Groves that whole nations of farming
>>>> people regularly changed their language
>>>> for no reason and at the drop of a hat?
>>
>>> (Note: if you think Groves is so wrong, why do you
>>> feel the need to misrepresent his thinking so
>>> incredibly badly? Even after many times being
>>> corrected?)
>>
>> What is the misrepresentation?

You see, Bob? No misrepresentation.
And you have created a fiction of 'many
times corrected' entirely in your own mind.

> It's sad to see what poteen will do to the brain. The point is,
> of course, that people don't change their language:
> language changes, with each generation.

Yeah, yeah -- especially in rural societies, where
agricultural families live tiny groups, only
occasionally seeing others in the parish, and
where each parish is largely isolated from each
other. Every family would naturally be desperate
to catch up on the latest fashion.

> It is a hugely complex system of rules that infants must
> deduce from the (flawed) verbal behaviour of their parents:
> they don't 'receive' these rules, like the explicit rules of
> chess, but unconsciously deduce them, with (as in
> evolution) an inevitable accretion of change.

Sure, so '. the big white house . .' is the
standard, and there is something wrong with
' . . the white big house . . '. That's been the
case for a few thousand years, and no one is
going to try to change it. No possible reason
is conceivable, and further, even if there was
one, they'd have no conceivable mechanism.

> The poor old eejit Crowley cannot see the connection
> between Old English "Min nama is Beowulf" and Modern
> English "My name is Beowulf" -- or perhaps he thinks it's a
> coincidence.

Leaving aside the likelihood of Beowulf being an
Elizabethan creation ('forgery' if you prefer) the
fact that England was ruled by Germans (speaking
some variety of German) has little bearing on the
form of English spoken by the peasantry, or later
on the form of English adopted by the new
(Norman-French) ruling class.

Let's put it like this. From 1940 German POWs
(e.g. fighter pilots) were imprisoned in England.
Let's suppose that in some later nuclear war
all written records were destroyed, and a linguist
in (say) 2540 had only records of the German
language before 1940 and a tiny amount about
English from after 1950. He'd note the similarity
of (say) the 1960 "My name is Beowulf" to the
German "Mein Name ist Beowulf" and 'sensibly'
conclude that the English had learned their
language from those German POWs -- modifying
many aspects of it. After all, what else would the
documentation indicate?

> To take a small example: sometime in the early fifteenth
> century, children stopped hearing the heavily attenuated
> inflexional distinction between "a good man" and "the goode
> man" (and plural "goode men"),

Why the fuck WOULD a few million pretty-much
isolated farmers and farm-labourers all over the
country have all started speaking a new way at
the same time?

How the fuck COULD a few million pretty-much
isolated farmers and farm-labourers all over the
country have all started speaking a new way at
the same time?

> and reinvented English as a language without adjectival
> inflexion (which German, of course, still retains).

How come there are no remote valleys in
England (say in the Yorkshire dales or in
Cumbria) or in Scotland, where the local
populations have strange accents, which
preferred to stick to their supposed ancestral
"adjectival inflexions" ? How come no traveller
or geographer in the 17th or 18th centuries
ever remarked on the existence of any such
speech patterns?

Name ONE well-recorded change in ANY
language at ANY time that begins to remotely
match this supposed event in English.

Oops, I forgot your escape clause -- the fact
that there was a record of a language makes
quite impossible any substantial change in it.

> Without this distinction, however, many of Chaucer's lines
> no longer scan, which is why the skill of writing pentameter
> disappeared in C15 England.

With Chaucer and poetry, you are talking of a
tiny number of people centred around the royal
court. Their fashions -- in speech, clothing, and
culture varied constantly. The connection with
English, as spoken by the peasantry all over the
country, was somewhat haphazard, although, in
fact, in England the speech of the aristocracy
was never likely to diverge too greatly from that
of the peasantry; the latter formed a substantially-
fixed base around which that of the aristocracy
could fluctuate.

The decline in poetry-writing was probably due
much more to changes in court fashion as well
as well as pressures from the constant wars in
France and then the Wars of the Roses. The
court did not have much time for poetry. Nor
was it a good way for courtiers to advance their
prospects.


Paul.

[marc hanson]

one has to wonder,
if those who don't like Shakespeare,
really read the historical records/documents about him?

there is a [long] list of documented facts,
that come from many different independent sources,
over a span of decades...

and then of course, on the flip side,
no record Whatsoever, to indicate that
the documented evidence is untrue
[not one hint, rumor, writing, etc]

it can only be brushed aside with speculation,
spin, agenda, boredom for attention,
maybe even jealousy, etc

marc

[Bob Grumman]

A response up to where the Evolution of English Discussion started. I took that out and started a new thread with it.

PAUL: > >> Sure -- stupidity, especially credulousness,

> >> is the default condition of the human race.
> >> I can't see what is wrong, or even remotely
> >> contestable, about that.
> >
> > You don't see that you are merely saying
> > that they are wrong because they are wrong?

> Take most 'doctrines' -- those ideas which
> have dominated human minds throughout
> history. Most have been wrong, and not
> merely marginally wrong, but ridiculously so.

Yes, but my question remains, what made them wrong?
As I asked in my previous post and posts before that,
Without, to speak Crowleyan, the SLIGHTEST effort to make
So much as a REMOTELY intelligent reply.

> > Forget that, just tell me what makes them
> > stupid and you not.

> It's genetically maladaptive. (It nearly always
> pays humans to emulate sheep.) So it could
> be a genetic defect, or maybe an infection by
> a parasite.

Good. An answer. A genetic defect, as I claim is why you are stupid,
except that I don’t call the genes making you the way you are defective
biologically because they may well prevent the human race from making
cultural progress too fast, which would result in chaos. To put it very
simplistically because it’s off-topic for this discussion.

Or a parasite, for which you have no evidence.

> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/03/how-your-cat-is-making-you-crazy/308873/?single_page=true

> [..]
Ah, a bunch of questions for you that you can’t deal with, I see. I’m too lazy to
Look at my post to see what they are, so your dodge has worked this time.

> >>>> Why do millions of new students
> >>>> every year hear utter garbage from the likes
> >>>> of Groves that whole nations of farming
> >>>> people regularly changed their language
> >>>> for no reason and at the drop of a hat?

> >>> (Note: if you think Groves is so wrong, why do you
> >>> feel the need to misrepresent his thinking so
> >>> incredibly badly? Even after many times being
> >>> corrected?)
> >> What is the misrepresentation?
> > Groves has never stated anything close to the idea
> > that: whole nations of farming people regularly
> > changed their language.

> Of course not.

Then why did you say, “new students

every year hear utter garbage from the likes
of Groves that whole nations of farming

people regularly changed their language?”

> For him, and other 'scholars'
> languages exist (and change) in their own
> dimension. They somehow forget that real
> people use them.

You’re too vague for me to follow. Of course,
Groves is quite aware of real people. It wouldn’t
Seem that you are, considering you actually believe
That two populations can live together without
Any cultural exchanges.

> > I don't know what he said, but am sure I'm not
> > severely wrong in saying that he believes PARTS of
> > various tribes, communities, and other groups
> > almost surely consisting of much more than farmers
> > GRADUALLY changed their language
>
> Eh? We are talking mostly about England
> and its supposed predominant language
> from around 100 AD to around 1400 AD.
> Where do these 'parts' come in?

England was never homogenous. There was north and
south, for one thing, and many different villages,
as you’ve often said yourself when you wanted to
support your idea of extremely limited transmission
of language, ideas, or anything else.

> > He most certainly doesn't believe that they changed
> > languages "for no reason and at the drop of a hat?"

> He has never indicated otherwise.

Right. Nor has he ever indicated that the Romans never
Conquered Britain. What he has said or implied is
that the language evolved. He’s mentioned a few examples of
this which clearly indicate that he believes the changes took
place over generations. He has shown reasons for it, or directed
those reading his posts to those who have. The writers I’m reading
give lots of reasons for changes, and admit to not having reasons for
other changes. I’m just learning about these things so can’t argue
for Peter, but I do remember that “ing” at the end of verbs was a change
found that scholars showed was due to one language group’s meeting
another in war or commerce, and influencing it to make the change—
the Scandinavians influencing the Anglo-Saxons? I can’t remember. I’m
just trying to get a sense of the field.

>
> > nor does anyone else in the real world, because the
> > idea is insane. Linguists ALWAYS advance
> > reasons for changes,

> Sorry, you are plain wrong. I doubt that they
> would regard that as a sensible question.

What in the world do you think they’re doing?!

> > whether valid or not--OR admit to not knowing a
> > reason because of lack of data (no written
> > manuscripts or tape recordings).
>
> I'd be very surprised to see any such admission.

Read the books Peter recommended to me. They are full
Of such admissions. I’ve been reading about quarks, gluons,
virtual photons and things I consider wacky. The author of
one book I finished is or was a key figure in the study of quarks
and related particles. He also admitted, in the same way, what
was not known, where several theories were in competition, etc.
It’s called science, Paul.

>
> > I'll try again: how is it that you are ahead of
> > the mob in the one or two instances you claim to be?

> I could speculate. But I'm not going to bother.
> However, I would not be here unless I felt
> that I had something distinctive to say.
> Someone else would be doing this job.
> Maybe you'd have only Art N.

> > How is it that I am not?

> Why should you be? You're a sheep and
> apparently proud of it.

Right, your only idea as to why some people are
able to find The Truth, some not, is that those like
you are not sheep, those like me are sheep. You
can’t say what makes you a non-sheep or me a
sheep. You can’t even make a try to. I, on the other
hand, have written three or four chapters of a complete
book saying why makes you what I call a rigidnik, and why
that caused you to form a conspiracy theory, and even
why it was the Oxfordian conspiracy you chose as your
delusional system. I may be completely wrong, but you’re incapable
of even coming up with some wrong explanation of my stupidity.
All you can bleat is that I’m stupid because I’m stupid.

> > Indeed, how is it, that according to you I am not
> > ahead of the mob in ANY instance, being simply a
> > puppet repeating what professors have told me?

> Maybe you are in some field. But the great bulk
> of people are sheep.

I would agree, but what I want to know is how the best
people fail to reach your level in Shakespeare studies. Of
how it is that biology draws good minds to it, and—I assume—
you would agree other fields do, as well, but Shakespeare
Studies does not?

> >> I really have no idea. You seem to have no
> >> grasp whatever of the concept of probability
> >> (unfortunately a common disability). Don't
> >> ever go to Las Vegas or play poker for money.

Hey, I saw through Farey’s probabilities—but not the way
you think you did. I saw him as making the most rudimentary
error in the use of probabilities, failing to understand the
huge range of outcomes involved in his “study.” He considers
himself to be dealing with a few sources of messages, a few possible
“valid solutions” and a few possible clue-sets when he’s really dealing
with a near-infinity of each—not to mention the same problem your
statistics have: their irrelevance when hard evidence is available.
Not to mention, commonsense.

> >
>
> > I know that odds against the occurrence of
> > something are irrelevant if actual evidence is
> > available. If I drop a pill, and find it twenty feet from
> > where I dropped it, the fact that the odds against my
> > finding it at that exact spot were millions or more to
> > one does not mean I didn't find it there.

> A perfect illustration of your inability to grasp
> probability. The pill has to finish up at SOME
> spot. The phrase 'millions to one' makes no
> sense unless there is something very special
> about that spot -- identifiable before the pill
> landed on it. Maybe it was uniquely stained in
> some vital manner that would have solved a
> crime. Only then could you sensibly put 'millions
> to one' into a sentence.

I understand all that. I stated my story badly. The twenty
feet away was the point—but add to that all kinds of furniture
in the way, and other things. In other words, assume something
unquestionably extremely unlikely to happen, did happen. You
can’t then say it didn’t happen because of how improbable it was.

>
>
> > Similarly, all the evidence for Shakespeare make
> > him the author the sane say he was in spite of your
> > proposed odds against him (even if valid, and they
> > are far from that, being based on invalid data and
> > insufficient data)
>
>
>
> You STILL fail to grasp the Oxfordian argument.
> IF there was a cover-up, then a Monument (or
> the like) was essential. 'To prove the Strat case,
> you need to show that the Stratman was praised
> or commended (or castigated and talked about)
> in a way that would not have occurred to the
> government agents -- or where that likelihood
> was too remote. That would be a very simple task
> for nearly all real authors, and especially for any
> as famous and prolific as Shake-speare. No one
> could doubt the existence of (say) Philip Sidney,
> or Spenser or John Donne or Dryden or Milton.
>
> [..]

All we have to do is provide evidence for which there
Is no counter evidence. This we have. That wacks will
always be able to find some kind of kind that we haven’t
be able to provide is irrelevant.

>
> > Why not just show one thing wrong with the paper?

> Would 'one thing wrong' about Archbishop
> Ussher's book demonstrate anything useful?

Yes, Paul, if you were criticizing it. It would show that
you were not pointlessly shooting your mouth off.

> >> As I have told him I don't want to

> >> contest any of it, any more than anyone (that
> >> I know, at least) would want to contest the
> >> detail of the works of Archbishop Ussher when
> >> he proved that the world was created on a
> >> Saturday morning in 4004 BC. Much in such
> >> works is sound. But overall drift is nonsense.

Many people have contested Ussher, even other
creationists. If you want to prove someone wrong,
you HAVE to contest what they said.


> > Many many people have contestED Ussher,

> No one AFAIK did it in his lifetime nor for many
> decades after. (Although the fact that Chinese
> genealogies went back a lot further was thought
> potentially embarrassing.)

I doubt that you’re right, but even if you were, why
should you, so much more perceptive than people
of Ussher’s time, not contest current scholars? Why let
a century or more go by before their errors are revealed?
Have you no consideration for future generations?

> > You don't have to refute anything in detail, just give a
> > sane overview of what you think your opponent is
> > saying, and show how it is wrong at the core.
>
> I've said it frequently. How could a widely dispersed
> farming community (in large isolated houses in
> largely isolated parishes) manage to change their
> language totally in a few generations?

And you stop there, except to characterize answers
as nonsense. Houses were not that isolated, nor were
parishes. There were monks, minstrels, merchants, soldiers,
vagabonds. Aside from that there is evidence that what
linguists say happened DID happen. Documentary evidence of
word-changes. You can’t explain them, the experts can.

More on this when we discuss the evolution one on one.
This I think we should do in a new thread, so I will transplant
What we have of it here to that new thread.

> > An example: I say Shakespeare was Shakespeare
> > because of his Stratford monument.

> One of the silliest arguments of all time. It's like
> saying the Soviets could not have killed any
> Polish soldiers at Katyn, because Joe Stalin
> denied it. But what else was he going to do?

My point is that I present evidence for my case. You
then need to show why my evidence is invalid.

Your analogy is so bad as to be insane. Stalin’s evidence
That the Russians had nothing to do with the bodies at
Katyn was his testimony. Fine. Where your analogy breaks
down is that there was all kinds of hard evidence against
his testimony, but none against the Shakespeare
monument and a lot for it in the testimony of those who
saw it, and the words of Digges in the First Folio.

[David L. Webb]

In article <610b6906-3bc4-4770...@googlegroups.com>,

I fear that such subtleties as scansion are forever lost upon someone
who thought that the "Ray Mignot" sonnet was genuine, and who moreover
pontificated upon its decisive impact upon the authorship "question"
with such derisive, brook-no-dissent self-assurance:

If beauty's time were brief, then he that knowest
Full well thy feeble life (with sports well crammed,
Disdaining love which cradles beauty best)
Would stand the hazard of thy rage inflamed,
And shout as though a cryer in the streets,
Descanting upon war or brawls abroad,
That Time will cram thee hard between his sheets,
As all dead beauties, bodies all, are awed.
But thy face summers in its campaign still,
Vanity in thine ears crams all the world
And stops the words who pleaseth not thy will,
A fort against which gunstones black are hurled.
Mark! No heir will fight for thee in hell,
If time, in war, destroys thy beauty's spell.

In retrospect, it's really rather remarkable that Crowley was so
rapturously enthusiastic about the poem. I'm not referring here to the
obvious tip-offs: the glaring grammatical gaffe in the very first line
(Crowley knows nothing whatever about verb conjugations in Early Modern
English, of course), the hermaphrodite rhyme knowest/best, the scansion
of the penultimate line, or even some of the usage. Rather, I'm
surprised that, since the poem doesn't include any reference to
defecation contests and the like, Crowley was so enamored of it --
indeed, it's hard to find anything particularly bawdy in the "Ray
Mignot" sonnet (unless the "fort" in the twelfth line is a pun on
"fart"), so I'm rather mystified by its powerful hold upon him:
-------------------
"It's too good. It shows too great a degree of familiarity with
the Elizabethan world for it to be a hoax. Its author has too much
sympathy with, and understanding of, the Oxfordian cause. I have
to conclude that it really is Oxford's.

"So, on the face of it, it is a magnificent discovery. (As Richard
Kennedy says, it's front-page stuff.)"
-------------------
"But if it is a hoax, just who is good enough to create it?
Certainly no one in this ng. And the notion that anyone connected
with the Stratford Trust has such a capacity is close to unthinkable.

"Seriously -- is there anyone alive with that sort of talent,
experience, knowledge and understanding?"
-------------------
"It is -- it's glorious. This is not the story of the year or
of the decade or of the century. It's the literary and
historical story of both this millenium and the next."

> Peter G.

[Paul Crowley]

Genes don't operate in that manner. They select
for 'more fitting' individuals. There are a few (nearly
all non-scientists) who believe in 'group selection'
but what you are proposing would be so wide that
hardly any of them would want to support it.

> Or a parasite, for which you have no evidence.
>
>> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/03/how-your-cat-is-making-you-crazy/308873/?single_page=true
>
>> [..]
> Ah, a bunch of questions for you that you can’t deal with, I
> see. I’m too lazy to Look at my post to see what they are,
> so your dodge has worked this time.

And more. Your questions need to be much more
specific and on-topic to be answerable, or before
I bother to try.

>>>>> (Note: if you think Groves is so wrong, why do you
>>>>> feel the need to misrepresent his thinking so
>>>>> incredibly badly? Even after many times being
>>>>> corrected?)
>>>>
>>>> What is the misrepresentation?
>>>
>>> Groves has never stated anything close to the idea
>>> that: whole nations of farming people regularly
>>> changed their language.
>>
>> Of course not.
>
> Then why did you say, “new students
> every year hear utter garbage from the likes
> of Groves that whole nations of farming
> people regularly changed their language?”

Groves would maintain two propositions --
which are incompatible with his theory but
which he never allows to occupy his brain
at the same time (which is why he has
ceased to respond):
a) Languages often undergo rapid and drastic
change; (note that linguists only talk of
languages changing, not of people changing
their way of speaking);
(b) The great bulk of the population of the UK
from before 1,000 BC and up to ~1850 consisted
of farmers and agricultural labourers.

When you take both (a) and (b) above together,
you get an implication that farmers, peasants etc.,
changed their way of talking at an extraordinarily
rapid rate. We all know that such a story is
absurd. So we must deny either (a) OR (b) above.

Groves (and every single one of the vast tribe of
linguists) can do neither. So we either get simple
plain abuse or silence.

The chief interest here is that it's not unlike the
Stratfordian story. That is, prima facie, a truly
ridiculous one. But what can you say when that
is pointed out? (1) You can pile abuse on the
heads of those who so inconveniently point it out;
(2) You can go silent; (3) You can endlessly
recite your ancient doctrines (or doctrinal excuses).

>> For him, and other 'scholars'
>> languages exist (and change) in their own
>> dimension. They somehow forget that real
>> people use them.
>
> You’re too vague for me to follow. Of course,
> Groves is quite aware of real people.

Find ONE linguist who discusses why and how
a real rural population would completely change
its language over a few generations.

> It wouldn’t Seem that you are, considering you actually
> believe That two populations can live together without Any
> cultural exchanges.

It depends on what you mean by 'living together'.
Did the Mongols have much effect on the
Russians (other than to make them scared of
foreigners, and too familiar with how nasty it was
to be conquered) ? Did the Russians affect the
Mongols? And so on for many (or most) such
conquests?

>>> I don't know what he said, but am sure I'm not
>>> severely wrong in saying that he believes PARTS of
>>> various tribes, communities, and other groups
>>> almost surely consisting of much more than farmers
>>> GRADUALLY changed their language
>>
>> Eh? We are talking mostly about England
>> and its supposed predominant language
>> from around 100 AD to around 1400 AD.
>> Where do these 'parts' come in?
>
> England was never homogenous. There was north and
> south, for one thing, and many different villages,

You're grasping at straws. The great bulk of
the nation was rural and agricultural. Under
the Anglo-Saxons, towns and cities were
deserted and fell into decay. Yet _this_
society is supposed to have moved from
'Brythonic' to Anglo-Saxon in a few generations;
and repeated the trick with a switch from Anglo-
Saxon to English a few hundred years later.
Parts of Scotland supposedly fitted in a switch
into Gaelic (and out of it) as well. Parts of
England supposedly fitted in a switch into
Danish and out-of-it.

You might have thought Stratfordianism utterly
daft. Standard linguistics tries hard to trump it

>>> He most certainly doesn't believe that they changed
>>> languages "for no reason and at the drop of a hat?"
>
>> He has never indicated otherwise.
>
> Right. Nor has he ever indicated that the Romans never
> Conquered Britain. What he has said or implied is that
> the language evolved.

Sure -- while somehow avoiding being
spoken by anyone in particular.

> He’s mentioned a few examples of this which clearly
> indicate that he believes the changes took place over
> generations.

No one suggests otherwise. But those theories
(standard in linguistics) would mean that the
change was so rapid that grand-parents would
often not have a clue what their grand-children
were saying. That often happens -- effectively
under compulsion, when adults migrate to new
counties. But it CAN'T happen in a static rural
society under no particular pressure. No record
of any such transition exists -- in ANY society
at ANY time.

> He has shown reasons for it

Such as?

> or directed those reading his posts to those who have

Yeah, yeah. "The answer is in a book in a
library somewhere." Even you should be
able to recognise that kind of bullshit.

> The writers I’m reading give lots of reasons for changes,

Bullshit pretend-reasons. We've already seen one.
Groves says "My name is Beowulf" _came_from_
the Anglo-Saxon "Min nama is Beowulf" rather than
having the same ancestry as the modern German
"Mein Name ist Beowulf" -- and that the 'Anglo-
Saxon origin' is so obvious that it is quite
unquestionable.

While this is a trivial example, it shows the way
his 'mind' works. First you have your doctrine.
Then you find examples to back it up. And you
never consider any other possible explanation.

> and admit to not having reasons for other changes. I’m
> just learning about these things so can’t argue for Peter,
> but I do remember that “ing” at the end of verbs was a
> change found that scholars showed was due to one
> language group’s meeting another in war or commerce,
> and influencing it to make the change— the
> Scandinavians influencing the Anglo-Saxons? I can’t
> remember. I m just trying to get a sense of the field.

Linguists play these silly games endlessly. But ask
them how a population made up of largely isolated
small groups of farmers and peasants living in
largely-isolated parishes, could or would have
changed their daily language in so short a time,
and they'll tell you (if they are honest) that they
have never -- not once in their lives -- considered
the issue. Nor have they ever seen any paper (or
even a note or a letter) in any 'learned journal' in
the vast libraries devoted to the 'discipline' ever
hint at the possibility of such a question.

>>> whether valid or not--OR admit to not knowing a
>>> reason because of lack of data (no written
>>> manuscripts or tape recordings).
>>
>> I'd be very surprised to see any such admission.
>
> Read the books Peter recommended to me. They are full
> Of such admissions.

Quote one that refers to a population of farmers
and peasants changing their language within a
few generations.

> I’ve been reading about quarks, gluons, virtual photons and
> things I consider wacky. The author of one book I finished is or
> was a key figure in the study of quarks and related particles.
> He also admitted, in the same way, what was not known,
> where several theories were in competition, etc. It’s called
> science, Paul.

Physics is a real science, in which doubt and
uncertainty are routinely expressed. Linguistics
and 'Stratfordian Studies' is the home of those who
have not a scholarly bone in their body, To them
the expression of doubt would be an admission of
failure.

Look at David Webb, if you want a classic example
of an academic without a brain but whose worthless
bum occupies a chair. He would never risk failure,
so he never does anything nor says anything nor
has an opinion on anything. And he simply cannot
grasp how there could be people in the world who
are capable of doing things or saying things or
having opinions.
[..]

>> I've said it frequently. How could a widely dispersed
>> farming community (in large isolated houses in
>> largely isolated parishes) manage to change their
>> language totally in a few generations?
>
> And you stop there, except to characterize answers
> as nonsense. Houses were not that isolated,

Tending cattle, tilling land, planting seed, weeding,
scything corn, and most other agricultural activities
are commonly done by one person or no more
than a few. Some activities -- such as harvesting
and threshing often involve groups, but not a lot of
complicated language.

> nor were parishes.

Of course they were. Why would a farmer, or
peasant or villein, or slave, have a need to visit the
next parish? Selling his produce, or buying what
items (such as candles) that he could afford, would
make trips into the local market town necessary on
occasion. But they would only be occasional.

> There were monks, minstrels, merchants, soldiers, vagabonds.

Monks stayed in their monasteries. Minstrels
worked for those who could pay -- rarely ordinary
farmers. Merchants lived in towns and cities (if
such existed). Soldiers went off to war and if they
did come back, did so years later. Effective
isolation was the general rule.

> Aside from that there is evidence that what linguists say
> happened DID happen.

Wrong -- in every respect. There is no contemporary
document about the Anglo-Saxon conquest. We have
to rely on the likes of Bede, writing a few hundred years
later. He says nothing about the language of ordinary
people, neither about that time, nor in his own. The
Anglo-Saxons were not into paper nor pens, nor towns
nor cities. The Romans did not record the barbaric
languages of those they conquered. They did not
understand them, nor discriminate between them.

> Documentary evidence of word-changes.

There were various documents from various sources,
but only from those who had literacy -- who almost
necessarily worked for the state or its institutions
(such as the Church).

> You can t explain them, the experts can.

Ridiculous. Firstly, they 'see' an absurdly fast
-- and totally inexplicable -- pace of change. (Not
realising that one gang of military overlords had
just been replaced by another, which spoke a
different language.) Secondly, they fail to notice
that it is ONLY the gang of military overloads (or
their clerks) who leave the written records.
Thirdly, they fail to understand that language change
is similar to genetic change and that language is
inherited in much the same way as genes.
Fourthly, they fail to recognise that new languages
are much more likely to arise in very small
populations in new locations (as has often been
seen as in the case of creoles) -- and may then
change scarcely at all over the next thousand
years.

I have a realistic and viable explanatory scenario.
They don't.
[..]

>>> An example: I say Shakespeare was Shakespeare
>>> because of his Stratford monument.
>>
>> One of the silliest arguments of all time. It's like
>> saying the Soviets could not have killed any
>> Polish soldiers at Katyn, because Joe Stalin
>> denied it. But what else was he going to do?
>
> My point is that I present evidence for my case.
> You then need to show why my evidence is invalid.

Wrong. This is not maths nor physics. It's history.
Your story could be completely cuckoo (as it is)
while remaining 'logical' or 'valid' -- whatever that
latter term might mean in this context.

We are seeking to present scenarios that provide
plausible explanations of a set of historical events.

I can readily show that your scenario (or theory)
is nuts, and wholly unlikely. I do it routinely:
(How many authors have had illiterate parents?
How many have had illiterate daughters?
How many forms of Renaissance (or other) art
has been financed from the pockets of the
common people? And so on and on . . . )

You never (or rarely) seek to undermine my
scenario -- but keep banging on about your
semi-Biblical beliefs, declaring that I must first
show them to be 'invalid' . . . . .

> Your analogy is so bad as to be insane. Stalin’s evidence
> That the Russians had nothing to do with the bodies at
> Katyn was his testimony. Fine. Where your analogy breaks
> down is that there was all kinds of hard evidence against
> his testimony,

The Soviets found plenty of 'evidence' FOR their
account of Katyn. They wanted to present it at
the Nuremberg trials, but were dissuaded by the
Americans and the British -- who fully knew it was
all lies.

> but none against the Shakespeare
> monument and a lot for it in the testimony of those who
> saw it, and the words of Digges in the First Folio.

Explain how the words of Digges undermine every
possible theory about a cover-up. To you, Digges
knew the Stratman personally, and had seen him
write his plays, and was utterly reliable and
honourable . . . . and would never have taken
money to suggest anything misleading? And you
know all this from . . . . ?


Paul.

[Bob Grumman]

** Genes do operate in that manner, but I’m
** not going to defend what was just a
** passing remark.

> Or a parasite, for which you have no evidence.
>
>> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/03/how-your-cat-is-making-you-crazy/308873/?single_page=true
>
>> [..]

> Ah, a bunch of questions for you that you can�t deal with, I
> see. I�m too lazy to Look at my post to see what they are,

> so your dodge has worked this time.

And more. Your questions need to be much more
specific and on-topic to be answerable, or before
I bother to try.

** One of our topics has been how you know that
** Those who oppose you are all stupid, so I was
** not off-topic. You can’t show how you know
** this to be true or how it is that you are able to
** discover truths they are not, so there’s no point
** in continuing our discussion of it.

>>>>> (Note: if you think Groves is so wrong, why do you
>>>>> feel the need to misrepresent his thinking so
>>>>> incredibly badly? Even after many times being
>>>>> corrected?)
>>>>
>>>> What is the misrepresentation?
>>>
>>> Groves has never stated anything close to the idea
>>> that: whole nations of farming people regularly
>>> changed their language.
>>
>> Of course not.
>

> Then why did you say, �new students

> every year hear utter garbage from the likes
> of Groves that whole nations of farming

> people regularly changed their language?�

Groves would maintain two propositions --
which are incompatible with his theory but
which he never allows to occupy his brain
at the same time (which is why he has
ceased to respond):

a) Languages often undergo rapid and drastic
change; (note that linguists only talk of
languages changing, not of people changing
their way of speaking);

b) The great bulk of the population of the UK
from before 1,000 BC and up to ~1850 consisted
of farmers and agricultural labourers.

When you take both (a) and (b) above together,
you get an implication that farmers, peasants etc.,
changed their way of talking at an extraordinarily
rapid rate. We all know that such a story is
absurd. So we must deny either (a) OR (b) above.

Groves (and every single one of the vast tribe of
linguists) can do neither. So we either get simple
plain abuse or silence.

The chief interest here is that it's not unlike the
Stratfordian story. That is, prima facie, a truly
ridiculous one. But what can you say when that
is pointed out? (1) You can pile abuse on the
heads of those who so inconveniently point it out;
(2) You can go silent; (3) You can endlessly
recite your ancient doctrines (or doctrinal excuses).

** Actually what you can do is can ask for a sane opposing
** theory that has some genuine evidence to support it. But
** this has to do with a topic I started a separate thread
** on, so I’ll drop it here. It will no doubt come up again
** there.

>> For him, and other 'scholars'
>> languages exist (and change) in their own
>> dimension. They somehow forget that real
>> people use them.
>
> You’re too vague for me to follow. Of course,
> Groves is quite aware of real people.

Find ONE linguist who discusses why and how
a real rural population would completely change
its language over a few generations.

** NEW THREAD TOPIC

> It wouldn’t Seem that you are, considering you actually
> believe That two populations can live together without Any
> cultural exchanges.

It depends on what you mean by 'living together'.
Did the Mongols have much effect on the
Russians (other than to make them scared of
foreigners, and too familiar with how nasty it was
to be conquered) ? Did the Russians affect the
Mongols? And so on for many (or most) such
conquests?

** NEW THREAD TOPIC

>>> I don't know what he said, but am sure I'm not
>>> severely wrong in saying that he believes PARTS of
>>> various tribes, communities, and other groups
>>> almost surely consisting of much more than farmers
>>> GRADUALLY changed their language
>>
>> Eh? We are talking mostly about England
>> and its supposed predominant language
>> from around 100 AD to around 1400 AD.
>> Where do these 'parts' come in?
>
> England was never homogenous. There was north and
> south, for one thing, and many different villages,

You're grasping at straws. The great bulk of
the nation was rural and agricultural. Under
the Anglo-Saxons, towns and cities were
deserted and fell into decay. Yet _this_
society is supposed to have moved from
'Brythonic' to Anglo-Saxon in a few generations;
and repeated the trick with a switch from Anglo-
Saxon to English a few hundred years later.
Parts of Scotland supposedly fitted in a switch
into Gaelic (and out of it) as well. Parts of
England supposedly fitted in a switch into
Danish and out-of-it.

You might have thought Stratfordianism utterly

daft. Standard linguistics tries hard to trump it.

** NEW THREAD TOPIC (And I hope you will try
** not to waste time and space there with these stupid
** insults of Stratfordians and academics. We all know
** your position on those.)

>>> He most certainly doesn't believe that they changed
>>> languages "for no reason and at the drop of a hat?"
>
>> He has never indicated otherwise.
>
> Right. Nor has he ever indicated that the Romans never
> Conquered Britain. What he has said or implied is that
> the language evolved.

Sure -- while somehow avoiding being
spoken by anyone in particular.

> He’s mentioned a few examples of this which clearly
> indicate that he believes the changes took place over
> generations.

No one suggests otherwise. But those theories
(standard in linguistics) would mean that the
change was so rapid that grand-parents would
often not have a clue what their grand-children
were saying. That often happens -- effectively
under compulsion, when adults migrate to new
counties. But it CAN'T happen in a static rural
society under no particular pressure. No record
of any such transition exists -- in ANY society
at ANY time.

** NEW THREAD TOPIC

> He has shown reasons for it
Such as?

> or directed those reading his posts to those who have

Yeah, yeah. "The answer is in a book in a
library somewhere." Even you should be
able to recognise that kind of bullshit.

** No, what I did was more intelligent. I bought
** Second-hand copies of the recommended
** books and am now reading them. They make
** sense and seem to refute most if not all you
** have been saying but I’m not yet at home enough
** with the material to be able to use it against you.

> The writers I’m reading give lots of reasons for changes,

Bullshit pretend-reasons. We've already seen one.
Groves says "My name is Beowulf" _came_from_
the Anglo-Saxon "Min nama is Beowulf" rather than
having the same ancestry as the modern German
"Mein Name ist Beowulf" -- and that the 'Anglo-
Saxon origin' is so obvious that it is quite
unquestionable.

While this is a trivial example, it shows the way
his 'mind' works. First you have your doctrine.
Then you find examples to back it up. And you
never consider any other possible explanation.

** NEW THREAD TOPIC I love the way you use our
** descriptions of your irrationality against us after
** you’ve heard it enough—always invalidly.

> and admit to not having reasons for other changes. I�m
> just learning about these things so can�t argue for Peter,
> but I do remember that �ing� at the end of verbs was a

> change found that scholars showed was due to one

> language group�s meeting another in war or commerce,
> and influencing it to make the change� the
> Scandinavians influencing the Anglo-Saxons? I can�t

> remember. I m just trying to get a sense of the field.

Linguists play these silly games endlessly. But ask
them how a population made up of largely isolated
small groups of farmers and peasants living in
largely-isolated parishes, could or would have
changed their daily language in so short a time,
and they'll tell you (if they are honest) that they
have never -- not once in their lives -- considered
the issue. Nor have they ever seen any paper (or
even a note or a letter) in any 'learned journal' in
the vast libraries devoted to the 'discipline' ever
hint at the possibility of such a question.

** NEW THREAD TOPIC

>>> whether valid or not--OR admit to not knowing a
>>> reason because of lack of data (no written
>>> manuscripts or tape recordings).
>>
>> I'd be very surprised to see any such admission.
>
> Read the books Peter recommended to me. They are full
> Of such admissions.

Quote one that refers to a population of farmers
and peasants changing their language within a
few generations.

** NEW THREAD TOPIC

> I've been reading about quarks, gluons, virtual photons and
> things I consider wacky. The author of one book I finished is or
> was a key figure in the study of quarks and related particles.
> He also admitted, in the same way, what was not known,

> where several theories were in competition, etc. It�s called

** Right, and no peasant would want to go far
** from home, a human curiosity instinct being
** a figment of my imagination none of them
** would have had.

> There were monks, minstrels, merchants, soldiers, vagabonds.
Monks stayed in their monasteries. Minstrels
worked for those who could pay -- rarely ordinary
farmers. Merchants lived in towns and cities (if
such existed). Soldiers went off to war and if they
did come back, did so years later. Effective
isolation was the general rule.

** Can you quote any authority who would back you on this?

> Aside from that there is evidence that what linguists say
> happened DID happen.

Wrong -- in every respect. There is no contemporary
document about the Anglo-Saxon conquest. We have
to rely on the likes of Bede, writing a few hundred years
later.

** NEW THREAD TOPIC But Bede IS evidence.

** NEW THREAD TOPIC

** They had no good evidence for their and there
** Was a huge amount of evidence against it.

Exactly the opposite of the Stratfordians.

> but none against the Shakespeare
> monument and a lot for it in the testimony of those who
> saw it, and the words of Digges in the First Folio.

Explain how the words of Digges undermine every
possible theory about a cover-up.

** I can’t think of any defense of a theory more unscientific,
** stupid and insane that yours here. The theory of quarks
** is wrong because those adhering to it can’t produce any
** evidence that undermines EVERY possible theory that
** the fact that quarks don’t exist has been covered up?

** Please tell me of any scientific or historical theory
** that was shown to be invalid because of such a thing.

** You believe that if Digges could have been part
** of a conspiracy, what he said has no evidentiary value?!

To you, Digges
knew the Stratman personally, and had seen him
write his plays, and was utterly reliable and
honourable . . . . and would never have taken
money to suggest anything misleading? And you
know all this from . . . . ?

** Of course, I say Digges ALMOST SURELY knew Will
** Shakespeare of Stratford for reasons given in several earlier
** posts of mine you’ll probably deny the existence of but I
** won’t bother trying to find. I don’t say he saw him write
** his plays. Why do you have to add that? What makes it
** impossible for you not to misrepresent your opponents’
** beliefs as completely as you can?

** I don’t say Digges was utterly
** reliable and honorable although I believe he was REASONABLY
** reliable and honorable. Why do you have to say I think he was
** UTTERLY reliable and honorable? What makes it
** impossible for you not to misrepresent your opponents’
** beliefs as completely as you can? Do you really think that wins
** you supporters? Where are they?

** Can you quote me saying Digges would NEVER have taken money
** to participate in a cover-up? Why can’t you simply argue against
** what I obviously believe, which is that I don’t think he was the kind
** person out to make money lying, and-—more important-—that I see
** no reason to believe he participated in any conspiracy, because you,
** for one thing, can produce no evidence of any kind that he did.

--Bob

[metri...@gmail.com]

On Friday, 19 October 2012 07:32:14 UTC+11, Paul Crowley wrote:
> On 17/10/2012 22:33, Bob Grumman wrote:
>

[desunt nonnulla]

>
> Groves would maintain two propositions --
>
> which are incompatible with his theory but
>
> which he never allows to occupy his brain
>
> at the same time (which is why he has
>
> ceased to respond):
>
> a) Languages often undergo rapid and drastic
>
> change;

The poor old poteen-raddled sot probably believes this. There really is no point in trying to explain anything to him: as I've pointed out, it's like attempting to teach your cat algebra. I'm pleased to say I've never met a student this thick and this ignorantly opinionated.

Peter G.

[Paul Crowley]

On 19/10/2012 02:23, Bob Grumman wrote:

>> Why would a farmer, or
>> peasant or villein, or slave, have a need to visit the
>> next parish? Selling his produce, or buying what
>> items (such as candles) that he could afford, would
>> make trips into the local market town necessary on
>> occasion. But they would only be occasional.
>>
> ** Right, and no peasant would want to go far
> ** from home, a human curiosity instinct being
> ** a figment of my imagination none of them
> ** would have had.

There would not be much point in going to the
next parish -- it being very much like one's own.
Local rivalries and feuds would often mean that
to travel without a group of friends would result
in being beaten up. Not that some local travel
was often necessary -- e.g. to go to the black-
smith. To travel further involved expense, and
they rarely had the disposable income or the
leisure time. Such travel was realy only possible
in the summer time, and then there was too much
work to do on the farm. But it was also a matter
of habit and attitude.

>>> There were monks, minstrels, merchants, soldiers, vagabonds.
>>
>> Monks stayed in their monasteries. Minstrels
>> worked for those who could pay -- rarely ordinary
>> farmers. Merchants lived in towns and cities (if
>> such existed). Soldiers went off to war and if they
>> did come back, did so years later. Effective
>> isolation was the general rule.
>
> ** Can you quote any authority who would back you on this?

There are numerous sources, such as this:

http://newhistories.group.shef.ac.uk/wordpress/wordpress/?p=2154

" . . .the Poor Law system, enshrined most famously in two
Acts of Parliament passed in 1598 and 1601, was based
around a central idea that people were �settled�, and that if
poverty struck, they would be maintained by the rates collected
from the place of their birth. The 1598 Act ordered that those
found to be vagabonds were to be �arrested, whipped until
bloody, and returned by the most direct route to their place of
origin�.

" . . of the 102 suspected vagrants arrested in Warwick
between 1580 and 1587 who gave a reason for their journey. 49
were found to be travelling for reasons attached to their
occupation, and a further 18 were �seeking work�. Only 23 were
deemed to have been travelling for illegal reasons, such as
theft."

'Tourism' was not conceivable as an answer
in response to a charge of 'vagrancy'.

>>> Your analogy is so bad as to be insane. Stalin�s evidence

>>> That the Russians had nothing to do with the bodies at
>>> Katyn was his testimony. Fine. Where your analogy breaks
>>> down is that there was all kinds of hard evidence against
>>> his testimony,
>>
>> The Soviets found plenty of 'evidence' FOR their
>> account of Katyn. They wanted to present it at
>> the Nuremberg trials, but were dissuaded by the
>> Americans and the British -- who fully knew it was
>> all lies.
>>
> ** They had no good evidence for their and there
> ** Was a huge amount of evidence against it.

Not true. The Soviets made sure that they had plenty
of 'good evidence'. Since they controlled the site and
nearly all the people involved, they could plant loads
of fake evidence and spin the rest as they liked,

>>> but none against the Shakespeare
>>> monument and a lot for it in the testimony of those who
>>> saw it, and the words of Digges in the First Folio.
>>
>> Explain how the words of Digges undermine every
>> possible theory about a cover-up.
>>

> ** I can�t think of any defense of a theory more unscientific,

> ** stupid and insane that yours here.

I'm not putting forward a theory here. You are.
I'm questioning the 'evidence' you claim to have.
How do you know that it is trustworthy and reliable?

> ** You believe that if Digges could have been part
> ** of a conspiracy, what he said has no evidentiary value?!

The First Folio was, of course, a part of the cover-
up operation. Digges wrote a smal commendatory
verse (emphasising the hyphen) in its introductory
material. Either he was a dupe, or he was a knowing
participant, or some kind of combination. His father
was a friend of William Cecil and Dr John Dee; he
was a poet and a literary person all his life. So it's
quite likely that he knew the full story, or much of it.

>> To you, Digges
>> knew the Stratman personally, and had seen him
>> write his plays, and was utterly reliable and
>> honourable . . . . and would never have taken
>> money to suggest anything misleading? And you
>> know all this from . . . . ?
>>
> ** Of course, I say Digges ALMOST SURELY knew Will
> ** Shakespeare of Stratford for reasons given in several earlier

> ** posts of mine you�ll probably deny the existence of but I
> ** won�t bother trying to find.

Maybe he did. His father died when he was seven,
After his mother married Thomas Russell, he may
have lived 4 miles from Stratford -- but Russell may
well have had a London house. Let's say Digges
was around 10 then (in 1598). He went to Oxford
when he was 15. He did not attend Stratford
Grammar school AFAIK. Under your scenario, the
Stratman would have been London when and if the
young Digges lived near Stratford.

> ** I don�t say he saw him write

> ** his plays. Why do you have to add that? What makes it

> ** impossible for you not to misrepresent your opponents�

> ** beliefs as completely as you can?

I was asking a question. As you now admit, you
do NOT know whether of not Digges believed that
the Stratman was the author of the plays, or that
even if he did, whether or not that belief was based
on good evidence in his possession.

YET you regard the words of Digges in the FF as
impeccable and incontrovertible evidence for your
theory.

> ** I don�t say Digges was utterly

> ** reliable and honorable although I believe he was REASONABLY
> ** reliable and honorable. Why do you have to say I think he was
> ** UTTERLY reliable and honorable? What makes it

> ** impossible for you not to misrepresent your opponents�

> ** beliefs as completely as you can? Do you really think that wins
> ** you supporters? Where are they?
>>
> ** Can you quote me saying Digges would NEVER have taken money

> ** to participate in a cover-up? Why can�t you simply argue against
> ** what I obviously believe, which is that I don�t think he was the kind
> ** person out to make money lying, and-�more important-�that I see

> ** no reason to believe he participated in any conspiracy, because you,
> ** for one thing, can produce no evidence of any kind that he did.

When there is a government-backed cover-up, all
manner of 'evidence' is cobbled together to 'prove'
that the official story is true. Stalin had large
numbers of fully-qualified scientists (who produced
detailed reports) to back up his claim that the
Germans had killed those Polish soldiers.

IF the First Folio was a part of a cover-up, then
some tame, impoverished poet would have been
found to pen the right sorts of verses. If Digges
had not been willing, they'd have got someone
else.

The kind of 'evidence' you quote is of EXACTLY of
the nature of what would have been produced by
the government agents. It's as useful (as reliable
and as trustworthy) as the words of Stalin on any
secret execution he ordered.

The weakness of the Stratfordian case is that you
have NOTHING that would not have come out of
some government machine. (No one ever reports
meeting the Stratman in a London street or in a
London inn or even seeing him on a London stage.)
You chose to believe in the government propaganda
in exactly the same manner as loyal Communists
chose to believe Stalin. To you, it's entirely a
matter of Faith -- not one of evidence.

In every instance, when something slips out --
something accidental and quite unforeseeable
happens, such as (for example) the acquisition
by Dr James Cooke of Dr John Hall's medical
papers -- the evidence points away from Stratford.
James Cooke does not mention a whisper about
the supposedly famous poet, who was the father
of the woman from whom he got those papers.

Anti-Strats can quote numerous instances like
this. Can you quote ONE (accidental and
unforeseeable incident) that supports the
Stratfordian case?


Paul.

[Paul Crowley]

You can see Professor Groves as a holding a chair
in Astronomy in pre-Copernican times, complaining
about a student who queries his detailed account
of the crystal spheres that enclose the universe.
You can see him as a holding a chair in Medicine
around 1875 complaining about a student who brings
up the germ theory and queries his detailed account
of the humours, as so accurately detailed by Galen
and Paracelsus.
You can see him as a holding a chair in Geology
around 1860 complaining about a student who brings
up the crazy theory of ice ages, undermining all his
vast scholarship on the remnants of the Great Flood.

He would, of course, flunk every such student --
declaring them to be raddled with alcohol and
disease, and so stupid that he could never teach
them anything.

Isn't it nice to see academe maintaining its ancient
traditions ?


Paul.

[The Historian]

On Oct 8, 10:12 pm, tom.re...@gmail.com wrote:

> On Sunday, October 7, 2012 9:35:22 PM UTC-5, Sneaky O. Possum wrote:
> > On Oct 7, 5:37 pm, Bob Grumman <bobgrum...@nut-n-but.net> wrote:
>
> > > Ah, Robin, nice to know you've read my book and therefore are competent to state that what I wrote about it in comparison to the estabniks' book is delusional.  Nonetheless, if you were a responsible critic of such as I, you really ought to show evidence in support of your contention.
>
> > Robin showed just as much evidence of your delusional state as you
> > showed to demonstrate that Charles Nicholl, MacDonald P. Jackson, Kate
> > McLuskie, Alan Nelson, Carol Rutter et al. are "mediocrities." But no
> > doubt you've read everything they've written, yes? You can cite
> > chapter and verse of Nicholl's work to demonstrate his mediocrity?
>
> > Please do so.

> > --
> > S.O.P.
>
> Actually Bob's book, although it has a few holes, is quite good. He could have used the services of a good copy editor (and if he had done so it would have been publishable by a mainstream press), but his arguments are clear and his style is a lot breezier than his sometimes convoluted and hard-to-follow HLAS style.
>
> That his criticism of mainstream scholars is juvenile and obviously motivated by a good deal of resentment and jealousy does nothing to besmirch his work at all--I look at it as the authorship version of Ezra Pound's idiotic views. There is nothing mediocre about the work of any of those named above.

>
> The refreshing feature of the book is his willingness to call insane thinking what it is. The part he could have left out is his idiosyncratic general theory of human psychology, but I suspect that without that he wouldn't have written it.
>

> TR

I second Tom's remarks.

[Bob Grumman]

On Friday, October 19, 2012 6:24:11 PM UTC-4, Paul Crowley wrote:
> On 19/10/2012 02:23, Bob Grumman wrote:
>
>
>
> >> Why would a farmer, or
>
> >> peasant or villein, or slave, have a need to visit the
>
> >> next parish? Selling his produce, or buying what
>
> >> items (such as candles) that he could afford, would
>
> >> make trips into the local market town necessary on
>
> >> occasion. But they would only be occasional.
>
> >>
>
> > ** Right, and no peasant would want to go far
>
> > ** from home, a human curiosity instinct being
>
> > ** a figment of my imagination none of them
>
> > ** would have had.
>
>
>
> There would not be much point in going to the
>
> next parish -- it being very much like one's own.
>
> Local rivalries and feuds would often mean that
>
> to travel without a group of friends would result
>
> in being beaten up. Not that some local travel
>
> was often necessary -- e.g. to go to the black-
>
> smith. To travel further involved expense, and
>
> they rarely had the disposable income or the
>
> leisure time. Such travel was realy only possible
>
> in the summer time, and then there was too much
>
> work to do on the farm. But it was also a matter
>
> of habit and attitude.
>

So you say.

>
> >>> There were monks, minstrels, merchants, soldiers, vagabonds.
>
> >>
>
> >> Monks stayed in their monasteries. Minstrels
>
> >> worked for those who could pay -- rarely ordinary
>
> >> farmers. Merchants lived in towns and cities (if
>
> >> such existed). Soldiers went off to war and if they
>
> >> did come back, did so years later. Effective
>
> >> isolation was the general rule.
> >





> > ** Can you quote any authority who would back you on this?
>
>
>
> There are numerous sources, such as this:
>
>
>
> http://newhistories.group.shef.ac.uk/wordpress/wordpress/?p=2154
>
>
>
> " . . .the Poor Law system, enshrined most famously in two
>
> Acts of Parliament passed in 1598 and 1601, was based
>

> around a central idea that people were ‘settled’, and that if

>
> poverty struck, they would be maintained by the rates collected
>
> from the place of their birth. The 1598 Act ordered that those
>

> found to be vagabonds were to be ‘arrested, whipped until

>
> bloody, and returned by the most direct route to their place of
>

> origin’.

>
>
>
> " . . of the 102 suspected vagrants arrested in Warwick
>
> between 1580 and 1587 who gave a reason for their journey. 49
>
> were found to be travelling for reasons attached to their
>

> occupation, and a further 18 were ‘seeking work’. Only 23 were

>
> deemed to have been travelling for illegal reasons, such as
>
> theft."
>

Good work, Paul--you actually found facts supporting an
argument of yours. The problem is that you don't go far
enough in considering it. For instance, if all the
peasants were as settled as you believe, why was a law
needed to make sure they didn't stray? What percentage
of the people in the area involved were these vagabonds?
What percentage of travelers would have been investigated
for vagrancy?

The 102 is only of those who gave reasons for their journeys.
How many others were there? Consider illegal immigrants
in the US, then tell me what percentage of serfs wanting
to go somewhere would not have been able to.

How about servants traveling with their masters? It seems to
me one would need a whole book of good scholarship at least
to answer the question of "the history of travel in England."

Finally, your quoted material is not what I asked for. I
want an authority for the idea that "There were monks,
minstrels, merchants, soldiers, vagabonds" doing much
more traveling than you give them credit for. I left out
actors, and there is documentary evidence of touring companies.

I want to know of an authority who said, "Hardly anyone ever
went more than a few miles from his doorstep, except nobles
and the very rich, before 1500, or whatever date you want
to use. As I write that, the absurdity of it increases. We
know that the population of London and other cities was
increasing. Where did their new citizens come from?

> 'Tourism' was not conceivable as an answer
> in response to a charge of 'vagrancy'.

Speaking of tourism, just what sort of people were
going to Canterbury in Chaucer's poem? What can
we infer from his tales? I ask in ignorance, never
having read all of it, and not remembering much
that would be pertinent to what we're discussing.
>
>
>
> >>> Your analogy is so bad as to be insane. Stalin’s evidence

>
> >>> That the Russians had nothing to do with the bodies at
>
> >>> Katyn was his testimony. Fine. Where your analogy breaks
>
> >>> down is that there was all kinds of hard evidence against
>
> >>> his testimony,
>
> >>
>
> >> The Soviets found plenty of 'evidence' FOR their
>
> >> account of Katyn. They wanted to present it at
>
> >> the Nuremberg trials, but were dissuaded by the
>
> >> Americans and the British -- who fully knew it was
>
> >> all lies.
>
> >>
>

> > ** They had no good evidence for their case and there

>
> > ** Was a huge amount of evidence against it.
>
>
>
> Not true. The Soviets made sure that they had plenty
>
> of 'good evidence'. Since they controlled the site and
>
> nearly all the people involved, they could plant loads
>
> of fake evidence and spin the rest as they liked,
>

They had no good evidence and the other side had a great deal
of evidence. But, yes, you can use the crank's ploy of finding
some moronic answer to any argument used against you. Study
the creationists sometime. They are as good at it as you. The
only difference is that they know they're right, and you know
they are not.

>
> >>> but none against the Shakespeare
>
> >>> monument and a lot for it in the testimony of those who
>
> >>> saw it, and the words of Digges in the First Folio.
>
> >>
>
> >> Explain how the words of Digges undermine every
>
> >> possible theory about a cover-up.
>
> >>
>

> > ** I can’t think of any defense of a theory more unscientific,

>
> > ** stupid and insane that yours here.
>
>
>
> I'm not putting forward a theory here. You are.
>
> I'm questioning the 'evidence' you claim to have.
>
> How do you know that it is trustworthy and reliable?

No, you asked something else. Reread what you wrote.

As for how I know Digges's testimony is trustworthy,
I've shown that at least a dozen times. Would not do
it again even if I didn't know for sure you would
reject everything I said.

>
>
> > ** You believe that if Digges could have been part
>
> > ** of a conspiracy, what he said has no evidentiary value?!
>
>
>
> The First Folio was, of course, a part of the cover-
>

> up operation. Digges wrote a small commendatory

>
> verse (emphasising the hyphen) in its introductory
>
> material. Either he was a dupe, or he was a knowing
>
> participant, or some kind of combination. His father
>
> was a friend of William Cecil and Dr John Dee; he
>
> was a poet and a literary person all his life. So it's
>
> quite likely that he knew the full story, or much of it.

Yes, yes, Paul, but it is STILL evidence. If 300 people see me
kill Art, but I leave the scene of the crime, is the fact that
it's possible that someone else looking just like me killed him
mean that their testimony can be ignored?

>
> >> To you, Digges
>
> >> knew the Stratman personally, and had seen him
>
> >> write his plays, and was utterly reliable and
>
> >> honourable . . . . and would never have taken
>
> >> money to suggest anything misleading? And you
>
> >> know all this from . . . . ?
>
> >>
>
> > ** Of course, I say Digges ALMOST SURELY knew Will
>
> > ** Shakespeare of Stratford for reasons given in several earlier
>

> > ** posts of mine you’ll probably deny the existence of but I
>
> > ** won’t bother trying to find.

>
>
>
> Maybe he did. His father died when he was seven,
>
> After his mother married Thomas Russell, he may
>
> have lived 4 miles from Stratford -- but Russell may
>
> well have had a London house. Let's say Digges
>
> was around 10 then (in 1598). He went to Oxford
>
> when he was 15. He did not attend Stratford
>
> Grammar school AFAIK. Under your scenario, the
>
> Stratman would have been London when and if the
>
> young Digges lived near Stratford.
>

I'm not going to repeat why I'm sure Digges knew Will S.,
will just say that that is my position, and that I've
said why it is at HLAS.


>
> > ** I don’t say he saw him write

>
> > ** his plays. Why do you have to add that? What makes it
>

> > ** impossible for you not to misrepresent your opponents’

>
> > ** beliefs as completely as you can?
>
>
>
> I was asking a question. As you now admit, you
>

> do NOT know whether or not Digges believed that

>
> the Stratman was the author of the plays, or that
>
> even if he did, whether or not that belief was based
>
> on good evidence in his possession.
>

What I don't know is whether Digges ever saw Shakespeare
in the act of writing a play. That is not the same thing
as saying he did not know whether or not he wrote plays.

>
> YET you regard the words of Digges in the FF as
>
> impeccable and incontrovertible evidence for your
>
> theory.
>

No, moron, I count it a very probably trustworthy.
Why do you have to claim I consider it "incontrovertible?"
Except because stupid arguments are easier to deal with
than intelligent ones.

>
> > ** I don’t say Digges was utterly

>
> > ** reliable and honorable although I believe he was REASONABLY
>
> > ** reliable and honorable. Why do you have to say I think he was
>
> > ** UTTERLY reliable and honorable? What makes it
>

> > ** impossible for you not to misrepresent your opponents’

>
> > ** beliefs as completely as you can? Do you really think that wins
>
> > ** you supporters? Where are they?
>
> >>
>
> > ** Can you quote me saying Digges would NEVER have taken money
>

> > ** to participate in a cover-up? Why can’t you simply argue against
>
> > ** what I obviously believe, which is that I don’t think he was the kind
>
> > ** person out to make money lying, and-—more important-—that I see

>
> > ** no reason to believe he participated in any conspiracy, because you,
>
> > ** for one thing, can produce no evidence of any kind that he did.
>

No answers?

How? No matter what I brought up, you would
claim the clever hoaxsters would have thought
to make it up, like the rings to fellow actors
in the will.

Why don't you provide an example of something
the hoaxsters would never have thought to fake but
might have shown up if Shakespeare had been the poet.

You might say, well, a poem praising his poetry the week
after he died. But why wouldn't that have been the same
as the monument--an obvious hoax to hide the Truth?

Why couldn't your way of arging for this conspiracy be used
as easily by Creationists? Why, of course, skeletons of birds
indicating they evolved from dinosaurs (or whatever) showed
up--that's exactly what the atheists trying to destroy the
Holy Book would have forged.

--Bob

[Paul Crowley]

On 21/10/2012 00:45, Bob Grumman wrote:

>> " . . .the Poor Law system, enshrined most famously in two
>> Acts of Parliament passed in 1598 and 1601, was based

>> around a central idea that people were �settled�, and that if

>> poverty struck, they would be maintained by the rates collected
>> from the place of their birth. The 1598 Act ordered that those

>> found to be vagabonds were to be �arrested, whipped until

>> bloody, and returned by the most direct route to their place of

>> origin�.

>>
>> " . . of the 102 suspected vagrants arrested in Warwick
>> between 1580 and 1587 who gave a reason for their journey. 49
>> were found to be travelling for reasons attached to their

>> occupation, and a further 18 were �seeking work�. Only 23 were

>> deemed to have been travelling for illegal reasons, such as
>> theft."
>
> Good work, Paul--you actually found facts supporting an
> argument of yours. The problem is that you don't go far
> enough in considering it. For instance, if all the
> peasants were as settled as you believe, why was a law
> needed to make sure they didn't stray?

We are talking about periods in which there
was supposedly enormous language change --
the latest being from Anglo-Saxon to English
between ~1100 and ~ 1350. They were very
much poorer then than under Elizabeth.
Travel had become (relatively) much easier in
her reign and more common. The economic
down-turn in the 1590s made vagrancy more
extensive, and that is why those laws were
put through.

> The 102 is only of those who gave reasons for their journeys.
> How many others were there? Consider illegal immigrants
> in the US, then tell me what percentage of serfs wanting
> to go somewhere would not have been able to.

A comparison with modern US is absurd. The
only forms of travel to places like Stratford
were by foot or on horseback. The roads
could not usually take wheeled vehicles.

> How about servants traveling with their masters?

If you had money, you could travel.
But few people had that kind of dough.

> I left out actors, and there is documentary evidence of
> touring companies.

They had to be members of companies with
noble patrons. And that system only came
into effect under Elizabeth.

> I want to know of an authority who said, "Hardly anyone ever
> went more than a few miles from his doorstep, except nobles
> and the very rich, before 1500, or whatever date you want
> to use. As I write that, the absurdity of it increases. We
> know that the population of London and other cities was
> increasing. Where did their new citizens come from?

You are (once again) getting your periods mixed
up. The supposed enormous change in language
was long before the populations of London and
other cities increased significantly. Under the
supposed adoption by the entire population of
Anglo-Saxon (~500? to ~700?), most cities and
towns had ceased to exist.

>> 'Tourism' was not conceivable as an answer
>> in response to a charge of 'vagrancy'.
>
> Speaking of tourism, just what sort of people were
> going to Canterbury in Chaucer's poem?

Pilgrims -- who were relatively wealthy.
No peasants are in Chaucer's group.

>> The First Folio was, of course, a part of the cover-
>> up operation. Digges wrote a small commendatory
>> verse (emphasising the hyphen) in its introductory
>> material. Either he was a dupe, or he was a knowing
>> participant, or some kind of combination. His father
>> was a friend of William Cecil and Dr John Dee; he
>> was a poet and a literary person all his life. So it's
>> quite likely that he knew the full story, or much of it.
>
> Yes, yes, Paul, but it is STILL evidence.

It's as trustworthy as Stalin's word that all
those Poles had gone to Siberia and got
lost, or been captured by the Germans.


>>> ** Why can�t you simply argue against
>>> ** what I obviously believe, which is that I don�t think he was the kind

>>> ** person out to make money lying,

You have no idea what Leonard Digges was
like as a person -- any more than anyone else.
His life and character are known only sketchily.

>>> ** no reason to believe he participated in any conspiracy, because you,
>>> ** for one thing, can produce no evidence of any kind that he did.
>
> No answers?

Nearly every argument I state here presents
evidence for a cover-up. Are you going to claim
that Lucrece is more sophisticated, advanced
and mature than V&A? Or that their dedicatory
letters are straightforward and clearly honest?
Or that Lucrece was clearly written at about the
same time as Richard III and Richard II? Or
that all Shakespeares routinely put hyphens
into their surname? Or that gentlemen and
nobles routinely signed their name as an
illegible scrawl? Or that numerous authors
were brought up in illiterate households and
have illiterate daughters?

Nah. You are going to duck, dodge and
weave, and say that I never present arguments
showing that there was a cover-up.

Duck, dodge and weave. Wills are public
documents, and are often disputed in court.
Every lawyer could foresee that possibility.
But pick up a biography of any public figure,
open it at random, and you will probably see
a report of some event that it would have
been impossible for any later conspirator
to invent -- the report of a visit to court, or to
the house of some notable person, or the
visit of the Queen Henrietta to New Place
in 1643, or a meeting in the street, or an
observation by a spectator at the theatre, or
an involvement in some legal case like Bellott
v. Mountjoy. No one disputes that report,
BUT the problem for Strats is that, like every
other comparable instance, it argues against
the Stratford theory. Famous rich playwrights
do not appear in legal cases described as
something like "the lodger upstairs" (in some
cheap doss-house).

> Why don't you provide an example of something
> the hoaxsters would never have thought to fake but
> might have shown up if Shakespeare had been the poet.

Schaxper would have got hauled before a
court for his part in the 1601 rebellion -- IF he
had actually written Richard II. He'd have got
involved in a dozen legal actions similar to
Bellott v. Mountjoy, but about theatre matters,
or on disputes arising from his work, or their
printing, or their purloining or copying.

> You might say, well, a poem praising his poetry the week
> after he died. But why wouldn't that have been the same
> as the monument--an obvious hoax to hide the Truth?

I've no idea what poem this was, but it forgot
to mention the death of the great poet -- as did
every other poet in that year, and for the next
seven years. The conspirators may well have
anticipated that situation, but what were they to
do about it? They weren't going to write poetry
celebrating the stooge, or pay anyone else to
do it -- or not until they wanted to publish more
works, and then they filled the poems with
double meanings.

> Why couldn't your way of arging for this conspiracy be used
> as easily by Creationists?

Creationists don't propose any significant
cover-up or level of forgery.

> Why, of course, skeletons of birds indicating they
> evolved from dinosaurs (or whatever) showed up--that's
> exactly what the atheists trying to destroy the Holy
> Book would have forged.

Sure -- there have been forgeries of fossils.
Most notoriously, the Piltdown Fraud. But
the forgery is usually (and usually rapidly)
shown up to be quite incompetent. Your
attempt at distraction does not work.

Do you accept that Strats have NOTHING
in the way of 'natural' evidence (i.e. a
report of an incident that a cover-up
operator could not have foreseen) ?

Do you accept that Strats SHOULD have
something in the way of 'natural' evidence
(i.e. a report of an incident that a cover-
up operator could not have foreseen) ?


Paul.

[Bob Grumman]

Paul, I think you've done it--found a way to say your absence of evidence is the only evidence that matters where the authorship of the Shakespeare works is concerned. I admit to not being able to continue to argue with you. I have, however, cut and pasted your argument into my files and, if I am ever able to put out a new edition of my authorship book, I will quote it there, and make you famous.

That I am so convinced of its idiocy that I would let others read it without any fear it would make Oxfordians of them I am sure you will consider further evidence of how stupid I am. Even though you will never be able to get anybody to testify at HLAS either that (1) he has found your reasoning persuasive or even (2) that he has found it sane.

But if you will join me in discussing the evolution of English in the thread I've started, I will debate that with you. There won't likely be many others joining in as joined in our Shakespeare arguments, so it should be easier to keep semi-organized. If we take it one or two very specific arguments at a time, we may get somewhere.

--Bob

[Paul Crowley]

On 22/10/2012 01:56, Bob Grumman wrote:

> Paul, I think you've done it--found a way to say your absence of evidence
> is the only evidence that matters where the authorship of the
> Shakespeare works is concerned.

I argue no such thing. There is a huge amount
of evidence against the Stratman and more in
favour of Oxford. Of course, the latter does not
consist of explicit written statements made at
the time -- which seem to be your only criteria
for 'evidence'.

> That I am so convinced of its idiocy that I would let others read it without
> any fear it would make Oxfordians of them I am sure you will consider
> further evidence of how stupid I am. Even though you will never be able
> to get anybody to testify at HLAS either that (1) he has found your
> reasoning persuasive or even (2) that he has found it sane.

A classic set of non-denial denials.


Paul.