Weir's Foolish Investment in Moribund Baconian Theory
PWDBard
Weir's response to my illumination of the historical context surrounding
Bacon's totally groveling letters to Southampton and the 18th Earl of Oxford as
copies of the First Folio were being distributed for sale in London book stores
in January 1624 is lame, feckless, utterly pathetic.
My original argument that this highly revealing conjunction of these men
and events and Bacon's total silence at this particular moment about his
literary stature in private letters and their non-cooperative attitude toward
him wipes him out totally as a credible alternative Bard stands unrefuted.
Bard was a big ass-kisser to boot with King James and Buckingham when those
behind the First Folio project were appalled with their aln for the Spanish
Marriage. Weir is ignorant of too much basic history to be taken seriously.
The Oxford/Derby duo is the truth behind the Shakespeare pen name as many
suspected in the 1920s. Proving it is the truth is difficult but now possible
with the evidence in my hand...which of course is a factor in my contempt for
the Baconian theory which has had many other shortcomings. It clearly was on
the wane in the years just before...yes before World War I. Weir is living in
the Edwardian era which is about the last time the Baconian theory had any
significant or enthusiastic following. I suppose now with the Stratford man
finally exposed for what he was...a cradle-to-grave secret Roman
Catholic...that alone is enough to prompt a few to give Bacon a second look.
But it is all rubbish and a total waste of time. I trust that the Shakespeare
enthusiast from Bulgaria who asked about the history of the authorship debate
understands all this now.
Buckeye Pete
Neil Brennen
"PWDBard" <pwd...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20031226224931...@mb-m07.aol.com...
>
> Weir's response to my illumination of the historical context
surrounding
> Bacon's totally groveling letters to Southampton and the 18th Earl of
Oxford as
> copies of the First Folio were being distributed for sale in London book
stores
> in January 1624 is lame, feckless, utterly pathetic.
You have to love the irony of PWDBard, the author of some of the most lame,
feckless, and utterly pathetic posts on HLAS, insulting another authorship
nutcase.
(Snip)
> Weir is ignorant of too much basic history to be >taken seriously.
LOL! Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle!
> The Oxford/Derby duo is the truth behind the Shakespeare pen name as
many
> suspected in the 1920s. Proving it is the truth is difficult but now
possible
> with the evidence in my hand...
And the tinfoil hat on your head?
...which of course is a factor in my contempt for
> the Baconian theory which has had many other shortcomings.
Such as lack of evidence, as with the Oxfordian theory.
It clearly was on
> the wane in the years just before...yes before World War I. Weir is
living in
> the Edwardian era which is about the last time the Baconian theory had any
> significant or enthusiastic following. I suppose now with the Stratford
man
> finally exposed for what he was...a cradle-to-grave secret Roman
> Catholic...that alone is enough to prompt a few to give Bacon a second
look.
> But it is all rubbish and a total waste of time.
That applies to ALL alternate authorship theories.
Elizabeth Weir
> Weir's response to my illumination
What 'illumination?' We've seen that post numerous times and
you have yet to show how it is
EVIDENCE
that Bacon did not write the Shakespeare works.
Why don't you just list the reasons why the 'groveling'
(show me a letter to an earl that isn't 'groveling) letter
disqualifies Bacon as author. Here, I'll number it for you.
> of the historical context surrounding
> Bacon's totally groveling letters to Southampton and the 18th Earl of Oxford as
> copies of the First Folio were being distributed for sale in London book stores
> in January 1624 is lame, feckless, utterly pathetic.
I'd appreciate more civility from you.
> My original argument that this highly revealing conjunction of these men
> and events
What 'conjuncture?' Bacon wanted back in the House of Lords.
Southampton wanted a civil war between the Puritans (Parliament)
and the Anglicans (Royalists) because the Catholic minority--a
rapidly shirinking minority in England thanks to the mass
coversions of the 'Protestant upswelling' between 1600 and 1642--
would benefit from the same disestablishmentarianism that Essex
represented. .
The Protestants were hard core on doctrine but as presbyterians
were more than willing to co-exist with Catholics in a sectarian
England.
Bacon was an Anglican but worse from Southampton's point of view,
a voice of mediation.
Bacon had the power to sway Parliament. As Jonson pointed out,
Bacon was the 'greatest in many ages,' equal to or greater than
the ancient orators including Cicero and Pericles. Bacon had the
power to change history. How can you compare a lightweight like
Southampton to Francis Bacon? Here's a quote from a law school
dean on an article I'm going to post:: 'It seems almost unreasonable
that
Francis Bacon not only founded the scientific method but directed the
course of modern law. . . " Bacon's Merchant of Venice
was not mere entertainment and the towering speeches of the
Shakespeare plays were first heard in Parliament.
> literary stature in private letters
Southampton had no 'literary status'
And incidently, proof of his radical Catholicism is in the fact
that during the SAME WEEK he was released from the Tower
the authorities raided Southampton House and sure enough,
found hundreds of banned Catholic books which they carried
outside and burned in the street.
> and their non-cooperative attitude toward
> him wipes him out totally as a credible alternative Bard stands unrefuted.
> Bard was a big ass-kisser to boot with King James and
Do you know anything about James I? He was not a 'scholar
king.' He was a neurotic moron who didn't even care to rule
Britain. He ran up horrendous debts to buy estates for the
members of his homosexual coteries. Southampton was showered
with favors--James paid off his huge debts, gave Southampton
an enormous lump of cash--something like 75 k iirc, and
purchased back all Southampton's estates. Philip Herbert, Earl of
Montgomery got enormous gifts of cash from James until Herbert
was badly scarred by small pox and then the cash was cut off.
All of this mindless extravagance was paid for by the English people.
Bacon's troubles started when he opened a session of Parliament
with an oration against monopolies. James I's favorites were
living riotously on the monopolies while the English paid high
prices for everything.
By 1620 the English people, who were so thrilled to have the
succession crisis resolved by his accession, loathed and
despised the king. James I was the most unpopular monarch
in British history.
Queen Anne was de facto sovereign who ruled through the Privy
Council--James went 'camping with the darling boys' for a full
six months of the year while Queen Anne and Bacon--he was a
member of HER circle, not James'--attended Privy Council meetings
and took care of the public's business. James was simply pathetic.
And he demanded constant extravagant flattery. England has
never had such a fool on the throne.
> behind the First Folio project were appalled with their aln for the Spanish
> Marriage.
Nobody knows who was 'behind the First Folio project.'
There is zero scholarship on this question outside of
the Strat flat acceptance that 'the printers did it.'
And what, conceivably, does the First Folio have with the
Spanish Marriage?
Bacon has a connection to the Spanish Marriage in that
his close friend Sir Tobie Matthew was sent to Madrid to work
on the negotiations but Bacon was certainly smart enough to
see where that was going.
The Stuarts, with all their rumors of illegitimacy and regicide and
kidnapping and rape and James' father Darnley lying strangled in the
garden--Bothwell's murder trial was a complete farce--the whole
chaotic, scandalous mess of the Stuart line--were SIMPLY NOT GOOD
ENOUGH FOR THE HAPSBURGS. The Spanish Marriage was never going
to happen even before it started. The question of succession was
overwhelming because Elizabeth was a heretic and a heretic had
named James I king (if she even did). James I was not a legitimate
heir because Bothwell was his father and everybody knew it--they
looked like twins--and there was no way that the scruffy Stuarts were
going to snag a Hapsburg princess. The Hapsburg line was at least 800
years while the Stuarts were nouveau royalty from a line only a few
generations old.
And what was Denmark's royalty? And worse of all, James was the
prettiest one in the family. Anne looked 'like a man' according to
accounts and Charles had a personality as disagreeable as his
father's. England was horribly in debt and rich Spain knew that
James only wanted the Infanta's dowry and would go through it
in a nonce.
The Catholic Marriage was a loss cause before the negotiations
even started and the First Folio is irrelevant to the Spanish
Marriage n any event.
> Weir is ignorant of too much basic history to be taken seriously.
I have the equivalent of a minor in history (in an interdisciplinary
program). That doesn't mean much but I do feel qualified to post
in HLAS.
> The Oxford/Derby duo is the truth behind the Shakespeare pen name as many
> suspected in the 1920s.
No textbooks for us, we got only primary documents, consequently
I see that Oxfordianism is incomplete because Looney did not
access Oxford's primary documents. Baconians, on the other hand
and despite the loss and scattering of BAcon's papers (I just learned
that the Folger is sitting on a huge collection of Bacon's annotated
books and manuscript notebooks and has been very quiet about it
for the last eighty years--nothing has ever been catalogued) the
Baconians have 15 volumes of Bacon's letters and papers in
Spedding's monumental work. Oxfordians have nothing even slightly
comparable to Spedding and of course the Strats have a small
fist full of documents that have absolutely no bearing on the
Shakespeare works.
> Proving it is the truth is difficult but now possible
> with the evidence in my hand...which of course is a factor in my contempt for
> the Baconian theory which has had many other shortcomings.
Bacon has the Strachey letter.
> It clearly was on
> the wane in the years just before...yes before World War I. Weir is living in
> the Edwardian era which is about the last time the Baconian theory had any
> significant or enthusiastic following.
The truth has an inverse relation to popularity. Do you actually
believe that Strats--who have had hundreds of millions if not billions
of 'believers'--have the right author? There are more Oxfordians
than Baconians because Baconian theory requires a lot of time
to comprehend. Its difficult in the same sense that Renaissance
philosophy is difficult or the Shakespeare works are difficult or
the scope of Bacon's polymath genius is more than one biographer
--even Spedding--can convey.
> I suppose now with the Stratford man
> finally exposed for what he was...a cradle-to-grave secret Roman
> Catholic...
I've done some original thinking on this and while I don't
expect to get credit for the insight that John Shakespeare
held his sons out of the Anglican schools to thwart the
Anglican authorities as the Irish did in Ireland, I think that's
a very plausible theory.
I also have several posts to write on further Longworth evidence--
although she was a passionate bardoloator, Longworth was
also highly ethical and felt that all the Stratford documents should
come out, even the ones that the Strat establishment was trying
to suppress. The Strats actually withheld documents from Longworth,
a doctor of philosophy at the Sorbonne.
Longworth came up with a Catholic theory to explain that
most dangerous of Strat documents--the warrant against bodily harm
sworn out against the actor, his partner in the Swan and two women.
Longworth found the warrant connects those four to Sir Thomas Lucy,
the scourge of Catholics in Warwickshire through Lucy's nephew
who swore out the warrant. In other words Shakspere et al were
attempting to kill Lucy's nephew. Hotson discovered the original
docuent in the Bankside but Longworth extended the research.
And yes, this is even more in regard to the Catholic question.
This warrant may be connected to another theory I have--
based on circumstantial evidence--that Will fled the military
draft. There was an actual draft going on to raise an army
against the Armada and I found out that Sir Thomas Lucy had the
power to concript into the army as punishment for petty crimes.
I'm willing to bet that the anti-Catholic fanatic Lucy attempted to
conscript the Catholic lad into the army against Spain which would
have caused Will to violate the Pius V Bull forbidding English
Catholics
to defend the Queen in time of war (Oxford's problem at Tilbury).
Will didn't want to be under papal anathema so he ran off to London a
and the highly romanticized 'deer poaching' story is a Strat screen.
> But it is all rubbish and a total waste of time. I trust that the Shakespeare
> enthusiast from Bulgaria who asked about the history of the authorship debate
> understands all this now.
So how did Oxford get the Strachey letter? Oxfordians have
some serious topical problems in plays written after 1604 that
disqualify Oxford as author.
Best regards,
Elizabeth
David L. Webb
In article <efbc3534.03122...@posting.google.com>,
elizabe...@mail.com (Elizabeth Weir) wrote:
> pwd...@aol.com (PWDBard) wrote in message
> news:<20031226224931...@mb-m07.aol.com>...
> > Weir's response to my illumination
> What 'illumination?' We've seen that post numerous times and
> you have yet to show how it is
>
> EVIDENCE
>
> that Bacon did not write the Shakespeare works.
>
> Why don't you just list the reasons why the 'groveling'
> (show me a letter to an earl that isn't 'groveling)
With pleasure. See the letter (quoted in Ogburn, as I recall) to the
Earl of Oxford from the lowly Thomas Vavasor. Whatever the letter may
be, it is certainly not "groveling."
> letter
> disqualifies Bacon as author. Here, I'll number it for you.
> > of the historical context surrounding
> > Bacon's totally groveling letters to Southampton and the 18th Earl of
> > Oxford as
> > copies of the First Folio were being distributed for sale in London book
> > stores
> > in January 1624 is lame, feckless, utterly pathetic.
> I'd appreciate more civility from you.
As Peter Groves would say, comment would be superfluous.
> > My original argument that this highly revealing conjunction of these
> > men
> > and events
> What 'conjuncture? [sic]'
Is this supposed to be a quotation of what PWDBard wrote above? As
we have seen, accurate quotation is not Elizabeth's strong suit -- she
cannot even reproduce the *sense*, let alone the correct text, of her
purported quotations!
> Bacon wanted back in
Bacon wanted BACKIN? That's a far better signature cipher than many
in the works of Leary, Ignatius Donnelly, and many other ciphermongering
Baconian nutcases.
> the House of Lords.
> Southampton wanted a civil war between the Puritans (Parliament)
> and the Anglicans (Royalists) because the Catholic minority--a
> rapidly shirinking minority in England thanks to the mass
> coversions [sic] of the 'Protestant upswelling' between 1600 and 1642--
> would benefit from the same disestablishmentarianism that Essex
> represented. .
>
> The Protestants were hard core on doctrine but as presbyterians
> were more than willing to co-exist with Catholics in a sectarian
> England.
> Bacon was an Anglican but worse from Southampton's point of view,
> a voice of mediation.
>
> Bacon had the power to sway Parliament. As Jonson pointed out,
> Bacon was the 'greatest in many ages,' equal to or greater than
> the ancient orators including Cicero and Pericles. Bacon had the
> power to change history. How can you compare a lightweight like
> Southampton to Francis Bacon? Here's a quote from a law school
> dean on an article I'm going to post:: 'It seems almost unreasonable
> that
> Francis Bacon not only founded the scientific method but directed the
> course of modern law. . . " Bacon's Merchant of Venice
> was not mere entertainment and the towering speeches of the
> Shakespeare plays were first heard in Parliament.
"O, that this too too solid flesh would melt..." -- in Parliament?!
Well, perhaps -- maybe some of Bacon's obese Parliamentary peers could
commiserate.
> > literary stature in private letters
> Southampton had no 'literary status [sic]'
*Another* instance of Elizabeth's exemplary accuracy in reproducing
quotations!
> And incidently, proof of his radical Catholicism is in the fact
> that during the SAME WEEK he was released from the Tower
> the authorities raided Southampton House and sure enough,
> found hundreds of banned Catholic books which they carried
> outside and burned in the street.
> > and their non-cooperative attitude toward
> > him wipes him out totally as a credible alternative Bard stands unrefuted.
> > Bard was a big ass-kisser to boot with King James and
> Do you know anything about James I?
Comment would be superfluous.
> He was not a 'scholar
> king.' He was a neurotic moron
Comment would be superfluous.
> who didn't even care to rule
> Britain. He ran up horrendous debts to buy estates for the
> members of his homosexual coteries. Southampton was showered
> with favors--James paid off his huge debts, gave Southampton
> an enormous lump of cash--something like 75 k iirc, and
> purchased back all Southampton's estates. Philip Herbert, Earl of
> Montgomery got enormous gifts of cash from James until Herbert
> was badly scarred by small pox and then the cash was cut off.
> All of this mindless extravagance was paid for by the English people.
> Bacon's troubles started when he opened a session of Parliament
> with an oration against monopolies. James I's favorites were
> living riotously on the monopolies while the English paid high
> prices for everything.
>
> By 1620 the English people, who were so thrilled to have the
> succession crisis resolved by his accession, loathed and
> despised the king. James I was the most unpopular monarch
> in British history.
Source? Evidently Elizabeth has never heard of King John.
> Queen Anne was de facto sovereign who ruled through the Privy
> Council--James went 'camping with the darling boys' for a full
> six months of the year while Queen Anne and Bacon--he was a
> member of HER circle, not James'--attended Privy Council meetings
> and took care of the public's business. James was simply pathetic.
> And he demanded constant extravagant flattery. England has
> never had such a fool on the throne.
> > behind the First Folio project were appalled with their aln for the Spanish
> > Marriage.
> Nobody knows who was 'behind the First Folio project.'
> There is zero scholarship on this question outside of
> the Strat flat acceptance that 'the printers did it.'
Elizabeth just keeps the comedy coming!
> The Catholic Marriage was a loss cause [sic]
A lost cause? Or a loss because..?
> before the negotiations
> even started and the First Folio is irrelevant to the Spanish
> Marriage n any event.
> > Weir is ignorant of too much basic history to be taken seriously.
Even PWDBard gets something right once in a great while!
> I have the equivalent of a minor in history (in an interdisciplinary
> program). That doesn't mean much
Indeed!
> but I do feel qualified to post
> in HLAS.
Any fool can post in h.l.a.s., and experience shows that many fools
do -- even anti-Einsteinian relativity cranks post all manner of
crackpot nonsense here.
> > The Oxford/Derby duo is the truth behind the Shakespeare pen name as
> > many
> > suspected in the 1920s.
> No textbooks for us, we got only primary documents, consequently
> I see that Oxfordianism is incomplete because Looney did not
> access Oxford's primary documents. Baconians, on the other hand
> and despite the loss and scattering of BAcon's papers (I just learned
> that the Folger is sitting on a huge collection of Bacon's annotated
> books and manuscript notebooks and has been very quiet about it
> for the last eighty years--nothing has ever been catalogued)
Where did Elizabeth "learn" this choice bit of gossip?
> the
> Baconians have 15 volumes of Bacon's letters and papers in
> Spedding's monumental work. Oxfordians have nothing even slightly
> comparable to Spedding and of course the Strats have a small
> fist full of documents that have absolutely no bearing on the
> Shakespeare works.
> > Proving it is the truth is difficult but now possible
> > with the evidence in my hand...which of course is a factor in my contempt
> > for
> > the Baconian theory which has had many other shortcomings.
> Bacon has the Strachey letter.
Elizabeth just keeps the comedy coming faster than one recover from
helpless laughter!
> > It clearly was on
> > the wane in the years just before...yes before World War I. Weir is living
> > in
> > the Edwardian era which is about the last time the Baconian theory had any
> > significant or enthusiastic following.
> The truth has an inverse relation to popularity.
Really?! The idea that the earth is roughly spherical is far more
popular than the notion that it is flat -- does the inverse relationship
of Elizabeth's pronouncement mean that the flat earth scenario is closer
to the truth?
> Do you actually
> believe that Strats--who have had hundreds of millions if not billions
> of 'believers'--have the right author? There are more Oxfordians
> than Baconians because Baconian theory requires a lot of time
> to comprehend.
True -- some of the theory's exponents (Delia Bacon comes to mind,
although Elizabeth Weir herself is a strong honorable mention) are such
inept writers of English prose that a reader can waste truly colossal
amounts of time trying to figure out what, if anything, the Baconians
are trying haplessly and incoherently to say.
> Its [sic] difficult in the same sense that Renaissance
> philosophy is difficult or the Shakespeare works are difficult or
> the scope of Bacon's polymath genius is more than one biographer
> --even Spedding--can convey.
> > I suppose now with the Stratford man
> > finally exposed for what he was...a cradle-to-grave secret Roman
> > Catholic...
> I've done some original thinking on this
Elizabeth's "thinking" is generally nothing if not original!
> and while I don't
> expect to get credit for the insight that John Shakespeare
> held his sons out of the Anglican schools to thwart the
> Anglican authorities
Elizabeth certainly won't get any credit for that insight if she
merely asserts it without furnishing any evidence.
> as the Irish did in Ireland, I think that's
> a very plausible theory.
The fact that Elizabeth regards it as plausible is the kiss of death
for virtually any theory.
> I also have several posts to write on further Longworth evidence--
> although she was a passionate bardoloator [sic], Longworth was
> also highly ethical and felt that all the Stratford documents should
> come out, even the ones that the Strat establishment was trying
> to suppress. The Strats actually withheld documents from Longworth,
> a doctor of philosophy at the Sorbonne.
>
> Longworth came up with a Catholic theory to explain that
> most dangerous of Strat documents--the warrant against bodily harm
> sworn out against the actor, his partner in the Swan and two women.
> Longworth found the warrant connects those four to Sir Thomas Lucy,
> the scourge of Catholics in Warwickshire through Lucy's nephew
> who swore out the warrant. In other words Shakspere et al were
> attempting to kill Lucy's nephew. Hotson discovered the original
> docuent in the Bankside but Longworth extended the research.
> And yes, this is even more in regard to the Catholic question.
>
> This warrant may be connected to another theory I have--
> based on circumstantial evidence--that Will fled the military
> draft. There was an actual draft going on to raise an army
> against the Armada and I found out that Sir Thomas Lucy had the
> power to concript [sic] into the army as punishment for petty crimes.
Elizabeth Weir
> Time for another amusing installment of Dueling Delusions:
Only an victim of orthodoxy like yourself would assume that
a request for FACTS is delusional.
> In article <efbc3534.03122...@posting.google.com>,
> elizabe...@mail.com (Elizabeth Weir) wrote:
>
> > pwd...@aol.com (PWDBard) wrote in message
> > news:<20031226224931...@mb-m07.aol.com>...
> > > Weir's response to my illumination
>
> > What 'illumination?' We've seen that post numerous times and
> > you have yet to show how it is
> >
> > EVIDENCE
> >
> > that Bacon did not write the Shakespeare works.
> >
> > Why don't you just list the reasons why the 'groveling'
> > (show me a letter to an earl that isn't 'groveling)
>
> With pleasure. See the letter (quoted in Ogburn, as I recall) to the
> Earl of Oxford from the lowly Thomas Vavasor. Whatever the letter may
> be, it is certainly not "groveling."
Most 'if I ever get my hands on you I will kill you' letters
supercede rank.
> > letter
> > disqualifies Bacon as author. Here, I'll number it for you.
>
> > > of the historical context surrounding
> > > Bacon's totally groveling letters to Southampton and the 18th Earl of
> > > Oxford as
> > > copies of the First Folio were being distributed for sale in London book
> > > stores
> > > in January 1624 is lame, feckless, utterly pathetic.
>
> > I'd appreciate more civility from you.
>
> As Peter Groves would say, comment would be superfluous.
Civility is a classical virtue. Orthodoxy is the antithesis of the
classical which explains why I don't bother asking you to be
civil.
> > > My original argument that this highly revealing conjunction of these
> > > men
> > > and events
>
> > What 'conjuncture? [sic]'
That's really brilliant Webb. I use the correct form of the word
(a critical combination of events or circumstances) and you correct
me.
> Is this supposed to be a quotation of what PWDBard wrote above?
No, you silly fuck. Conjunction means two things happening at
the same time but conjuncture means some significant coincidence
which is what PWD Bard clearly meant.
I feel sorry for anyone who has to sweep HLAS every day looking
for trivial errors so he can put [sic] after them.
> we have seen, accurate quotation is not Elizabeth's strong suit -- she
> cannot even reproduce the *sense*, let alone the correct text, of her
> purported quotations!
And you are so brilliant that you put [sic] behind the correct form
of the word.
> > Bacon wanted back in
>
> Bacon wanted BACKIN? That's a far better signature cipher than many
> in the works of Leary, Ignatius Donnelly, and many other ciphermongering
> Baconian nutcases.
You're obviously in the habit of seeing things that don't exist.
> > the House of Lords.
> > Southampton wanted a civil war between the Puritans (Parliament)
> > and the Anglicans (Royalists) because the Catholic minority--a
> > rapidly shirinking minority in England thanks to the mass
> > coversions [sic] of the 'Protestant upswelling' between 1600 and 1642--
> > would benefit from the same disestablishmentarianism that Essex
> > represented. .
Yes, you're perfectly capable of putting a [sic] after my typo, Webb,
but you don't know what the fuck I'm writing about because you
are so disconnected that you really don't participate in any
meaningful way in this forum. I don't doubt that you just come into
HLAS just to jack off.
> > The Protestants were hard core on doctrine but as presbyterians
> > were more than willing to co-exist with Catholics in a sectarian
> > England.
> > Bacon was an Anglican but worse from Southampton's point of view,
> > a voice of mediation.
> >
> > Bacon had the power to sway Parliament. As Jonson pointed out,
> > Bacon was the 'greatest in many ages,' equal to or greater than
> > the ancient orators including Cicero and Pericles. Bacon had the
> > power to change history. How can you compare a lightweight like
> > Southampton to Francis Bacon? Here's a quote from a law school
> > dean on an article I'm going to post:: 'It seems almost unreasonable
> > that
> > Francis Bacon not only founded the scientific method but directed the
> > course of modern law. . . " Bacon's Merchant of Venice
> > was not mere entertainment and the towering speeches of the
> > Shakespeare plays were first heard in Parliament.
>
> "O, that this too too solid flesh would melt..." -- in Parliament?!
No, something by Wolsey from Henry VIII.
> Well, perhaps -- maybe some of Bacon's obese Parliamentary peers could
> commiserate.
You're overreaching.
> > > literary stature in private letters
>
> > Southampton had no 'literary status [sic]'
>
> *Another* instance of Elizabeth's exemplary accuracy in reproducing
> quotations!
Such prissy outrage. I'm laughing. And an exclamation mark,
no less.
> > And incidently, proof of his radical Catholicism is in the fact
> > that during the SAME WEEK he was released from the Tower
> > the authorities raided Southampton House and sure enough,
> > found hundreds of banned Catholic books which they carried
> > outside and burned in the street.
>
> > > and their non-cooperative attitude toward
> > > him wipes him out totally as a credible alternative Bard stands unrefuted.
> > > Bard was a big ass-kisser to boot with King James and
>
> > Do you know anything about James I?
>
> Comment would be superfluous.
Indicating that you know nothing about James I.
> > He was not a 'scholar
> > king.' He was a neurotic moron
>
> Comment would be superfluous.
Indicating that you know nothing about James I.
I would like to experience something, Webb. I'd like to
feel a little shock and thrill when you post your first fact.
> > who didn't even care to rule
> > Britain. He ran up horrendous debts to buy estates for the
> > members of his homosexual coteries. Southampton was showered
> > with favors--James paid off his huge debts, gave Southampton
> > an enormous lump of cash--something like 75 k iirc, and
> > purchased back all Southampton's estates. Philip Herbert, Earl of
> > Montgomery got enormous gifts of cash from James until Herbert
> > was badly scarred by small pox and then the cash was cut off.
> > All of this mindless extravagance was paid for by the English people.
> > Bacon's troubles started when he opened a session of Parliament
> > with an oration against monopolies. James I's favorites were
> > living riotously on the monopolies while the English paid high
> > prices for everything.
> >
> > By 1620 the English people, who were so thrilled to have the
> > succession crisis resolved by his accession, loathed and
> > despised the king. James I was the most unpopular monarch
> > in British history.
>
> Source? Evidently Elizabeth has never heard of King John.
British history. I'm sure that there were many uncouth
kings like James I before James I. He did know Latin but he
couldn't think in any language.
Strats don't put any scholarship into James I because it's
difficult to explain how a tradesman in Stratford was trying
to drive cottagers off their ancient tithe-holdings in 1612 at
the same time he was writing Lear which shows pity for
the homeless and starving.
> > Queen Anne was de facto sovereign who ruled through the Privy
> > Council--James went 'camping with the darling boys' for a full
> > six months of the year while Queen Anne and Bacon--he was a
> > member of HER circle, not James'--attended Privy Council meetings
> > and took care of the public's business. James was simply pathetic.
> > And he demanded constant extravagant flattery. England has
> > never had such a fool on the throne.
>
> > > behind the First Folio project were appalled with their aln for the Spanish
> > > Marriage.
>
> > Nobody knows who was 'behind the First Folio project.'
> > There is zero scholarship on this question outside of
> > the Strat flat acceptance that 'the printers did it.'
>
> Elizabeth just keeps the comedy coming!
I am stating the facts. There is no theory in Stratfordianism
to explain the First Folio. Clara Garber, a 1930s scholar who
wrote a study on Elizabethan dedications said that she couldn't
deal with the First Folio front matter because it was too problematic.
Hemminges and Condell dedicate the FF to Pembroke and
Mongomery AND the public violating every rule of the rhetoric
of rank in dedications. Jonson had a lot of confidence in his patron,
apparently. And there's a clue that Strats never bring forth.
Jonson was given a generous annual pension by Pembroke who
was his fond patron and here we find Jonson dedicating the works
of another poet to his, Jonson's, patron. No wonder Garber didn't
want to deal with it.
Elizabeth Weir
There is no mouse gesture for 'send post' but a mouse gesture
sent the post anyway.
> > The Stuarts, with all their rumors of illegitimacy and regicide and
> > kidnapping and rape and James' father Darnley lying strangled in the
> > garden--Bothwell's murder trial was a complete farce--the whole
> > chaotic, scandalous mess of the Stuart line--were SIMPLY NOT GOOD
> > ENOUGH FOR THE HAPSBURGS. The Spanish Marriage was never going
> > to happen even before it started. The question of succession was
> > overwhelming because Elizabeth was a heretic and a heretic had
> > named James I king (if she even did). James I was not a legitimate
> > heir because Bothwell was his father and everybody knew it--they
> > looked like twins--and there was no way that the scruffy Stuarts were
> > going to snag a Hapsburg princess. The Hapsburg line was at least 800
> > years while the Stuarts were nouveau royalty from a line only a few
> > generations old.
> > And what was Denmark's royalty? And worse of all, James was the
> > prettiest one in the family. Anne looked 'like a man' according to
> > accounts and Charles had a personality as disagreeable as his
> > father's. England was horribly in debt and rich Spain knew that
> > James only wanted the Infanta's dowry and would go through it
> > in a nonce.
> >
> > The Catholic Marriage was a loss cause [sic]
>
> A lost cause? Or a loss because..?
A lost cause. Some mouse gesture is sending my posts before
I can edit them. With time, and perhaps therapy, you will someday
come to terms with it.
> > before the negotiations
> > even started and the First Folio is irrelevant to the Spanish
> > Marriage n any event.
>
> > > Weir is ignorant of too much basic history to be taken seriously.
>
> Even PWDBard gets something right once in a great while!
> > I have the equivalent of a minor in history (in an interdisciplinary
> > program). That doesn't mean much
>
> Indeed!
Predictable.
> > but I do feel qualified to post
> > in HLAS.
>
> Any fool can post in h.l.a.s., and experience shows that many fools
> do -- even anti-Einsteinian relativity cranks post all manner of
> crackpot nonsense here.
Einsteinianism is just another orthodoxy you've collected, Webb.
Stratfordianism, no doubt Marxism, Ripsianism--I guess that's
ultra-orthodoxy--Einsteinianism. You'd have a massive anxiety
attack if you had to leave the commune. And (I'm laughing, I
can't help it) you come into HLAS to ENFORCE ORTHODOXY.
> > > The Oxford/Derby duo is the truth behind the Shakespeare pen name as
> > > many
> > > suspected in the 1920s.
>
> > No textbooks for us, we got only primary documents, consequently
> > I see that Oxfordianism is incomplete because Looney did not
> > access Oxford's primary documents. Baconians, on the other hand
> > and despite the loss and scattering of BAcon's papers (I just learned
> > that the Folger is sitting on a huge collection of Bacon's annotated
> > books and manuscript notebooks and has been very quiet about it
> > for the last eighty years--nothing has ever been catalogued)
>
> Where did Elizabeth "learn" this choice bit of gossip?
In an article on the dispersal of a Baconian biographer's estate. He
wrote between 1900 and 1920 and collected many Shakespeare quartos
when they were still very cheap. I suppose the Shakespeare quartos are
on display but the short article--probably from Baconiana--definitely stated that
Bacon's other papers were being kept uncatalogued in the basement.
> > the
> > Baconians have 15 volumes of Bacon's letters and papers in
> > Spedding's monumental work. Oxfordians have nothing even slightly
> > comparable to Spedding and of course the Strats have a small
> > fist full of documents that have absolutely no bearing on the
> > Shakespeare works.
Oh. I see you didn't stop to dispute this statement.
> > > Proving it is the truth is difficult but now possible
> > > with the evidence in my hand...which of course is a factor in my contempt
> > > for
> > > the Baconian theory which has had many other shortcomings.
>
> > Bacon has the Strachey letter.
>
> Elizabeth just keeps the comedy coming faster than one recover from
> helpless laughter!
What were the odds that the best evidence of Shakespeare authorship
would land on Sir Francis Bacon's desk, Webb? The odds are
4,000,000 to 1.
> > > It clearly was on
> > > the wane in the years just before...yes before World War I. Weir is living
> > > in
> > > the Edwardian era which is about the last time the Baconian theory had any
> > > significant or enthusiastic following.
>
> > The truth has an inverse relation to popularity.
>
> Really?! The idea that the earth is roughly spherical is far more
> popular than the notion that it is flat -- does the inverse relationship
> of Elizabeth's pronouncement mean that the flat earth scenario is closer
> to the truth?
Do you think that the Oxfordian theory is 'more true' than the
Baconian theory? The Oxfordians outnumber the Baconians
by probably a thousand to one. That may be too conservative.
>
> > Do you actually
> > believe that Strats--who have had hundreds of millions if not billions
> > of 'believers'--have the right author? There are more Oxfordians
> > than Baconians because Baconian theory requires a lot of time
> > to comprehend.
>
> True -- some of the theory's exponents (Delia Bacon comes to mind,
> although Elizabeth Weir herself is a strong honorable mention)
Delia Bacon was not a Baconian. She, like Art, was a 'syndicalist.'
> are such
> inept writers of English prose that a reader can waste truly colossal
> amounts of time trying to figure out what, if anything, the Baconians
> are trying haplessly and incoherently to say.
Strats have yet to produce scholars on the level of some of the
Baconians. Orthodoxy really doesn't attract the brilliant.
> > Its [sic] difficult in the same sense that Renaissance
> > philosophy is difficult or the Shakespeare works are difficult or
> > the scope of Bacon's polymath genius is more than one biographer
> > --even Spedding--can convey.
>
> > > I suppose now with the Stratford man
> > > finally exposed for what he was...a cradle-to-grave secret Roman
> > > Catholic...
>
> > I've done some original thinking on this
>
> Elizabeth's "thinking" is generally nothing if not original!
I'll accept that and note that you've produced nothing original at
all except for your abusive repartee with Art.
> > and while I don't
> > expect to get credit for the insight that John Shakespeare
> > held his sons out of the Anglican schools to thwart the
> > Anglican authorities
>
> Elizabeth certainly won't get any credit for that insight if she
> merely asserts it without furnishing any evidence.
When have you ever come up with an original insight? You're
here to protect the intellectual status quo at all cost. You're boring,
Webb.
> > as the Irish did in Ireland, I think that's
> > a very plausible theory.
>
> The fact that Elizabeth regards it as plausible is the kiss of death
> for virtually any theory.
Even your venom is boring.
Christine Cooper
>
> In article <efbc3534.03122...@posting.google.com>,
> elizabe...@mail.com (Elizabeth Weir) wrote:
>
> > pwd...@aol.com (PWDBard) wrote in message
> > news:<20031226224931...@mb-m07.aol.com>...
>
<snip>
> > > Weir is ignorant of too much basic history to be taken seriously.
>
> Even PWDBard gets something right once in a great while!
>
> > I have the equivalent of a minor in history (in an interdisciplinary
> > program). That doesn't mean much
>
> Indeed!
>
> > but I do feel qualified to post
> > in HLAS.
>
> Any fool can post in h.l.a.s., and experience shows that many fools
> do -- even anti-Einsteinian relativity cranks post all manner of
> crackpot nonsense here.
>
What? Oh, that would be me, right?
http://frontwheeldrive.com/joao_magueijo.html
We anti-Einsteinian relativity cranks must stick together, but I was
unaware that there were others HERE. (which ones?) I didn't think
Einstein had a dog in this fight, but I suppose it's as good an
example as any, when it comes to the concept of new evidence
overthrowing established doctrine. :-)
Calling somebody a Fool while arguing over the Bard is so ironic....
Christine
++++++++++++++++++
David L. Webb
elizabe...@mail.com (Elizabeth Weir) wrote:
> "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote in message
> news:<david.l.webb-9C50...@merrimack.dartmouth.edu>...
>
> There is no mouse gesture for 'send post' but a mouse gesture
> sent the post anyway.
Why is Elizabeth dragging Lynne into this?
> > > The Stuarts, with all their rumors of illegitimacy and regicide and
> > > kidnapping and rape and James' father Darnley lying strangled in the
> > > garden--Bothwell's murder trial was a complete farce--the whole
> > > chaotic, scandalous mess of the Stuart line--were SIMPLY NOT GOOD
> > > ENOUGH FOR THE HAPSBURGS. The Spanish Marriage was never going
> > > to happen even before it started. The question of succession was
> > > overwhelming because Elizabeth was a heretic and a heretic had
> > > named James I king (if she even did). James I was not a legitimate
> > > heir because Bothwell was his father and everybody knew it--they
> > > looked like twins--and there was no way that the scruffy Stuarts were
> > > going to snag a Hapsburg princess. The Hapsburg line was at least 800
> > > years while the Stuarts were nouveau royalty from a line only a few
> > > generations old.
> > > And what was Denmark's royalty? And worse of all, James was the
> > > prettiest one in the family. Anne looked 'like a man' according to
> > > accounts and Charles had a personality as disagreeable as his
> > > father's. England was horribly in debt and rich Spain knew that
> > > James only wanted the Infanta's dowry and would go through it
> > > in a nonce.
> > >
> > > The Catholic Marriage was a loss cause [sic]
> > A lost cause? Or a loss because..?
> A lost cause. Some mouse gesture is sending my posts before
> I can edit them.
What?! Elizabeth actually *edits* her posts?!
[...]
> > > > Weir is ignorant of too much basic history to be taken seriously.
> > Even PWDBard gets something right once in a great while!
> > > I have the equivalent of a minor in history (in an interdisciplinary
> > > program). That doesn't mean much
> > Indeed!
> Predictable.
> > > but I do feel qualified to post
> > > in HLAS.
> > Any fool can post in h.l.a.s., and experience shows that many fools
> > do -- even anti-Einsteinian relativity cranks post all manner of
> > crackpot nonsense here.
> Einsteinianism is just another orthodoxy you've collected, Webb.
> Stratfordianism, no doubt Marxism,
I have explained numerous times my reference to Groucho, not Karl,
Marx, although I had thought that the context would have made it
obvious. However, Elizabeth, despite my repeated clarifications, is not
only unfamiliar with Groucho Marx's celebrated remark but is actually
incapable of distinguishing Groucho Marx from Karl Marx! This lapse is
indicative of a cognitive deficit even more conspicuous than the one
that occasioned Art's cretinous confusion of the two Peter Gays!
> Ripsianism--I guess that's
> ultra-orthodoxy--
There is nothing particularly Orthodox about Rips's forays into
Biblical "codes," and many Orthodox Jews have objected publicly. But
since you have not even read Rips and have no idea what he said, how
could you know this?
> Einsteinianism. You'd have a massive anxiety
> attack if you had to leave the commune. And (I'm laughing, I
> can't help it) you come into HLAS to ENFORCE ORTHODOXY.
No, I read h.l.a.s. because because I like some of the participants,
because I occasionally learn somthing interesting from the more
knowledgeable of these, and because I enjoy the wit of others. However,
most of all I read h.l.a.s. because it affords copious amusement.
> > > > The Oxford/Derby duo is the truth behind the Shakespeare pen name
> > > > as
> > > > many
> > > > suspected in the 1920s.
> > > No textbooks for us, we got only primary documents, consequently
> > > I see that Oxfordianism is incomplete because Looney did not
> > > access Oxford's primary documents.
Looney is not the last word on the Oxfordian "theory," and others
have utilized primary documents -- although since Elizabeth does not
read sources anyway, one would not expect her to know this. Elizabeth's
outdated notion of Oxfordianism remains Victorian. (However, one cannot
complain too much, since her notion of logic remains paleolithic.)
> > > Baconians, on the other hand
> > > and despite the loss and scattering of BAcon's papers (I just learned
> > > that the Folger is sitting on a huge collection of Bacon's annotated
> > > books and manuscript notebooks and has been very quiet about it
> > > for the last eighty years--nothing has ever been catalogued)
> > Where did Elizabeth "learn" this choice bit of gossip?
> In an article
WHAT "article"? Can Elizabeth furnish a credible source for once?
Or is this the perishable internet, and must one lament Wayback's
continuing lack of a search feature?
> on the dispersal of a Baconian biographer's estate. He
Who? Source?
> wrote between 1900 and 1920 and collected many Shakespeare quartos
> when they were still very cheap. I suppose the Shakespeare quartos are
> on display but the short article--probably from Baconiana
"Probably from Baconiana"?! Now that's what I call a precise
citation! (The fact that Elizabeth evidently regards a citation from
such a source as authoritative is in itself uproariously funny!)
> --definitely stated
> that
> Bacon's other papers were being kept uncatalogued in the basement.
Of course, the source of this chestnut is nowhere identified. That
may well be fortunate, as we have already seen on numerous occasions how
farcically Elizabeth misreads the very few sources that she actually
does cite -- J.-P. Hsu, Akrigg, Dave Kathman's online essay on dating
_The Tempest_, Poincaré, etc., etc.
> > > the
> > > Baconians have 15 volumes of Bacon's letters and papers in
> > > Spedding's monumental work. Oxfordians have nothing even slightly
> > > comparable to Spedding and of course the Strats have a small
> > > fist full of documents that have absolutely no bearing on the
> > > Shakespeare works.
> Oh. I see you didn't stop to dispute this statement.
Even if absolutely everything Elizabeth had ever written was complete
crap -- which incidentally is a very close approximation to the actual
state of affairs -- that circumstance would not obligate Elizabeth's
interlocutors to dispute her every statement, no matter how ridiculous
those statements might be.
> > > > Proving it is the truth is difficult but now possible
> > > > with the evidence in my hand...which of course is a factor in my
> > > > contempt
> > > > for
> > > > the Baconian theory which has had many other shortcomings.
> > > Bacon has the Strachey letter.
> > Elizabeth just keeps the comedy coming faster than one recover from
> > helpless laughter!
> What were the odds that the best evidence of Shakespeare authorship
As has been pointed out to Elizabeth numerous times by several
people, the Strachey letter is *not* "the best evidence of Shakespeare
authorship," for the simple reason that it does not limit the field very
much -- indeed, it is not known how many people had access to the
letter's content, nor who those people were. The letter is pertinent
only as a minor sideshow, in that it pretty conclusively eliminates
Oxford on chronological grounds (not that there was any credible reason
to suspect that Oxford had anything to do with it in the first place);
indeed, the entire authorship "question" is a minor sideshow anyway.
> would land on Sir Francis Bacon's desk, Webb? The odds are
> 4,000,000 to 1.
One wonders how Elizabeth arrives at this figure!
> > > > It clearly was on
> > > > the wane in the years just before...yes before World War I. Weir is
> > > > living
> > > > in
> > > > the Edwardian era which is about the last time the Baconian theory had
> > > > any
> > > > significant or enthusiastic following.
> > > The truth has an inverse relation to popularity.
> > Really?! The idea that the earth is roughly spherical is far more
> > popular than the notion that it is flat -- does the inverse relationship
> > of Elizabeth's pronouncement mean that the flat earth scenario is closer
> > to the truth?
> Do you think that the Oxfordian theory is 'more true' than the
> Baconian theory?
No. There is no credible evidence known to me that supports *either*
of the theories. Of the partisans of the two, the Baconians have given
perhaps the more demented lunatic "arguments" for their candidate's
authorship (chiefly crackpot cryptography and the like), but some of the
nuttier lunatic fringe Oxfordians have recently furnished the Baconians
with some stiff competition in their ongoing Dementia Derby.
> The Oxfordians outnumber the Baconians
> by probably a thousand to one. That may be too conservative.
That's probably because a few of the more rational Oxfordians accept
the arguments by which the Baconian nutcases of yesteryear were refuted
long ago.
> > > Do you actually
> > > believe that Strats--who have had hundreds of millions if not billions
> > > of 'believers'--have the right author? There are more Oxfordians
> > > than Baconians because Baconian theory requires a lot of time
> > > to comprehend.
> > True -- some of the theory's exponents (Delia Bacon comes to mind,
> > although Elizabeth Weir herself is a strong honorable mention)
> Delia Bacon was not a Baconian. She, like Art, was a 'syndicalist.'
However, unlike Art, she accorded Bacon a pivotal role.
> > are such
> > inept writers of English prose that a reader can waste truly colossal
> > amounts of time trying to figure out what, if anything, the Baconians
> > are trying haplessly and incoherently to say.
This seems as good a place as any to inject a jocular, Elizabeth
Weird-style "argument":
"Oh. I see you didn't stop to dispute this statement."
> Strats have yet to produce scholars on the level of some of the
> Baconians. Orthodoxy really doesn't attract the brilliant.
Whom does Elizabeth have in mind?
> > > Its [sic] difficult in the same sense that Renaissance
> > > philosophy is difficult or the Shakespeare works are difficult or
> > > the scope of Bacon's polymath genius is more than one biographer
> > > --even Spedding--can convey.
> > > > I suppose now with the Stratford man
> > > > finally exposed for what he was...a cradle-to-grave secret Roman
> > > > Catholic...
> > > I've done some original thinking on this
> > Elizabeth's "thinking" is generally nothing if not original!
> I'll accept that and note that you've produced nothing original at
> all except for your abusive repartee with Art.
In areas about which I know next to nothing, I prefer being correct
to being an original lunatic. However, if it is originality that you
seek, then perhaps I will repost a parody that I devised a while back --
although even in that instance I can claim only scant originality, as
anti-Stratfordians' words themselves are generally *far* funnier than
anything I could ever invent.
> > > and while I don't
> > > expect to get credit for the insight that John Shakespeare
> > > held his sons out of the Anglican schools to thwart the
> > > Anglican authorities
> > Elizabeth certainly won't get any credit for that insight if she
> > merely asserts it without furnishing any evidence.
> When have you ever come up with an original insight?
See above.
> You're
> here to protect the intellectual status quo at all cost.
No, I'm here to enjoy the unintentional amusement furnished by people
who claim that Old English was spoken as late as the nineteenth century
and other choice bits of ignorant, farcical invention.
> You're boring,
> Webb.
I don't contest the point. I lack the gift for inadvertent farce
that insures that persons like Mr. Streitz, Okay Fine, Mr. Paraleresis,
"Dr." Faker, Stephanie Caruana, and above all Elizabeth Weird are NEVER
boring!
> > > as the Irish did in Ireland, I think that's
> > > a very plausible theory.
> > The fact that Elizabeth regards it as plausible is the kiss of death
> > for virtually any theory.
> Even your venom is boring.
Evidently one must add "venom" to the long list of words whose
meanings Elizabeth really should look up.
David L. Webb
elizabe...@mail.com (Elizabeth Weir) wrote:
> "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote in message
> news:<david.l.webb-9C50...@merrimack.dartmouth.edu>...
> > Time for another amusing installment of Dueling Delusions:
> Only an victim of orthodoxy like yourself would assume that
> a request for FACTS is delusional.
> > In article <efbc3534.03122...@posting.google.com>,
> > elizabe...@mail.com (Elizabeth Weir) wrote:
> >
> > > pwd...@aol.com (PWDBard) wrote in message
> > > news:<20031226224931...@mb-m07.aol.com>...
> > > > Weir's response to my illumination
> >
> > > What 'illumination?' We've seen that post numerous times and
> > > you have yet to show how it is
> > >
> > > EVIDENCE
> > >
> > > that Bacon did not write the Shakespeare works.
> > >
> > > Why don't you just list the reasons why the 'groveling'
> > > (show me a letter to an earl that isn't 'groveling)
> > With pleasure. See the letter (quoted in Ogburn, as I recall) to the
> > Earl of Oxford from the lowly Thomas Vavasor. Whatever the letter may
> > be, it is certainly not "groveling."
> Most 'if I ever get my hands on you I will kill you' letters
> supercede rank.
You asked me to show you a letter to an Earl that was not not
"groveling," and I did so. What more do you want?
[...]
> > > I'd appreciate more civility from you.
> > As Peter Groves would say, comment would be superfluous.
> Civility is a classical virtue. Orthodoxy is the antithesis of the
> classical which explains why I don't bother asking you to be
> civil.
If civility is a classical virtue, then why do you so consistently
and so conspicuously fail to display it? Indeed, you *far* exceed mere
incivility, progressing to serious accusations of dishonesty that cannot
be sustained, in comparison with which most h.l.a.s.-style insults are
tame and innocuous. Is that a "classical" virtue as well?
> > > > My original argument that this highly revealing conjunction of
> > > > these
> > > > men
> > > > and events
> > > What 'conjuncture? [sic]'
> That's really brilliant Webb. I use the correct form of the word
> (a critical combination of events or circumstances) and you correct
> me.
I corrected you because you put it in quotation marks. (You do know
what quotation marks are for, don't you? Well, perhaps not -- you have
fabricated bogus quotations before now.)
> > Is this supposed to be a quotation of what PWDBard wrote above?
> No,
Then why did you enclose it within quotation marks? (You do know
what quotation marks are for, don't you? Well, perhaps not -- you have
fabricated bogus quotations repeatedly before now.)
> you silly fuck.
Ah -- a further exhibition of classical virtue, I perceive.
> Conjunction means two things happening at
> the same time but conjuncture means some significant coincidence
> which is what PWD Bard clearly meant.
Yes, I know both words -- but congratulations upon having looked them
up yourself! Keep up the good work!
> I feel sorry for anyone who has to sweep HLAS every day looking
> for trivial errors so he can put [sic] after them.
That you evidently regard misquotation as "trivial" is regrettable
but not surprising; indeed, such disregard for accuracy probably
accounts for the bogus quotations that you fabricated and attributed to
Dave Kathman.
> > we have seen, accurate quotation is not Elizabeth's strong suit -- she
> > cannot even reproduce the *sense*, let alone the correct text, of her
> > purported quotations!
> And you are so brilliant that you put [sic] behind the correct form
> of the word.
No, I merely flagged a flagrant misquotation. Even PWDBard deserves
not to be misquoted.
> > > Bacon wanted back in
> > Bacon wanted BACKIN? That's a far better signature cipher than many
> > in the works of Leary, Ignatius Donnelly, and many other ciphermongering
> > Baconian nutcases.
> You're obviously in the habit of seeing things that don't exist.
No, I'm merely trying to emulate Baconian cryptographic cranks.
> > > the House of Lords.
> > > Southampton wanted a civil war between the Puritans (Parliament)
> > > and the Anglicans (Royalists) because the Catholic minority--a
> > > rapidly shirinking minority in England thanks to the mass
> > > coversions [sic] of the 'Protestant upswelling' between 1600 and 1642--
> > > would benefit from the same disestablishmentarianism that Essex
> > > represented. .
> Yes, you're perfectly capable of putting a [sic] after my typo, Webb,
> but you don't know what the fuck I'm writing about
That's often quite true -- indeed, your prose often bears so little
resemblance to competent English that it's difficult to divine what, if
any, its sense might be.
> because you
> are so disconnected that you really don't participate in any
> meaningful way in this forum.
Plainly, you have not been paying attention.
> I don't doubt that you just come into
> HLAS just to jack off.
It is always refreshing to see such a display of classical virtue.
> > > The Protestants were hard core on doctrine but as presbyterians
> > > were more than willing to co-exist with Catholics in a sectarian
> > > England.
> > > Bacon was an Anglican but worse from Southampton's point of view,
> > > a voice of mediation.
> > >
> > > Bacon had the power to sway Parliament. As Jonson pointed out,
> > > Bacon was the 'greatest in many ages,' equal to or greater than
> > > the ancient orators including Cicero and Pericles. Bacon had the
> > > power to change history. How can you compare a lightweight like
> > > Southampton to Francis Bacon? Here's a quote from a law school
> > > dean on an article I'm going to post:: 'It seems almost unreasonable
> > > that
> > > Francis Bacon not only founded the scientific method but directed the
> > > course of modern law. . . " Bacon's Merchant of Venice
> > > was not mere entertainment and the towering speeches of the
> > > Shakespeare plays were first heard in Parliament.
> > "O, that this too too solid flesh would melt..." -- in Parliament?!
> No, something by Wolsey from Henry VIII.
But you said -- and I quote -- "the towering speeches of the
Shakespeare plays were first heard in Parliament." But perhaps you
don't regard Hamlet's soliloquies as "towering speeches."
> > Well, perhaps -- maybe some of Bacon's obese Parliamentary peers could
> > commiserate.
> You're overreaching.
> > > > literary stature in private letters
> > > Southampton had no 'literary status [sic]'
> > *Another* instance of Elizabeth's exemplary accuracy in reproducing
> > quotations!
> Such prissy outrage. I'm laughing. And an exclamation mark,
> no less.
Your disregard for accuracy has been often noted, and often with
farcical results. (Your attribution of your own words to me was an
amusing case in point.)
[...]
> > > Do you know anything about James I?
> > Comment would be superfluous.
> Indicating that you know nothing about James I.
> > > He was not a 'scholar
> > > king.' He was a neurotic moron
> > Comment would be superfluous.
> Indicating that you know nothing about James I.
>
> I would like to experience something, Webb. I'd like to
> feel a little shock and thrill when you post your first fact.
I have posted many; however, you would not know a fact if it bit you
(and being a staunch advocate of classical virtue, I will omit any
mention of the bite's location).
> > > who didn't even care to rule
> > > Britain. He ran up horrendous debts to buy estates for the
> > > members of his homosexual coteries. Southampton was showered
> > > with favors--James paid off his huge debts, gave Southampton
> > > an enormous lump of cash--something like 75 k iirc, and
> > > purchased back all Southampton's estates. Philip Herbert, Earl of
> > > Montgomery got enormous gifts of cash from James until Herbert
> > > was badly scarred by small pox and then the cash was cut off.
> > > All of this mindless extravagance was paid for by the English people.
> > > Bacon's troubles started when he opened a session of Parliament
> > > with an oration against monopolies. James I's favorites were
> > > living riotously on the monopolies while the English paid high
> > > prices for everything.
> > >
> > > By 1620 the English people, who were so thrilled to have the
> > > succession crisis resolved by his accession, loathed and
> > > despised the king. James I was the most unpopular monarch
> > > in British history.
> > Source? Evidently Elizabeth has never heard of King John.
> British history.
Now *there's* a precise citation for you!
> I'm sure that there were many uncouth
> kings like James I before James I.
Then why did you opine that "James I was the most unpopular monarch
in British history"?
> He did know Latin but he
> couldn't think in any language.
That's nothing -- I know of someone who *doesn't* know Latin and yet
cannot think in any language. (Indeed, she even thinks that "Verulam"
means "state of truth" in Latin!)
[...]
Elizabeth Weir
> "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote in message news:<david.l.webb-9C50...@merrimack.dartmouth.edu>...
> > Any fool can post in h.l.a.s., and experience shows that many fools
> > do -- even anti-Einsteinian relativity cranks post all manner of
> > crackpot nonsense here.
> We anti-Einsteinian relativity cranks must stick together, but I was
> unaware that there were others HERE. (which ones?)
In Webb's next post you'll be informed that you're under the
influence of Aryan supremacists and you'll get the lecture on
Nietzsche, Wagner and the skinheads in Idaho, sample below.
Best,
Elizabeth
Re: CONCEALED POET: The Precious Gem of Concealed
Literature ... One wonders where Elizabeth imbibes such claptrap.
There are indeed a few lunatics, mostly Aryan-supremacists who know
as much physics as Elizabeth does ...
humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare - Aug 10, 2002 by David L. Webb -
View Thread (18 articles)
_________________________________________________
Re: CONCEALED POET: The Precious Gem of Concealed
Literature ... There are indeed a few lunatics, mostly
Aryan-supremacists who know as much physics as Elizabeth does (that is
to say, none), who strive to belittle Einstein ...
humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare - Aug 9, 2002 by David L. Webb -
View Thread (18 articles)
_________________________________________________
Re: WEBBLOG: ... and credulous as Elizabeth could
presumably read and think well enough to see through the ignorant and
illiterate rants of Aryan-supremacist relativity-deniers ...
humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare - Aug 19, 2003 by David L. Webb -
View Thread (6 articles)
_________________________________________________
Re: Daughter Judith: Stratford Man & Catholicism ... other
delusions). As a counterexample, he could consider Richard Butler's
former Aryan Nations compound in Hayden Lake, Idaho. When ...
humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare - Sep 17, 2003 by David L. Webb -
View Thread (2 articles)
_________________________________________________
Re: Elizabeth Weir vs. Oxford ... Weir) wrote: [Much of
Elizabeth Weird's delusional diatribe snipped] I'm not a skinhead and
I am not "under the influence of Aryan Supremacists" because I ...
humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare - Mar 2, 2003 by David L. Webb -
View Thread (72 articles)
_________________________________________________
Christine Cooper
> kemahw...@yahoo.com (Christine Cooper) wrote in message news:<45b7371d.04010...@posting.google.com>...
> > "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote in message news:<david.l.webb-9C50...@merrimack.dartmouth.edu>...
> [...]
> > > Any fool can post in h.l.a.s., and experience shows that many fools
> > > do -- even anti-Einsteinian relativity cranks post all manner of
> > > crackpot nonsense here.
> [...]
> > We anti-Einsteinian relativity cranks must stick together, but I was
> > unaware that there were others HERE. (which ones?)
>
> In Webb's next post you'll be informed that you're under the
> influence of Aryan supremacists and you'll get the lecture on
> Nietzsche, Wagner and the skinheads in Idaho, sample below.
>
> Best,
>
> Elizabeth
>
Way Cool:
My understanding is that Joao Magueijo is Portugese, but perhaps his
PhD from Cambridge, St. John's fellowship, Royal Society Research
Fellowship, and tenure at Imperial College has altered his outlook.
However, his descriptions of the "discussions" between peers makes
these posts look like love letters, so I have cause to doubt. Thanks
for the warning. Can't wait to see Herr Webb's response.
Do they have skinheads in Idaho? Or is Senor Webb referring to the
Pawnee?
:-)
Christine
Whittbrantley
>you don't know what the fuck I'm writing about
I love the way Elizabeth uses the "F" word.
How long HAS it been Elizabeth?
Not long enough...obviously.
David L. Webb
kemahw...@yahoo.com (Christine Cooper) wrote:
> elizabe...@mail.com (Elizabeth Weir) wrote in message
> news:<efbc3534.04010...@posting.google.com>...
> > kemahw...@yahoo.com (Christine Cooper) wrote in message
> > news:<45b7371d.04010...@posting.google.com>...
> > > "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote in message
> > > news:<david.l.webb-9C50...@merrimack.dartmouth.edu>...
> > [...]
> > > > Any fool can post in h.l.a.s., and experience shows that many fools
> > > > do -- even anti-Einsteinian relativity cranks post all manner of
> > > > crackpot nonsense here.
> > [...]
> > > We anti-Einsteinian relativity cranks must stick together, but I was
> > > unaware that there were others HERE. (which ones?)
> > In Webb's next post you'll be informed that you're under the
> > influence of Aryan supremacists and you'll get the lecture on
> > Nietzsche, Wagner and the skinheads in Idaho, sample below.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Elizabeth
> Way Cool:
You are a relative newcomer so perhaps you have not observed the
phenomenon, but Elizabeth routinely distorts and misrepresents the words
of others, and her post above is no exception. Indeed, as we shall
below, Elizabeth is not even capable of using Google competently.
> My understanding is that Joao Magueijo is Portugese, but perhaps his
> PhD from Cambridge, St. John's fellowship, Royal Society Research
> Fellowship, and tenure at Imperial College has altered his outlook.
> However, his descriptions of the "discussions" between peers makes
> these posts look like love letters, so I have cause to doubt. Thanks
> for the warning. Can't wait to see Herr Webb's response.
I will discuss the work of João Magueijo further in another post. As
far as Elizabeth is concerned, this is a fruitless undertaking, as she
is both ignorant and mathematically and scientifically illiterate;
however, perhaps you know more about those subjects than she does
(indeed, it would be virtually impossible to know less), so I will take
the time to explain at greater length.
First, however, let's take the posts that Elizabeth attempted
haplessly to quote.
[...]
> > Re: Daughter Judith: Stratford Man & Catholicism ... other
> > delusions). As a counterexample, he could consider Richard Butler's
> > former Aryan Nations compound in Hayden Lake, Idaho. When ...
> > humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare - Sep 17, 2003 by David L. Webb -
> > View Thread (2 articles)
This one is truly bizarre, as Elizabeth is *not even mentioned at all
in the entire post*, let alone called a Nazi. You can find the post at
<http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=david.l.webb-4E1B51.12222817092003%
40merrimack.dartmouth.edu&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain>
-- note that Elizabeth does not post URLs of what she dredges up from
Google.
Here is the pertinent extract:
-------------------------------
In article <20030917103353...@mb-m28.aol.com>,
pwd...@aol.com (PWDBard) wrote:
> Unlike the brilliant but ultimately flawed Michael Wood, orthodox
> Shakespeare scholars such as Wells and Duncan-Jones hostile to the Catholic
> Bard movement ignore powerful evidence pointing to a hard core Catholic
> Stratford man...which is more than just one piece of historical
> evidence...such
> as the late purchase in 1613 of the notorious Blackfrair's Gatehouse...
PWDBard's bizarre belief that an inanimate piece of real estate
forever retains the character of its past possessors -- so that, for
example, the "notorious Blackfrair's [sic] Gatehouse" is always
inherently Catholic -- is curious indeed (although admittedly no more
so than many of his other delusions). As a counterexample, he could
consider Richard Butler's former Aryan Nations compound in Hayden
Lake, Idaho. When in Butler's possession just a few years ago, the
property was a gathering place for neo-Nazis and other racist hate
groups, complete with a guard tower and barracks, armed guards, a
sprawling commissary with a huge swastika painted on the roof, an
on-site church that glorified Hitler, etc. Now in the possession of
new owners, the property has been converted into a peace park
promoting tolerance and human rights.
---------------------------------
So much for Elizbeth's bizarre notion that this post has *anything
whatever* to do with her, let alone that she was called a Nazi therein.
> > Re: Elizabeth Weir vs. Oxford ... Weir) wrote: [Much of
> > Elizabeth Weird's delusional diatribe snipped] I'm not a skinhead and
> > I am not "under the influence of Aryan Supremacists" because I ...
> > humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare - Mar 2, 2003 by David L. Webb -
> > View Thread (72 articles)
This one is, if possible, even more bizarre, because those are her
*own words* that Elizabeth has quoted above! I merely quoted them in my
post. See the post for yourself at
<http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=david.l.webb-C4BE3E.13473002032003%
40merrimack.dartmouth.edu&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain>.
The supposed quotation "under the influence of Aryan Supremacists" that
appears in her remarks is wholly fabricated by Elizabeth -- I did not
write it, as you can readily check for yourself by pasting the quotation
into the "exact phrase" box of the Google Groups search page
<http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search>;
as you will see, there are nine hits; of those, a plurality (four) are
authored by Elizabeth herself, while all the others merely quote posts
of Elizabeth in which the phrase is used. Elizabeth herself is the
source of the "quotation" -- but we have seen before, on many occasions,
that Elizabeth fabricates quotations at will. Perhaps the most amusing
instances are the posts in which she fabricates quotations concerning
Richard Field, ostensibly from Dave Kathman's essay on dating _The
Tempest_, an online essay in which Richard Field is *not even mentioned
anywhere*!
Of course, opining that Elizabeth was under the influence of Aryan
supremacists would be far short of calling her a Nazi, but I have not
even asserted the former, let alone the latter.
As for skinheads in Idaho, you can verify for yourself by means of
the aforementioned Google Groups search engine that there is not a
*SINGLE POST* to this newsgroup authored by *anyone* that contains both
the words "skinheads" and "Idaho," other than the post of Elizabeth
herself which you imprudently designated as "way cool."
> > Re: CONCEALED POET: The Precious Gem of Concealed
> > Literature ... One wonders where Elizabeth imbibes such claptrap.
> > There are indeed a few lunatics, mostly Aryan-supremacists who know
> > as much physics as Elizabeth does ...
> > humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare - Aug 10, 2002 by David L. Webb -
> > View Thread (18 articles)
See the August 9 post (from which this is merely quoted) in its
entirety at
<http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=090820021450376480%25David.L.Webb%4
0Dartmouth.edu&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain>
Elizabeth had just opined that
"Like Einstein, Leibnitz published when he was still young, then went
on to to [sic] nothing much for the rest of his life."
This is farcically false, and I wrote in response:
"One wonders where Elizabeth imbibes such claptrap. There are
indeed a few lunatics, mostly Aryan-supremacists who know as much
physics as Elizabeth does (that is to say, none), who strive to
belittle Einstein in illiterate prose in vanity-published tracts
and on the web, but their farcical misunderstandings of basic
mathematics and physics and their preposterous allegations are
so easily refuted by any sane person who can read English and
has access to a decent public library that one would think that
even someone as ignorant and as comically credulous as Elizabeth
Weir would immediately identify them as the ignorant, often
racist nonentities that they are.
[Note that I articulated quite explicitly the expectation that *even*
someone as ignorant and as comically credulous as Elizabeth would *NOT*
be duped by such nonsense, so one *still* wonders where on earth
Elizabeth imbibes such claptrap. I did *not* opine that Elizabeth was
under the influence of Aryan supremacists, of Nietzsche, of Wagner or of
skinheads in Idaho, the latter three of whom are utterly irrelevant to
Elizabeth's misconceptions concerning relativity, and are dragged by her
into this dicussion for reasons that are far from clear.]
"Another possibility is that Elizabeth merely invents (or
hallucinates) such nonsense out of thin air.
"In fact, Einstein's productive scientific career spanned decades
and, unlike Newton's, occupied virtually his entire adult life.
While it is true that Einstein, like a great many other scientific
giants, published several extraordinary, landmark papers in different
fields near the beginning of his career and did not match this
dazzling *rate* of groundbreaking work throughout his career, he
continued to publish research papers in the best physics and
mathematics journals throughout his life. In fact, one Einstein
bibliography lists over 300 papers under the "Scientific writings"
classification; these papers span the period 1901-1949, almost a
half century. During his later years, after the development of
General Relativity, Einstein's time was in great demand and short
supply, and he was in heavy demand as an expositor and reviewer,
so expository and review articles occupied a larger fraction of
his published output. However, high quality research articles in
the best journals *still* appeared nearly until Einstein's death.
In view of Einstein's later quest for a unified field theory (in
which he was unsuccessful), these later research publications are
often rather peripheral to the main problems occupying his mind,
so it is truly remarkable that so many such later papers were of
such high quality. For example, in each of the years 1943-1946,
Einstein published at least one paper in _Annals of mathematics_,
one of a small handful of journals enjoying the highest prestige
in the profession. As another example, the famous paper in which
the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen experiment first appeared was published
in _Physical Review_ in 1935, over three decades after Einstein's
ground-breaking work on Special Relativity, the photoelectric effect,
the theory of radiation, Brownian motion, etc.
"Of course, one has long since given up any faint hope that Elizabeth
Weir can actually read any of Einstein's papers, even the ones in
English, which is a tragic loss for her; however, one would think that
she could at least manage to use a bibliography to remediate her
ignorance concerning factual matters."
As we have seen, Elizabeth's profound ignorance of factual matters
continues unabated; recently she declared that Old English was still
spoken in some shires as late as the nineteenth century! She also
declared that the geometry of Minkowski space was hyperbolic. (In fact,
the geometry of Minkowski space is that of a flat (zero curvature)
nondegenerate but *indefinite* metric tensor, while hyperbolic geometry
is that of a *nonflat* *positive-definite* metric tensor of constant
curvature -1.)
> > Re: CONCEALED POET: The Precious Gem of Concealed
> > Literature ... There are indeed a few lunatics, mostly
> > Aryan-supremacists who know as much physics as Elizabeth does (that is
> > to say, none), who strive to belittle Einstein ...
> > humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare - Aug 9, 2002 by David L. Webb -
> > View Thread (18 articles)
This is *precisely* the same text that Elizabeth quoted above, and
only her incompetence in the use of a search engine seems capable of
explaining her repetition of it.
> > _________________________________________________
> >
> > Re: WEBBLOG: ... and credulous as Elizabeth could
> > presumably read and think well enough to see through the ignorant and
> > illiterate rants of Aryan-supremacist relativity-deniers ...
> > humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare - Aug 19, 2003 by David L. Webb -
> > View Thread (6 articles)
Again, see the entire post at
<http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=david.l.webb-F23EB0.11362619082003%
40merrimack.dartmouth.edu&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain>.
I merely reiterated therein that I had *not* called Elizabeth a Nazi, as
she had evidently misread or hallucinated:
"However, while we're on the subject of Elizabeth Weird quotations,
perhaps the most incomprehensible aspect of this while thread is
Elizabeth's tiresome repetition of the absurd allegation that I
called her a Nazi. As I already noted in this thread, I opined
that even someone as uninformed and credulous as Elizabeth could
presumably read and think well enough to see through the ignorant
and illiterate rants of Aryan-supremacist relativity-deniers (of
course, I no longer harbor any such illusions -- Elizabeth has
pretty conclusively demonstrated functional illiteracy so complete
that I doubt that she could comprehend even the first paragraph of
such tracts). However, here are two quotations from Elizabeth
herself, addressed to me:
'You're in here to play HLAS Nazi....'
'Back in your didactic nazi school marm mode.'
Remarkable."
By now it should be perfectly clear who is calling whom a Nazi (clear to
everyone except Elizabeth, of course).
Finally, although this is getting exceedingly tiresome, there remains
the matter of Nietzsche and Wagner. Again, the post in question has
nothing whatever to do with Elizabeth, other than to correct yet another
of her bizarre misconceptions (that the paper's the philosopher's sister
released were reliable). That post is at
<http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=030820021151021637%25David.L.Webb%4
0Dartmouth.edu&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain>; I reproduce it below:
-----------------------------------------
From: "David L. Webb" <David....@Dartmouth.edu>
Newsgroups: humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare
Subject: Re: CONCEALED POET: Prodigious Wit Known By Another Name
Date: Sat, 03 Aug 2002 11:51:02 -0700
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA
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In article <efbc3534.02073...@posting.google.com>,
elizabe...@mail.com (Elizabeth Weir) wrote:
> rpari...@yahoo.com (Roger Nyle Parisious) wrote in message
> news:<a3cc4070.0207...@posting.google.com>...
> > elizabe...@mail.com (Elizabeth Weir) wrote in message
> > news:<efbc3534.0207...@posting.google.com>...
> > > rpari...@yahoo.com (Roger Nyle Parisious) wrote in message
> > > news:<a3cc4070.02072...@posting.google.com>...
> > > > david...@tesco.net (Rita) wrote in message
> > > > news:<129f8f2d.0207...@posting.google.com>...
> > > > > "Peter Groves" <Monti...@bigpond.com> wrote in message
> > > > > news:<qxS09.46171$Hj3.1...@newsfeeds.bigpond.com>...
> > > > > > Elizabeth Weir <elizabe...@mail.com> wrote in message
> > > > > > news:efbc3534.02072...@posting.google.com...
[...]
> > > In 1999 a Baconian barrister, Nigel Cockburn, compiled a fairly
> > > massive
> > > summation of the Baconian evidence. Cockburn covered Sir Sidney Lee's
> > > Southwell arguments. I could probably get the Southwell section
> > > e-mailed
> > > to me from a Baconian if you have no luck.
> > >
> > > I think there were at least three "erudite Baconians"
That many?!
> > > including one
> > > very brilliant Baconian from Austria. Nietzsche was a Baconian for
> > > that matter.
Nietzsche was also completely insane for the last decade of his
life, but that fate seems to be an occupational hazard for Baconians.
> > > His sister released his Baconian papers after his death.
His sister Elisabeth was also responsible for a number of gross
distortions and outright forgeries of Nietzsche's writings, chiefly in
an attempt to remake her brother into an Aryan-supremacist simulacrum
of herself and her late husband Bernhard Förster, a crude, anti-Semitic
propagandist and blowhard who had tried unsuccessfully to found a
racially pure Aryan homeland in Paraguay. You can learn more about
Nietzsche's proto-Nazi sister and unscrupulous literary executor in
_Zarathustra's Sister_ by H.F. Peters, as well as in the brief but
captivating case history of Wagner by Martin van Amerongen. The
Britannica article succinctly summarizes the main points:
"An early believer in the superiority of the Teutonic races, she
[Elisabeth Nietzsche] married an anti-Semitic agitator, Bernhard
F–rster. In the 1880s they went to Paraguay and founded Nueva
Germania, a supposedly pure Aryan colony, but the enterprise
failed, and F–rster committed suicide. Amid a major financial
scandal, Elisabeth failed to make a national hero of her husband
or to salvage the colony as an island of Teutonic Christianity.
She next served as Nietzsche's guardian at Weimar after his mental
breakdown in 1889. On his death (1900) she secured the rights to
his manuscripts and renamed her family home the Nietzsche-Archiv.
Refusing public access to her brother's works, she edited them
without scruple or understanding.
"While Elisabeth gained a wide audience for her misinterpretations,
she withheld Nietzsche's self-interpretation, Ecce Homo, until
1908. Meanwhile, she collected some of his notes under the title
_Der Wille zur Macht_ („The Will to Power¾)....After her death
scholars reedited his writings and found some of Elisabeth's
versions distorted and spurious: she forged nearly 30 letters
and often rewrote passages. The discovery of her forgeries and of
the original texts had a profound influence on subsequent
interpretations of Nietzsche's philosophy."
> > I managed to skim about a hundred and fifty pages of Cockburn one
> > evening when I was last at John Michel's. This is definitely the best
> > Baconian book in a hundred years.
> At first I was critical of Cockburn in the fact that he
> didn't go outside the sphere of 19th c. Baconian theories.
> I kept seeing things he'd missed.
>
> Then I realized that Cockburn's strategy was simply to
> put to rest all the Strat objections from the 19th and
> early 20th century.
>
> Nothing could be more valuable to the Baconians.
A little training in rudimentary cryptography would do many
Baconians *far* more good. For some Baconians, modern pharmaceuticals
would be more valuable still.
> > Actually the most comprehensive
> > ever.As I have had no chance to consider it further in detail,I cannot
> > say how critical I would be become later.It certainly aims to be the
> > most comprehensive alternative authorship book,period, since Lefranc
> > wrote at mid-century and I cannot think of a serious alternative.
> I'm unfamiliar with Lefranc.
And with a great deal else. However, Lefranc is entertaining, in
the same way that the Ogburns and other authorship cranks are. At
least Lefranc writes reasonably well, so you should find his
scholarship impeccable.
> > The
> > senior Ogburns book must be set aside as an
> > unmitigated disaster(so C.W. Barrell justly described it) and Charlton
> > Ogburn Jr.'s effort, though often extremely good on the negative side,
> Looney was a not a bad scholar,
In a literal sense, that's quite true -- he wasn't a scholar at all.
> to my surprise. He had
> a nice prose style.
If you assess the quality of scholarship by the work's prose style,
then it's little wonder that you have been so comically misled. You
should read Gililov, Lefranc, and Sobran -- except in Gililov's case,
the actual scholarship in these books is pretty negligible, but since
the prose styles are reasonably graceful, you would scarcely notice.
Perhaps on the basis of these books you could be persuaded to champion
Bacon, Oxford, Rutland, and Derby *all at the same time*!
> I read Nelson's OXDOX files before I tried to read This Star of England.
"Tried to read"? Was it too much for you?
> It made the Ogburns look very silly.
True -- although the Ogburns themselves had already achieved that
end quite decisively, even without Nelson's help.
[...]
> > You have been doing very well on your last several posts but I am
> > troubled
> > by your reference to Nietzsche's Baconian papers. Are you sure this is
> > not a misconception? I have never seen any reference to them before.If
> > they exist they would be invaluable from a literary(though probably
> > not from an evidential)point of view. But you must be careful about
> > statements like this.
> I don't think this is what I saw on a different website but it's
> similar. The translation from German is a bit literal.
>
> Alfred von Weber Ebenhof writes:
>
> Nietzsche always believed that Shakespeare had endowed Caesar
> with an inexpressible something, some event or other, unknown,
> staying in the dark, or some adventure out of the poet's own
> soul and recollection.
>
> Mrs. Forster Nietzsche goes on to say,
>
> "So that it became this tragedy directly which led my brother
> to believe that the poet whom we call Shakespeare is perhaps
> indeed Lord Bacon."
>
> Von Weber Ebenhof continues,
>
> So much for Mrs. Forster Nietzsche.
>
> Friedrich Nietzsche, however, actually went much further than
> Mrs. Forster Nietzsche believes, since in his "Ecce Homo" he
> says expressly :
>
> "We are all afraid in the face of Truth; and while I recognize
> that I am instinctively certain and sure of this, that Lord Bacon
> is the creator, the self-torturer of this most gloomy sort of
> literature......" [my note: Nietzsche is referring to Hamlet].
>
> and again
>
> "Long are we without adequate knowledge of Lord Bacon, the first
> realist in every great sense of the word; what he has done, what
> he has desired, what his experiences have been....And to the devil
> with you, Messrs. critics!"
>
> <http://www.sirbacon.org/nietzsche.htm>
Once again Elizabeth Weir, in the best Neuendorfferian tradition,
resorts to one of the most farcically unreliable sources on the web.
> The line above is usually translated as:
>
> The critics can go to hell. We don't know half enough about
> Lord Bacon.
> > And do not be defensive about Baconian intellectuals. The problem
> > is that not enough of them wrote books on the subject.
> I've gone through the LOC catalogue and you're right.
Yes, it's a pity. If more Baconian intellectuals had written books,
there might be far more entertaining accounts available than the
unintelligible gibberish of Delia Bacon, the crank ciphermongering of
Ignatius Donnelly, and other monstrosities.
> > I incorporated
> > a short list of good,readable,Baconian intellectuals in some footnotes
> > to my l998 article in the Elizabethan Review. My favorite is still
> > "Bacon-Shakespeare:An Essay" by E.W.S.[Smithson] from l887. It is
> > remarkable how few factual errors this twenty-something young made
> > made compared to many of the standard academics of his generation. The
> > Bacon Society should really reprint this short monograph with the very
> > few corrections now necessary.
> I'll look for Smithson.
The prose style is unexceptionable, so you'll admire the scholarship.
David Webb
---------------------------------------
Like Elizabeth, you would do well to rely upon the sources themselves
rather than upon the grotesque distortions (or perhaps hallucinations)
of the likes of Elizabeth.
Christine Cooper
I'm perfectly certain that YOU discussing his work with ME, is
functionally equivalent to explaining such things to the proverbial
monkey we were all introduced to in Physics 101, and against which I
performed only marginally better. I spent most of my time in calculus
muttering, "I SHOULD be able to understand this stuff," but perhaps it
had something to do with the distractions provided by three children
and an absentee husband. Either way, my grasp of calculus was only
marginally sufficient to get me through one semester of international
economics. I enjoy Magueijo, Hawking, Martin Rees, Richard Preston,
Crossan, and other such persons because they place into perspective
all of the day-to-day petty squabbles that make up my law practice.
By way of comparison, what is going on here amounts to escapism,
rather like reading a good mystery novel. I merely enjoy my position
as the token "interested but uninformed lay person" to which K & R's
essay was purported to be addressed.
As
> far as Elizabeth is concerned, this is a fruitless undertaking, as she
> is both ignorant and mathematically and scientifically illiterate;
> however, perhaps you know more about those subjects than she does
> (indeed, it would be virtually impossible to know less), so I will take
> the time to explain at greater length.
>
> First, however, let's take the posts that Elizabeth attempted
> haplessly to quote.
>
> [...]
> > > Re: Daughter Judith: Stratford Man & Catholicism ... other
> > > delusions). As a counterexample, he could consider Richard Butler's
> > > former Aryan Nations compound in Hayden Lake, Idaho. When ...
> > > humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare - Sep 17, 2003 by David L. Webb -
> > > View Thread (2 articles)
>
> This one is truly bizarre, as Elizabeth is *not even mentioned at all
> in the entire post*, let alone called a Nazi. You can find the post at
>
> <http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=david.l.webb-4E1B51.12222817092003%
> 40merrimack.dartmouth.edu&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain>
None of these take me to the posts. I get error message "not found."
As for your position on Blackfriars Gatehouse, I'd have to agree that
we'd have to know more about the Mr. Robinson who occupied the
property at the time of Shakespeare's will and his relationship to
Shakespeare, to draw any inference about Shakespeare's religious
affinity or lack thereof.
Christine
> F?rster. In the 1880s they went to Paraguay and founded Nueva
> Germania, a supposedly pure Aryan colony, but the enterprise
> failed, and F?rster committed suicide. Amid a major financial
> scandal, Elisabeth failed to make a national hero of her husband
> or to salvage the colony as an island of Teutonic Christianity.
> She next served as Nietzsche's guardian at Weimar after his mental
> breakdown in 1889. On his death (1900) she secured the rights to
> his manuscripts and renamed her family home the Nietzsche-Archiv.
> Refusing public access to her brother's works, she edited them
> without scruple or understanding.
>
> "While Elisabeth gained a wide audience for her misinterpretations,
> she withheld Nietzsche's self-interpretation, Ecce Homo, until
> 1908. Meanwhile, she collected some of his notes under the title
> _Der Wille zur Macht_ (?The Will to Power¾)....After her death
Elizabeth Weir
> You are a relative newcomer
Since Christine is a relative newcomer don't you think
you'd better inform her that you harassed another woman
in HLAS--probably the reason she left--before you lit on me?
> so perhaps you have not observed the
> phenomenon, but Elizabeth routinely distorts and misrepresents the words
> of others, and her post above is no exception. Indeed, as we shall
> below, Elizabeth is not even capable of using Google competently.
You'll note, you puling little tattle tale, that I address you
directly in the first person while your thousand spamming
posts to me are nearly always this kind of puerile gossipy
going behind my back stabbing it as you pass.
> I will discuss the work of João Magueijo further in another post.
As soon as I humiliate Elizabeth, zip my fly and wash my hands
I'll be back to bore the hell out of you like I bore the hell out of
everyone else.
Exhibit A:
> F?rster. In the 1880s they went to Paraguay and founded Nueva
> Germania, a supposedly pure Aryan colony, but the enterprise
> failed, and F?rster committed suicide. Amid a major financial
> scandal, Elisabeth failed to make a national hero of her husband
> or to salvage the colony as an island of Teutonic Christianity.
> She next served as Nietzsche's guardian at Weimar after his mental
> breakdown in 1889. On his death (1900) she secured the rights to
> his manuscripts and renamed her family home the Nietzsche-Archiv.
> Refusing public access to her brother's works, she edited them
> without scruple or understanding.
>
> "While Elisabeth gained a wide audience for her misinterpretations,
> she withheld Nietzsche's self-interpretation, Ecce Homo, until
> 1908. Meanwhile, she collected some of his notes under the title
> _Der Wille zur Macht_ (?The Will to Power¾)....After her death
David L. Webb
elizabe...@mail.com (Elizabeth Weir) wrote:
> "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote in message
> news:<david.l.webb-A8F4...@merrimack.dartmouth.edu>...
>
> > You are a relative newcomer
> Since Christine is a relative newcomer don't you think
> you'd better inform her that you harassed another woman
> in HLAS--probably the reason she left--before you lit on me?
First, from the fact that you use the word "harassed" to describe
what mostly amounts to my correction of your distortions, misquotations,
delusions, and the many other infelicities that mar your posts one
infers that you must have led a *very* sheltered life. Second, if you
are referring to Stephanie Caruana, then I was very mild with her. You
must not have read some of my exchanges with Mr. Streitz, Mr. Crowley,
or "Dr." Faker if you think those whom I have "harassed" are exclusively
women -- or perhaps you believe that Mr. Streitz, "Dr." Faker, Mr.
Crowley, Okay Fine, _et al_ are all female. Third, I still maintain a
sporadic and amicable e-mail correspondence with Stephanie. You are
misinformed about every particular, but that lamentable state of affairs
is certainly nothing novel or unanticipated.
In fact, I am generally pretty cordial with posters who exhibit
accord their interlocutors the presumption of honesty and sincerity.
Regrettably, there are a very few people -- such as yourself -- who hurl
wanton accusations of intellectual dishonesty that they cannot sustain
with evidence, and for such posters I have very little regard or pity,
as they venture far beyond the pale of civilized discourse.
Fortunately, such people are relatively few, and mostly very far out on
the lunatic fringe.
> > so perhaps you have not observed the
> > phenomenon, but Elizabeth routinely distorts and misrepresents the words
> > of others, and her post above is no exception. Indeed, as we shall
> > below, Elizabeth is not even capable of using Google competently.
> You'll note, you puling little tattle tale,
"Puling little tattle tale"?! I perceive that you dislike being
caught out in misquotations, distortions, misrepresentations, etc. You
can best avoid such unpleasantness in the future by refraining from
misrepresenting the words of others (which you generally have not read
in any case) and even in some cases attributing your own words to others.
> that I address you
> directly in the first person
First, I presume you mean the second person (the first person is "I,"
while the second person is "you"), but a command of English grammar is
demonstrably not among your many charms. Second, I often address you in
the second person; indeed, I am doing so now. However, the post in
question was *not* addressed to you, but rather to Christine Cooper. I
realize that you are hopelessly incompetent at ascertaining attributions
even when posts are clearly signed or otherwise labeled, and that you
are utterly incapable of keeping track of who said what, even when
you're the one who said it, but if you'll find someone who can read the
headers to you, then perhaps you will eventually be able to figure out
to whose post I was replying.
> while your thousand spamming
> posts to me are nearly always this kind of puerile gossipy
> going behind my back
How on earth can a post in an unmoderated public forum possibly be
"behind [your] back"?! Are you suggesting that you open each post, but
then you do not read the ones not written in the second person?! What a
bizarre practice! If so, it is clear that this eccentric method is not
invariable, or you would scarcely be replying to my post addressed to
Christine.
> stabbing it as you pass.
I repeat: I was not talking to you, but rather to Christine Cooper.
> > I will discuss the work of João Magueijo further in another post.
> As soon as I humiliate Elizabeth,
Your humiliation is strictly self-inflicted, as indeed most
humiliation is. If you do not wish to have your misquotations and
distortions retrieved from Google, then kindly refrain from misquoting
people, misrepresenting what they have written, and making accusations
that cannot be sustained. Since you have repeatedly dredged up your
*own words* from the Google archive and misattributed them to me and
others, I realize that this request is rather like asking George W. Bush
to speak in coherent English sentences, but he at least presumably makes
an attempt, and so can you.
> zip my fly and wash my hands
Another exhibition of classical virtue, I presume.
> I'll be back to bore the hell out of you like I bore the hell out of
> everyone else.
Most people regard fabricated quotations and grotesque distortions
and misrepresentations -- such as your farcical misrepresentation of the
work of J.-P. Hsu, for example -- as reprehensible, and although
correcting the fallout from your slapdash disregard for accuracy is like
cleansing the Augean stables, most honest participants don't regard
setting the record straight as boring, tiresome though the process may
be. You evidently don't either, or you would scarcely bother with this
feeble rejoinder, which is in any case completely irrelevant to the
truth of what I said below, with which you do not take issue.
Indeed, I note that you do not dispute or gainsay a single word of
what follows. How could you, since I retrieved the text directly from
the archive?
Christine Cooper
> In article <efbc3534.04010...@posting.google.com>,
> elizabe...@mail.com (Elizabeth Weir) wrote:
>
> > "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote in message
> > news:<david.l.webb-A8F4...@merrimack.dartmouth.edu>...
> >
> > > You are a relative newcomer
I am somewhat other than "relative," having posted here for less than
a month.
>
> > Since Christine is a relative newcomer don't you think
> > you'd better inform her that you harassed another woman
> > in HLAS--probably the reason she left--before you lit on me?
I believe I was informed otherwhere that the harrassment
goes with the territory, and is not necessarily personal.
It appears otherwise at times.
>
> First, from the fact that you use the word "harassed" to describe
> what mostly amounts to my correction of your distortions, misquotations,
> delusions, and the many other infelicities that mar your posts one
> infers that you must have led a *very* sheltered life. Second, if you
> are referring to Stephanie Caruana, then I was very mild with her. You
> must not have read some of my exchanges with Mr. Streitz, Mr. Crowley,
> or "Dr." Faker if you think those whom I have "harassed" are exclusively
> women -- or perhaps you believe that Mr. Streitz, "Dr." Faker, Mr.
> Crowley, Okay Fine, _et al_ are all female. Third, I still maintain a
> sporadic and amicable e-mail correspondence with Stephanie. You are
> misinformed about every particular, but that lamentable state of affairs
> is certainly nothing novel or unanticipated.
>
>
> I repeat: I was not talking to you, but rather to Christine Cooper.
>
> > > I will discuss the work of João Magueijo further in another post.
I'd like to clarify that my references to Einstein have nothing to do
with Christopher Jon Bjerknes and those who subscribe to his opinions.
It is my understanding that 1) Einstein is credited with synthesizing
several individual theories in math and physics into a coherent set of
formulae. 2) Any persons whose work may not have been credited in his
papers said as much at the time, and others recognized this or not.
3) any failure to credit does not undermine the originality of
Einstein's work. 4) We all stand on the shoulders of others.
Scientists don't and can't work in a vacuum. 5) Einstein continued
to struggle with the paradoxes in his own work throughout his life,
the sign of an honest scientist.
Actually, I had never heard of Mr. Bjerknes and his friends prior to
my attempt to sort through this thread and learn what all the fuss was
about.
My reference to Einstein and Magueijo falls into a different camp. He
and his companions challenged Einstein's concept that the speed of
light is constant, which more or less amounted to heresy, and they
were considered cranks at the time, but their work is gaining respect.
Magueijo has in turn made contributions to string theory and other
stuff that competes with VSL and seemingly contradict his own work,
also the sign of an honest scientist.
<snip to>
>
> > As soon as I humiliate Elizabeth,
>
<snip to>
As to all of David's many quotes, which I have snipped, I note the
following:
David's directions pulled up error messages, so I did a google search,
which only made things more confusing, but it appears that David DID
NOT call Elizabeth a Nazi or an Aryan Supremacist, but rather said
that her belief in certain things (like Bjerknes' claims of
plagiarism) implies that she is as dumb as they are.
If Elizabeth called Einstein a plagiarist, then I personally would
give more credit to her opinion if I knew she came to her conclusion
after a thorough and independent investigation of the competing
arguments on the subject.
Since I'm neither a mathmetician, nor a physicist, I'm not competent
to form an opinion, because in order to comprehend whether the
argument had merit, I would first need to understand the theories that
were purported to have been plagiarized and to understand how they fit
into Einstein's own work, which means to have read and understood the
various papers. An example is the constant demand for "sources" and
"documentary evidence" in connection with the Shakespeare Authorship
question.
This is NOT to say I think Elizabeth's work in the Shakespeare
Authorship context is without merit
> > >
> > > Of course, opining that Elizabeth was under the influence of Aryan
> > > supremacists would be far short of calling her a Nazi, but I have not
> > > even asserted the former, let alone the latter.
> > >
Not if you take the statement literally, but in fairness, "under the
influence" can be held to imply as much.
> > > As for skinheads in Idaho, you can verify for yourself by means of
> > > the aforementioned Google Groups search engine that there is not a
> > > *SINGLE POST* to this newsgroup authored by *anyone* that contains both
> > > the words "skinheads" and "Idaho,"
It appears that it was Greg Reynolds and not David Webb who said
something about someone bringing out the skinhead in Elizabeth.
other than the post of Elizabeth
> > > herself which you imprudently designated as "way cool."
Make that "impudently." ;-)
<snip> in the interest of saving cyberspace from storage burdens.
Cordelialy, Christine
David L. Webb
kemahw...@yahoo.com (Christine Cooper) wrote:
> "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote in message
> news:<david.l.webb-A8F4...@merrimack.dartmouth.edu>...
> > In article <45b7371d.04010...@posting.google.com>,
> > kemahw...@yahoo.com (Christine Cooper) wrote:
[...]
> > I will discuss the work of João Magueijo further in another post.
> I'm perfectly certain that YOU discussing his work with ME, is
> functionally equivalent to explaining such things to the proverbial
> monkey we were all introduced to in Physics 101, and against which I
> performed only marginally better. I spent most of my time in calculus
> muttering, "I SHOULD be able to understand this stuff," but perhaps it
> had something to do with the distractions provided by three children
> and an absentee husband.
You should consider giving it another try when you have a little time.
> Either way, my grasp of calculus was only
> marginally sufficient to get me through one semester of international
> economics.
Some fairly sophisticated mathematics is unfortunately required for
an understanding of general relativity; however, the good news is that
very *little* mathematics is required to understand the basic ideas of
special relativity, Einstein's beautiful and resoundingly successful
marriage of electrodynamics with (a modification of) the principle of
Galilean relativity enjoyed by classical Newtonian mechanics. I would
recommend _Spacetime Physics_ by Edwin Taylor and John Wheeler.
Although written by two distinguished scientists, it requires little
mathematical sophistication beyond high school algebra and a smattering
of single variable calculus; however, despite its welcome accessibility
and lucid exposition, it is nonetheless an honest, serious beginning
physics book rather than a watered-down popularization.
Briefly, Newtonian mechanics enjoys a remarkable symmetry (now called
Galilean relativity) that had long been recognized: there is a class of
reference frames (the _inertial frames_, those of an unaccelerated
observer) such that the equations of motion always take the same form in
any inertial frame. Thus, there is no "God given" reference frame of
absolute rest, and any inertial reference frame is as good as any other,
in the sense that Newton's second law holds in any. (Indeed, Newton's
second law contains second derivatives but not first derivatives, i.e.,
accelerations but *not* velocities. Thus a notion of "absolute
velocity" is not physically meaningful.)
However, with the discovery of Maxwell's equations (the equations
governing electrodynamics), the situation changed dramatically: the
Lorentz force law, the equation specifying the force experienced by a
charged particle in an electromagnetic field, *does* contain an explicit
velocity term -- but velocity relative to *which* reference frame? If
all inertial frames are equally good for expressing the laws of motion,
then how could there possibly be a velocity term in the equations of
motion? Thus, if one attempts to marry Maxwell's electrodynamics with
Newton's mechanics, one finds that the Galilean relativity principle is
violated: suddenly there *is* a preferred frame of absolute rest --
there must be, or the velocity term in the Lorentz force law would be
meaningless. Maxwell also observed that an easy consequence of his
equations was d'Alembert's familiar linear differential equation
governing propagation of waves. Thus, the equations of electrodynamics
*predicted* the propagation of electromagnetic waves at a velocity (now
denoted "c") easily computed in terms of two constants easily measured
in desktop electrostatics and magnetostatics experiments (specifically,
the electric permittivity and the magnetic permeability of free space).
When the predicted velocity c of electromagnetic wave propagation was
calculated, it turned out to be the velocity of light! The conclusion
was inescapable: light was merely the electromagnetic wave propagation
predicted by Maxwell's equations.
At the time, physicists familiar with water waves, waves on stretched
violin strings, etc. could scarcely imagine oscillatory waves unless
there was some medium doing the oscillating, so physicists suggested the
existence of a "luminiferous ether" that was supposed to be the medium
whose vibrations were the electromagnetic waves. It was irresistible to
identify the rest frame of the luminiferous ether with the "absolute
rest frame" relative to which the velocites showing up in the Lorentz
force law and in Maxwell's wave equation were to be measured. This
speculation was rather metaphysical, as there was absolutely *no*
experimental evidence whatever of the existence of the ether, and there
is none to this day (although some have coöpted the term to refer to the
quantum vacuum, a different matter altogether).
Maxwell's work was a stunning success, as it unified two apparently
disparate phenomena, electromagnetism and light. However, it was
disconcerting that the well-enshrined Galilean relativity principle was
violated, and that there apparently *was* an "absolute rest frame."
(The situation would be rather like getting used to the fact that the
earth is not the stationary center of the medieval universe, only to
learn from the latest advances that in fact there *was* a preferred
"absolute rest" reference frame after all.)
Not surprisingly, attempts were made to measure the earth's motion
relative to the fixed absolute rest frame, beginning with the
beautifully ingenious interferometry experiment of Michelson and Morley
-- but none of these experiments detected the expected "ether wind,"
although they were easily sensitive enough to do so.
The situation was rather baffling, and many insightful attempts were
made to resolve it. Lorentz discovered a set of transformations of
coordinates -- *not* the Galilean transformations familiar from
Newtonian mechanics -- that left the form of Maxwell's equations
unaltered; however, Lorentz ascribed no physical significance to the
"local time" that arose in his transformations, his transformations were
incompatible with the changes of reference frame sanctioned by Newtonian
mechanics, and there was no ready explanation of *why* the Lorentz
transformations should preserve the form of the equations of
electrodynamics. Poincaré explicitly expressed the wish that the laws
of physics conform to some sort of relativity principle analogous to
Galilean relativity, but his attempt to couch the newly discovered
electrodynamic phenomena in dynamical terms (a new, special force that
deforms the intrinsically spherical and presumably elastic electron in
the direction of motion into an ellipsoid, etc.) was unsuccessful.
Einstein's brilliant insight was that a simple but fundamental
revision of *kinematics* -- *not* of dynamics, as in Poincaré's approach
-- sufficed to resolve the apparent conflict and thereby to unify (a
modification of) Newton's resoundingly successful mechanics with
Maxwell's no less resoundingly successful electrodynamics: there was
*no* absolute rest frame, and all inertial reference frames were
equivalent; in particular, there was no longer any need for an _ad hoc_
construct like the luminiferous ether, for whose existence there was not
the slightest experimental evidence in any case. Einstein's beautifully
simple insight explained Lorentz's _ad hoc_-looking transformations in a
very satisfying way. Also, unlike Poincaré's dynamical approach,
Einstein's revised kinematics governed the fabric of spacetime itself,
mot merely the dynamical equations of a particular theory. Thus
Einstein's special relativity should underlie at some level *all*
physical theories, an expectation that has been confirmed as new
interactions have been better understood by various quantum field
theories. Finally, the predictions of Einstein's theory have been
resoundingly confirmed in literally *thousands* of observations, from
astrophysics to elementary particle experiments -- this is emphatically
*not* the case for competing theories intended to explain the null
Michelson-Morley result, all of which are contradicted by experiment
(see Leo Sartori's book for a summary of some of these observations,
from the classical aberration of starlight to the observations of binary
stars systems).
For a more complete understanding of the background of special
relativity in the Lorentz symmetries of Maxwell's equations, the old
classic by Max Born still makes good reading; for this one must have a
little more mathematics (vector calculus is needed for Maxwell's
equations), but Taylor and Wheeler is readable with virtually no such
prerequisites, so I heartily recommend it as a starting point.
> I enjoy Magueijo, Hawking, Martin Rees,
You might also like Brian Green's _The Elegant Universe_, a popular
account of some of the successes of string theory and related ideas.
> Richard Preston,
> Crossan, and other such persons because they place into perspective
> all of the day-to-day petty squabbles that make up my law practice.
> By way of comparison, what is going on here amounts to escapism,
> rather like reading a good mystery novel. I merely enjoy my position
> as the token "interested but uninformed lay person" to which K & R's
> essay was purported to be addressed.
I would cordially dispute your self-described "token" status. I am
also an uninformed amateur (an ignoramus, in fact). Indeed, all but a
very few h.l.a.s. participants, I believe, fit your "interested but
uninformed lay person" characterization -- although most are far better
informed than I.
> > As
> > far as Elizabeth is concerned, this is a fruitless undertaking, as she
> > is both ignorant and mathematically and scientifically illiterate;
> > however, perhaps you know more about those subjects than she does
> > (indeed, it would be virtually impossible to know less), so I will take
> > the time to explain at greater length.
> >
> > First, however, let's take the posts that Elizabeth attempted
> > haplessly to quote.
> >
> > [...]
> > > > Re: Daughter Judith: Stratford Man & Catholicism ... other
> > > > delusions). As a counterexample, he could consider Richard Butler's
> > > > former Aryan Nations compound in Hayden Lake, Idaho. When ...
> > > > humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare - Sep 17, 2003 by David L. Webb -
> > > > View Thread (2 articles)
> > This one is truly bizarre, as Elizabeth is *not even mentioned at all
> > in the entire post*, let alone called a Nazi. You can find the post at
> >
> > <http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=david.l.webb-4E1B51.12222817092003%
> > 40merrimack.dartmouth.edu&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain>
> None of these take me to the posts. I get error message "not found."
You're probably getting a spurious "line break" character that is
truncating the URL. Try pasting the URL into a word processor, making
sure that the line break is gone, and then pasting it into your browser
window. Or, simply search Google Groups yourself for the dates and
subject lines of these posts. Either way, it is not difficult to
discover that Elizabeth is, as usual, farcically misrepresenting her
interlocutors' words. (This is by no means the first time -- on several
occasions she has attributed her *own words* to myself and others!)
Right. Note also that the post has *nothing whatever* to do with
Elizabeth; in particular, she is not called a Nazi therein, nor even an
unwitting dupe of Aryan-supremacists. (Indeed, Elizabeth's crankery is
much more expansive than the narrow political preoccupations of
racists.)
Note also the rather amusing fact that Elizabeth *continues* to call
me a Marxist, despite my repeated clarifications that the Marx whose
words I paraphrased with qualified approval was Groucho Marx, not Karl
Marx -- but Elizabeth probably thinks that the latter was merely another
of the celebrated cinematic brethren, along with Harpo, Chico, _et al_.
Bizarre.
[...]
David Webb
David L. Webb
kemahw...@yahoo.com (Christine Cooper) wrote:
> "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote in message
> news:<david.l.webb-A8D3...@merrimack.dartmouth.edu>...
> > In article <efbc3534.04010...@posting.google.com>,
> > elizabe...@mail.com (Elizabeth Weir) wrote:
> >
> > > "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote in message
> > > news:<david.l.webb-A8F4...@merrimack.dartmouth.edu>...
> > >
> > > > You are a relative newcomer
> I am somewhat other than "relative," having posted here for less than
> a month.
Then you are probably unaware of Elizabeth's almost perfect track
record of error, mostly in the form of utterly farcical fabrications
asserted authoritatively as fact. Stick around and you will soon see it
for yourself.
[...]
> > > > I will discuss the work of João Magueijo further in another post.
> I'd like to clarify that my references to Einstein have nothing to do
> with Christopher Jon Bjerknes and those who subscribe to his opinions.
I honestly have no idea whether Bjerknes's nonsense is the source of
some of Elizabeth's delusions or not; I was quite serious when I said
that one wonders where on earth Elizabeth imbibes such claptrap. She
demonstrably has not even read, let alone understood, the few putative
sources that she cites. I doubt that Bjerknes can be her sole source,
as he mostly confines himself to "history" and prudently avoids
discussing the underlying science for the most part, and what he does
discuss, he frequently gets wrong (not that his history is any more
reliable than his science).
Elizabeth, however, weighs in farcically with one mathematical and
physical misunderstanding after another. She declares that the geometry
of Minkowski space is hyperbolic. She declares that the luminiferous
aether is not discredited. She confuses special relativity (which she
does not understand) with general relativity (ditto). She does not like
relativity because, she informs us, it is "dystopian," and she
*simultaneously*(!) argues that special relativity is wrong *and* that
Einstein "plagerized [sic]" "equasions [sic]" from Poincaré and Lorentz,
who deserve full credit for the discovery. (Why Elizabeth is so eager
to bestow full credit upon her anyone-but-Einstein alternatives for what
in her view is a failed theory she does not disclose; it seems plain
that she is actuated almost completely by a vitriolic animus toward
Einstein, an irrational animus whose source remains a mystery to me.)
Perhaps most unconscionable, though, was Elizabeth's pretense to have
read the work of J.-P. Hsu, and her grotesque fabrication of things that
Hsu never said. Here are a few representative Weir utterances on the
subject:
"Prof. JP Hsu at UMass spent his entire professional career--
close to 40 years--'agonizing over whether the basic principles
of special relativity are correct' and found them wanting."
"Einstein's STR never had a full minute of peer review except
for the editorial board at Annalen Der Physik which later
signaled its regret by reprinting Gerber's calculations for
the parahelion [sic] of Mercury which were supiciously [sic]
identical to Einstein's."
"As far as Einstein is concerned, Webb can't answer to the fact
that his Dartmouth colleague
[sic! Elizabeth cannot distinguish U. Mass. Dartmouth, a branch campus
of the public U. Mass system located, as the name strongy suggests, in
Massachussets, from Dartmouth College, a private, Ivy League institution
in another state entirely]
physics Professor J.P. Hsu can throw out Einstein's
superflous Second Postulate and still have a complete working
relativity theory that is consistent with quantum physics
[sic! As Professor Hsu himself points out, his taiji relativity
INCLUDES Einstein's theory as a special case, so any incompatibility or
inconsistency in special relativity would perforce be present in taiji
relativity as well],
because, Laila, to admit to Lorenzian
relativity would prove that Einstein was a plagiarist. And a
pathological liar. And a fool because Hsu [and others] demonstrate
that Einstein's equations were not 'derived' from Einstein's
'thought experiments' but were swiped from physics journals
that landed on his desk at the Berne Patent Office
[sic!! Hsu says nothing of the kind; plainly, Elizabeth has not read
Hsu].
All of the various parts that Einstein plagiarized were in print
before Einstein mailed his paper to the Annalen der Physik and
Einstein would have seen all the papers while checking priority
on patents [sic!]."
[Elizabeth's bizarre notion that patent applications tend to contain
ground-breaking advances in theoretical physics is one of the most
ludicrous I have ever encountered.]
However, from an earlier post, here is what Professor Hsu himself
says about the subject in an e-mail to me, which I reproduce here with
his kind permission; my explanatory comments are in square brackets:
------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2003 14:12:14 -0700
From: "J. P. Hsu" <jh...@UMassD.Edu>
Subject: Re: Taiji relativity
In-reply-to: <1806...@newprancer.Dartmouth.EDU>
To: David....@Dartmouth.EDU (David L. Webb)
Cc: jh...@UMassD.Edu, Leon Hsu <lh...@umn.edu>
References: <1806...@newprancer.Dartmouth.EDU>
Professor Webb,
Thank you for letting me know about this situation. You are
absolutely correct in thinking that our work on Taiji Relativity is
not a repudiation of Einstein's work at all. As you know, abundant
experimental evidence exists showing the utility of special relativity
for predicting and explaining physical phenomena.
"Taiji relativity" is a formulation of special relativity which is
operationally equivalent to writing the Lorentz transformations using the
same units for length and time (as done by Taylor and Wheeler in
Spacetime Physics [an excellent book on special relativity]). However,
I also proposed a slightly different conceptual interpretation of
relativity (just as quantum mechanics has different conceptual
interpretations which are all operationally identical
[Note: Quantum theory is formulated in two main alternative but
equivalent ways: the "Schrödinger picture," in which the Hermitian
operators representing observables are fixed but the state vectors
undergo unitary time evolution according to Schrödinger's equation, and
the "Heisenberg picture," in which the state vectors are fixed but the
Hermitian operators undergo unitary time evolution. The two viewpoints
are completely equivalent logically, and picking which one to use is a
matter of convention, like deciding whether to measure distance in miles
or in furlongs. (In particular, declaring one viewpoint to be correct
and the other one wrong because it is "dystopian" would be as silly as
declaring furlongs to be the natural unit for measuring distance because
measurement in miles would be "dystopian.") In the same way, taiji
relativity is operationally identical to special relativity.]
), and also tried to show how this different conceptual interpretation
could extend the utility of relativity (for example, it could simplify
calculations of relativistic many-particle systems, and could be used to
write down an invariant Planck's law for the blackbody radiation).*
More recently, my work has been focused on trying to extend the
Lorentz transformations to accelerated frames. [...]
I do feel that trying to argue with cranks is hopeless task and in fact,
that arguing with them might inadvertently lend them some legitimacy in
some people's eyes, so please don't trouble yourself to post a response
from me. I can only hope that readers of her posts will take note of the
source and view her claims about the work of others in a skeptical light.
If you find anything of interest in my papers, my collaborator Leon and
I would be happy to discuss those with you further. [...]
--------------------------------------------------
> It is my understanding that 1) Einstein is credited with synthesizing
> several individual theories in math and physics into a coherent set of
> formulae.
Correct, but he did much more than that. For example, the paper
mentioned in his Nobel Prize citation (on the photoelectric effect) was
not in any sense a synthesis, but was profoundly original. While others
came close to developing special relativity, the general theory of
relativity (the extension of Einstein's successful marriage of mechanics
and electrodynamics that included gravitation as well) was almost
entirely Einstein's own creation.
> 2) Any persons whose work may not have been credited in his
> papers said as much at the time, and others recognized this or not.
What Elizabeth says about Lorentz and Poincaré having been dismayed
by Einstein's supposed plagiarism is completely false. I haven't a clue
where she got that factoid, but here is what Lorentz himself said about
Einstein's insight:
"A transformation of the time was necessary. So I introduced the
conception of a local time which is different for all systems of
reference which are in motion relative to each other. But I never
thought that this had anything to do with real time. This real
time for me was still represented by the old classical notion of
an absolute time, which is independent of any reference to special
frames of coordinates. There existed for me only this one true
time. I considered my time transformation only as a heuristic
working hypothesis. So the theory of relativity is solely Einstein's
work. And there can be no doubt that he would have conceived it
even if the work of his predecessors in the field had not been done
at all. His work in this respect is independent of the previous
theories."
Similarly, Pais's biography (p. 170) quotes Poincaré's assessment of
Einstein, in that most candid of settings, a confidential letter
recommending that a university hire Einstein, as "...one of the most
original minds I have known; in spite of his youth he already occupies a
very honorable position among the leading scholars of his time. [...]"
> 3) any failure to credit does not undermine the originality of
> Einstein's work.
Right.
4) We all stand on the shoulders of others.
> Scientists don't and can't work in a vacuum.
Indeed. It would have been a courtesy for Einstein to have mentioned
the Lorentz transformation in his landmark 1905 paper, but as Lorentz
himself noted, Einstein's work was "...independent of the previous
theories."
5) Einstein continued
> to struggle with the paradoxes in his own work throughout his life,
> the sign of an honest scientist.
Yes. Einstein was troubled by the difficulty of reconciling
classical field theories (such as electrodynamics and his own theory of
gravitation) with the emerging quantum theory that Einstein's own work
on the photoelectric effect had helped to inaugurate.
> Actually, I had never heard of Mr. Bjerknes and his friends prior to
> my attempt to sort through this thread and learn what all the fuss was
> about.
Your state was the more gracious.
> My reference to Einstein and Magueijo falls into a different camp.
Competely different -- Magueijo is a highly regarded theoretical
physicist; Elizabeth is a crank. There is simply no comparison.
> He
> and his companions challenged Einstein's concept that the speed of
> light is constant, which more or less amounted to heresy,
It is certainly somewhat short of heresy. It has long been known
that some modification (whose effects are unlikely to be observable at
present) to classical theories like general relativity is imperative in
order to square those theories with quantum mechanics. Thus it is not
the case that any modification of Einstein's theory constitutes a
revolutionary "heresy," as Einstein himself, along with everyone else,
realized that such accomodations were inevitable. While it is not at
all uncommon for physicists to characterize certain of their colleagues'
*ideas* as "crazy," this emphatically does *not* mean that they regard
their colleagues *themselves* as crazy.
> and they
> were considered cranks at the time,
To my knowledge, nobody regarded Maguiejo as a crank, however crazy
they may have considered some of his ideas; in a *very* competitive
intellectual discipline with an alarmingly high attrition rate, cranks
are not appointed to professorships or awarded Royal Society
fellowships. His cosmological suggestion is very speculative, as he
acknowledges, and there is at present no experimental evidence
supporting it, but like inflation before it, it intrigues more people as
it successfully explains more of the fundamental problems that beset
cosmologists.
> but their work is gaining respect.
> Magueijo has in turn made contributions to string theory and other
> stuff that competes with VSL and seemingly contradict his own work,
> also the sign of an honest scientist.
Right.
> <snip to>
> >
> > > As soon as I humiliate Elizabeth,
> >
>
> <snip to>
>
> As to all of David's many quotes, which I have snipped, I note the
> following:
>
> David's directions pulled up error messages, so I did a google search,
> which only made things more confusing, but it appears that David DID
> NOT call Elizabeth a Nazi or an Aryan Supremacist,
Correct.
> but rather said
> that her belief in certain things (like Bjerknes' claims of
> plagiarism) implies that she is as dumb as they are.
Correct, with slight caveats: I do not presume that all of
Elizabeth's demented misinformation comes from Bjerknes -- indeed, I
have no idea what its source could be, other than Elizabeth's own
misunderstandings of popularizations, as not even Bjerknes (to my
knowledge and recollection) says *anything* resembling some of
Elizabeth's ridiculous and demonstrably false factoids. In particular,
I doubt that *anyone* else is stupid enough to argue *simultaneously*
that relativity is wrong and that Einstein plagiarized it from others
who therefore deserve all the credit and the Nobel Prizes!
> If Elizabeth called Einstein a plagiarist,
Being Elizabeth, she actually accused Einstein of "plagerism [sic]"
and of "stealing equasions [sic]."
> then I personally would
> give more credit to her opinion if I knew she came to her conclusion
> after a thorough and independent investigation of the competing
> arguments on the subject.
That she manifestly has *not* done. In fact, as I have shown by
producing the pertinent quotations, Elizabeth has misrepresented the
opinions of just about everyone involved, from Lorentz and Poincaré to
Hsu, none of whom she has read.
> Since I'm neither a mathmetician, nor a physicist, I'm not competent
> to form an opinion, because in order to comprehend whether the
> argument had merit, I would first need to understand the theories that
> were purported to have been plagiarized and to understand how they fit
> into Einstein's own work, which means to have read and understood the
> various papers.
You quite plainly understand what Elizabeth does not. But this is by
no means the first time that Elizabeth has claimed to have read texts
that she has not; the case of Akrigg's book was particularly funny.
> An example is the constant demand for "sources" and
> "documentary evidence" in connection with the Shakespeare Authorship
> question.
>
> This is NOT to say I think Elizabeth's work in the Shakespeare
> Authorship context is without merit
I certainly have not seen any merit in it yet. In fact, Elizabeth's
fabrications (or possibly hallucinations) in that area are just as
copious and almost as ludicrous as the ones occasioned by her profound
scientific ignorance. And, unlike Elizabeth, I can certainly furnish
specific instances (with URLs) if samples of her folly interest you.
> > > > Of course, opining that Elizabeth was under the influence of Aryan
> > > > supremacists would be far short of calling her a Nazi, but I have not
> > > > even asserted the former, let alone the latter.
> Not if you take the statement literally, but in fairness, "under the
> influence" can be held to imply as much.
One can be under the influence of persons with a racist agenda
without being a racist oneself; one need only be too dense to perceive
the racist agenda.
However, as I trust is clear by now, I never said *either one*. But
Elizabeth has attributed the words of many others to me, including those
of people like Kevin Patrick Webb in bit.listserv.catholic, Sydney Webb
in soc.history.what-if, J. Webb in alt.tv.ally-mcbeal, not to mention
her *own words* in this forum, so her misattributions and fabricated
quotations, while tiresome, are quite routine and commonplace. For one
of the funniest instances of Elizabeth not recognizing her own words,
taking them for Peter Groves's, and thereby engaging in a bizarre online
conversation with herself, see
<http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=efbc3534.0310031723.51a0eb62%40post
ing.google.com&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain>,
<http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=bvqfb.135530%24bo1.61194%40news-ser
ver.bigpond.net.au&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain>, and
<http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=david.l.webb-699B87.22584503102003%
40merrimack.dartmouth.edu&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain>.
> > > > As for skinheads in Idaho, you can verify for yourself by means of
> > > > the aforementioned Google Groups search engine that there is not a
> > > > *SINGLE POST* to this newsgroup authored by *anyone* that contains both
> > > > the words "skinheads" and "Idaho,"
> It appears that it was Greg Reynolds and not David Webb who said
> something about someone bringing out the skinhead in Elizabeth.
> > > > other than the post of Elizabeth
> > > > herself which you imprudently designated as "way cool."
> Make that "impudently." ;-)
>
>
> <snip> in the interest of saving cyberspace from storage burdens.
>
>
> Cordelialy, Christine
I fully reciprocate your Cordeliality. And, despite havinGloucester
mind, I suspect that Elizabeth does too.
David L. Webb
whittb...@aol.com (Whittbrantley) wrote:
Oh, no, Whitt, now you've done it -- your post may well induce
Elizabeth to conclude, once again, that you and I are the same person,
as she formerly insisted so obstinately!
But I agree about Elizabeth's language, although personally I am
indifferent to being called a "silly f*ck," an "a**hole," a "sh*t," and
most of Elizabeth's and Mr. Streitz's other prepubescent pejoratives.
Rather, what I object strenuously to is Elizabeth's habit of hurling
unsustainable accusations of intellectual dishonesty, racism, sexism,
mendacity, etc. at all and sundry -- such accusations possess an ethical
component, and to honest persons concerned only with discovering the
truth, they are far more serious than the infantile epithets of a small
child with an impoverished vocabulary.
However, one can take comfort in the fact that in not a *single*
instance has Elizabeth substantiated her charges of racism, sexism,
suppression of evidence, "plagerism," mendacity, etc., etc., so one
presumes that most readers will consider the source -- accusations of
dishonesty, racism, sexism, etc. from a notorious crank are, one hopes,
apt to be disregarded.
oiut lkjklj
inertial systems and kinematics in the same breath? The 1905 Einstein
paper was titled On the ElectroDYNAMICS of Moving BODIES, which is
dynamics, not kinematics. Einstein has a kinematical section, but he
did not understand the term, and he simply repeated Poincare's methods
of clock synchronization with light signals, which is a dynamic
process. The postulates are both dynamically based. What precisely do
you think is wrong with Bjerknes's work, David? Please be specific.
BTW, Poincare asserted the POR of relativity as a general principle
before Einstein, as is well known.
David L. Webb
tkf...@yahoo.se (oiut lkjklj) wrote:
> In what sense was Poincare's theory unsuccessful? How can you speak of
> inertial systems and kinematics in the same breath?
Why on earth not? Newton's first law, which *defines* the class of
inertial frames in Newtonian mechanics, is purely kinematic (dynamics
doesn't enter the picture until the second law), so inertial frames have
been mentioned in the same sentence as kinematics for quite a long time.
> The 1905 Einstein
> paper was titled On the ElectroDYNAMICS of Moving BODIES, which is
> dynamics, not kinematics.
*Of course* the paper was so entitled -- because it was Maxwell's
theory of electrodynamics that violated the Galilean relativity formerly
enjoyed by all the known laws of physics. That curious phenomenon,
which seemed to mandate the existence of an absolute stationary
reference frame, was the conundrum that inspired the Michelson-Morley
experiment whose null outcome was so vexing. Nobody but Einstein
apparently had an inkling that a simple reformulation of kinematics
would neatly explain the otherwise _ad hoc_ Lorentz invariance of
Maxwell's equations and many other things besides. And I have no idea
why on earth you emphasized the word "bodies" -- a moving body is a
standard notion in particle kinematics, and dynamics does not enter the
picture until the *mass* of the moving body or until specific forces
acting upon the body are considered.
> Einstein has a kinematical section, but he
> did not understand the term,
What do you mean, he did not understand the term?! By definition,
kinematics is "...that part of the study of motion that does not take
force and mass into account." (See Callahan's book _The geometry of
spacetime_. If you prefer the OED, kinematics is "The science of pure
motion, considered without reference to the matter or objects moved, or
to the force producing or changing the motion.") In other words, it is
that part of the study of motion which is *universal*, independent of
any particular force of interaction or of the masses of the moving
bodies. Einstein's crucial insight is independent of force and mass,
hence perforce purely kinematic, and it pertains to situations in which
*any* force field is present, not merely the electromagnetic field. In
fact, Einstein's special relativistic kinematics underlies at present
*all* physical theories, from the theory of gravitation to quantum field
theories of elementary particles; indeed, that is why, for example,
David Griffiths's book on elementary particle physics contains a
foundational chapter entitled "Relativistic kinematics." For a more
elementary account than Callahan's or Griffiths's, see the chapter
entitled "The new kinematics" in Pais's scientific biography of
Einstein. The classic book by Weidner and Sells on modern physics also
contains a foundational chapter entitled "Relativistic kinematics: space
and time" that explains Einstein's key reformulation of kinematics,
including consequences such as Lorentz invariance, the invariance of the
interval, so-called "time dilation" and "length contraction," the twin
"paradox," etc. See also chapter 2, "Einsteinian kinematics," of
Wolfgang Rindler's _Essential relativity: special, general, and
cosmological_. This is *all* kinematics, not dynamics.
> and he simply repeated Poincare's methods
> of clock synchronization with light signals, which is a dynamic
> process. The postulates are both dynamically based.
No, velocity is a purely kinematic notion. It is the time derivative
of position, and neither time nor position is a dynamical concept.
Poincaré's approach to the problem was dynamical, not kinematic.
Indeed, Poincaré was forced to postulate the existence of a "special
force" -- I reproduce his words from an earlier post (slightly edited):
---------------------------
"Il faut donc a revenir à la theorie de Lorentz; mais si l'on veut
la conserver et éviter d'intolérables contradictions, il faut
supposer une force speciale qui explique à la foi
la contraction et la constance de deux des axes [of the electron].
J'ai chercher à determiner cette force, j'ai trouvé qu'*elle peut
être assimilée à une pression extérieure constante, agissant sur
l'electron déformable et compressible, et dont le travail est
proportionnel aux variations du volume de cet électron*."
Note that Poincaré is talking about dynamics (a special force, etc.),
*not* about kinematics. Moreover, as far as is known to this day, the
electron is a point particle with no internal structure, so Poincaré's
notion of a deformable, compressible electron that experiences an
external force that effects the Lorentz contraction only along one of
its axes (that of its instantaneous velocity) does not correspond at all
to the structure of reality as it is presently understood.
--------------------------
> What precisely do
> you think is wrong with Bjerknes's work, David? Please be specific.
Well, for one thing, Bjerknes does not, as far as I am aware, discuss
the admiration of Einstein that emerges from Pauli's correspondence;
rather, he misleadingly cites only a small part of what Pauli actually
wrote. (In that regard he is not unlike those anti-Stratfordians who,
from a lengthy passage expressing Dryden's almost boundless admiration
of Shakespeare, pluck out a single mildly critical utterance as evidence
of Dryden's supposed dislike of Shakespeare.) I could go on at some
length, but I do not intend to waste time on absurd, vanity-published
fulminations on pseudohistory; for a few of the highlights, see the
review by John Stachel, a physicist and historian who directs the Center
of Einstein Studies at Boston University, at
<http://physicsweb.org/article/review/16/4/2>.
> BTW, Poincare asserted the POR of relativity as a general principle
> before Einstein, as is well known.
I have noted elsewhere that Poincaré explicitly stated the principle
of relativity, a very significant insight. And as a mathematician I am
a great admirer of Poincaré, whose work I regard as among the most
striking of both of the last two centuries, comparable only to that of a
few other Titans like Elie Cartan. Like Lorentz, Poincaré deserves full
credit for key insights that constitute a part of what eventually became
the special theory of relativity. However, much as I hate to bestow the
credit upon a physicist rather than a mathematician, it was Einstein's
brilliant insight that made it all beautifully simple and comprehensible
-- no more unphysical "local times," no more "special forces" deforming
supposedly spherical elastic electrons into ellipsoids with shortened
axes in the direction of motion, no more _ad hoc_ and rather mysterious
coordinate transformations, no more unexplained and purely _ad hoc_
dynamical effects (molecular forces postulated to differ in a rod in
uniform motion from a rod at rest, etc.), no more loss of the beautiful
symmetry of Galilean relativity.
The fact that a small contingent of ignorant cranks seems hell-bent
upon denying credit to Einstein for one of the most beautifully simple
and original ideas in the history of science is a remarkable and to me
incomprehensible phenomenon. I could understand an honest attempt to
counter the deification of Einstein and to see him instead as a flawed
human being, as indeed most geniuses are, but these anti-hagiographers
have a much fuller agenda. They do not deny Newton the credit that he
deserves for his remarkable insights, despite the fact that Newton was a
pathologically vindictive man who, despite his unquestioned genius,
*did* commit acts of what would now be regarded as academic dishonesty,
purely out of malicious spite. True, many of Einstein's detractors are
unapologetic racists, and predictably enough, Bjerknes's book is highly
praised on the web sites of some orgzanizations identified as hate
groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center, but the anti-Einstein animus
seems to extend beyond ignorant racists and readers too obtuse to
perceive the racist agendas of the former. It remains a curious
phenomenon -- but it is strictly a sociological, not a scientific one;
Einstein's reputation is best gauged by actually reading the papers of
Einstein and his contemporaries, and among those who have done so and
who understand the science, Einstein's profound originality is
unimpeachable.
oiut lkjklj
From: "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu>
Newsgroups: humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2004 4:14 PM
Subject: Re: Weir's Foolish Investment in Moribund Baconian Theory
> In article <e7ef210a.04011...@posting.google.com>,
> tkf...@yahoo.se (oiut lkjklj) wrote:
>
> > In what sense was Poincare's theory unsuccessful? How can you speak of
> > inertial systems and kinematics in the same breath?
>
> Why on earth not? Newton's first law, which *defines* the class of
> inertial frames in Newtonian mechanics, is purely kinematic (dynamics
> doesn't enter the picture until the second law), so inertial frames have
> been mentioned in the same sentence as kinematics for quite a long time.
>
Newton's first law depends upon Newton's definition of absolute
space. Without an absolute space, one must dynamically define an
inertial system (what is "uniform motion" or "rest" without
dynamics?). See Ludwig Lange's Die geschichtliche Entwickelung des
Bewegungsbegriffes und ihr voraussichtliches Endergebniss. Ein Beitrag
zur historischen Kritik der mechanischen Principien von Ludwig Lange
(1886), and Das Inertialsystem vor dem Forum der Naturforschung
(1902). Einstein asserts a resting system in which the equations of
Newtonian MECHANICS hold good. Such a system cannot be defined without
the metaphysical notion of absolute space, or, more scientifically,
through dynamics.
[snip]
> Nobody but Einstein
> apparently had an inkling that a simple reformulation of kinematics
> would neatly explain the otherwise _ad hoc_ Lorentz invariance of
> Maxwell's equations and many other things besides. And I have no idea
> why on earth you emphasized the word "bodies" -- a moving body is a
> standard notion in particle kinematics, and dynamics does not enter the
> picture until the *mass* of the moving body or until specific forces
> acting upon the body are considered.
>
How do you send light signals, how do you employ observers, how do you
employ clocks and measuring rods, without employing masses? In section
3, Einstein imparts relative velocity to his masses. How can this be
accomplished without the introduction of force, in inertial systems?
The clock synch idea was Poincare's, not Einstein's, and Einstein had
read Poincare's work.
> > Einstein has a kinematical section, but he
> > did not understand the term,
>
> What do you mean, he did not understand the term?! By definition,
> kinematics is "...that part of the study of motion that does not take
> force and mass into account." (See Callahan's book _The geometry of
> spacetime_. If you prefer the OED, kinematics is "The science of pure
> motion, considered without reference to the matter or objects moved, or
> to the force producing or changing the motion.") In other words, it is
> that part of the study of motion which is *universal*, independent of
> any particular force of interaction or of the masses of the moving
> bodies.
Kinematics is abstract motion. Light signals, clocks and observers are
dynamic, not kinematic.
>Einstein's crucial insight is independent of force and mass,
If so, you have not yet demonstrated how.
[snip]
> cosmological_. This is *all* kinematics, not dynamics.
>
> > and he simply repeated Poincare's methods
> > of clock synchronization with light signals, which is a dynamic
> > process. The postulates are both dynamically based.
>
> No, velocity is a purely kinematic notion. It is the time derivative
> of position, and neither time nor position is a dynamical concept.
>
Light signals, observers, accelerometers, etc. are needed for this
misnamed kinematic process, or do you believe in absolute space, as
Newton did? And Einstein did simply repeated Poincare's clock
synchronization procedure...
> Poincaré's approach to the problem was dynamical, not kinematic.
> Indeed, Poincaré was forced to postulate the existence of a "special
> force" -- I reproduce his words from an earlier post (slightly edited):
> ---------------------------> "Il faut donc a revenir à la theorie de Lorentz; mais si l'on veut
> la conserver et éviter d'intolérables contradictions, il faut
> supposer une force speciale qui explique à la foi
> la contraction et la constance de deux des axes [of the electron].
> J'ai chercher à determiner cette force, j'ai trouvé qu'*elle peut
> être assimilée à une pression extérieure constante, agissant sur
> l'electron déformable et compressible, et dont le travail est
> proportionnel aux variations du volume de cet électron*."
>
> Note that Poincaré is talking about dynamics (a special force, etc.),
> *not* about kinematics. Moreover, as far as is known to this day, the
> electron is a point particle with no internal structure, so Poincaré's
> notion of a deformable, compressible electron that experiences an
> external force that effects the Lorentz contraction only along one of
> its axes (that of its instantaneous velocity) does not correspond at all
> to the structure of reality as it is presently understood.
You haven't proven any inconsistency, nor disagreement with any
empirical facts, in Poincare's theory.
> --------------------------
>
> > What precisely do
> > you think is wrong with Bjerknes's work, David? Please be specific.
>
> Well, for one thing, Bjerknes does not, as far as I am aware, discuss
> the admiration of Einstein that emerges from Pauli's correspondence
> rather, he misleadingly cites only a small part of what Pauli actually
> wrote.
There is nothing misleading about Bjerknes's citations from Pauli. He
demonstrated that Pauli proved that Lorentz and Poincare created the
special theory of relativity before Einstein. That was his goal, and
he quoted Pauli at length.
[snip]
>for a few of the highlights, see the
> review by John Stachel, a physicist and historian who directs the Center
> of Einstein Studies at Boston University, at
>
> <http://physicsweb.org/article/review/16/4/2>.
>
John Stachel had an axe to grind with Bjerknes. His "review" was
nothing of the kind, but was instead a bitter personal attack, which
completely avoided the facts. Stachel was also wrong about what Klein
wrote. Physics World refused to publish Bjerknes's response, which you
can read here:
<http://home.comcast.net/~xtxinc/Response.htm>
Stachel tried to lead people to believe that Einstein had anticipated
Hilbert, but did so with mutilated evidence. So much for John Stachel.
> > BTW, Poincare asserted the POR of relativity as a general principle
> > before Einstein, as is well known.
>
> I have noted elsewhere that Poincaré explicitly stated the principle
> of relativity, a very significant insight.
[snip]
Racism is terrible. It isn't the subject. Poincare introduced that
which you attribute to Einstein. It was Poincare who criticized
Lorentz's theory for being ad hoc. I suggest you read Bjerknes's books
before criticizing them. You are not being fair. As a mathematician,
you would probably most benefit from the book Anticipations of
Einstein in the General Theory of Relativity. You can get it through
interlibrary loan.
> Einstein's profound originality is
> unimpeachable.
I disagree.
Phil Innes
> which you attribute to Einstein. It was Poincare who criticized
> Lorentz's theory for being ad hoc. I suggest you read Bjerknes's books
> before criticizing them. You are not being fair. As a mathematician,
> you would probably most benefit from the book Anticipations of
> Einstein in the General Theory of Relativity. You can get it through
> interlibrary loan.
>
> > Einstein's profound originality is
> > unimpeachable.
>
> I disagree.
Such a writer!
You account for precedents before a cohesive expression of them is achieved,
no? Before a field concept exists, most of its components are already in a
full array of anecdote?
It is the same in the literary world. The cohesive statement is nil
consuetudine majus.
I remember reading Koestler in Germany and wrestling with his issue of
intuition of planetary elliptical orbits by his own explanation, which
seemed false, (and of which he made a very long and poor mathematical proof,
qui uti scit el bona) proposing, I think, something acceptable to empirical
observation as a methodology, rather than whatever actual process had
occurred to him.
This is a difficult philosophic negotiation! Koestler had not arrived at his
conclusion from his proof, but offered a proof of his conclusion. What is
intercepted is method.
And what is absent in Newton as public statement, yet present in Einstein,
is method. Yet Newton (at least early in his life) could be considered the
more protean of the two, neh? Einstein was able to achieve the meta-theorem:
a brevi manu, dux gregis sans fons et origo.
These investigations also inform the arts, and are as rare! The very best
researchers of their age state that it is often some generations (!) later
that material is able to be digested - especially from the non-researching
teaching professions who are most conservative of all.
Excuse me for breaking into your subject, but it also illuminates this
question of high intuition compared to methodological proof, which is the
ever present background in discussions here of authorship of the Work.
Cordially, Phil Innes
Phil Innes
doh!
Reading Koestler on Kepler!
> and wrestling with his issue of
> intuition of planetary elliptical orbits
Phil
Christine Cooper
I will add that Bjerknes' publisher is located at www.xtxinc.com,
wherein his book appears to be the ONLY work available for review.
I've tried valiantly, and have not yet located any legitimate
peer review on this work, and all but one of the reviews
at Amazon.com are anonymous, which the Lone Outcast pointed out.
Like him/her, I smell a rat.
Otherwise, you two should get seconds and a quiet place at dawn.
Cordelialy,
Christine
Elizabeth Weir
Webb. We've had this discussion before, perhaps you'll remember.
It was the day Stephanie dropped in and abruptly left.
I pointed out to you that women are not impressed by the bashing
of other women. Watching other women being abused is not a
turn on for women.
Men bond around the abuse of women--I cited studies on fraternity
members that will bond around rape or abuse of women--but women
will not bond around the abuse of women.
This obsessive behavior can't be healthy and I think it's time that
you stopped. Maybe you should buy a television.
Best regards,
Elizabeth
Christine Cooper
+++++++++++++++++
Aside:
I found another "publication" by Bjerknes.
Elizabeth, you should DEFINITELY visit this one:
David, you gotta see this one!
(makes a person wonder why CJB is so concerned with
whether Einstein plagiarized anything, don't it?)
>:-0 (I thought the little antennae were topical)
Cordelialy,
Christine
oiut lkjklj
Don't be paranoid, Christine. Bjerknes isn't out to get you and he
doesn't believe in UFO's. If you disagree with what he has written,
why don't you state your disagreements in terms of the facts? You have
already misrepresented a paper that you claimed he had written, which
he had not. You ought to get your facts straight, drop the paranoia,
and address the issue of Einstein's plagiarism.
oiut lkjklj
From: "Christine Cooper" <kemahw...@yahoo.com>
Newsgroups: humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare
Sent: Monday, January 12, 2004 6:57 AM
Subject: Re: Weir's Foolish Investment in Moribund Baconian Theory
[snip]
> Aside:
>
> I found another "publication" by Bjerknes.
>
> Elizabeth, you should DEFINITELY visit this one:
>
> www.n-t.org/tpe/ng/lt.htm
>
[snip]
>
> Cordelialy,
>
> Christine
Your statement is not true, Christine. That site did not present a
publication by Bjerknes. Bjerknes does not believe in UFO's. He was
asked as a favor to correct the English of a translation. Why don't
you address the issue of Einstein's plagiarism?
David L. Webb
kemahw...@yahoo.com (Christine Cooper) wrote:
[...]
> I will add that Bjerknes' publisher is located at www.xtxinc.com,
> wherein his book appears to be the ONLY work available for review.
> I've tried valiantly, and have not yet located any legitimate
> peer review on this work, and all but one of the reviews
> at Amazon.com are anonymous, which the Lone Outcast pointed out.
> Like him/her, I smell a rat.
Here is the review by Stachel to which I alluded:
-----------------------------------
Albert Einstein: The Incorrigible Plagiarist
Christopher Jon Bjerknes
2002 XTX Inc 408pp $19.95pb
One's first reaction to books like this is to follow Virgil's advice
about the trimmers in hell: "Speak not of them, but look, and pass them
by" (Dante Inferno III 51). Yet there are reasons for reviewing this
book in spite of its lack of originality or intellectual merit. Its
author has gained a certain notoriety as the result of his indefatigable
- not to say monomaniacal - efforts to indict Einstein as an
"incorrigible plagiarist".
By his own claim, this is the author's sixth book on the subject of
Einstein's work on the special and general theories of relativity. (A
search of the Internet, however, turned up no record of the other five.)
Its publication by a "vanity publisher" has brought Bjerknes appearances
at bookstores, articles in newspapers and magazines, recommendations on
several websites, to mention just a few of the 355 items that a search
on Google did reveal.
Under attack
The book is of interest as the latest manifestation of an undercurrent
of hostility towards Einstein that has run for almost 90 years,
surfacing from time to time. Since the inception of the theories of
relativity - both special and general - Einstein and his work have been
attacked on the basis of numerous physical and philosophical
misunderstandings and/or prejudices, quite often tinged with various
versions of anti-Semitism.
Relativity has been attacked in the name of US pragmatism, German
idealism, English Hegelianism, French Bergsonianism (by fellow Jew Henri
Bergson!), Soviet "diamat" (dialectical materialism) and Nazi "Deutsche
Physik" (German physics), to name but a few of the high-minded (and not
so high-minded) points of the compass from which such attacks have
originated over the years.
So it seems worthwhile to review such a book - if only to be reminded
that the current still runs strong - and to highlight the need for
caution in uncritically accepting the claims of such "objective" attacks
on Einstein. (I hasten to add that serious critical scrutiny of any
person or theory is always welcome.)
This book is primarily an industrious compilation of citations taken
from various points of the intellectual compass. Well over half of the
book consists of quotations in English and in various original
languages, with source notes - all duly accurate as far as I checked.
The one glaring exception is of a supposed quotation from Einstein that
appears on the front cover of the book - "The secret to creativity is
knowing how to hide your sources" - for which no source is given. This
liberal helping of quotations is seasoned with the author's own
comments, examples of which are given below.
The citations fall into three broad classes. First, there are those from
the traditional anti-Einstein literature. They range from Nobel-prize
winners, like Johannes Stark and Philip Lenard, through run-of-the-mill
physicists such as Ernst Gehrke, to out-and-out confidence tricksters,
like Paul Weyland, to name but some of those cited from the Weimar
Republic days. Bjerknes does not cite their anti-Semitic outbursts or
mention their Nazi connections, nor does he cite any of the extensive
literature from the Nazi era that attempted to salvage the special
theory (while savaging Einstein) by attributing it to the "Aryans"
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz and Henri Poincaré. He does cite Sir Edmund
Whittaker, Herbert Ives, and many other non-Germans who made similar
attacks without any public anti-Semitic comments.
Apparently, it does not bother Bjerknes that the various opponents of
the special and general theories that he cites attack relativity from
mutually contradictory viewpoints. Nor does he seem to realize the
incongruity of endorsing claims that Einstein's theories are wrong as
well as claims that they were plagiarized from valid sources! The
culmination of Bjerknes's uncritical piling of name upon name is found
on pages 231-233, which constitute two full pages of names, ranging from
the famous - like Gauss and John Locke - to unknowns like Pavannini and
Caldonazzi, all of whom are cited as having made unnamed (but
referenced) "contributions toward the general theory of relativity".
In the second main category of citations, Bjerknes cites carefully
chosen excerpts from numerous valuable accounts of the development of
relativity theory that discuss the role of Lorentz, Poincaré and many
others. These researchers carried out work on the optics and
electrodynamics of moving bodies that helped to create the intellectual
atmosphere that led to the formulation of the special theory.
The author, however, takes any hint that Einstein did not work in an
intellectual vacuum as proof positive that he was a plagiarist - as if
any scientific creation is a purely individual activity. Einstein
himself acknowledged that the special theory of relativity would soon
have been formulated without him, while claiming (correctly I believe)
that, in his absence, the general theory would not have been so easy to
arrive at. Indeed, Bjerknes has a much harder time producing evidence of
Einstein's "plagiarism" of the general theory, a topic I shall not
discuss.
I will mention just one example of the author's method of citation: his
treatment of Wolfgang Pauli, in which case we are fortunate in having
additional information. Writing of Einstein's role in the development of
special relativity, Bjerknes argues: "In 1921 Wolfgang Pauli set the
record straight in the Encyklopädie der mathematischen Wissenschaften."
He then cites extensively - but not completely - Pauli's comments on
the roles of Woldemar Voigt, Lorentz, Poincaré and Einstein in
developing some of the key concepts in the now-standard version of the
special theory.
The author concludes: "After giving Poincaré his due credit, and
acknowledging that Einstein holds no priority for the special theory of
relativity, Pauli, half-heartedly, pays the seemingly obligatory homage
to Einstein the then recently emerged celebrity [by writing] 'It was
Einstein, finally, who in a way completed the basic formulation of this
new discipline.'". Bjerknes then adds: "It appears that Pauli was
forced, or felt compelled, to praise Einstein with additional
inappropriate and, evidently, insincere comments."
But what if we consult letters that were sent to Pauli by Felix Klein -
the renowned German mathematician who orchestrated the Encyklopädie? It
emerges from these letters that indeed "Pauli was forced, or felt
compelled" by Klein - although not to praise Einstein more, but to say
more about the role of Poincaré and Lorentz! Similarly, Klein asked
Pauli to give more credit to Hilbert in his discussion of the origins of
the general theory (see Wolfgang Pauli 1979 Scientific Correspondence
with Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg, a.o. Volume 1 1919-1929 (Springer,
Berlin)).
Lest Bjerknes now seize upon these letters as evidence against Einstein,
let me hasten to add that in them Klein evaluates Einstein's work most
highly. He refers to Einstein as "a genius" and points out that
"[t]here still remains enough [credit] in this connection for Einstein".
Klein also exonerates him from any role in the public hullabaloo: "In
his personal comments Einstein is always so lovable, quite in contrast
to the insane publicity that is set in motion in his honour."
Finally, let us see what Pauli says in full about Einstein in his
Encyklopädie article. After the sentence cited by Bjerknes above, Pauli
continues: "[Einstein's] paper of 1905 was submitted at almost the same
time as Poincaré's article and had been written without previous
knowledge of Lorentz's paper of 1904. It includes not only all the
essential results contained in the other two papers, but shows an
entirely novel, and much more profound understanding of the whole
problem. This will now be demonstrated in detail."
No wonder Bjerknes does not cite the whole passage!
In the final category of citations in this book, Bjerknes refers many
times to the more recent anti-Einstein literature, claiming that
Einstein plagiarized the ideas of his first wife, Mileva
Einstein-Maric. I have published extensive discussions of this claim -
see, for example, "Albert Einstein and Mileva Maric: a scientific
collaboration that failed to develop", which appears in my book Einstein
from B to Z (2002 Birkhäuser). I will, therefore, cite just a couple of
examples of the intellectual level of Bjerknes's arguments. Since the
author claims that the work - no matter who did it - is plagiarized, he
ends up with statements that would be truly ludicrous were they not an
insult to a woman who deserves better.
On pages 214-215, for example, Bjerknes writes: "Mileva once hinted to
Albert that she was contemplating publishing her memoirs. Albert told
her to keep her mouth shut, and may have intimated that he, an innocent
idiot, would suffer less than she, the incorrigible plagiarist...What
would Mileva have stood to gain by revealing that Albert had taken
credit for her work, when she herself had merely repeated what others
had already published?"
His discussion of the agreement that the pair came to as part of their
divorce settlement - namely that Albert would give Mileva the
Nobel-prize money, should he receive that prize - is in a similar vein.
"If one thief steals a stolen purse from another thief, then offers to
split the purse," he writes, " what option does either thief have, but
to keep silent and spend the money?"
But our author does endeavour to be fair minded. On page 217 he writes:
"Did Albert have no choice but to copy what others had published before
him, if indeed he ever actually did? Was he of sub-average intelligence?
Given that this issue is still controversial, I'll give Albert the
benefit of the doubt and regard the 1905 paper [on special relativity]
as a co-authored work."
I opened with a quotation from Dante's Divine Comedy. I will close with
one from Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer: "Let us draw the curtain of charity
over the rest of the scene."
Author
John Stachel is director of the Center for Einstein Studies at Boston
University, US, e-mail sta...@buphy.bu.edu.
[...]
David L. Webb
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu>
> Newsgroups: humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare
> Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2004 4:14 PM
> Subject: Re: Weir's Foolish Investment in Moribund Baconian Theory
>
> > In article <e7ef210a.04011...@posting.google.com>,
> > tkf...@yahoo.se (oiut lkjklj) wrote:
> >
> > > In what sense was Poincare's theory unsuccessful? How can you speak of
> > > inertial systems and kinematics in the same breath?
> > Why on earth not? Newton's first law, which *defines* the class of
> > inertial frames in Newtonian mechanics, is purely kinematic (dynamics
> > doesn't enter the picture until the second law), so inertial frames have
> > been mentioned in the same sentence as kinematics for quite a long time.
> Newton's first law depends upon Newton's definition of absolute
> space.
No, although Newton believed in the notion, it is not necessary, as
numerous writers on classical mechanics have taken pains to point out;
see, for example, Vladimir Arnol'd's _Mathematical methods of classical
mechanics_, page 5, where the universe is defined as a four-dimensional
affine space with a real-valued absolute time mapping defined on the
associated vector space of displacements. On page 6, Arnol'd explicitly
notes that
"...'two non-simultaneous events a,b [in the affine 4-space]
occurring at *one and the same place in three-dimensional space*'
has no meaning as long as we have not chosen a coordinate system."
If there *were* an underlying "absolute space" of the sort Newton
envisioned, then the notion of two events occurring at the same point in
space would certainly be meaningful, since the identity of two points is
a coordinate-independent concept. The formulation adopted by Arnol'd
demonstrates quite conclusively that no such construct is necessary.
> Without an absolute space, one must dynamically define an
> inertial system (what is "uniform motion" or "rest" without
> dynamics?).
One of the salient points is that there *is* no notion of absolute
rest. As for uniform motion, it is unaccelerated motion. Acceleration
is a kinematic notion, being the second time derivative of position.
> See Ludwig Lange's Die geschichtliche Entwickelung des
> Bewegungsbegriffes und ihr voraussichtliches Endergebniss. Ein Beitrag
> zur historischen Kritik der mechanischen Principien von Ludwig Lange
> (1886),
I'm not sure what your point is here. Can you furnish an actual
*quotation* therein asserting whatever it is that you are claiming?
> and Das Inertialsystem vor dem Forum der Naturforschung
> (1902).
I'm not sure what your point is here. Can you furnish an actual
*quotation* therein asserting whatever it is that you are claiming?
> Einstein asserts a resting system
No, Einstein's viewpoint dispenses with the notion of rest.
> in which the equations of
> Newtonian MECHANICS hold good. Such a system cannot be defined without
> the metaphysical notion of absolute space, or, more scientifically,
> through dynamics.
>
> [snip]
> > Nobody but Einstein
> > apparently had an inkling that a simple reformulation of kinematics
> > would neatly explain the otherwise _ad hoc_ Lorentz invariance of
> > Maxwell's equations and many other things besides. And I have no idea
> > why on earth you emphasized the word "bodies" -- a moving body is a
> > standard notion in particle kinematics, and dynamics does not enter the
> > picture until the *mass* of the moving body or until specific forces
> > acting upon the body are considered.
> How do you send light signals, how do you employ observers, how do you
> employ clocks and measuring rods, without employing masses? In section
> 3, Einstein imparts relative velocity to his masses. How can this be
> accomplished without the introduction of force, in inertial systems?
*No* force is required to impart a velocity; forces produce
*acceleration*, not velocity, accoring to Newton's second law,
force = mass x acceleration. In fact, different intertial observers
will disagree upon the velocity of a particle in uniform motion -- an
observer in the particle's rest frame will assign the particle velocity
zero, while an inertial observer moving relative to the particle's rest
frame will assign it a nonzero velocity.
However, it is pointless to argue interminably about the meaning of
the word "kinematics"; I have cited definitions from the OED and from
Callahan, and readers can draw their own conclusions. If you persist in
believing that Einstein did not understand the term, and if you persist
in using the term in an idiosyncratic sense peculiar to yourself, then
perhaps you should ask yourself why so many books explain Einstein's
postulates in chapters explicitly identifed as kinematic. In particular:
€ Weidner and Sells contains a foundational chapter entitled
"Relativistic kinematics: space and time" that explains Einstein's key
reformulation of kinematics;
€ Griffiths's book on elementary particle physics contains a
foundational chapter entitled "Relativistic kinematics";
€ The chapter of Pais introducing Einstein's postulates is entitled "The
new kinematics";
€ The chapter of Wolfgang Rindler's _Essential relativity: special,
general, and cosmological_ that introduces Einstein's postulates is
entitled "Einsteinian kinematics";
etc., etc.; I could go on at much greater length, but this is getting
tedious, and it already suffices to alert you that the rest of world
uses the term rather differently than you evidently do. These are all
eminent physicists, by the way, and there are many others.
> The clock synch idea was Poincare's,
To my knowledge, nobody in this discussion has denied credit for that
important idea to Poincaré.
> not Einstein's, and Einstein had
> read Poincare's work.
There is some uncertainty concerning which of the works of Poincaré
Einstein had read at the time. Certainly he had read some of them.
> > > Einstein has a kinematical section, but he
> > > did not understand the term,
> > What do you mean, he did not understand the term?! By definition,
> > kinematics is "...that part of the study of motion that does not take
> > force and mass into account." (See Callahan's book _The geometry of
> > spacetime_. If you prefer the OED, kinematics is "The science of pure
> > motion, considered without reference to the matter or objects moved, or
> > to the force producing or changing the motion.") In other words, it is
> > that part of the study of motion which is *universal*, independent of
> > any particular force of interaction or of the masses of the moving
> > bodies.
> Kinematics is abstract motion. Light signals, clocks and observers are
> dynamic, not kinematic.
No, for Einstein's postulates the only pertinent attribute of a light
signal is its velocity, which is a purely kinematic notion.
> >Einstein's crucial insight is independent of force and mass,
> If so, you have not yet demonstrated how.
Yes, I have -- only velocities need be observed, and velocity is a
kinematic notion; if you do not yet understand that, I would suggest
that you look at any of the references I suggested, in particular the
chapters entitled "Relativistic kinematics," "Einsteinian kinematics,"
"The new kinematics," etc.
> [snip]
> > cosmological_. This is *all* kinematics, not dynamics.
> > > and he simply repeated Poincare's methods
> > > of clock synchronization with light signals, which is a dynamic
> > > process. The postulates are both dynamically based.
> > No, velocity is a purely kinematic notion. It is the time derivative
> > of position, and neither time nor position is a dynamical concept.
> Light signals, observers, accelerometers, etc. are needed for this
> misnamed kinematic process,
No, one need only measure the velocity of a light signal.
> or do you believe in absolute space, as
> Newton did?
No; see above.
> And Einstein did simply repeated [sic] Poincare's clock
> synchronization procedure...
I have never claimed otherwise; Poincaré deserves full credit for the
significant steps he took toward the theory.
> > Poincaré's approach to the problem was dynamical, not kinematic.
> > Indeed, Poincaré was forced to postulate the existence of a "special
> > force" -- I reproduce his words from an earlier post (slightly edited):
> > ---------------------------
> "Il faut donc a revenir à la theorie de
> > Lorentz; mais si l'on veut
> > la conserver et éviter d'intolérables contradictions, il faut
> > supposer une force speciale qui explique à la foi
> > la contraction et la constance de deux des axes [of the electron].
> > J'ai chercher à determiner cette force, j'ai trouvé qu'*elle peut
> > être assimilée à une pression extérieure constante, agissant sur
> > l'electron déformable et compressible, et dont le travail est
> > proportionnel aux variations du volume de cet électron*."
> >
> > Note that Poincaré is talking about dynamics (a special force, etc.),
> > *not* about kinematics. Moreover, as far as is known to this day, the
> > electron is a point particle with no internal structure, so Poincaré's
> > notion of a deformable, compressible electron that experiences an
> > external force that effects the Lorentz contraction only along one of
> > its axes (that of its instantaneous velocity) does not correspond at all
> > to the structure of reality as it is presently understood.
> You haven't proven any inconsistency, nor disagreement with any
> empirical facts, in Poincare's theory.
Did you not read the second paragraph? "Moreover, as far as is known
to this day, the electron is a point particle with no internal
structure, so Poincaré's notion of a deformable, compressible electron
that experiences an external force that effects the Lorentz contraction
only along one of its axes (that of its instantaneous velocity) does not
correspond at all to the structure of reality as it is presently
understood." The electron may yet turn out to have an interal
structure, and may indeed be spherical, but it matter not a whit --
Einstein's viewpoint disposes of any necessity for Poincaré's mysterious
and _ad hoc_ "special force" which compresses the electron along its
direction of motion.
> > --------------------------
> >
> > > What precisely do
> > > you think is wrong with Bjerknes's work, David? Please be specific.
> > Well, for one thing, Bjerknes does not, as far as I am aware, discuss
> > the admiration of Einstein that emerges from Pauli's correspondence
> > rather, he misleadingly cites only a small part of what Pauli actually
> > wrote.
> There is nothing misleading about Bjerknes's citations from Pauli.
I have posted elsewhere Stachel's demonstration to the contrary.
> He
> demonstrated that Pauli proved that Lorentz and Poincare created the
> special theory of relativity before Einstein. That was his goal, and
> he quoted Pauli at length.
Not at the length that Stachel does.
> [snip]
>
> >for a few of the highlights, see the
> > review by John Stachel, a physicist and historian who directs the Center
> > of Einstein Studies at Boston University, at
> >
> > <http://physicsweb.org/article/review/16/4/2>.
> John Stachel had an axe to grind with Bjerknes.
Yes, he mentions two: "Yet there are reasons for reviewing this book
in spite of its lack of originality or intellectual merit."
> His "review" was
> nothing of the kind, but was instead a bitter personal attack, which
> completely avoided the facts.
Can you point to some "personal" aspect of Stachel's review? On the
contrary, Stachel points to out numerous shortcomings, among them this:
"Apparently, it does not bother Bjerknes that the various opponents
of the special and general theories that he cites attack relativity
from mutually contradictory viewpoints. Nor does he seem to realize
the incongruity of endorsing claims that Einstein's theories are
wrong as well as claims that they were plagiarized from valid
sources!"
> Stachel was also wrong about what Klein
> wrote. Physics World refused to publish Bjerknes's response, which you
> can read here:
>
> <http://home.comcast.net/~xtxinc/Response.htm>
>
> Stachel tried to lead people to believe that Einstein had anticipated
> Hilbert, but did so with mutilated evidence. So much for John Stachel.
I'm afraid that you are going to have to be more than merely make
assertions in order to be even remotely persuasive. I supplied actual
quotation from Poincaré, Arnol'd, Lorentz, Stachel, etc.; you have yet
to reciprocate in kind.
> > > BTW, Poincare asserted the POR of relativity as a general principle
> > > before Einstein, as is well known.
> > I have noted elsewhere that Poincaré explicitly stated the principle
> > of relativity, a very significant insight.
> [snip]
>
> Racism is terrible. It isn't the subject.
No, it is not the subject -- but it cannot be altogether ignored, as
it is one of the salient motivations of some of Einstein's detractors,
many of whom express overt anti-Semitism with varying degrees of crudity.
> Poincare introduced that
> which you attribute to Einstein.
Can you be more specific about what insight of Poincaré's you imagine
that I am misattributing to Einstein? I did not attribute the clock
synchronziation procedure to Einstein, nor did I attribute to him the
prinicple of relativity. Indeed, as I have taken pains to explain
elsewhere on many occasions, Einstein's great contribution was *not* to
introduce but to *restore* relativity, which physicists had enjoyed in
its Galilean form for centuries. Maxwell's equations threatened to
exile physics from that symmetric paradise, and various attempts were
made to salvage the situation. All were at some level _ad hoc_ (I have
already quoted Poincaré's suggestion that a mysterous "special force" be
introduced, although others made similar suggestions). Only Einstein
had the key insight that a *kinematic* reformulation neatly restored the
principle of relativity (in a modified form) to Maxwell's equations
(which had appeared to violate it), and in the process explained the
apparently _ad hoc_ character of the Lorentz transformations.
> It was Poincare who criticized
> Lorentz's theory for being ad hoc.
I have never said otherwise. Can you produce a quotation from me
asserting the contrary?
> I suggest you read Bjerknes's books
> before criticizing them.
I have criticized the first one, not the second, which I have not yet
read.
> You are not being fair.
You will need to do far more than merely assert that if you wish to
be at all persuasive.
> As a mathematician,
> you would probably most benefit from the book Anticipations of
> Einstein in the General Theory of Relativity. You can get it through
> interlibrary loan.
> > Einstein's profound originality is
> > unimpeachable.
> I disagree.
It's a free country. You're certainly free to believe any crank
nonsense you like, and I won't argue with you about such nonsense.
Readers can draw their own conclusions.
Phil Innes
> In article <20040109125334...@mb-m26.aol.com>,
> whittb...@aol.com (Whittbrantley) wrote:
>
> > >No, you silly fuck
> >
> > >you don't know what the fuck I'm writing about
> >
> > I love the way Elizabeth uses the "F" word.
> >
> > How long HAS it been Elizabeth?
> >
> > Not long enough...obviously.
>
> Oh, no, Whitt, now you've done it -- your post may well induce
> Elizabeth to conclude, once again, that you and I are the same person,
> as she formerly insisted so obstinately!
>
> But I agree about Elizabeth's language, although personally I am
> indifferent to being called a "silly f*ck," an "a**hole," a "sh*t," and
> most of Elizabeth's and Mr. Streitz's other prepubescent pejoratives.
> Rather, what I object strenuously to is Elizabeth's habit of hurling
> unsustainable accusations of intellectual dishonesty, racism, sexism,
> mendacity, etc. at all and sundry
David, I read a post from Elizabeth, posted this date and am looking back at
what may have caused the purported offence.
>-- such accusations possess an ethical
> component, and to honest persons concerned only with discovering the
> truth, they are far more serious than the infantile epithets of a small
> child with an impoverished vocabulary.
You do seem to spend a lot of time recommending 'the truth' by addressing
the person who speaks it. I wanted to investigate this subject since in your
last post to myself you restricted yourself purely to ad hominem comments
about my ability to speak English, and if it were my first langauge, and
proceeding to make further recommendations of what I should do or not do.
Now, you may wish to disagree with anyone's opinion, but I hope you are
aware of a certain phenomena in the teaching professions; to be didactic to
the degree that other's own opinions and explorations can appear regretable?
They may pursue another thesis than one's own, but that the /motive/ for
seeking to repress their writing by mocking their persons cannot be freely
admitted or ascribed to not 'discovering the truth.'
Do you not protest overmuch? Especially on this Bacon issue, is it all just
gammon, really? As someone of rank in the teaching profession, how committed
are you to 'drawing out', e ducare, or nourishing honest (if sometimes
fatuous, nevermind) inquiry?
> However, one can take comfort in the fact that in not a *single*
> instance has Elizabeth substantiated her charges of racism, sexism,
> suppression of evidence, "plagerism," mendacity, etc., etc., so one
> presumes that most readers will consider the source -- accusations of
> dishonesty, racism, sexism, etc. from a notorious crank are, one hopes,
> apt to be disregarded.
Interesting. For some people the red flag is a mention of psychology - they
protest to the skies that nothing other than their surface expression has
any relevance, and to consider their material otherwise must obviously
originate from the pen of a crank. (This, a good century after Dostoyevski!)
Since it is my understanding of the Work that the opinion of another
scholar, poet and indeed the Laureate, Ted Hughes, was precisely the inverse
of any surface rationalism, and even a specific warning of the dangers of
repressing the feminine; of ignoring the animistic rank bodied element of
the work, and further, that this was the great thesis of the Author, I beg
you reconsider when a woman shouts 'foul.'
Perhaps it is the very /type/ of expression which we demand which so
subtlety represses its appearance?
Given that the very language of discussion of these sub-fusc elements is
mightily repressed and marginalised in our own culture, indeed treated with
scant honour in any of its forms, what say you to the condition of the
Cordelias de nos jours?
You may consider your own demand for faithfulness to a cause, to which
another cannot assent - but do you then as result banish the silent woman to
an outer realm accepting only Regans and Gonnerils to your affection?
Cordially, Phil Innes
oiut lkjklj
From: "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu>
Newsgroups: humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare
Sent: Monday, January 12, 2004 12:43 PM
Subject: Re: Weir's Foolish Investment in Moribund Baconian Theory
> In article <e7ef210a.04011...@posting.google.com>,
> tkf...@yahoo.se (oiut lkjklj) wrote:
>
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu>
> > Newsgroups: humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare
> > Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2004 4:14 PM
> > Subject: Re: Weir's Foolish Investment in Moribund Baconian Theory
> >
> > > In article <e7ef210a.04011...@posting.google.com>,
> > > tkf...@yahoo.se (oiut lkjklj) wrote:
> > >
> > > > In what sense was Poincare's theory unsuccessful? How can you speak of
> > > > inertial systems and kinematics in the same breath?
>
> > > Why on earth not? Newton's first law, which *defines* the class of
> > > inertial frames in Newtonian mechanics, is purely kinematic (dynamics
> > > doesn't enter the picture until the second law), so inertial frames have
> > > been mentioned in the same sentence as kinematics for quite a long time.
>
> > Newton's first law depends upon Newton's definition of absolute
> > space.
>
> No, although Newton believed in the notion, it is not necessary, as
> numerous writers on classical mechanics have taken pains to point out;
> see, for example, Vladimir Arnol'd's _Mathematical methods of classical
> mechanics_, page 5, where the universe is defined as a four-dimensional
> affine space with a real-valued absolute time mapping defined on the
> associated vector space of displacements. On page 6, Arnol'd explicitly
> notes that
[long snip]
You are again confusing kinematics with dynamics. You can define
anything you like in kinematics. Restrict yourself to what EINSTEIN
mistakenly called kinematics. We have no abstract space to play with
in physics. We have to map space with MASSES in motion in order to be
able to comprehend it as INERTIAL.
I don't need lectures in kinematics. I would much prefer you restrict
your responses to Einstein's assertions of what constitutes
kinematics. The rest of what you wrote, as far as I had time to read,
is irrelevant for the reasons just stated. Please address Poincare's
clock synch procedure as reiterated by Einstein and misnamed
"kinematics", and explain how it is done without observers, clocks,
accelerometers, etc., or concede that it is dynamics. And, no you
cannot accelerate velocity to Einstein's clock, observers, etc.
without force. You are changing the subject kinematics and then
declaring that your changed argument is kinematics. Use Einstein's
argument.
David L. Webb
elizabe...@mail.com (Elizabeth Weir) wrote:
> "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote in message
> news:<david.l.webb-4A78...@merrimack.dartmouth.edu>...
>
> Webb.
Weir.
> We've had this discussion before, perhaps you'll remember.
Yes, I remember quite clearly that you outrageously misrepresented
the work of a scientist whose work you plainly had never even read, and
that you made absurd accusations about my supposed sexism, racism, etc.
> It was the day Stephanie dropped in and abruptly left.
Stephanie has noted that she has been spending her time on other
endeavors, among them the promotion of her amusing "Gemstone" conspiracy
theory CD-ROM (see
and working on the Kucinich presidential campaign. In the latter case,
more power to her; regarding the former, the less said the better.
> I pointed out to you that women are not impressed by the bashing
> of other women. Watching other women being abused is not a
> turn on for women.
If you imagine that setting the record straight regarding your
misattributions, distortions, misreadings, unsustainable accusations,
factual howlers, and other farcical blunders constitutes "abuse," then
you are both more self-pitying and more fortunate than I thought -- you
must have led a very sheltered life. If you state your inventions as
fact, and if you hurl unwarranted accusations of intellectual dishonesty
at all and sundry, then you should be prepared to substantiate them.
And if you imagine that John Baker, Paul Streitz, Art Neuendorffer,
Peter Zenner, Peter Dickson, Paul Crowley, Pat Dooley, Ken Kaplan, etc.
are women, then you are evidently more delusional than I had feared. In
any event, I neither initiated the present thread nor gave it its name;
you have PWDBard to thank for that.
> Men bond around the abuse of women
Now there's a perrsuasive statement.
> --I cited studies on fraternity
> members that will bond around rape or abuse of women--
I have been outspoken in expressing a wish that fraternities be
abolished -- but you have never known what you were talking about yet,
so why should this instance be an exception?
> but women
> will not bond around the abuse of women.
Another persuasive statement.
> This obsessive behavior can't be healthy and I think it's time that
> you stopped. Maybe you should buy a television.
Your recommendations are apt to have the unintended effect of
dissuading your readers from emulating you, since they may reason that
you have actually tried whatever you are recommending (and one can see
what has happened to you).
Phil Innes
> > This obsessive behavior can't be healthy and I think it's time that
> > you stopped. Maybe you should buy a television.
>
> Your recommendations are apt to have the unintended effect of
> dissuading your readers from emulating you, since they may reason that
> you have actually tried whatever you are recommending (and one can see
> what has happened to you).
Are they?
And are you making a sincere recommendation for the benefit of your
correspondent; in open pursuit of her topic; or simply trying to shut her
down preemptively?
I find my earlier post today the more persuasive by the /nature/ of these
responses.
Phil Innes
oiut lkjklj
[snip]
> > Without an absolute space, one must dynamically define an
> > inertial system (what is "uniform motion" or "rest" without
> > dynamics?).
>
> One of the salient points is that there *is* no notion of absolute
> rest. As for uniform motion, it is unaccelerated motion. Acceleration
> is a kinematic notion, being the second time derivative of position.
[snip]
Acceleration is also a dynamic notion, and without that dynamic
notion, no such thing as an inertial system could exist. You have not
defined an inertial system. Kinematics can abstract any kind of space
it wants to create. An inertial space must be one in which a MASS
subject to no NET FORCE moves rectilinearly and uniformly. One cannot
envision such a space without masses, and in such a space, one cannot
accelerate observers, clocks, measuring rods, etc., without a net
force acting on one, the other, or both reference systems. Newton's
equations of mechanics must hold good, and without dynamics, no such
system can be envisioned. Please address these points.
oiut lkjklj
> In article <45b7371d.04011...@posting.google.com>,
> kemahw...@yahoo.com (Christine Cooper) wrote:
>
> [...]
> > I will add that Bjerknes' publisher is located at www.xtxinc.com,
> > wherein his book appears to be the ONLY work available for review.
> > I've tried valiantly, and have not yet located any legitimate
> > peer review on this work, and all but one of the reviews
> > at Amazon.com are anonymous, which the Lone Outcast pointed out.
> > Like him/her, I smell a rat.
>
> Here is the review by Stachel to which I alluded:
[snip]
> Author
> John Stachel is director of the Center for Einstein Studies at Boston
> University,
[snip]
I'm glad you posted it for all to see what a meanspirited personal
attack Stachel's garbage is. Those who have read the Bjerknes's book
know that Stachel hid from all the issues of Einstein's plagiarism.
And, don't forget, Physics World refused to publish Bjerknes's
response, which appears at:
http://home.comcast.net/~xtxinc/Response.htm
Stachel had tried to claim that Einstein anticipated Hilbert, but
based his claim on mutilated evidence in Science in 1997. He neglected
to mention then that the evidence was cut apart. So much for John
Stachel.
Bjerknes has discredited both Stachel's personal attack, and Stachel's
efforts to deny Hilbert's priority with mutilated evidence:
http://home.comcast.net/~xtxinc/AEGRBook.htm
I suggest you read both.
If you really want to see John Stachel at his finest, watch the PBS
special on Mileva Maric. It is a real treat, as Stachel avoids the
facts yet again.
Elizabeth Weir
> Aside:
>
> I found another "publication" by Bjerknes.
>
> Elizabeth, you should DEFINITELY visit this one:
>
> www.n-t.org/tpe/ng/lt.htm
Are you implying that I'm a ufo crank?
I think the ufo phenomena is probably plasma phenomena
caused by increased solar flares and and/or a drop in the
earth's magnetic field. The lights that appeared over Phoenix
a few years ago were plasma balls, not ufos.
What do you find wrong with this?
Science is the method of establishing the connections between
the phenomena of the material world and its causes and
corollaries. It is the discovery of the laws of Nature through
logical inference and deduction based on the fullest set of
observations, facts and experiments currently available to the
scientist. It is not knowledge known a priori. There must be
substantial proof of the failure of an established category
and the necessity of a new category, before it is reasonable
to posit a new categorical invariant, in the same class as
space, time or mass. The misbegotten introduction of a new
invariant velocity of light, c, has led physicists to act on
faith and resulted in a vulgar mathematical formalism.
This is an electrodynamic, not a kinematic universe as Dr. Hsu
tried to explain to Webb, and mathematical formalism vulgar
or otherwise is not adequate to describe it.
The 'vulgar' remark probably alludes to Einstein's operationalism--
an abstract Swiss village with abstract trains and engineers and
platforms and porters and flashing lights and train whistles. Sort
of an odd tableau to be described by mathematical formalism
which comes out of elitist German idealism.
Best regards,
Elizabeth
Christine Cooper
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Christine Cooper" <kemahw...@yahoo.com>
> Newsgroups: humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare
> Sent: Monday, January 12, 2004 6:57 AM
> Subject: Re: Weir's Foolish Investment in Moribund Baconian Theory
>
>
> [snip]
>
> > Aside:
> >
> > I found another "publication" by Bjerknes.
> >
> > Elizabeth, you should DEFINITELY visit this one:
> >
> > www.n-t.org/tpe/ng/lt.htm
> >
> [snip]
> >
> > Cordelialy,
> >
> > Christine
>
>
> Your statement is not true, Christine. That site did not present a
> publication by Bjerknes. Bjerknes does not believe in UFO's.
Please provide your source for that assertion.
He was
> asked as a favor to correct the English of a translation.
You seem to know alot about Bjerknes "behind the scenes."
Why don't
> you address the issue of Einstein's plagiarism?
Because I've already pointed out that my position as a crank
vis-a-vis Einstein relates to the theories of Magueijo and others
concerning VSL, and not to any accusations of plagiarism.
IMHO, David has already wasted more of his valuable time on you
than you deserve, considering you haven't the common courtesy
to introduce yourself.
Cordelialy,
Christine
David L. Webb
> "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote in message
> news:<david.l.webb-C44C...@merrimack.dartmouth.edu>...
> > In article <45b7371d.04011...@posting.google.com>,
> > kemahw...@yahoo.com (Christine Cooper) wrote:
> >
> > [...]
> > > I will add that Bjerknes' publisher is located at www.xtxinc.com,
> > > wherein his book appears to be the ONLY work available for review.
> > > I've tried valiantly, and have not yet located any legitimate
> > > peer review on this work, and all but one of the reviews
> > > at Amazon.com are anonymous, which the Lone Outcast pointed out.
> > > Like him/her, I smell a rat.
> > Here is the review by Stachel to which I alluded:
> [snip]
>
> > Author
> > John Stachel is director of the Center for Einstein Studies at Boston
> > University,
>
> [snip]
> I'm glad you posted it for all to see what a meanspirited personal
> attack Stachel's garbage is.
I'm frankly at a loss to see what you find "personal" in the review.
Stachel points out quite plainly a few of the book's glaring
shortcomings, among them the following:
"Apparently, it does not bother Bjerknes that the various opponents
of the special and general theories that he cites attack relativity
from mutually contradictory viewpoints. Nor does he seem to realize
the incongruity of endorsing claims that Einstein's theories are
wrong as well as claims that they were plagiarized from valid
sources!"
> Those who have read the Bjerknes's book
> know that Stachel hid from all the issues of Einstein's plagiarism.
> And, don't forget, Physics World refused to publish Bjerknes's
> response, which appears at:
>
> http://home.comcast.net/~xtxinc/Response.htm
Bjerknes makes the following extraordinary statement:
"...we have a letter from Einstein to Hilbert dated 18 November 1915
in which Einstein acknowledges receipt of a copy of Hilbert's
manuscript, which Einstein had requested from Hilbert on
15 November 1915. The chronology is straightforward. Einstein
received a copy of Hilbert's work on 18 November 1915. Hilbert
delivered his lecture to the Goettingen Academy on 20 November 1915.
Einstein betrayed Hilbert's trust and plagiarized Hilbert's work on
25 November 1915."
How could Einstein possibly have "plagiarized" Hilbert's work *five days
AFTER(!)* Hilbert had already given a lecture on the subject and hence
would have copious supporting witnesses to his priority?! You evidently
have not thought this through very carefully.
> Stachel had tried to claim that Einstein anticipated Hilbert, but
> based his claim on mutilated evidence in Science in 1997. He neglected
> to mention then that the evidence was cut apart. So much for John
> Stachel.
>
> Bjerknes has discredited both Stachel's personal attack, and Stachel's
> efforts to deny Hilbert's priority with mutilated evidence:
>
>
> http://home.comcast.net/~xtxinc/AEGRBook.htm
If the evidence was "cut apart," why is there such a robust consensus
among both physicists and historians that Bjerknes is talking nonsense?
If it is indeed evident that Bjerknes has prevailed, why are his books
(at least, all the ones I know of) published by a vanity press?
> I suggest you read both.
On that I agree!
David L. Webb
tkf...@yahoo.se (oiut lkjklj) wrote:
Yes, I'm not surprised that you snipped the quotation from Arnol'd
demonstrating that there is no necessity for the existence of an
"absolute space," as you claimed.
> You are again confusing kinematics with dynamics.
You can make all the assertions you like; thus far, however, I am the
one who furnished both the definition and the quotations.
> You can define
> anything you like in kinematics. Restrict yourself to what EINSTEIN
> mistakenly called kinematics.
I have already done so, in the parts of my post that you snipped,
without any signs of comprehension on your part thus far. If you indeed
think that Einstein did not understand kinematics and used the term
mistakenly, then you are forced to conclude also that:
€ Weidner does not understand kinematics,
€ Sells does not understand kinematics,
€ Rindler does not understand kinematics,
€ Pais does not understand kinematics,
€ Griffiths does not understand kinematics,
€ Török does not understand kinematics,
€ Marion does not understand kinematics,
€ Thornton does not understand kinematics,
etc., etc. It could be that your continued inability to furnish even a
*single* quotation supporting your viewpoint arises from the fact that
you are the *only* person on the planet who understands kinematics, but
that possibility seems to me rather unlikely.
> We have no abstract space to play with
> in physics. We have to map space with MASSES
You appear to be laboring under another misapprehension. Kinematics
does not *preclude* the existence of masses or forces in the discussion;
it merely deals that those *universal* aspects of motion in which the
value of the mass and the nature of the force are irrelevant. For the
kinematic foundations of special relativity, it *does not matter* what
the mass of the observer is, what the mass of his or her clock is, what
the mass of his or her meter stick is, etc.
> in motion in order to be
> able to comprehend it as INERTIAL.
> I don't need lectures in kinematics.
On the contrary, you would evidently benefit a great deal from them.
> I would much prefer you restrict
> your responses to Einstein's assertions of what constitutes
> kinematics. The rest of what you wrote, as far as I had time to read,
Ah, I see -- you didn't even read what I wrote, let alone the
references I both quoted and cited. That explains a good deal.
> is irrelevant for the reasons just stated. Please address Poincare's
> clock synch procedure as reiterated by Einstein and misnamed
> "kinematics", and explain how it is done without observers, clocks,
> accelerometers, etc., or concede that it is dynamics.
It is not done without clocks, meter sticks, etc., but (1) the clocks
and meter sticks are idealizations of physical instruments, and (2)
their masses are utterly irrelevant.
> And, no you
> cannot accelerate velocity
"Accelerate velocity"?! You mean, *alter* velocity by means of
nonzero acceleration? The bizarre locution "accelerate velocity"
suggests that you are talking about some sort of third time derivative
of position (i.e., the second derivative of velocity), in addition to
suggesting that you harbor some very fundamental confusions about both
basic kinematics and freshman calculus. But don't take my word for it
-- see any of the introductory textbooks I recommended.
> to Einstein's clock, observers, etc.
> without force. You are changing the subject kinematics and then
> declaring that your changed argument is kinematics. Use Einstein's
> argument.
I'm not sure what you mean by "Einstein's argument"; Einstein didn't
make an "argument" in favor of his postulates (by definition, the two
postulates are *assumptions* whose usefulness, like that of all axioms,
is ultimately in the crucible of observation) in the section in question
-- rather, he stated two fundamental postulates and went on to deduce
their consequences. Specifically, he postulated (1) the principle of
relativity (already explicitly enunciated by Poincaré, but known in the
context of Newtonian mechanics long before that) and (2) the constancy
of the observed velocity of light as measured by any inertial observer.
Testing whether an observer's frame is inertial requires apparatus (a
lattice of clocks, mirrors, etc. and a test particle), but neither the
mass of the test particle nor that of the clocks or mirrors is relevant.
However, as I said, the key point is *not* your misunderstanding of
the definition of kinematics, although that is plainly an obstruction to
your understanding; the key point is that Einstein's postulates obviate
the need for Poincaré's postulated "special force" and other _ad hoc_
constructs, and they give a beautiful, satisfying explanation of the
Lorentz invariance of Maxwell's equations observed by Lorentz. It is
for his beautifully simple insight concerning the best foundational
point of view that Einstein is awarded the lion's share of the credit
for the special theory of relativity.
David L. Webb
> "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote in message
> news:<david.l.webb-AD13...@merrimack.dartmouth.edu>...
> [snip]
>
> > > Without an absolute space, one must dynamically define an
> > > inertial system (what is "uniform motion" or "rest" without
> > > dynamics?).
> >
> > One of the salient points is that there *is* no notion of absolute
> > rest. As for uniform motion, it is unaccelerated motion. Acceleration
> > is a kinematic notion, being the second time derivative of position.
>
>
> [snip]
>
>
> Acceleration is also a dynamic notion, and without that dynamic
> notion, no such thing as an inertial system could exist.
Acceleration is simply the second time derivative of position; time
and position are kinematic concepts.
> You have not
> defined an inertial system.
I have indeed done so, and I have even noted that while an
operational test that a frame is inertial requires apparatus, neither
the mass of the observer nor that of the apparatus is relevant to the
test of whether the frame is inertial.
> Kinematics can abstract any kind of space
> it wants to create. An inertial space
There is no such thing as an "inertial space"; there are only
inertial frames in a given spacetime.
> must be one in which a MASS
> subject to no NET FORCE moves rectilinearly and uniformly. One cannot
> envision such a space without masses,
As I already noted, kinematics does not preclude a discussion of
massive particles; it merely confines itself to those aspects of the
motion which are independent of the mass of the particle.
> and in such a space, one cannot
> accelerate observers, clocks, measuring rods, etc., without a net
> force acting on one, the other, or both reference systems. Newton's
> equations of mechanics must hold good, and without dynamics, no such
> system can be envisioned. Please address these points.
I already did, and at length. But you seem oblivious to correction,
and quite convinced that you alone understand kinematics -- Griffiths
evidently does not, nor does Weidner, nor Sells, nor Török, nor
Callahan, nor anyone else for that matter. You are the only one on the
planet who does, and every physics textbook on the planet is hopelessly
wrong. Are you happy now?
oiut lkjklj
Instead of admitting you are wrong, you get personal. It is no wonder
you like Stachel's personal attack. The two of you are apparently cut
from the same cloth. Funny that Stachel's unsupported assertions don't
bother you, but you mistakenly claim I am making unsupported
assertions. I will try one more time get you to respond to the issue
of EINSTEIN'S misuse of the term "kinematics". Please don't quote me
authority, or change the subject. EINSTEIN asserts Poincare's DYNAMIC
clock synch procedure as a new "kinematics" which it is not. Explain
how EINSTEIN'S observers, clocks, measuring rods, light signals, etc.
are not MASSES, and how one frame of reference composed of MASSES can
accelerate relative to another, without force. Don't hide again,
please. As for the mutilation of the evidence, you only display your
ignorance when you deny it. Even John Stachel does not deny it. He
however failed to mention it in the notorious 1997 article in Science.
Instead of being obnoxious, please, oh please, address EINSTEIN'S
statement of "kinematics" without changing it, without citing
authority, and without being insulting. Thank you!
P.S. You still confuse abstract spaces with inertial spaces in which
masses are not subject to a NET FORCE. You confuse abstraction with
physical theory again and again, and you have not demonstrated any
contradictions in Poincare's work, nor any conflict with empirical
fact. You also have not shown how this one issue topples Poincare's
theory, if that it is what you believe.
David L. Webb
> David, yet again, you have failed to address what Einstein wrote.
No, I have addressed it repeatedly.
> Instead of admitting you are wrong, you get personal.
I am not wrong, and I have said nothing personal, other than to note
the sad fact that your understanding of the subject is deficient, as I
have shown -- unless you are the *only* person on the planet who
understands it, and *all* the standard physics texts and references are
dead wrong, a scenario that I have admitted as possible but unlikely.
> It is no wonder
> you like Stachel's personal attack. The two of you are apparently cut
> from the same cloth.
I'm relieved to see that you eschew personal attacks.
> Funny that Stachel's unsupported assertions don't
> bother you, but you mistakenly claim I am making unsupported
> assertions. I will try one more time get you to respond to the issue
> of EINSTEIN'S misuse of the term "kinematics".
I have already done so, and repeatedly, but I will make one final
effort. After that, I will simply give it up -- as I said, you are of
couse perfectly free to believe any nonsense you like.
> Please don't quote me
> authority, or change the subject. EINSTEIN asserts Poincare's DYNAMIC
> clock synch procedure as a new "kinematics" which it is not.
No, the new kinematic innovation of Einstein is the postulate that
the velocity (a kinematic notion) of light is the same for all inertial
observers. I have also noted that there is an operational procedure for
deciding when a frame is inertial which relies upon a lattice of clocks
and mirrors whose separations are measured by meter sticks, etc., but
the masses of the clocks, mirrors, meter sticks, and observers are
*irrelevant* to the determination of whether a frame is inertial.
> Explain
> how EINSTEIN'S observers, clocks, measuring rods, light signals, etc.
> are not MASSES,
As I have *already* said, at leasts twice, kinematics does *not*
preclude the discussion of the motion of *massive* particles; rather, it
concerns itself with the universal aspects of motion which are
*independent* of the masses of those particles.
> and how one frame of reference composed of MASSES can
> accelerate relative to another, without force.
What is at issue is the notion of two uniform observers in relative
motion; one need only measure their relative *velocity* (and that of a
light signal). There is no need to ask how one observer got his or her
velocity relative to the other observer. Indeed, if either observer had
to accelerate by the application of a force in order to attain that
relative velocity, than that observer would *by definition* be
accelerated, hence *noninertial*.
> Don't hide again,
> please. As for the mutilation of the evidence, you only display your
> ignorance when you deny it. Even John Stachel does not deny it.
Source?
> He
> however failed to mention it in the notorious 1997 article in Science.
> Instead of being obnoxious, please, oh please, address EINSTEIN'S
> statement of "kinematics" without changing it, without citing
> authority, and without being insulting. Thank you!
I have already done so. That you still do not comprehend is your
loss.
> P.S. You still confuse abstract spaces with inertial spaces
As I have already said, there is no such thing as "inertial space";
there are only inertial *frames* in a background spacetime.
> in which
> masses are not subject to a NET FORCE. You confuse abstraction with
> physical theory again and again, and you have not demonstrated any
> contradictions in Poincare's work,
I certainly have *not* claimed the existence of any contradictions in
Poincaré's work! He was far too good a mathematician for that. Rather,
what I have noted is that Poincaré's solution to the conundrum requires
that he postulate a "special force" deforming an elastic electron -- and
I have reproduced the quotation in which he says precisely this. If you
don't read French, I can translate it for you.
Einstein's solution obviates the need to posulate such a "special
force," and explains the observations far more neatly and parsimoniously
than Poincaré's. There was no inherent contradiction in the notion of a
geocentric planetary system either, in the sense that the observations
can be explained by a complicated cascade of epicycles; however, the
heliocentric system won favor because it is simpler, more elegant, and
more parsimonious, and it avoids many unintuitive, _ad hoc_ constructs.
Poincaré's theory contains no contradictions (that I know of); rather,
it is unsuccessful for other reasons having to do with simplicity and
universality, not with internal consistency. (I have noted that there
is no experimental evidence whatever for the spherical electron that
Poincaré imagines being deformed by his "special force," but this is not
a contradiction; rather, it is a hypothesis not borne out by
observation. However, in the end it does not matter, because Einstein's
theory gets rid of the need for *all* such details.)
> nor any conflict with empirical
> fact.
See above. As far as is now known, the electron is a point particle.
This is not a conflict with observation, but it is an assumption that is
not -- so far -- borne out empirically.
> You also have not shown how this one issue topples Poincare's
> theory, if that it is what you believe.
No, I have explained above why Poincaré's theory was ultimately
unsuccessful. It was by no means "toppled" by any internal
inconsistency, and I have never claimed that it was; rather, it lacked
the simplicity and the parsimony that characterized Einstein's beautiful
solution.
oiut lkjklj
has done so. I cannot take him seriously, but am forced to view him as
an obnoxious crank. The issue is what EINSTEIN wrote, which was
plagiarized from Poincare. David claims a new "kinematics" based on
the DYNAMICS of inertial motion and the DYNAMICS of light
propagations, but he refuses to see the contradictions of his
arguments. Here is the quote from the 1905 paper On the
ElectroDYNAMICS of Moving BODIES (note that there is no "space-time"
involved in this "new" "kinematics". Space-time in the theory of
relativity was another of Poincare's ideas):
I. KINEMATICAL PART
§ 1. Definition of Simultaneity
Let us take a system of co-ordinates in which the equations of
Newtonian mechanics hold good. In order to render our presentation
more precise and to distinguish this system of co-ordinates verbally
from others which will be introduced hereafter, we call it the
"stationary system."
If a material point is at rest relatively to this system of
co-ordinates, its position can be defined relatively thereto by the
employment of rigid standards of measurement and the methods of
Euclidean geometry, and can be expressed in Cartesian co-ordinates.
If we wish to describe the motion of a material point, we give the
values of its co-ordinates as functions of the time. Now we must bear
carefully in mind that a mathematical description of this kind has no
physical meaning unless we are quite clear as to what we understand by
"time." We have to take into account that all our judgments in which
time plays a part are always judgments of simultaneous events. If, for
instance, I say, "That train arrives here at 7 o'clock,'' I mean
something like this: "The pointing of the small hand of my watch to 7
and the arrival of the train are simultaneous events."
It might appear possible to overcome all the difficulties attending
the definition of "time" by substituting "the position of the small
hand of my watch" for "time." And in fact such a definition is
satisfactory when we are concerned with defining a time exclusively
for the place where the watch is located; but it is no longer
satisfactory when we have to connect in time series of events
occurring at different places, or--what comes to the same thing--to
evaluate the times of events occurring at places remote from the
watch.
We might, of course, content ourselves with time values determined by
an observer stationed together with the watch at the origin of the
co-ordinates, and co-ordinating the corresponding positions of the
hands with light signals, given out by every event to be timed, and
reaching him through empty space. But this co-ordination has the
disadvantage that it is not independent of the standpoint of the
observer with the watch or clock, as we know from experience. We
arrive at a much more practical determination along the following line
of thought.
If at the point A of space there is a clock, an observer at A can
determine the time values of events in the immediate proximity of A by
finding the positions of the hands which are simultaneous with these
events. If there is at the point B of space another clock in all
respects resembling the one at A, it is possible for an observer at B
to determine the time values of events in the immediate neighbourhood
of B. But it is not possible without further assumption to compare, in
respect of time, an event at A with an event at B. We have so far
defined only an "A time" and a "B time." We have not defined a common
"time" for A and B, for the latter cannot be defined at all unless we
establish by definition that the "time" required by light to travel
from A to B equals the "time" it requires to travel from B to A. Let a
ray of light start at the "A time" from A towards B, let it at the "B
time" be reflected at B in the direction of A, and arrive again at A
at the "A time" .
In accordance with definition the two clocks synchronize if
t_B - t_A = t'_A - t_B.
We assume that this definition of synchronism is free from
contradictions, and possible for any number of points; and that the
following relations are universally valid:--
2. If the clock at A synchronizes with the clock at B and also with
the clock at C, the clocks at B and C also synchronize with each
other.
Thus with the help of certain imaginary physical experiments we have
settled what is to be understood by synchronous stationary clocks
located at different places, and have evidently obtained a definition
of "simultaneous," or "synchronous," and of "time." The "time" of an
event is that which is given simultaneously with the event by a
stationary clock located at the place of the event, this clock being
synchronous, and indeed synchronous for all time determinations, with
a specified stationary clock.
In agreement with experience we further assume the quantity
(2AB) / (t'_A - t_A) = c,
to be a universal constant--the velocity of light in empty space.
It is essential to have time defined by means of stationary clocks in
the stationary system, and the time now defined being appropriate to
the stationary system we call it "the time of the stationary system."
Notice the DYNAMICS of Newtonian MECHANICS, the motion of a MATERIAL
point, light signals, observers, etc. It is a repetition of Poincare's
work, was not new, is not kinematics, and does not address space-time,
another of Poincare's ideas. I again observe that David has not
demonstrated that Poincare's theory was unsuccessful, only that it was
more physically oriented and comprehensive than Einstein's. I again
observe that in order for a space to be inertial, a mass subject to no
NET FORCE must rest or move uniformly in a rectilinear line relative
to that space, because inertial motion is a DYNAMIC entity, and
abstract spaces do not tell us how masses move in these arbitrary
images, but dynamics does, through observation of moving masses.
Nowhere in the known universe do we masses subject to no forces.
Kinematics cannot define inertial motion.
Elizabeth Weir
>
> > We've had this discussion before, perhaps you'll remember.
>
> Yes, I remember quite clearly that you outrageously misrepresented
> the work of a scientist whose work you plainly had never even read,
I understand that Hsu has demoted Einstein's kinematic
STR to a special case for the simple reason that a kinematic
theory is incapable of describing an electrodynamic universe.
I don't think you understand that.
> and
> that you made absurd accusations about my supposed sexism, racism, etc.
What do you call harassing me in HLAS for three years?
> > I pointed out to you that women are not impressed by the bashing
> > of other women. Watching other women being abused is not a
> > turn on for women.
>
> If you imagine that setting the record straight regarding your
> misattributions, distortions, misreadings, unsustainable accusations,
> factual howlers, and other farcical blunders constitutes "abuse," then
> you are both more self-pitying and more fortunate than I thought -- you
> must have led a very sheltered life.
You're still recycling spelling errors I made THREE YEARS AGO.
And on a DAILY BASIS.
Do you consider that to be healthy behavior?
> If you state your inventions as
> fact, and if you hurl unwarranted accusations of intellectual dishonesty
> at all and sundry, then you should be prepared to substantiate them.
> And if you imagine that John Baker, Paul Streitz, Art Neuendorffer,
> Peter Zenner, Peter Dickson, Paul Crowley, Pat Dooley, Ken Kaplan, etc.
> are women, then you are evidently more delusional than I had feared. In
> any event, I neither initiated the present thread nor gave it its name;
> you have PWDBard to thank for that.
What do I care what the thread is named. People can name
threads whatever they like. The Baconian theory may be perceived
as moribund but Baconians are sitting on the only authorship
E V I D E N C E. Baconians have the Strachey letter, manuscripts,
attestations and more evidence than they know how to marshall.
> > Men bond around the abuse of women
>
> Now there's a perrsuasive statement.
>
> > --I cited studies on fraternity
> > members that will bond around rape or abuse of women--
>
> I have been outspoken in expressing a wish that fraternities be
> abolished -- but you have never known what you were talking about yet,
Ok. We can settle that.
Refute my argument on the Strachey letter.
The Strachey letter is without peer the biggest thing in
the authorship dispute. If you can place the Strachey letter
in the hands of the Stratford tradesman and prove that it
didn't go straight to the Virginia Company in London, then
I will concede that 'I have never known what I was talking
about.'
Otherwise, Webb, you will be proved to 'not know what you're
talking about.'
And when you lose that argument I'll give you another chance on
Hsu's relativity theory because I know that either you don't understand
Hsu's theory or your just trying to cover Einstein's ass.
> so why should this instance be an exception?
>
> > but women
> > will not bond around the abuse of women.
>
> Another persuasive statement.
>
> > This obsessive behavior can't be healthy and I think it's time that
> > you stopped. Maybe you should buy a television.
>
> Your recommendations are apt to have the unintended effect of
> dissuading your readers from emulating you, since they may reason that
> you have actually tried whatever you are recommending (and one can see
> what has happened to you).
I'd have to be obsessive to stop.
Best regards,
Elizabeth
oiut lkjklj
[snip]
> I'm frankly at a loss to see what you find "personal" in the review.
> Stachel points out quite plainly a few of the book's glaring
> shortcomings, among them the following:
>
> "Apparently, it does not bother Bjerknes that the various opponents
> of the special and general theories that he cites attack relativity
> from mutually contradictory viewpoints. Nor does he seem to realize
> the incongruity of endorsing claims that Einstein's theories are
> wrong as well as claims that they were plagiarized from valid
> sources!"
>
Stachel made unsupported assertions. Why don't you try to back them
up?
> > Those who have read the Bjerknes's book
> > know that Stachel hid from all the issues of Einstein's plagiarism.
> > And, don't forget, Physics World refused to publish Bjerknes's
> > response, which appears at:
> >
> > http://home.comcast.net/~xtxinc/Response.htm
>
> Bjerknes makes the following extraordinary statement:
>
> "...we have a letter from Einstein to Hilbert dated 18 November 1915
> in which Einstein acknowledges receipt of a copy of Hilbert's
> manuscript, which Einstein had requested from Hilbert on
> 15 November 1915. The chronology is straightforward. Einstein
> received a copy of Hilbert's work on 18 November 1915. Hilbert
> delivered his lecture to the Goettingen Academy on 20 November 1915.
> Einstein betrayed Hilbert's trust and plagiarized Hilbert's work on
> 25 November 1915."
>
> How could Einstein possibly have "plagiarized" Hilbert's work *five days
> AFTER(!)* Hilbert had already given a lecture on the subject and hence
> would have copious supporting witnesses to his priority?! You evidently
> have not thought this through very carefully.
>
Those witnesses, Wiechert and Klein, acknowledged Hilbert's priority.
Einstein was a habitual plagiarist. Einstein acknowledged Hilbert's
priority in 1916, which you would have known if you had read
Bjerknes's book. You evidently are ignorant of the facts, but
criticize anyway.
> > Stachel had tried to claim that Einstein anticipated Hilbert, but
> > based his claim on mutilated evidence in Science in 1997. He neglected
> > to mention then that the evidence was cut apart. So much for John
> > Stachel.
> >
> > Bjerknes has discredited both Stachel's personal attack, and Stachel's
> > efforts to deny Hilbert's priority with mutilated evidence:
> >
> >
> > http://home.comcast.net/~xtxinc/AEGRBook.htm
>
> If the evidence was "cut apart," why is there such a robust consensus
> among both physicists and historians that Bjerknes is talking nonsense?
> If it is indeed evident that Bjerknes has prevailed, why are his books
> (at least, all the ones I know of) published by a vanity press?
>
You have made an unsupported assertion, which again demonstrates your
ignorance, and willingness to make personal attacks based only on your
ignorance. By saying Bjerknes is talking nonsense, without showing how
you believe what he has said is nonsense, you are making a personal
attack in lieu of an argument. This demonstrates that you are ignorant
as to what constitutes a personal attack in an argument. You are also
merely waving your hands to make your attack. Why don't you try to
support you assertion that there is "robust concensus" that Bjerknes
is wrong that the evidence was mutilated. Better yet, try to find one
such person.
oiut lkjklj
I showed your mistakes. You can hide from them. That is your problem,
not mine.
> > You can define
> > anything you like in kinematics. Restrict yourself to what EINSTEIN
> > mistakenly called kinematics.
>
> I have already done so, in the parts of my post that you snipped,
> without any signs of comprehension on your part thus far.
You have not shown any failure to comprehend on my part. You tried to
form an argument that because someone else discussed kinematics,
Einstein discussed kinematics, after I had already shown you that
Einstein had not. Someone else's discussion of kinematics does not
prove that Einstein discussed kinematics. I asked you repeatedely to
back your assertions based upon what EINSTEIN wrote and you repeatedly
failed to do so.
>If you indeed
> think that Einstein did not understand kinematics and used the term
> mistakenly, then you are forced to conclude also that:
>
> ? Weidner does not understand kinematics,
>
> ? Sells does not understand kinematics,
>
> ? Rindler does not understand kinematics,
>
> ? Pais does not understand kinematics,
>
> ? Griffiths does not understand kinematics,
>
> ? Török does not understand kinematics,
>
> ? Marion does not understand kinematics,
>
> ? Thornton does not understand kinematics,
>
> etc., etc. It could be that your continued inability to furnish even a
> *single* quotation supporting your viewpoint arises from the fact that
> you are the *only* person on the planet who understands kinematics, but
> that possibility seems to me rather unlikely.
>
That is again a personal attack by you. Try an effective argument,
instead. It would be much more convincing then simply asserting you
understand what they wrote and it contradicts what I have said.
> > We have no abstract space to play with
> > in physics. We have to map space with MASSES
>
> You appear to be laboring under another misapprehension. Kinematics
> does not *preclude* the existence of masses or forces in the discussion;
> it merely deals that those *universal* aspects of motion in which the
> value of the mass and the nature of the force are irrelevant.
I have shown you again and again that the inertia of the masses in
Einstein's arguments and the dynamics of his clocks, light signals,
measuring rods, etc. are key to his theory. You have not addressed
that fact.
> For the
> kinematic foundations of special relativity, it *does not matter* what
> the mass of the observer is, what the mass of his or her clock is, what
> the mass of his or her meter stick is, etc.
>
Of course it matters, because cannot claim they are inertial without
addressing their nature as masses. You cannot just say they move
relative to each other uniformly and rectilinearly. You must address
their inertia. Light propagation is dynamic. Rods are dynamic. Clocks
are dynamic.
> > in motion in order to be
> > able to comprehend it as INERTIAL.
> > I don't need lectures in kinematics.
>
> On the contrary, you would evidently benefit a great deal from them.
>
Another unsupported personal attack by you.
> > I would much prefer you restrict
> > your responses to Einstein's assertions of what constitutes
> > kinematics. The rest of what you wrote, as far as I had time to read,
>
> Ah, I see -- you didn't even read what I wrote, let alone the
> references I both quoted and cited. That explains a good deal.
>
Another unsupported assertion by you.
> > is irrelevant for the reasons just stated. Please address Poincare's
> > clock synch procedure as reiterated by Einstein and misnamed
> > "kinematics", and explain how it is done without observers, clocks,
> > accelerometers, etc., or concede that it is dynamics.
>
> It is not done without clocks, meter sticks, etc., but (1) the clocks
> and meter sticks are idealizations of physical instruments, and (2)
> their masses are utterly irrelevant.
>
The idealization occurs to the extent that the masses behave exactly
consistently relative to each other, not they are not dynamic or
composed of mass or sucject to forces. Forces are present throughout
the known universe. To define a system as inertial, you must prove
that no NET FORCE is acting on the masses of the system.
> > And, no you
> > cannot accelerate velocity
>
> "Accelerate velocity"?! You mean, *alter* velocity by means of
> nonzero acceleration? The bizarre locution "accelerate velocity"
> suggests that you are talking about some sort of third time derivative
> of position (i.e., the second derivative of velocity), in addition to
> suggesting that you harbor some very fundamental confusions about both
> basic kinematics and freshman calculus. But don't take my word for it
> -- see any of the introductory textbooks I recommended.
>
It was a typing mistake. Instead of asking me to clarify what I had
written, you launched into a personal attack. This is typical of your
willingness to be unfair.
> > to Einstein's clock, observers, etc.
> > without force. You are changing the subject kinematics and then
> > declaring that your changed argument is kinematics. Use Einstein's
> > argument.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by "Einstein's argument"; Einstein didn't
> make an "argument" in favor of his postulates (by definition, the two
> postulates are *assumptions* whose usefulness, like that of all axioms,
> is ultimately in the crucible of observation) in the section in question
> -- rather, he stated two fundamental postulates and went on to deduce
> their consequences. Specifically, he postulated (1) the principle of
> relativity (already explicitly enunciated by Poincaré, but known in the
> context of Newtonian mechanics long before that)
The POR is dynamically based.
> and (2) the constancy
> of the observed velocity of light as measured by any inertial observer.
Inertia and light propagation are dynamic.
> Testing whether an observer's frame is inertial requires apparatus (a
> lattice of clocks, mirrors, etc. and a test particle), but neither the
> mass of the test particle nor that of the clocks or mirrors is relevant.
>
> However, as I said, the key point is *not* your misunderstanding of
> the definition of kinematics, although that is plainly an obstruction to
> your understanding;
Another personal attack by you.
> the key point is that Einstein's postulates obviate
> the need for Poincaré's postulated "special force" and other _ad hoc_
> constructs,
Poincare stated both postulates before Einstein.
> and they give a beautiful, satisfying explanation of the
> Lorentz invariance of Maxwell's equations observed by Lorentz.
It was Poincare who attempted an explanation in addition to
formulating the equations, and you attack him for it.
[snip]
John W. Kennedy
> Bjerknes makes the following extraordinary statement:
>
> "...we have a letter from Einstein to Hilbert dated 18 November 1915
> in which Einstein acknowledges receipt of a copy of Hilbert's
> manuscript, which Einstein had requested from Hilbert on
> 15 November 1915. The chronology is straightforward. Einstein
> received a copy of Hilbert's work on 18 November 1915. Hilbert
> delivered his lecture to the Goettingen Academy on 20 November 1915.
> Einstein betrayed Hilbert's trust and plagiarized Hilbert's work on
> 25 November 1915."
>
> How could Einstein possibly have "plagiarized" Hilbert's work *five days
> AFTER(!)* Hilbert had already given a lecture on the subject and hence
> would have copious supporting witnesses to his priority?! You evidently
> have not thought this through very carefully.
Not to mention the very letter mentioned. My wife is a great fan of the
"Bozo Criminal of the Day" website, but I cannot recall her telling me
of any thief who gave a receipt.
>>http://www.pbs.org/opb/einsteinswife/index.htm
The website is about 90% rubbish, confusing relativity with quantum
mechanics, and rhetorically asking how Einstein could possibly have
produced his 1905 papers without the use of a computer (doubly
ridiculous, really, both because Einstein's main use for a computer on
those papers would have been word processing, and because if he _had_
needed a computer, one collaborator wouldn't have made much of a
substitute). And the language in the purely biographical section is
carefully chosen to blacken Einstein's reputation. A very slovenly,
cheapjack piece of work. Right at the end, it actually does introduce
one relevant fact, but fails to put it in context. TV journalism at its
worst.
If this is the best support there is for the hypothesis that Mileva
Maric deserves co-credit, no wonder it is reserved to cranks.
--
John W. Kennedy
"But now is a new thing which is very old--
that the rich make themselves richer and not poorer,
which is the true Gospel, for the poor's sake."
-- Charles Williams. "Judgement at Chelmsford"
Elizabeth Weir
[...]
> I honestly have no idea whether Bjerknes's nonsense is the source of
> some of Elizabeth's delusions or not;
The source of my critique of Einstein's STR, Webb, is a
program I did in philosophy that pitted the British empricists
against the German Idealists. I came to 'not admire' the German
Idealists.
Einstein was a self-admitted German Idealist and the German
Idealists (i.e., the German Aesthetics movement in physics)
embraced Einstein's theory not only because of its simplicity
and aesthetic beauty but because Einstein's theory is intrinsically
authoritarian. I'll deconstruct the STR rhetoric in another post.
German Idealism was the official philosophy of the Third Reich
(plenty of scholarship on that point).
It is now politically incorrect to critique German Idealism in Einstein's
theories because German idealism 'romanticized' for lack of a better
word, the mass murder of Jews.
Political rectitude is not only crazed, it too is a form of authoritarianism.
I don't doubt that you subscribe to it.
Best regards,
Elizabeth
Elizabeth Weir
> In article <efbc3534.04010...@posting.google.com>,
> elizabe...@mail.com (Elizabeth Weir) wrote:
>
> > "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote in message
> >
> > There is no mouse gesture for 'send post' but a mouse gesture
> > sent the post anyway.
>
> Why is Elizabeth dragging Lynne into this?
Just for the record, you're the one 'dragging Lynne into this,'
and I have no idea why.
Are you alluding to Lynne as 'a mouse?'
You're probably not aware that 'mouse' is slang for tampon
in some circles.
> > > > The Stuarts, with all their rumors of illegitimacy and regicide and
> > > > kidnapping and rape and James' father Darnley lying strangled in the
> > > > garden--Bothwell's murder trial was a complete farce--the whole
> > > > chaotic, scandalous mess of the Stuart line--were SIMPLY NOT GOOD
> > > > ENOUGH FOR THE HAPSBURGS. The Spanish Marriage was never going
> > > > to happen even before it started. The question of succession was
> > > > overwhelming because Elizabeth was a heretic and a heretic had
> > > > named James I king (if she even did). James I was not a legitimate
> > > > heir because Bothwell was his father and everybody knew it--they
> > > > looked like twins--and there was no way that the scruffy Stuarts were
> > > > going to snag a Hapsburg princess. The Hapsburg line was at least 800
> > > > years while the Stuarts were nouveau royalty from a line only a few
> > > > generations old.
> > > > And what was Denmark's royalty? And worse of all, James was the
> > > > prettiest one in the family. Anne looked 'like a man' according to
> > > > accounts and Charles had a personality as disagreeable as his
> > > > father's. England was horribly in debt and rich Spain knew that
> > > > James only wanted the Infanta's dowry and would go through it
> > > > in a nonce.
> > > >
> > > > The Catholic Marriage was a loss cause [sic]
>
> > > A lost cause? Or a loss because..?
>
> > A lost cause. Some mouse gesture is sending my posts before
> > I can edit them.
>
> What?! Elizabeth actually *edits* her posts?!
>
> [...]
> > > > > Weir is ignorant of too much basic history to be taken seriously.
>
> > > Even PWDBard gets something right once in a great while!
>
> > > > I have the equivalent of a minor in history (in an interdisciplinary
> > > > program). That doesn't mean much
>
> > > Indeed!
>
> > Predictable.
>
> > > > but I do feel qualified to post
> > > > in HLAS.
>
> > > Any fool can post in h.l.a.s., and experience shows that many fools
> > > do -- even anti-Einsteinian relativity cranks post all manner of
> > > crackpot nonsense here.
>
> > Einsteinianism is just another orthodoxy you've collected, Webb.
> > Stratfordianism, no doubt Marxism,
>
> I have explained numerous times my reference to Groucho, not Karl,
> Marx, although I had thought that the context would have made it
> obvious. However, Elizabeth, despite my repeated clarifications, is not
> only unfamiliar with Groucho Marx's celebrated remark but is actually
> incapable of distinguishing Groucho Marx from Karl Marx! This lapse is
> indicative of a cognitive deficit even more conspicuous than the one
> that occasioned Art's cretinous confusion of the two Peter Gays!
>
> > Ripsianism--I guess that's
> > ultra-orthodoxy--
>
> There is nothing particularly Orthodox about Rips's forays into
> Biblical "codes," and many Orthodox Jews have objected publicly. But
> since you have not even read Rips and have no idea what he said, how
> could you know this?
>
> > Einsteinianism. You'd have a massive anxiety
> > attack if you had to leave the commune. And (I'm laughing, I
> > can't help it) you come into HLAS to ENFORCE ORTHODOXY.
>
> No, I read h.l.a.s. because because I like some of the participants,
> because I occasionally learn somthing interesting from the more
> knowledgeable of these, and because I enjoy the wit of others. However,
> most of all I read h.l.a.s. because it affords copious amusement.
>
> > > > > The Oxford/Derby duo is the truth behind the Shakespeare pen name
> > > > > as
> > > > > many
> > > > > suspected in the 1920s.
>
> > > > No textbooks for us, we got only primary documents, consequently
> > > > I see that Oxfordianism is incomplete because Looney did not
> > > > access Oxford's primary documents.
>
> Looney is not the last word on the Oxfordian "theory," and others
> have utilized primary documents -- although since Elizabeth does not
> read sources anyway, one would not expect her to know this. Elizabeth's
> outdated notion of Oxfordianism remains Victorian. (However, one cannot
> complain too much, since her notion of logic remains paleolithic.)
>
> > > > Baconians, on the other hand
> > > > and despite the loss and scattering of BAcon's papers (I just learned
> > > > that the Folger is sitting on a huge collection of Bacon's annotated
> > > > books and manuscript notebooks and has been very quiet about it
> > > > for the last eighty years--nothing has ever been catalogued)
>
> > > Where did Elizabeth "learn" this choice bit of gossip?
>
> > In an article
>
> WHAT "article"? Can Elizabeth furnish a credible source for once?
> Or is this the perishable internet, and must one lament Wayback's
> continuing lack of a search feature?
>
> > on the dispersal of a Baconian biographer's estate. He
>
> Who? Source?
>
> > wrote between 1900 and 1920 and collected many Shakespeare quartos
> > when they were still very cheap. I suppose the Shakespeare quartos are
> > on display but the short article--probably from Baconiana
>
> "Probably from Baconiana"?! Now that's what I call a precise
> citation! (The fact that Elizabeth evidently regards a citation from
> such a source as authoritative is in itself uproariously funny!)
>
> > --definitely stated
> > that
> > Bacon's other papers were being kept uncatalogued in the basement.
>
> Of course, the source of this chestnut is nowhere identified. That
> may well be fortunate, as we have already seen on numerous occasions how
> farcically Elizabeth misreads the very few sources that she actually
> does cite -- J.-P. Hsu, Akrigg, Dave Kathman's online essay on dating
> _The Tempest_, Poincaré, etc., etc.
>
> > > > the
> > > > Baconians have 15 volumes of Bacon's letters and papers in
> > > > Spedding's monumental work. Oxfordians have nothing even slightly
> > > > comparable to Spedding and of course the Strats have a small
> > > > fist full of documents that have absolutely no bearing on the
> > > > Shakespeare works.
>
> > Oh. I see you didn't stop to dispute this statement.
>
> Even if absolutely everything Elizabeth had ever written was complete
> crap -- which incidentally is a very close approximation to the actual
> state of affairs -- that circumstance would not obligate Elizabeth's
> interlocutors to dispute her every statement, no matter how ridiculous
> those statements might be.
>
> > > > > Proving it is the truth is difficult but now possible
> > > > > with the evidence in my hand...which of course is a factor in my
> > > > > contempt
> > > > > for
> > > > > the Baconian theory which has had many other shortcomings.
>
> > > > Bacon has the Strachey letter.
>
> > > Elizabeth just keeps the comedy coming faster than one recover from
> > > helpless laughter!
>
> > What were the odds that the best evidence of Shakespeare authorship
>
> As has been pointed out to Elizabeth numerous times by several
> people, the Strachey letter is *not* "the best evidence of Shakespeare
> authorship," for the simple reason that it does not limit the field very
> much -- indeed, it is not known how many people had access to the
> letter's content, nor who those people were. The letter is pertinent
> only as a minor sideshow, in that it pretty conclusively eliminates
> Oxford on chronological grounds (not that there was any credible reason
> to suspect that Oxford had anything to do with it in the first place);
> indeed, the entire authorship "question" is a minor sideshow anyway.
>
> > would land on Sir Francis Bacon's desk, Webb? The odds are
> > 4,000,000 to 1.
>
> One wonders how Elizabeth arrives at this figure!
>
> > > > > It clearly was on
> > > > > the wane in the years just before...yes before World War I. Weir is
> > > > > living
> > > > > in
> > > > > the Edwardian era which is about the last time the Baconian theory had
> > > > > any
> > > > > significant or enthusiastic following.
>
> > > > The truth has an inverse relation to popularity.
>
> > > Really?! The idea that the earth is roughly spherical is far more
> > > popular than the notion that it is flat -- does the inverse relationship
> > > of Elizabeth's pronouncement mean that the flat earth scenario is closer
> > > to the truth?
>
> > Do you think that the Oxfordian theory is 'more true' than the
> > Baconian theory?
>
> No. There is no credible evidence known to me that supports *either*
> of the theories. Of the partisans of the two, the Baconians have given
> perhaps the more demented lunatic "arguments" for their candidate's
> authorship (chiefly crackpot cryptography and the like), but some of the
> nuttier lunatic fringe Oxfordians have recently furnished the Baconians
> with some stiff competition in their ongoing Dementia Derby.
>
> > The Oxfordians outnumber the Baconians
> > by probably a thousand to one. That may be too conservative.
>
> That's probably because a few of the more rational Oxfordians accept
> the arguments by which the Baconian nutcases of yesteryear were refuted
> long ago.
>
> > > > Do you actually
> > > > believe that Strats--who have had hundreds of millions if not billions
> > > > of 'believers'--have the right author? There are more Oxfordians
> > > > than Baconians because Baconian theory requires a lot of time
> > > > to comprehend.
>
> > > True -- some of the theory's exponents (Delia Bacon comes to mind,
> > > although Elizabeth Weir herself is a strong honorable mention)
>
> > Delia Bacon was not a Baconian. She, like Art, was a 'syndicalist.'
>
> However, unlike Art, she accorded Bacon a pivotal role.
>
> > > are such
> > > inept writers of English prose that a reader can waste truly colossal
> > > amounts of time trying to figure out what, if anything, the Baconians
> > > are trying haplessly and incoherently to say.
>
> This seems as good a place as any to inject a jocular, Elizabeth
> Weird-style "argument":
>
> "Oh. I see you didn't stop to dispute this statement."
>
> > Strats have yet to produce scholars on the level of some of the
> > Baconians. Orthodoxy really doesn't attract the brilliant.
>
> Whom does Elizabeth have in mind?
>
> > > > Its [sic] difficult in the same sense that Renaissance
> > > > philosophy is difficult or the Shakespeare works are difficult or
> > > > the scope of Bacon's polymath genius is more than one biographer
> > > > --even Spedding--can convey.
>
> > > > > I suppose now with the Stratford man
> > > > > finally exposed for what he was...a cradle-to-grave secret Roman
> > > > > Catholic...
>
> > > > I've done some original thinking on this
>
> > > Elizabeth's "thinking" is generally nothing if not original!
>
> > I'll accept that and note that you've produced nothing original at
> > all except for your abusive repartee with Art.
>
> In areas about which I know next to nothing, I prefer being correct
> to being an original lunatic. However, if it is originality that you
> seek, then perhaps I will repost a parody that I devised a while back --
> although even in that instance I can claim only scant originality, as
> anti-Stratfordians' words themselves are generally *far* funnier than
> anything I could ever invent.
>
> > > > and while I don't
> > > > expect to get credit for the insight that John Shakespeare
> > > > held his sons out of the Anglican schools to thwart the
> > > > Anglican authorities
>
> > > Elizabeth certainly won't get any credit for that insight if she
> > > merely asserts it without furnishing any evidence.
>
> > When have you ever come up with an original insight?
>
> See above.
>
> > You're
> > here to protect the intellectual status quo at all cost.
>
> No, I'm here to enjoy the unintentional amusement furnished by people
> who claim that Old English was spoken as late as the nineteenth century
> and other choice bits of ignorant, farcical invention.
>
> > You're boring,
> > Webb.
>
> I don't contest the point. I lack the gift for inadvertent farce
> that insures that persons like Mr. Streitz, Okay Fine, Mr. Paraleresis,
> "Dr." Faker, Stephanie Caruana, and above all Elizabeth Weird are NEVER
> boring!
>
> > > > as the Irish did in Ireland, I think that's
> > > > a very plausible theory.
>
> > > The fact that Elizabeth regards it as plausible is the kiss of death
> > > for virtually any theory.
>
> > Even your venom is boring.
>
> Evidently one must add "venom" to the long list of words whose
> meanings Elizabeth really should look up.
Elizabeth Weir
[...]
> I was quite serious when I said
> that one wonders where on earth Elizabeth imbibes such claptrap.
At a small but distinguished liberal arts college.
> She
> demonstrably has not even read, let alone understood, the few putative
> sources that she cites.
Here is where you get yourself into trouble Webb, because
you have made an assertion you can't support.
I have, in fact, read what I've cited and it is you who got caught
reading the index but not the body of Akrigg's biography.
I have not read Akrigg's work on Southampton, I cited a
review article (archived) on Akrigg's now out-of-print book
in a post.
I'm reading Akrigg's work on the Court of James I.
You, in turn, have written
41 posts
on my remark about--not even a reference to or a citation of--
a bibliography I saw in passing.
Not much in the way of a citation but it was at least proportional
to the non-issue of Southampton's cross-dressing, a subject
which seems to interest you far more than it does me.
Searched Groups for akrigg group:humanities.lit.authors.
shakespeare author:webb. Results 1 - 34 of about 51.
Search took 1.12 seconds.
Excuse me--51 posts.
So it is you, Webb, who claims to have read works whose index
you have checked instead.
Best regards,
Elizabeth
David L. Webb
elizabe...@mail.com (Elizabeth Weir) wrote:
> "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote in message
> news:<david.l.webb-A965...@merrimack.dartmouth.edu>...
> > In article <efbc3534.04010...@posting.google.com>,
> > elizabe...@mail.com (Elizabeth Weir) wrote:
> >
> > > "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote in message
> > > news:<david.l.webb-9C50...@merrimack.dartmouth.edu>...
> > >
> > > There is no mouse gesture for 'send post' but a mouse gesture
> > > sent the post anyway.
> > Why is Elizabeth dragging Lynne into this?
> Just for the record, you're the one 'dragging Lynne into this,'
> and I have no idea why.
Because Lynne has informed us that her nickname is "Mouse," and she
has even signed posts that way:
<http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=hhLAb.2142%243y1.244827%40news20.be
llglobal.com&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain>,
<http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=anJxb.21565%24dt2.1597205%40news20.
bellglobal.com&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain>,
<http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=LrILb.109997%24BA6.2273593%40news20
.bellglobal.com&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain>,
<http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=pxRyb.4410%24yd.735303%40news20.bel
lglobal.com&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain>,
and many others. It is a pity that you would not recognize a jest if it
bit you; indeed, your total incapacity for recognizing humor might have
saved you the trouble of excoriating my supposed Marxism when I
expressed qualified approval of an utterance of Groucho -- not Karl --
Marx. (Of course, your repetition of the *same* stupidity leads me to
doubt seriously whether you can even distinguish between the two.)
It is also a great pity that you evidently do not read Lynne's posts
-- you could learn a great deal from her. She is often charmingly
witty, she has an amusing sense of humor, and she has never (as far as I
know) made vile accusations of intellectual dishonesty, racism, sexism,
etc., let alone *unsupportable* accusations of that nature, as you so
frequently do. Finally, when Lynne is caught out in a mistake, she
gracefully acknowledges the error, and thanks those who drew attention
to her lapse for the correction. She does not distort grotesquely what
others have said (as you just did yet *again* in the case of Professor
J.P. Hsu), misattribute recklessly, or fabricate bogus "quotations."
She even recognizes her own words, and does not attribute them to
others! Finally, she does not try to pass off pure invention as fact.
Finally, it is a pity that you cannot use the Google archive
competently.
Beyond that, I have no idea why you invoke a "mouse gesture" -- are
you attempting one of your usual feeble and farcical exculpations (this
is the perishable internet, my mouse made me do it, etc.)?
> Are you alluding to Lynne as 'a mouse?'
Yes. Lynne really is Mouse. I really am not Whitt Brantley. Have
you got that straight now? I'm ever the optimist.
> You're probably not aware that 'mouse' is slang for tampon
> in some circles.
I very seriously doubt that that's what Lynne had in mind in
denominating herself "Mouse," or for that matter in bestowing the same
name upon a protagonist in one of her novels. But if you're so very
certain of it, why don't you bother Lynne about it rather than me? You
just love to call people sexist and racist without any grounds -- this
is your big chance to do so yet again.
[...]
David L. Webb
elizabe...@mail.com (Elizabeth Weir) wrote:
> "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote in message
> news:<david.l.webb-4A78...@merrimack.dartmouth.edu>...
> [...]
>
> > I honestly have no idea whether Bjerknes's nonsense is the source of
> > some of Elizabeth's delusions or not;
> The source of my critique of Einstein's STR, Webb, is a
> program I did in philosophy that pitted the British empricists
> against the German Idealists. I came to 'not admire' the German
> Idealists.
>
> Einstein was a self-admitted German Idealist
As fas as the correctness of special relativity is concerned, it does
not matter whether Einstein was a self-professed devotee of the Tooth
Fairy. Correctness of physical theories is ascertained empirically, by
means of observation and experiment, not by adjudicating the political
correctness (or lack thereof) of the philosophical enthusiasms of the
theory's proposer. All that matters is whether special relativity
passes experimental tests. It has passed literally thousands, and it
has not failed one yet. But you know no mathematics or science, so you
doubtless you were unaware of this.
> and the German
> Idealists (i.e., the German Aesthetics movement in physics)
> embraced Einstein's theory not only because of its simplicity
> and aesthetic beauty but because Einstein's theory is intrinsically
> authoritarian. I'll deconstruct the STR rhetoric in another post.
That should be amusing indeed!
> German Idealism was the official philosophy of the Third Reich
> (plenty of scholarship on that point).
And the German Idealists of the Third Reich indignantly *rejected*
Einstein's physics (plenty of scholarship on that point).
> It is now politically incorrect to critique German Idealism in Einstein's
> theories because German idealism 'romanticized' for lack of a better
> word, the mass murder of Jews.
>
> Political rectitude is not only crazed, it too is a form of authoritarianism.
>
>
> I don't doubt that you subscribe to it.
That merely demonstrates your functionally illiteracy.
Elizabeth Weir
ELIZABETH, Dr. Faker ELIZABETH Mr. Streitz ELIZABETH Mr. Crowley
ELIZABETH ELIZABETH ELIZABETH ELIZABETH ELIZABETH
Crowley ELIZABETH PWD Bard ELIZABETH Bernoulli ELIZABETH
Agnes A Gob ELIZABETH ELIZABETH ELIZABETH ELIZABETH ELIZABETH
ELIZABETH ELIZABETH Akrigg ELIZABETH Einstein ELIZABETH Aryan
ELIZABETH ELIZABETH ELIZABETH ELIZABETH ELIZABETH ELIZABETH
Obsessive-compulsive disorder is an anxiety disorder
characterized by obsessions or compulsions --having one or
both is sufficient for the diagnosis. An obsession is a
recurrent and intrusive thought, feeling, idea, or sensation.
A compulsion is a conscious, recurrent pattern of behavior a
person feels driven to perform.
The behavior is aimed at neutralizing anxiety or distress.
ELIZABETH ELIZABETH ELIZABETH ELIZABETH ELIZABETH ELIZABETH
ELIZABETH, Dr. Faker ELIZABETH Mr. Streitz ELIZABETH Mr.
Crowley ELIZABETH PWD Bard ELIZABETH Bernoulli ELIZABETH Agnes
A Gob ELIZABETH ELIZABETH ELIZABETH ELIZABETH ELIZABETH
ELIZABETH ELIZABETH Akrigg ELIZABETH Einstein ELIZABETH Aryan
ELIZABETH ELIZABETH ELIZABETH ELIZABETH ELIZABETH ELIZABETH
ELIZABETH ELIZABETH PWD Bard ELIZABETH Bernoulli ELIZABETH
Agnes A Gob ELIZABETH ELIZABETH ELIZABETH ELIZABETH ELIZABETH
David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote in message news:<david.l.webb-A8F4...@merrimack.dartmouth.edu>...
> In article <45b7371d.04010...@posting.google.com>,
> kemahw...@yahoo.com (Christine Cooper) wrote:
>
> > elizabe...@mail.com (Elizabeth Weir) wrote in message
> > news:<efbc3534.04010...@posting.google.com>...
> > > kemahw...@yahoo.com (Christine Cooper) wrote in message
> > > news:<45b7371d.04010...@posting.google.com>...
> > > > "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote in message
> > > > news:<david.l.webb-9C50...@merrimack.dartmouth.edu>...
> [...]
> > > > > Any fool can post in h.l.a.s., and experience shows that many fools
> > > > > do -- even anti-Einsteinian relativity cranks post all manner of
> > > > > crackpot nonsense here.
> > > [...]
>
> > > > We anti-Einsteinian relativity cranks must stick together, but I was
> > > > unaware that there were others HERE. (which ones?)
>
> > > In Webb's next post you'll be informed that you're under the
> > > influence of Aryan supremacists and you'll get the lecture on
> > > Nietzsche, Wagner and the skinheads in Idaho, sample below.
> > >
> > > Best,
> > >
> > > Elizabeth
>
> > Way Cool:
>
> You are a relative newcomer so perhaps you have not observed the
> phenomenon, but Elizabeth routinely distorts and misrepresents the words
> of others, and her post above is no exception. Indeed, as we shall
> below, Elizabeth is not even capable of using Google competently.
>
> > My understanding is that Joao Magueijo is Portugese, but perhaps his
> > PhD from Cambridge, St. John's fellowship, Royal Society Research
> > Fellowship, and tenure at Imperial College has altered his outlook.
> > However, his descriptions of the "discussions" between peers makes
> > these posts look like love letters, so I have cause to doubt. Thanks
> > for the warning. Can't wait to see Herr Webb's response.
>
> I will discuss the work of João Magueijo further in another post. As
> far as Elizabeth is concerned, this is a fruitless undertaking, as she
> is both ignorant and mathematically and scientifically illiterate;
> however, perhaps you know more about those subjects than she does
> (indeed, it would be virtually impossible to know less), so I will take
> the time to explain at greater length.
>
> First, however, let's take the posts that Elizabeth attempted
> haplessly to quote.
>
> [...]
> > > Re: Daughter Judith: Stratford Man & Catholicism ... other
> > > delusions). As a counterexample, he could consider Richard Butler's
> > > former Aryan Nations compound in Hayden Lake, Idaho. When ...
> > > humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare - Sep 17, 2003 by David L. Webb -
> > > View Thread (2 articles)
>
> This one is truly bizarre, as Elizabeth is *not even mentioned at all
> in the entire post*, let alone called a Nazi. You can find the post at
>
> <http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=david.l.webb-4E1B51.12222817092003%
> 40merrimack.dartmouth.edu&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain>
>
> -- note that Elizabeth does not post URLs of what she dredges up from
> Google.
>
> Here is the pertinent extract:
> -------------------------------
> In article <20030917103353...@mb-m28.aol.com>,
> pwd...@aol.com (PWDBard) wrote:
>
> > Unlike the brilliant but ultimately flawed Michael Wood, orthodox
> > Shakespeare scholars such as Wells and Duncan-Jones hostile to the Catholic
> > Bard movement ignore powerful evidence pointing to a hard core Catholic
> > Stratford man...which is more than just one piece of historical
> > evidence...such
> > as the late purchase in 1613 of the notorious Blackfrair's Gatehouse...
>
> PWDBard's bizarre belief that an inanimate piece of real estate
> forever retains the character of its past possessors -- so that, for
> example, the "notorious Blackfrair's [sic] Gatehouse" is always
> inherently Catholic -- is curious indeed (although admittedly no more
> so than many of his other delusions). As a counterexample, he could
> consider Richard Butler's former Aryan Nations compound in Hayden
> Lake, Idaho. When in Butler's possession just a few years ago, the
> property was a gathering place for neo-Nazis and other racist hate
> groups, complete with a guard tower and barracks, armed guards, a
> sprawling commissary with a huge swastika painted on the roof, an
> on-site church that glorified Hitler, etc. Now in the possession of
> new owners, the property has been converted into a peace park
> promoting tolerance and human rights.
> ---------------------------------
>
> So much for Elizbeth's bizarre notion that this post has *anything
> whatever* to do with her, let alone that she was called a Nazi therein.
>
> > > Re: Elizabeth Weir vs. Oxford ... Weir) wrote: [Much of
> > > Elizabeth Weird's delusional diatribe snipped] I'm not a skinhead and
> > > I am not "under the influence of Aryan Supremacists" because I ...
> > > humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare - Mar 2, 2003 by David L. Webb -
> > > View Thread (72 articles)
>
> This one is, if possible, even more bizarre, because those are her
> *own words* that Elizabeth has quoted above! I merely quoted them in my
> post. See the post for yourself at
>
> <http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=david.l.webb-C4BE3E.13473002032003%
> 40merrimack.dartmouth.edu&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain>.
>
> The supposed quotation "under the influence of Aryan Supremacists" that
> appears in her remarks is wholly fabricated by Elizabeth -- I did not
> write it, as you can readily check for yourself by pasting the quotation
> into the "exact phrase" box of the Google Groups search page
>
> <http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search>;
>
> as you will see, there are nine hits; of those, a plurality (four) are
> authored by Elizabeth herself, while all the others merely quote posts
> of Elizabeth in which the phrase is used. Elizabeth herself is the
> source of the "quotation" -- but we have seen before, on many occasions,
> that Elizabeth fabricates quotations at will. Perhaps the most amusing
> instances are the posts in which she fabricates quotations concerning
> Richard Field, ostensibly from Dave Kathman's essay on dating _The
> Tempest_, an online essay in which Richard Field is *not even mentioned
> anywhere*!
>
> Of course, opining that Elizabeth was under the influence of Aryan
> supremacists would be far short of calling her a Nazi, but I have not
> even asserted the former, let alone the latter.
>
> As for skinheads in Idaho, you can verify for yourself by means of
> the aforementioned Google Groups search engine that there is not a
> *SINGLE POST* to this newsgroup authored by *anyone* that contains both
> the words "skinheads" and "Idaho," other than the post of Elizabeth
> herself which you imprudently designated as "way cool."
>
> > > Re: CONCEALED POET: The Precious Gem of Concealed
> > > Literature ... One wonders where Elizabeth imbibes such claptrap.
> > > There are indeed a few lunatics, mostly Aryan-supremacists who know
> > > as much physics as Elizabeth does ...
> > > humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare - Aug 10, 2002 by David L. Webb -
> > > View Thread (18 articles)
>
> See the August 9 post (from which this is merely quoted) in its
> entirety at
>
> <http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=090820021450376480%25David.L.Webb%4
> 0Dartmouth.edu&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain>
>
> Elizabeth had just opined that
>
> "Like Einstein, Leibnitz published when he was still young, then went
> on to to [sic] nothing much for the rest of his life."
>
> This is farcically false, and I wrote in response:
>
> "One wonders where Elizabeth imbibes such claptrap. There are
> indeed a few lunatics, mostly Aryan-supremacists who know as much
> physics as Elizabeth does (that is to say, none), who strive to
> belittle Einstein in illiterate prose in vanity-published tracts
> and on the web, but their farcical misunderstandings of basic
> mathematics and physics and their preposterous allegations are
> so easily refuted by any sane person who can read English and
> has access to a decent public library that one would think that
> even someone as ignorant and as comically credulous as Elizabeth
> Weir would immediately identify them as the ignorant, often
> racist nonentities that they are.
>
> [Note that I articulated quite explicitly the expectation that *even*
> someone as ignorant and as comically credulous as Elizabeth would *NOT*
> be duped by such nonsense, so one *still* wonders where on earth
> Elizabeth imbibes such claptrap. I did *not* opine that Elizabeth was
> under the influence of Aryan supremacists, of Nietzsche, of Wagner or of
> skinheads in Idaho, the latter three of whom are utterly irrelevant to
> Elizabeth's misconceptions concerning relativity, and are dragged by her
> into this dicussion for reasons that are far from clear.]
>
> "Another possibility is that Elizabeth merely invents (or
> hallucinates) such nonsense out of thin air.
>
> "In fact, Einstein's productive scientific career spanned decades
> and, unlike Newton's, occupied virtually his entire adult life.
> While it is true that Einstein, like a great many other scientific
> giants, published several extraordinary, landmark papers in different
> fields near the beginning of his career and did not match this
> dazzling *rate* of groundbreaking work throughout his career, he
> continued to publish research papers in the best physics and
> mathematics journals throughout his life. In fact, one Einstein
> bibliography lists over 300 papers under the "Scientific writings"
> classification; these papers span the period 1901-1949, almost a
> half century. During his later years, after the development of
> General Relativity, Einstein's time was in great demand and short
> supply, and he was in heavy demand as an expositor and reviewer,
> so expository and review articles occupied a larger fraction of
> his published output. However, high quality research articles in
> the best journals *still* appeared nearly until Einstein's death.
> In view of Einstein's later quest for a unified field theory (in
> which he was unsuccessful), these later research publications are
> often rather peripheral to the main problems occupying his mind,
> so it is truly remarkable that so many such later papers were of
> such high quality. For example, in each of the years 1943-1946,
> Einstein published at least one paper in _Annals of mathematics_,
> one of a small handful of journals enjoying the highest prestige
> in the profession. As another example, the famous paper in which
> the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen experiment first appeared was published
> in _Physical Review_ in 1935, over three decades after Einstein's
> ground-breaking work on Special Relativity, the photoelectric effect,
> the theory of radiation, Brownian motion, etc.
>
> "Of course, one has long since given up any faint hope that Elizabeth
> Weir can actually read any of Einstein's papers, even the ones in
> English, which is a tragic loss for her; however, one would think that
> she could at least manage to use a bibliography to remediate her
> ignorance concerning factual matters."
>
> As we have seen, Elizabeth's profound ignorance of factual matters
> continues unabated; recently she declared that Old English was still
> spoken in some shires as late as the nineteenth century! She also
> declared that the geometry of Minkowski space was hyperbolic. (In fact,
> the geometry of Minkowski space is that of a flat (zero curvature)
> nondegenerate but *indefinite* metric tensor, while hyperbolic geometry
> is that of a *nonflat* *positive-definite* metric tensor of constant
> curvature -1.)
>
> > > Re: CONCEALED POET: The Precious Gem of Concealed
> > > Literature ... There are indeed a few lunatics, mostly
> > > Aryan-supremacists who know as much physics as Elizabeth does (that is
> > > to say, none), who strive to belittle Einstein ...
> > > humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare - Aug 9, 2002 by David L. Webb -
> > > View Thread (18 articles)
>
> This is *precisely* the same text that Elizabeth quoted above, and
> only her incompetence in the use of a search engine seems capable of
> explaining her repetition of it.
>
> > > _________________________________________________
> > >
> > > Re: WEBBLOG: ... and credulous as Elizabeth could
> > > presumably read and think well enough to see through the ignorant and
> > > illiterate rants of Aryan-supremacist relativity-deniers ...
> > > humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare - Aug 19, 2003 by David L. Webb -
> > > View Thread (6 articles)
>
> Again, see the entire post at
>
> <http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=david.l.webb-F23EB0.11362619082003%
> 40merrimack.dartmouth.edu&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain>.
>
> I merely reiterated therein that I had *not* called Elizabeth a Nazi, as
> she had evidently misread or hallucinated:
>
> "However, while we're on the subject of Elizabeth Weird quotations,
> perhaps the most incomprehensible aspect of this while thread is
> Elizabeth's tiresome repetition of the absurd allegation that I
> called her a Nazi. As I already noted in this thread, I opined
> that even someone as uninformed and credulous as Elizabeth could
> presumably read and think well enough to see through the ignorant
> and illiterate rants of Aryan-supremacist relativity-deniers (of
> course, I no longer harbor any such illusions -- Elizabeth has
> pretty conclusively demonstrated functional illiteracy so complete
> that I doubt that she could comprehend even the first paragraph of
> such tracts). However, here are two quotations from Elizabeth
> herself, addressed to me:
>
> 'You're in here to play HLAS Nazi....'
>
> 'Back in your didactic nazi school marm mode.'
>
> Remarkable."
>
> By now it should be perfectly clear who is calling whom a Nazi (clear to
> everyone except Elizabeth, of course).
>
> Finally, although this is getting exceedingly tiresome, there remains
> the matter of Nietzsche and Wagner. Again, the post in question has
> nothing whatever to do with Elizabeth, other than to correct yet another
> of her bizarre misconceptions (that the paper's the philosopher's sister
> released were reliable). That post is at
>
> <http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=030820021151021637%25David.L.Webb%4
> 0Dartmouth.edu&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain>; I reproduce it below:
> -----------------------------------------
> From: "David L. Webb" <David....@Dartmouth.edu>
> Newsgroups: humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare
> Subject: Re: CONCEALED POET: Prodigious Wit Known By Another Name
> Date: Sat, 03 Aug 2002 11:51:02 -0700
> Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA
> Lines: 210
> Message-ID: <030820021151021637%David....@Dartmouth.edu>
> References: <efbc3534.02072...@posting.google.com>
> <rOE09.45519$Hj3.1...@newsfeeds.bigpond.com>
> <efbc3534.02072...@posting.google.com>
> <qxS09.46171$Hj3.1...@newsfeeds.bigpond.com>
> <129f8f2d.0207...@posting.google.com>
> <a3cc4070.02072...@posting.google.com>
> <efbc3534.0207...@posting.google.com>
> <a3cc4070.0207...@posting.google.com>
> <efbc3534.02073...@posting.google.com>
> NNTP-Posting-Host: sw2-as-78-186.dartmouth.edu
> Mime-Version: 1.0
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> 2002 15:50:26 GMT)
> X-Complaints-To: ab...@Dartmouth.EDU
> NNTP-Posting-Date: 3 Aug 2002 15:50:26 GMT
> User-Agent: YA-NewsWatcher/3.1.8
>
>
> In article <efbc3534.02073...@posting.google.com>,
> elizabe...@mail.com (Elizabeth Weir) wrote:
>
> > rpari...@yahoo.com (Roger Nyle Parisious) wrote in message
> > news:<a3cc4070.0207...@posting.google.com>...
> > > elizabe...@mail.com (Elizabeth Weir) wrote in message
> > > news:<efbc3534.0207...@posting.google.com>...
> > > > rpari...@yahoo.com (Roger Nyle Parisious) wrote in message
> > > > news:<a3cc4070.02072...@posting.google.com>...
> > > > > david...@tesco.net (Rita) wrote in message
> > > > > news:<129f8f2d.0207...@posting.google.com>...
> > > > > > "Peter Groves" <Monti...@bigpond.com> wrote in message
> > > > > > news:<qxS09.46171$Hj3.1...@newsfeeds.bigpond.com>...
> > > > > > > Elizabeth Weir <elizabe...@mail.com> wrote in message
> > > > > > > news:efbc3534.02072...@posting.google.com...
>
> [...]
> > > > In 1999 a Baconian barrister, Nigel Cockburn, compiled a fairly
> > > > massive
> > > > summation of the Baconian evidence. Cockburn covered Sir Sidney Lee's
> > > > Southwell arguments. I could probably get the Southwell section
> > > > e-mailed
> > > > to me from a Baconian if you have no luck.
> > > >
> > > > I think there were at least three "erudite Baconians"
>
> That many?!
>
> > > > including one
> > > > very brilliant Baconian from Austria. Nietzsche was a Baconian for
> > > > that matter.
>
> Nietzsche was also completely insane for the last decade of his
> life, but that fate seems to be an occupational hazard for Baconians.
>
> > > > His sister released his Baconian papers after his death.
>
> His sister Elisabeth was also responsible for a number of gross
> distortions and outright forgeries of Nietzsche's writings, chiefly in
> an attempt to remake her brother into an Aryan-supremacist simulacrum
> of herself and her late husband Bernhard Förster, a crude, anti-Semitic
> propagandist and blowhard who had tried unsuccessfully to found a
> racially pure Aryan homeland in Paraguay. You can learn more about
> Nietzsche's proto-Nazi sister and unscrupulous literary executor in
> _Zarathustra's Sister_ by H.F. Peters, as well as in the brief but
> captivating case history of Wagner by Martin van Amerongen. The
> Britannica article succinctly summarizes the main points:
>
> "An early believer in the superiority of the Teutonic races, she
> [Elisabeth Nietzsche] married an anti-Semitic agitator, Bernhard
> F?rster. In the 1880s they went to Paraguay and founded Nueva
> Germania, a supposedly pure Aryan colony, but the enterprise
> failed, and F?rster committed suicide. Amid a major financial
> scandal, Elisabeth failed to make a national hero of her husband
> or to salvage the colony as an island of Teutonic Christianity.
> She next served as Nietzsche's guardian at Weimar after his mental
> breakdown in 1889. On his death (1900) she secured the rights to
> his manuscripts and renamed her family home the Nietzsche-Archiv.
> Refusing public access to her brother's works, she edited them
> without scruple or understanding.
>
> "While Elisabeth gained a wide audience for her misinterpretations,
> she withheld Nietzsche's self-interpretation, Ecce Homo, until
> 1908. Meanwhile, she collected some of his notes under the title
> _Der Wille zur Macht_ (?The Will to Power¾)....After her death
> scholars reedited his writings and found some of Elisabeth's
> versions distorted and spurious: she forged nearly 30 letters
> and often rewrote passages. The discovery of her forgeries and of
> the original texts had a profound influence on subsequent
> interpretations of Nietzsche's philosophy."
>
> > > I managed to skim about a hundred and fifty pages of Cockburn one
> > > evening when I was last at John Michel's. This is definitely the best
> > > Baconian book in a hundred years.
>
> > At first I was critical of Cockburn in the fact that he
> > didn't go outside the sphere of 19th c. Baconian theories.
> > I kept seeing things he'd missed.
> >
> > Then I realized that Cockburn's strategy was simply to
> > put to rest all the Strat objections from the 19th and
> > early 20th century.
> >
> > Nothing could be more valuable to the Baconians.
>
> A little training in rudimentary cryptography would do many
> Baconians *far* more good. For some Baconians, modern pharmaceuticals
> would be more valuable still.
>
> > > Actually the most comprehensive
> > > ever.As I have had no chance to consider it further in detail,I cannot
> > > say how critical I would be become later.It certainly aims to be the
> > > most comprehensive alternative authorship book,period, since Lefranc
> > > wrote at mid-century and I cannot think of a serious alternative.
>
> > I'm unfamiliar with Lefranc.
>
> And with a great deal else. However, Lefranc is entertaining, in
> the same way that the Ogburns and other authorship cranks are. At
> least Lefranc writes reasonably well, so you should find his
> scholarship impeccable.
>
> > > The
> > > senior Ogburns book must be set aside as an
> > > unmitigated disaster(so C.W. Barrell justly described it) and Charlton
> > > Ogburn Jr.'s effort, though often extremely good on the negative side,
>
> > Looney was a not a bad scholar,
>
> In a literal sense, that's quite true -- he wasn't a scholar at all.
>
> > to my surprise. He had
> > a nice prose style.
>
> If you assess the quality of scholarship by the work's prose style,
> then it's little wonder that you have been so comically misled. You
> should read Gililov, Lefranc, and Sobran -- except in Gililov's case,
> the actual scholarship in these books is pretty negligible, but since
> the prose styles are reasonably graceful, you would scarcely notice.
> Perhaps on the basis of these books you could be persuaded to champion
> Bacon, Oxford, Rutland, and Derby *all at the same time*!
>
> > I read Nelson's OXDOX files before I tried to read This Star of England.
>
> "Tried to read"? Was it too much for you?
>
> > It made the Ogburns look very silly.
>
> True -- although the Ogburns themselves had already achieved that
> end quite decisively, even without Nelson's help.
>
> [...]
> > > You have been doing very well on your last several posts but I am
> > > troubled
> > > by your reference to Nietzsche's Baconian papers. Are you sure this is
> > > not a misconception? I have never seen any reference to them before.If
> > > they exist they would be invaluable from a literary(though probably
> > > not from an evidential)point of view. But you must be careful about
> > > statements like this.
>
> > I don't think this is what I saw on a different website but it's
> > similar. The translation from German is a bit literal.
> >
> > Alfred von Weber Ebenhof writes:
> >
> > Nietzsche always believed that Shakespeare had endowed Caesar
> > with an inexpressible something, some event or other, unknown,
> > staying in the dark, or some adventure out of the poet's own
> > soul and recollection.
> >
> > Mrs. Forster Nietzsche goes on to say,
> >
> > "So that it became this tragedy directly which led my brother
> > to believe that the poet whom we call Shakespeare is perhaps
> > indeed Lord Bacon."
> >
> > Von Weber Ebenhof continues,
> >
> > So much for Mrs. Forster Nietzsche.
> >
> > Friedrich Nietzsche, however, actually went much further than
> > Mrs. Forster Nietzsche believes, since in his "Ecce Homo" he
> > says expressly :
> >
> > "We are all afraid in the face of Truth; and while I recognize
> > that I am instinctively certain and sure of this, that Lord Bacon
> > is the creator, the self-torturer of this most gloomy sort of
> > literature......" [my note: Nietzsche is referring to Hamlet].
> >
> > and again
> >
> > "Long are we without adequate knowledge of Lord Bacon, the first
> > realist in every great sense of the word; what he has done, what
> > he has desired, what his experiences have been....And to the devil
> > with you, Messrs. critics!"
> >
> > <http://www.sirbacon.org/nietzsche.htm>
>
> Once again Elizabeth Weir, in the best Neuendorfferian tradition,
> resorts to one of the most farcically unreliable sources on the web.
>
> > The line above is usually translated as:
> >
> > The critics can go to hell. We don't know half enough about
> > Lord Bacon.
>
> > > And do not be defensive about Baconian intellectuals. The problem
> > > is that not enough of them wrote books on the subject.
>
> > I've gone through the LOC catalogue and you're right.
>
> Yes, it's a pity. If more Baconian intellectuals had written books,
> there might be far more entertaining accounts available than the
> unintelligible gibberish of Delia Bacon, the crank ciphermongering of
> Ignatius Donnelly, and other monstrosities.
>
> > > I incorporated
> > > a short list of good,readable,Baconian intellectuals in some footnotes
> > > to my l998 article in the Elizabethan Review. My favorite is still
> > > "Bacon-Shakespeare:An Essay" by E.W.S.[Smithson] from l887. It is
> > > remarkable how few factual errors this twenty-something young made
> > > made compared to many of the standard academics of his generation. The
> > > Bacon Society should really reprint this short monograph with the very
> > > few corrections now necessary.
>
> > I'll look for Smithson.
>
> The prose style is unexceptionable, so you'll admire the scholarship.
>
> David Webb
> ---------------------------------------
>
> Like Elizabeth, you would do well to rely upon the sources themselves
> rather than upon the grotesque distortions (or perhaps hallucinations)
> of the likes of Elizabeth.
David L. Webb
elizabe...@mail.com (Elizabeth Weir) wrote:
[...]
> This is an electrodynamic, not a kinematic universe as Dr. Hsu
> tried to explain to Webb,
No, I very recently posted Dr. Hsu's e-mail; anyone who can paste a
URL into a browser window can simply view the post and verify there is
no mention whatever of kinematics therein:
<http://groups.google.com/groups?q=group:humanities.lit.authors.*+insubje
ct:hsu+author:webb&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=david.l.webb-ECF8B4.2
2433421102003%40merrimack.dartmouth.edu&rnum=1>.
> and mathematical formalism vulgar
> or otherwise is not adequate to describe it.
>
> The 'vulgar' remark probably alludes to Einstein's operationalism--
> an abstract Swiss village with abstract trains and engineers and
> platforms and porters and flashing lights and train whistles. Sort
> of an odd tableau to be described by mathematical formalism
> which comes out of elitist German idealism.
As I have already mentioned to Christine, the mathematical formalism
for special relativity is high school algebra (known since antiquity),
and a smattering of calculus (known for centuries, since Newton and
Leibniz), although even the latter is not necessary to convey the key
ideas, since one need only deal with constant velocities to elucidate
the theory's foundations -- but perhaps Elizabeth believes that Isaac
Newton was an elitist German idealist.
David L. Webb
> "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote in message
> news:<david.l.webb-4A78...@merrimack.dartmouth.edu>...
> [...]
> > I was quite serious when I said
> > that one wonders where on earth Elizabeth imbibes such claptrap.
> At a small but distinguished liberal arts college.
One is inclined to doubt that you were taught there that Einstein
"plagerized" "equasions," or that the geometry of Minkowski space is
hyperbolic. Where on earth *were* you educated? On second thought,
don't answer that -- it's best not to embarrass what may well be a
perfectly respectable institution.
> > She
> > demonstrably has not even read, let alone understood, the few putative
> > sources that she cites.
> Here is where you get yourself into trouble Webb, because
> you have made an assertion you can't support.
>
> I have, in fact, read what I've cited and it is you who got caught
> reading the index but not the body of Akrigg's biography.
No, I produced the quotation from Akrigg's book that directly refuted
what you claimed; I will reproduce it below from the Google archive.
> I have not read Akrigg's work on Southampton,
That is quite plain.
> I cited a
> review article (archived) on Akrigg's now out-of-print book
> in a post.
>
> I'm reading Akrigg's work on the Court of James I.
>
> You, in turn, have written
>
> 41 posts
>
> on my remark about--not even a reference to or a citation of--
> a bibliography I saw in passing.
Your revisionist newsgroup history would be amusing were it not
suggestive of severe amnesia on your part. Here are your exact words,
with Google archive URLs:
Elizabeth:
"Southampton was overly fond of drag and used to hang about the
theatres hoping to play female roles. He was given a few parts
and was apparently very convincing as a girl."
<http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=efbc3534.0205131259.2971c408%40post
ing.google.com&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain>
My followup:
"What is your source for this claim?"
<http://groups.google.com/groups?q=g:thl4202711597d&dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-
8&oe=UTF-8&selm=170520021453104941%25David.L.Webb%40Dartmouth.edu>
[Here I cannot resist quotion Tom Lay's followup:
"I've mostly been skipping over Weir's posts lately, but I do hate
to have missed this little gem. Thanks for pointing it out."]
Elizabeth's rejoinder:
"It's in the record
[*WHAT* "record"? Elizabeth never gets more specific than that.]
that Southampton acted in theatrical productions,
probably at Court instead of the public theatres. He is supposed
to have taken a female role in MSND which was played for his mother's
wedding according to some Strat scholars. [...]
"Here are some academic pages that point to the fact that Wriothesley
was gay...." [...]
[Of course, I did *not* ask for evidence that Southampton was gay --
rather, I asked for evidence of his supposed cross dressing (which is
another matter entirely -- many gay men are not transvestites, and some
cross dressers are not gay). I also sought evidence that he used to
hang around the theatres hoping to play female roles, that he was given
a few such roles, and that he was quite convincing in them, as you
claimed. You *still* have furnished no such evidence, and you probably
never will, leading the reader to suspect that the whole charming
fantasy was pure invention.]
"Here's a site on gender studies where a bibliography of
transexualism features a book on Southampton.
http://faculty.washington.edu/alvin/gaycat.htm"
[Here the reader can simply visit the URL in question and check that the
*ONLY* reference to Akrigg therein is the following bibliography entry:
Akrigg, G. P. V.
Shakespeare and the Earl of Southampton.
London: H. Hamilton, 1968.
Suz, Ugl DA 391.1 .S8 A65
I had read Akrigg, and I knew perfectly well that he did not assert that
Southampton was gay, let alone that he was a transvestite theatrical
habitué seeking and appearing in female roles; as we shall see below,
Elizabeth had not read the book at all.]
<http://groups.google.com/groups?q=g:thl2035743231d&dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-
8&oe=UTF-8&selm=efbc3534.0205171839.919dd88%40posting.google.com&rnum=13>
My followup:
"The only reference I see to Southampton is to Akrigg's _Shakespeare
and the Earl of Southampton_; is that *really* the book you had in
mind? If so, where does Akrigg opine that Southamtpon was "overly
fond of drag," that he used to "hang about the theatres hoping to
play female roles," or that he was "very convincing as a girl"?
Or did you just make that up?:
Elizabeth's rejoinder:
"Why else would a site on queer studies have a book on Southampton
listed in the biography [sic]?"
<http://groups.google.com/groups?q=g:thl2035743231d&dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-
8&oe=UTF-8&selm=efbc3534.0205181712.da0ae81%40posting.google.com&rnum=15>
My followup:
"Ah -- I see that you *haven't* read Akrigg. Rather, you infer --
from its mere presence in a bibliography(!) -- that the book asserts
that Southampton was 'overly fond of drag,' that he used to 'hang
about the theatres hoping to play female roles,' or that he was
'very convincing as a girl'! Astounding -- you infer the detailed
content of a book that you have *not even read*, solely from its
appearance in someone's bibliography!!"
In fact, the book by Akrigg in question contains the following damning
passage, which I reproduced in a new thread:
From my post:
"After summarizing the evidence underlying speculations concerning
Southampton's sexuality, Akrigg writes:
'It all adds up to one thing: nothing would be less surprising
than to learn that during certain periods of his early life
Southampton passed through homosexual phases but, until better
evidence is found, only a fool will declare that he did.'
One need scarcely add that only one with even *less* sound judgment
than a fool would attempt to infer the content of a book she had
never read from its mere appearance in someone's bibliography!"
> Not much in the way of a citation but it was at least proportional
> to the non-issue of Southampton's cross-dressing, a subject
> which seems to interest you far more than it does me.
No, I've never been particularly interested in Southampton's cross
dressing or sexual orientation; it was you wrote
"Southampton was overly fond of drag and used to hang about the
theatres hoping to play female roles. He was given a few parts
and was apparently very convincing as a girl."
I am merely interested in the question of whether there exists any
credible *evidence* for such a detailed, outlandish assertion. Plainly,
if any such evidence exists, it is utterly unknown to you.
[...]
> So it is you, Webb, who claims to have read works whose index
> you have checked instead.
No, the quotation I posted came *directly from the text* of Akrigg's
book, not from the index. Evidently you don't know what an index is
either if you think that an index is likely to contain text like
"It all adds up to one thing: nothing would be less surprising
than to learn that during certain periods of his early life
Southampton passed through homosexual phases but, until better
evidence is found, only a fool will declare that he did."
I cannot imagine *why* you repeatedly post your risible revisionist
newsgroup history when anyone can check the Google archives and confirm
that your history is either invented or hallucinated. But perhaps you
believe -- wrongly, as it turns out -- that everyone is as inept in the
use of search engines as you are.
The entire thread can be found at
<http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&threadm=efbc
3534.0205131259.2971c408%40posting.google.com&rnum=2&prev=/groups%3Fq%3D%
2B%2522overly%2Bfond%2Bof%2Bdrag%2522%2Bgroup:humanities.lit.authors.*%2B
author:weir%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26selm%3Defbc3534
.0205131259.2971c408%2540posting.google.com%26rnum%3D2>.
Elizabeth Weir
> "plagerized" "equasions," or that the geometry of Minkowski space is
> hyperbolic.
I wasn't taught there how to deal with the mania of obsessive
personalities. I'm having to work that out on my own.
There are thousands of hits for 'Minkowski hyerbolic geometry,' most
from university math deparment sites. Is you panic attack over the
fact that I didn't write 'Minkowski hyperbolic Lorentzian geometry?'
I've seen that. The rest are all like this:
PDF] Math 605 ? Minkowski Model of Hyperbolic Space
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
November 10, 2003 Math 605 ? Minkowski Model of Hyperbolic
Space Denote points in . . .
www.math.temple.du/~hijab/courses/2003/Fall/Math605/
Homeworks/minkowski.pdf -. . .
Now if there is something in 'Minkowski Model of Hyperbolic Space'
that doesn't meet with your requirements
BE SURE TO WRITE ME TWO OR THREE
HUNDRED POSTS OBSESSING ABOUT IT.
There's no point in reading any further Webb, because we've seen
it all at least
FIFTY-TWO TIMES BEFORE.
Searched Groups for akrigg group:humanities.lit.authors.
shakespeare author:webb. Results 1 - 34 of about 52. <--<<
Search took 0.54 seconds
<snip> of 400k of Webb's unhealthy obsession with Southampton's
gender identity confusion.
David L. Webb
"John W. Kennedy" <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
> David L. Webb wrote:
>
> > Bjerknes makes the following extraordinary statement:
> >
> > "...we have a letter from Einstein to Hilbert dated 18 November 1915
> > in which Einstein acknowledges receipt of a copy of Hilbert's
> > manuscript, which Einstein had requested from Hilbert on
> > 15 November 1915. The chronology is straightforward. Einstein
> > received a copy of Hilbert's work on 18 November 1915. Hilbert
> > delivered his lecture to the Goettingen Academy on 20 November 1915.
> > Einstein betrayed Hilbert's trust and plagiarized Hilbert's work on
> > 25 November 1915."
> >
> > How could Einstein possibly have "plagiarized" Hilbert's work *five days
> > AFTER(!)* Hilbert had already given a lecture on the subject and hence
> > would have copious supporting witnesses to his priority?! You evidently
> > have not thought this through very carefully.
> Not to mention the very letter mentioned. My wife is a great fan of the
> "Bozo Criminal of the Day" website, but I cannot recall her telling me
> of any thief who gave a receipt.
Yes; the claim is as silly as the argument (if one may call it that)
that special relativity is both plagiarized *and* wrong, and it strongly
suggests that its proponents are actuated by an animus toward Einstein
that is hard to fathom.
> >>http://www.pbs.org/opb/einsteinswife/index.htm
>
> The website is about 90% rubbish, confusing relativity with quantum
> mechanics, and rhetorically asking how Einstein could possibly have
> produced his 1905 papers without the use of a computer (doubly
> ridiculous, really, both because Einstein's main use for a computer on
> those papers would have been word processing, and because if he _had_
> needed a computer, one collaborator wouldn't have made much of a
> substitute). And the language in the purely biographical section is
> carefully chosen to blacken Einstein's reputation. A very slovenly,
> cheapjack piece of work. Right at the end, it actually does introduce
> one relevant fact, but fails to put it in context. TV journalism at its
> worst.
What I find exceedingly odd is the presumption, apparently widespread
among anti-Einsteinians, that if Mileva Maric's name was indeed removed
from a preliminary version of the 1905 special relativity paper, that
this action was taken by Einstein himself; if it occurred at all, it is
at least as likely to have been taken by Maric. I have upon several
occasions removed myself from joint authorship of a paper because I felt
my contribution to be insufficient to warrant joint authorship, and I
know other instances of the same thing; it is simply a matter of
personal ethics. On the other hand, in my entire professional life I
know of only *one* instance in which an author tried to remove his
coauthor's name -- unsuccessfully, as it turned out: there existed a
preliminary manuscript with both authors' names affixed, and the
journal's editor would not publish the article in its altered form
without the removed coauthor's consent.
> If this is the best support there is for the hypothesis that Mileva
> Maric deserves co-credit, no wonder it is reserved to cranks.
Indeed. One does not even know for certain whether there *existed* a
joint preliminary version of the paper; to my knowledge, no such
document is extant. Even if such a joint version once existed, which is
certainly possible, one has no way of knowing why the paper eventually
appeared without Maric's name, and the likelihood seems greater that
this change was made voluntarily by Maric rather than unilaterally by
Einstein. Matters being so, one simply has no way of knowing what
happened, and it seems foolish to begin hurling very serious accusations
of intellectual dishonesty on such a flimsy basis.
David L. Webb
> Nowhere in the known universe do we masses [sic] subject to no forces.
> Kinematics cannot define inertial motion.
No, the number of misconceptions in this paragraph is staggering.
First, Poincaré's theory was unsuccessful, as I already said, because
among other things he postulated the existence of an unexplained
"special force" deforming a supposedly elastic electron, an _ad hoc_
construct not required in Einstein's formulation. Second, as I have
already said several times, there is no such thing as an "inertial
space"; there are only inertial *reference frames*, but these are merely
the bases of a vector space, a *mathematical* notion, and make sense in
a spacetime devoid of masses. You are confusing the adjective
"inertial" used in discussing such a reference with frame with the
inertia of a massive body. Third, the only aspect of motion pertinent
to Einstein's key second postulate is the velocity of light, a purely
kinematic notion. Finally, although special relativity does of course
contain a dynamical component, Einstein's key innovation was kinematic,
not dynamical -- indeed, the dynamical equation of special relativity
reads *exactly* the same as Newton's second law, F=ma, except that the
vectors in question are now Minkowski 4-vectors, and m is now the proper
mass. See Callahan's chapter on relativistic dynamics, p. 132, the last
equation. On the other hand, Eistein's crucial innovation, the second
postulate, is expained in Callahan's chapter 2, appropriately entitled
"Special relativity - kinematics." That is the last I shall say about
the physics involved. If you wish to believe that you are the only one
on the planet who understands relativity and that all the standard texts
and references are wrong, by all means feel free to do so.
David L. Webb
Well, there is certainly a staggering quantity of distinguished
physicists whose books contains chapters entitled "Relativistic
kinematics" and the like. All they *all* wrong?
> >If you indeed
> > think that Einstein did not understand kinematics and used the term
> > mistakenly, then you are forced to conclude also that:
> >
> > ? Weidner does not understand kinematics,
> >
> > ? Sells does not understand kinematics,
> >
> > ? Rindler does not understand kinematics,
> >
> > ? Pais does not understand kinematics,
> >
> > ? Griffiths does not understand kinematics,
> >
> > ? Török does not understand kinematics,
> >
> > ? Marion does not understand kinematics,
> >
> > ? Thornton does not understand kinematics,
> >
> > etc., etc. It could be that your continued inability to furnish even a
> > *single* quotation supporting your viewpoint arises from the fact that
> > you are the *only* person on the planet who understands kinematics, but
> > that possibility seems to me rather unlikely.
> That is again a personal attack by you.
No, it is merely an observation, and a correct one -- I have produced
plenty of quotations from experts substantiating what I have said; you
have produced none.
> Try an effective argument,
> instead. It would be much more convincing then simply asserting you
> understand what they wrote and it contradicts what I have said.
What is it about a chapter entitled "Relativistic *kinematics* that
leads you to believe that the chapter does not deal with relativistic
kinematics?
> > > We have no abstract space to play with
> > > in physics. We have to map space with MASSES
> > You appear to be laboring under another misapprehension. Kinematics
> > does not *preclude* the existence of masses or forces in the discussion;
> > it merely deals that those *universal* aspects of motion in which the
> > value of the mass and the nature of the force are irrelevant.
> I have shown you again and again that the inertia of the masses in
> Einstein's arguments and the dynamics of his clocks, light signals,
> measuring rods, etc. are key to his theory. You have not addressed
> that fact.
I have done so repeatedly, and for the last time.
> > For the
> > kinematic foundations of special relativity, it *does not matter* what
> > the mass of the observer is, what the mass of his or her clock is, what
> > the mass of his or her meter stick is, etc.
> Of course it matters, because cannot claim they are inertial without
> addressing their nature as masses. You cannot just say they move
> relative to each other uniformly and rectilinearly.
Inertial frames are merely coordinate systems.
> You must address
> their inertia. Light propagation is dynamic. Rods are dynamic. Clocks
> are dynamic.
> > > in motion in order to be
> > > able to comprehend it as INERTIAL.
> > > I don't need lectures in kinematics.
> > On the contrary, you would evidently benefit a great deal from them.
> Another unsupported personal attack by you.
No, merely a suggestion, from which you plainly will not profit.
> > > I would much prefer you restrict
> > > your responses to Einstein's assertions of what constitutes
> > > kinematics. The rest of what you wrote, as far as I had time to read,
> > Ah, I see -- you didn't even read what I wrote, let alone the
> > references I both quoted and cited. That explains a good deal.
> Another unsupported assertion by you.
Huh?! You just wrote yourself "The rest of what you wrote, *as far
as I had time to read....*" [emphasis added].
> > > is irrelevant for the reasons just stated. Please address Poincare's
> > > clock synch procedure as reiterated by Einstein and misnamed
> > > "kinematics", and explain how it is done without observers, clocks,
> > > accelerometers, etc., or concede that it is dynamics.
> > It is not done without clocks, meter sticks, etc., but (1) the clocks
> > and meter sticks are idealizations of physical instruments, and (2)
> > their masses are utterly irrelevant.
> The idealization occurs to the extent that the masses behave exactly
> consistently relative to each other, not they are not dynamic or
> composed of mass or sucject [sic] to forces. Forces are present throughout
> the known universe. To define a system as inertial, you must prove
> that no NET FORCE is acting on the masses of the system.
> > > And, no you
> > > cannot accelerate velocity
> > "Accelerate velocity"?! You mean, *alter* velocity by means of
> > nonzero acceleration? The bizarre locution "accelerate velocity"
> > suggests that you are talking about some sort of third time derivative
> > of position (i.e., the second derivative of velocity), in addition to
> > suggesting that you harbor some very fundamental confusions about both
> > basic kinematics and freshman calculus. But don't take my word for it
> > -- see any of the introductory textbooks I recommended.
> It was a typing mistake.
Fine.
> Instead of asking me to clarify what I had
> written, you launched into a personal attack.
No, I merely observed that such a locution *suggests* a fundamental
misunderstanding. The utterance does not *prove* the existence of such
a misunderstanding, but it certainly suggests it.
> This is typical of your
> willingness to be unfair.
> > > to Einstein's clock, observers, etc.
> > > without force. You are changing the subject kinematics [sic?] and then
> > > declaring that your changed argument is kinematics. Use Einstein's
> > > argument.
No, I am observing that the entire physics world plainly labels it as
kinematics in dozens of respected references. Matters being so, you
shoujld consider the possibility that your use of the term differs from
that of the rest of the world.
> > I'm not sure what you mean by "Einstein's argument"; Einstein didn't
> > make an "argument" in favor of his postulates (by definition, the two
> > postulates are *assumptions* whose usefulness, like that of all axioms,
> > is ultimately in the crucible of observation) in the section in question
> > -- rather, he stated two fundamental postulates and went on to deduce
> > their consequences. Specifically, he postulated (1) the principle of
> > relativity (already explicitly enunciated by Poincaré, but known in the
> > context of Newtonian mechanics long before that)
> The POR is dynamically based.
> > and (2) the constancy
> > of the observed velocity of light as measured by any inertial observer.
> Inertia and light propagation are dynamic.
>
> > Testing whether an observer's frame is inertial requires apparatus (a
> > lattice of clocks, mirrors, etc. and a test particle), but neither the
> > mass of the test particle nor that of the clocks or mirrors is relevant.
> >
> > However, as I said, the key point is *not* your misunderstanding of
> > the definition of kinematics, although that is plainly an obstruction to
> > your understanding;
> Another personal attack by you.
No, another suggestion whereby you might remediate your difficulties.
> > the key point is that Einstein's postulates obviate
> > the need for Poincaré's postulated "special force" and other _ad hoc_
> > constructs,
> Poincare stated both postulates before Einstein.
>
>
> > and they give a beautiful, satisfying explanation of the
> > Lorentz invariance of Maxwell's equations observed by Lorentz.
> It was Poincare who attempted an explanation in addition to
> formulating the equations, and you attack him for it.
No, I do not "attack" Poincaré; I have already praised him as one of
the greatest mathematicians of both centuries during which he lived.
However, there is a good reason that the physics *and* mathematics
communities assign the lion's share of the credit to Einstein, while
giving Poincaré full credit and admiration for some very key insights.
> [snip]
David L. Webb
> "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote in message
> news:<david.l.webb-F62A...@merrimack.dartmouth.edu>...
> [snip]
>
>
> > I'm frankly at a loss to see what you find "personal" in the review.
> > Stachel points out quite plainly a few of the book's glaring
> > shortcomings, among them the following:
> >
> > "Apparently, it does not bother Bjerknes that the various opponents
> > of the special and general theories that he cites attack relativity
> > from mutually contradictory viewpoints. Nor does he seem to realize
> > the incongruity of endorsing claims that Einstein's theories are
> > wrong as well as claims that they were plagiarized from valid
> > sources!"
> Stachel made unsupported assertions. Why don't you try to back them
> up?
Well, the notion that Einstein's discoveries are both wrong *and*
plagiarized seems pretty self-evidently indefensible to me, but perhaps
such incongruities don't trouble you, so I won't bother to argue.
> > > Those who have read the Bjerknes's book
> > > know that Stachel hid from all the issues of Einstein's plagiarism.
> > > And, don't forget, Physics World refused to publish Bjerknes's
> > > response, which appears at:
> > >
> > > http://home.comcast.net/~xtxinc/Response.htm
You might wish to contemplate possible reasons for that.
> > Bjerknes makes the following extraordinary statement:
> >
> > "...we have a letter from Einstein to Hilbert dated 18 November 1915
> > in which Einstein acknowledges receipt of a copy of Hilbert's
> > manuscript, which Einstein had requested from Hilbert on
> > 15 November 1915. The chronology is straightforward. Einstein
> > received a copy of Hilbert's work on 18 November 1915. Hilbert
> > delivered his lecture to the Goettingen Academy on 20 November 1915.
> > Einstein betrayed Hilbert's trust and plagiarized Hilbert's work on
> > 25 November 1915."
> >
> > How could Einstein possibly have "plagiarized" Hilbert's work *five days
> > AFTER(!)* Hilbert had already given a lecture on the subject and hence
> > would have copious supporting witnesses to his priority?! You evidently
> > have not thought this through very carefully.
> Those witnesses, Wiechert and Klein,
Huh? There were only *two witnesses* at Hilbert's lecture at the
Academy?!
> acknowledged Hilbert's priority.
Source?
> Einstein was a habitual plagiarist. Einstein acknowledged Hilbert's
> priority in 1916, which you would have known if you had read
> Bjerknes's book. You evidently are ignorant of the facts, but
> criticize anyway.
> > > Stachel had tried to claim that Einstein anticipated Hilbert, but
> > > based his claim on mutilated evidence in Science in 1997. He neglected
> > > to mention then that the evidence was cut apart. So much for John
> > > Stachel.
> > >
> > > Bjerknes has discredited both Stachel's personal attack, and Stachel's
> > > efforts to deny Hilbert's priority with mutilated evidence:
> > >
> > >
> > > http://home.comcast.net/~xtxinc/AEGRBook.htm
> > If the evidence was "cut apart," why is there such a robust consensus
> > among both physicists and historians that Bjerknes is talking nonsense?
> > If it is indeed evident that Bjerknes has prevailed, why are his books
> > (at least, all the ones I know of) published by a vanity press?
> You have made an unsupported assertion, which again demonstrates your
> ignorance, and willingness to make personal attacks based only on your
> ignorance. By saying Bjerknes is talking nonsense, without showing how
> you believe what he has said is nonsense, you are making a personal
> attack in lieu of an argument. This demonstrates that you are ignorant
> as to what constitutes a personal attack in an argument. You are also
> merely waving your hands to make your attack. Why don't you try to
> support you assertion that there is "robust concensus [sic]" that Bjerknes
> is wrong that the evidence was mutilated. Better yet, try to find one
> such person.
I have never yet found a physics or mathematics text or journal
article in the professional literature that attributed general
relativity solely to Hilbert. Perhaps you know of one that does.
David L. Webb
kemahw...@yahoo.com (Christine Cooper) wrote:
> "Phil Innes" <aong...@sover.net> wrote in message
> news:<snmMb.91$1f.1...@monger.newsread.com>...
> > > I remember reading Koestler in Germany
> >
> > doh!
> >
> >
> > Reading Koestler on Kepler!
> >
> >
> > > and wrestling with his issue of
> > > intuition of planetary elliptical orbits
> >
> > Phil
>
> +++++++++++++++++
>
> Aside:
>
> I found another "publication" by Bjerknes.
>
> Elizabeth, you should DEFINITELY visit this one:
>
> www.n-t.org/tpe/ng/lt.htm
>
> David, you gotta see this one!
>
> www.n-t.org/tpe/ng/ops.htm
>
> (makes a person wonder why CJB is so concerned with
> whether Einstein plagiarized anything, don't it?)
Thanks for pointing this out; the page is most amusing. The prose
alone is worth the price of admission:
"The problem on a ether is not harmless, it is in 'a solar plexus'
of physics, its incorrect solution puts a considerable loss to
scientific views. Relativists go on to persist in the fallacy. They
have created such 'brilliant' supercomposite mathematical formalism.
They 'have broken fire wood' in the irrepressible imaginations with
waiving of common sense. And they came into that so far, that now it
is inconvenient to them to return on the guilty Earth and to be
recognized that they for noting so much time misted a head to all
mankind."
(Incidentally, I presume that the second URL contains a typo and should
actually be www.n-t.org/tpe/ng/opo.htm rather than .../ops.htm; when I
tried the latter I got a "File not found" error message in Russian.)
> >:-0 (I thought the little antennae were topical)
Thanks again for drawing my attention to this. It just goes to show
that one can find just about *anything* on the web!
> Cordelialy,
>
> Christine
Christine Cooper
> "Phil Innes" <aong...@sover.net> wrote in message news:<snmMb.91$1f.1...@monger.newsread.com>...
> > > I remember reading Koestler in Germany
> >
> > doh!
> >
> >
> > Reading Koestler on Kepler!
> >
> >
> > > and wrestling with his issue of
> > > intuition of planetary elliptical orbits
> >
> > Phil
>
> +++++++++++++++++
>
> Aside:
>
> I found another "publication" by Bjerknes.
>
> Elizabeth, you should DEFINITELY visit this one:
>
> www.n-t.org/tpe/ng/lt.htm
>
> David, you gotta see this one!
>
> www.n-t.org/tpe/ng/ops.htm
OOPS
the latter url is actually www.n-t.org/tpe/ng/opo.htm
Thanks for pointing this out, David
Glad you were amused.
Cordelialy,
Christine
>
> (makes a person wonder why CJB is so concerned with
> whether Einstein plagiarized anything, don't it?)
>
> >:-0 (I thought the little antennae were topical)
>
> Cordelialy,
>
> Christine
oiut lkjklj
1. From: "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu>
Newsgroups: humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 5:23 AM
> In article <e7ef210a.04011...@posting.google.com>,
> tkf...@yahoo.se (oiut lkjklj) wrote:
>
> > "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote in message
> > news:<david.l.webb-F62A...@merrimack.dartmouth.edu>...
> > [snip]
> >
> >
> > > I'm frankly at a loss to see what you find "personal" in the review.
> > > Stachel points out quite plainly a few of the book's glaring
> > > shortcomings, among them the following:
> > >
> > > "Apparently, it does not bother Bjerknes that the various opponents
> > > of the special and general theories that he cites attack relativity
> > > from mutually contradictory viewpoints. Nor does he seem to realize
> > > the incongruity of endorsing claims that Einstein's theories are
> > > wrong as well as claims that they were plagiarized from valid
> > > sources!"
>
> > Stachel made unsupported assertions. Why don't you try to back them
> > up?
>
> Well, the notion that Einstein's discoveries are both wrong *and*
> plagiarized seems pretty self-evidently indefensible to me, but perhaps
> such incongruities don't trouble you, so I won't bother to argue.
You are irrational, David. There is no mutual exclusion in a theory
being both plagiarized and incorrect, no more than there is a mutual
exclusion in theory being both plagiarized and correct. What makes it
impossible for Einstein to have copied an incorrect idea? Apparently,
you are stupid, as well as ignorant, David.
>
> > > > Those who have read the Bjerknes's book
> > > > know that Stachel hid from all the issues of Einstein's plagiarism.
> > > > And, don't forget, Physics World refused to publish Bjerknes's
> > > > response, which appears at:
> > > >
> > > > http://home.comcast.net/~xtxinc/Response.htm
>
> You might wish to contemplate possible reasons for that.
>
You don't find it unethical to attack a person in print and then
refuse to publish his response?
> > > Bjerknes makes the following extraordinary statement:
> > >
> > > "...we have a letter from Einstein to Hilbert dated 18 November 1915
> > > in which Einstein acknowledges receipt of a copy of Hilbert's
> > > manuscript, which Einstein had requested from Hilbert on
> > > 15 November 1915. The chronology is straightforward. Einstein
> > > received a copy of Hilbert's work on 18 November 1915. Hilbert
> > > delivered his lecture to the Goettingen Academy on 20 November 1915.
> > > Einstein betrayed Hilbert's trust and plagiarized Hilbert's work on
> > > 25 November 1915."
> > >
> > > How could Einstein possibly have "plagiarized" Hilbert's work *five days
> > > AFTER(!)* Hilbert had already given a lecture on the subject and hence > > > would have copious supporting witnesses to his priority?! You evidently
> > > have not thought this through very carefully.
>
> > Those witnesses, Wiechert and Klein,
>
> Huh? There were only *two witnesses* at Hilbert's lecture at the
> Academy?!
>
Again you are irrational, David. You are arguing a straw man argument.
I never said there were only two witnesses. We have two published
accounts from those witnesses. If you can provide published accounts
among the witnesses which deny Hilbert's priority, please do so.
> > acknowledged Hilbert's priority.
>
> Source?
>
See Anticipations of Einstein in the General Theory of Relativity page
17. It gives the precise references.
Again you are irrational, David. You are arguing another of your straw
man arguments, and misrepresenting what you know Bjerknes has written.
Bjerknes never claimed that David Hilbert was the sole creator of
general relativity. You say you have read his book Albert Einstein the
Incorrigible Plagiarist. You should know that he lists HUNDREDS of
people as participants in the development of the theory. Instead of
supporting your assertion, you hide from it. Name one source who has
stated that Bjerknes's claim that the evidence was mutilated is
nonsense.
oiut lkjklj
1. From: "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu>
Newsgroups: humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 5:16 AM
If they are right, you are unable to defend them, other than to invoke
their names. Of course, you may have misunderstood what they wrote. I
am not arguing with them, but with you, and you really try to avoid
talking about what EINSTEIN wrote.
>
> > >If you indeed
> > > think that Einstein did not understand kinematics and used the term
> > > mistakenly, then you are forced to conclude also that:
> > >
> > > ? Weidner does not understand kinematics,
> > >
> > > ? Sells does not understand kinematics,
> > >
> > > ? Rindler does not understand kinematics,
> > >
> > > ? Pais does not understand kinematics,
> > >
> > > ? Griffiths does not understand kinematics,
> > >
> > > ? Török does not understand kinematics,
> > >
> > > ? Marion does not understand kinematics,
> > >
> > > ? Thornton does not understand kinematics,
> > >
> > > etc., etc. It could be that your continued inability to furnish even a
> > > *single* quotation supporting your viewpoint arises from the fact that
> > > you are the *only* person on the planet who understands kinematics, but
> > > that possibility seems to me rather unlikely.
>
> > That is again a personal attack by you.
>
> No, it is merely an observation, and a correct one -- I have produced
> plenty of quotations from experts substantiating what I have said; you
> have produced none.
>
It was a personal attack. You produced no argument. Instead you
attacked me as a person. I am able to form my own arguments. You
apparently cannot form your own arguments, but feel compelled to rely
on authority. That is your weakness. It does not make me wrong.
> > Try an effective argument,
> > instead. It would be much more convincing then simply asserting you
> > understand what they wrote and it contradicts what I have said.
>
> What is it about a chapter entitled "Relativistic *kinematics* that
> leads you to believe that the chapter does not deal with relativistic
> kinematics?
>
If you are talking about EINSTEIN'S chapter, I have already repeatedly
stated and shown the reasons. If you are not talking about EINSTEIN'S
chapter, you are off topic.
> > > > We have no abstract space to play with
> > > > in physics. We have to map space with MASSES
>
> > > You appear to be laboring under another misapprehension. Kinematics
> > > does not *preclude* the existence of masses or forces in the discussion;
> > > it merely deals that those *universal* aspects of motion in which the
> > > value of the mass and the nature of the force are irrelevant.
>
> > I have shown you again and again that the inertia of the masses in
> > Einstein's arguments and the dynamics of his clocks, light signals,
> > measuring rods, etc. are key to his theory. You have not addressed
> > that fact.>
> I have done so repeatedly, and for the last time.
>
You have never done so. You do not understand that an inertial system
is not an arbitrary coordinate system. It is a dynamic state in which
masses are not subjected to a NET FORCE. This state can be mapped with
a potentially infinite number of different coordinate systems, but no
coordinate system defines a system as inertial, per se. An inertial
system is defined dynamically.
> > > For the
> > > kinematic foundations of special relativity, it *does not matter* what
> > > the mass of the observer is, what the mass of his or her clock is, what
> > > the mass of his or her meter stick is, etc.
>
> > Of course it matters, because cannot claim they are inertial without
> > addressing their nature as masses. You cannot just say they move
> > relative to each other uniformly and rectilinearly.
>
> Inertial frames are merely coordinate systems.
>
You do not understand that an inertial system is not an arbitrary
coordinate system. It is a dynamic state in which masses are not
subjected to a NET FORCE. This state can be mapped with a potentially
infinite number of different coordinate systems, but no coordinate
system defines a system as inertial, per se. An inertial system is
defined dynamically. It is certainly not MERELY a coordinate system.
Your statement demonstrates that you have no comprehension of what
constitutes an inertial system.
> > You must address
> > their inertia. Light propagation is dynamic. Rods are dynamic. Clocks
> > are dynamic.>
> > > > in motion in order to be
> > > > able to comprehend it as INERTIAL.
> > > > I don't need lectures in kinematics.
>
> > > On the contrary, you would evidently benefit a great deal from them.
>
> > Another unsupported personal attack by you.
>
> No, merely a suggestion, from which you plainly will not profit.
>
No, it was a personal attack in lieu of an argument.
> > > > I would much prefer you restrict
> > > > your responses to Einstein's assertions of what constitutes
> > > > kinematics. The rest of what you wrote, as far as I had time to read,
>
> > > Ah, I see -- you didn't even read what I wrote, let alone the
> > > references I both quoted and cited. That explains a good deal.
>
> > Another unsupported assertion by you.
>
> Huh?! You just wrote yourself "The rest of what you wrote, *as far
> as I had time to read....*" [emphasis added].
>
What did that explain? You made an unsupported assertion, which you
have not yet demonstrated. Try addressing what EINSTEIN wrote.
Have you read the entire works of the physics world? Why don't you try
to argue with what I have said, instead of trying to make a personal
attack against me? The general theory of relativity came about for the
very reasons I have stated. See, for example, Mendel Sach's article in
the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 1972, pages
117-119.
> > > I'm not sure what you mean by "Einstein's argument"; Einstein didn't
> > > make an "argument" in favor of his postulates (by definition, the two
> > > postulates are *assumptions* whose usefulness, like that of all axioms,
> > > is ultimately in the crucible of observation) in the section in question
> > > -- rather, he stated two fundamental postulates and went on to deduce
> > > their consequences. Specifically, he postulated (1) the principle of
> > > relativity (already explicitly enunciated by Poincaré, but known in the > > > context of Newtonian mechanics long before that)
>
> > The POR is dynamically based.
>
> > > and (2) the constancy
> > > of the observed velocity of light as measured by any inertial observer.
>
> > Inertia and light propagation are dynamic.
> >
> > > Testing whether an observer's frame is inertial requires apparatus (a
> > > lattice of clocks, mirrors, etc. and a test particle), but neither the
> > > mass of the test particle nor that of the clocks or mirrors is relevant.
> > >
> > > However, as I said, the key point is *not* your misunderstanding of
> > > the definition of kinematics, although that is plainly an obstruction to
> > > your understanding;
>
> > Another personal attack by you.
>
> No, another suggestion whereby you might remediate your difficulties.
>
No, instead of demonstrating your argument that there are errors in
what I have I said, you simply attack my "understanding" without
qualifying what you believe it is and without giving me the
opportunity to correct you, which is a personal attack against me, in
lieu of an argument by you.
> > > the key point is that Einstein's postulates obviate
> > > the need for Poincaré's postulated "special force" and other _ad hoc_
> > > constructs,
>
> > Poincare stated both postulates before Einstein.
> >
> > > > > and they give a beautiful, satisfying explanation of the
> > > Lorentz invariance of Maxwell's equations observed by Lorentz.
>
> > It was Poincare who attempted an explanation in addition to
> > formulating the equations, and you attack him for it.
>
> No, I do not "attack" Poincaré;
Sure you do. You state that his theory was unsuccessful. You use the
principle of logical economy as a measure of success, but do not show
that his theory was inconsistent, or contradicted by empirical
evidence. The principle of economy is only an argument if Poincare and
Einstein had the same goal. You have not shown that they did.
>I have already praised him as one of
> the greatest mathematicians of both centuries during which he lived.
> However, there is a good reason that the physics *and* mathematics
> communities assign the lion's share of the credit to Einstein, while
> giving Poincaré full credit and admiration for some very key insights.
>
That was good for a laugh! Thank you! I suggest you Logunov's book "On
the Articles by Henri Poincare ON THE DYNAMICS OF THE ELECTRON."
> > [snip]
oiut lkjklj
1. From: "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu>
Newsgroups: humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare
> In article <e7ef210a.04011...@posting.google.com>,
Space-time is an absolute space, as is well known. In order to define
a region of space-time as inertial, you must tacitly or explicitly
acknowledge the dynamical state as exhibiting no NET FORCE. EINSTEIN
did not discuss space-time, let alone the physically contradicted
delusion of "spacetime devoid of masses." You are again off topic and
are confusing metaphysical fantasies with physics. An inertial system
is a physical concept depending upon masses in a space in which the
masses are in a physical state of not being subject to a NET FORCE.
Where you have observers, you have masses. In order to know that they
are in an inertial space, you must conduct DYNAMIC tests with
accelerometers. EINSTEIN uses physical light signals, and physical
measuring rods and physical clocks, which he accelerates with force. I
notice again that you do not address what EINSTEIN wrote, nor do you
realize that the inertial state is a dynamic state, and an inertial
system is an expression of that dynamic state.
> You are confusing the adjective
> "inertial" used in discussing such a reference with frame with the
> inertia of a massive body.
I am not confusing anything, rather I am arguing with your false
definitions of an inertial system. Inertial is a physical state in
which masses are subject to no NET FORCE. The universe contains
masses. EINSTEIN writes about the universe, not an abstract absolute
spacetime devoid of masses.
> Third, the only aspect of motion pertinent
> to Einstein's key second postulate is the velocity of light, a purely
> kinematic notion.
Physics is about the physical. EINSTEIN repeatedly defines the second
postulate as being empirically based. He uses dynamic light signals to
map space. The postulate of the velocity of LIGHT is not purely
kinematic. It is dynamically based and EINSTEIN employs it as a
dynamic measuring tool, along with the dynamic measuring tools of rods
and clocks. You seem not to realize that the space, or spacetime, does
not exist UNTIL IT IS MAPPED with dynamic light signals, measuring
rods and light signals. You cannot just pretend that spacetime exists
and is inertial. You must give a physical definition of how to create
it. THAT is EINSTEIN'S whole point. EINSTEIN uses dynamics to measure
and map spaces and times. You use metaphysical absolutism to pretend a
world which you know to be physically contradicted, and you tacitly
presuppose those dynamic states, and assert that since they are
tacitly supposed, they do not exist.
oiut lkjklj
> In article <R6WMb.13634$G04.2...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net>,
> "John W. Kennedy" <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>
> > David L. Webb wrote:
> >
> > > Bjerknes makes the following extraordinary statement:
> > >
> > > "...we have a letter from Einstein to Hilbert dated 18 November 1915
> > > in which Einstein acknowledges receipt of a copy of Hilbert's
> > > manuscript, which Einstein had requested from Hilbert on
> > > 15 November 1915. The chronology is straightforward. Einstein
> > > received a copy of Hilbert's work on 18 November 1915. Hilbert
> > > delivered his lecture to the Goettingen Academy on 20 November 1915.
> > > Einstein betrayed Hilbert's trust and plagiarized Hilbert's work on
> > > 25 November 1915."
> > >
> > > How could Einstein possibly have "plagiarized" Hilbert's work *five days
> > > AFTER(!)* Hilbert had already given a lecture on the subject and hence
> > > would have copious supporting witnesses to his priority?! You evidently
> > > have not thought this through very carefully.
>
> > Not to mention the very letter mentioned. My wife is a great fan of the
> > "Bozo Criminal of the Day" website, but I cannot recall her telling me
> > of any thief who gave a receipt.
>
> Yes; the claim is as silly as the argument (if one may call it that)
> that special relativity is both plagiarized *and* wrong, and it strongly
> suggests that its proponents are actuated by an animus toward Einstein
> that is hard to fathom.
>
Explain to us the mutual exclusion between plagiarized and wrong.
Given your stupidity, many things must be difficult for you to fathom,
especially those you make up of whole cloth.
The letter exists. Hilbert's paper, dated November 20, 1915, exists.
Einstein's paper, dated November 25, 1915, exists. Stachel has proudly
stated that the majority view among physicists and historians was that
Hilbert anticipated Einstein. Those are the facts. Einstein's actions,
while unethical and foolish, were not the only time he behaved that
way. Pais could not explain why Einstein published two papers
repeating the Kaluza-Klein theory, which Einstein knew. You can find
the story in Subtle is the Lord... page 333.
[snip]
David L. Webb
> being both plagiarized and incorrect, no more [sic] than there is a mutual
> exclusion in theory being both plagiarized and correct. What makes it
> impossible for Einstein to have copied an incorrect idea?
I did not say that it was *impossible* -- but if Einstein's theories
are indeed *incorrect*, then why the enormous fuss about who deserves
credit for priority?! Who cares about priority for an incorrect
theory?! Certainly no working scientist whom I have ever encountered in
my professional life.
> Apparently,
> you are stupid, as well as ignorant, David.
Fine; suit yourself. As far as I am concerned, then, this discussion
is at an end; surely you have little interest in trying to persuade the
stupid and the ignorant.
[...]
oiut lkjklj
1. From: "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu>
Newsgroups: humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare
> In article <e7ef210a.04011...@posting.google.com>,
> tkf...@yahoo.se (oiut lkjklj) wrote:
>
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > 1. From: "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu>
> > Newsgroups: humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare
> > Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 5:23 AM
> > Subject: Re: Weir's Foolish Investment in Moribund Baconian Theory
> >
> > > In article <e7ef210a.04011...@posting.google.com>,
> > > tkf...@yahoo.se (oiut lkjklj) wrote:
> > >
> > > > "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote in message
> > > > news:<david.l.webb-F62A...@merrimack.dartmouth.edu>...
> > > > [snip]
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > > I'm frankly at a loss to see what you find "personal" in the review.
> > > > > Stachel points out quite plainly a few of the book's glaring
> > > > > shortcomings, among them the following:
> > > > >
> > > > > "Apparently, it does not bother Bjerknes that the various opponents
> > > > > of the special and general theories that he cites attack relativity
> > > > > from mutually contradictory viewpoints. Nor does he seem to realize
> > > > > the incongruity of endorsing claims that Einstein's theories are
> > > > > wrong as well as claims that they were plagiarized from valid
> > > > > sources!"
>
> > > > Stachel made unsupported assertions. Why don't you try to back them
> > > > up?
>
> > > Well, the notion that Einstein's discoveries are both wrong *and*
> > > plagiarized seems pretty self-evidently indefensible to me, but perhaps
> > > such incongruities don't trouble you, so I won't bother to argue.
>
> > You are irrational, David. There is no mutual exclusion in a theory
> > being both plagiarized and incorrect, no more [sic] than there is a mutual
> > exclusion in theory being both plagiarized and correct. What makes it
> > impossible for Einstein to have copied an incorrect idea?
>
> I did not say that it was *impossible* -- but if Einstein's theories
> are indeed *incorrect*, then why the enormous fuss about who deserves
> credit for priority?!
Well, actually, you did say it was impossible, or, "pretty
self-evidently indefensible" and you claimed an "incongruity" between
plagiarized and wrong, which does not exist, and which would make it
impossible for both to be true.
>Who cares about priority for an incorrect
> theory?! Certainly no working scientist whom I have ever encountered in
> my professional life.
>
History compel us to tell the truth. Most people care about the truth.
You must not travel in those circles.
> > Apparently,
> > you are stupid, as well as ignorant, David.
>
> Fine; suit yourself. As far as I am concerned, then, this discussion
> is at an end; surely you have little interest in trying to persuade the
> stupid and the ignorant.
>
> [...]
Now, that is true! I have no pretensions that I can persuade someone
like you with the facts. As for priorities and fallacies, it is only
proper that we should examine the past to see what led to the theory
of relativity, and if and where errors were made in the evolution of
the theory. That is the historico-critical method. To do it properly,
the truth must be told.
Neil Brennen
> Thanks again for drawing my attention to this. It just goes to show
> that one can find just about *anything* on the web!
Dr. Webb,
Since this thread is so wonderfully off-topic, here is another crackpot site
for you.
http://www.new-tradition.org/view-garry-kasparov.htm
Elizabeth Weir
> Because Lynne has informed us that her nickname is "Mouse," and she
> has even signed posts that way:
[...]
> and many others. It is a pity that you would not recognize a jest
How could I take it as a 'jest' from someone as negative and
bitter as you, Webb. I'm sorry that I mentioned the slang because
I don't want to offend Lynne but since Lynne doesn't participate in
this thread I though you were making a joke about her, not to her.
> if it
> bit you;
You bite but your jests only grate.
> indeed,
Here we go again (big heaving sigh).
> your total incapacity for recognizing humor might have
> saved you the trouble of excoriating my supposed Marxism when I
> expressed qualified approval of an utterance of Groucho -- not Karl --
> Marx. (Of course, your repetition of the *same* stupidity leads me to
> doubt seriously whether you can even distinguish between the two.)
I'm laughing. Are you or have you ever been a member of
the Young Socialists For Whatever The Rest of It Is? You're
a generic ideologue, Webb. Groucho Marxism would be the
last thing you'd join.
> It is also a great pity that you evidently do not read Lynne's posts
> -- you could learn a great deal from her.
As could you.
> She is often charmingly
> witty,
> she has an amusing sense of humor,
Yes, she has.
> and she has never (as far as I > know) made vile accusations
of intellectual dishonesty, racism, sexism,
> etc., let alone *unsupportable* accusations of that nature,
> as you so frequently do.
So far you haven't given Lynne cause.
> Finally, when Lynne is caught out in a mistake, she
> gracefully acknowledges the error, and thanks those who drew attention
> to her lapse for the correction.
(NOTE: Here's where Webb transitions from politiking to
propagandizing and I'm sure if Lynne were to read this
she would instantly see that Webb's has made her into a
stick to beat me over the head with--I hope she does
see it)..
> She does not distort grotesquely what
> others have said (as you just did yet *again* in the case of Professor
> J.P. Hsu),
We're not through with Hsu.
> misattribute recklessly, or fabricate bogus "quotations."
> She even recognizes her own words, and does not attribute them to
> others! Finally, she does not try to pass off pure invention as fact.
>
> Finally, it is a pity that you cannot use the Google archive
> competently.
Webb. I promise I will find the post in which I
satirized you and Stephanie and I'll show you that the
Cross-Dressing Webbs were a joke.
I repeat. The Cross-Dressing Webbs were a joke.
I laughed so hard when I was writing it that I hyperventilated.
That, however, was not nearly as hysterical as your irrate
reaction!
> Beyond that, I have no idea why you invoke a "mouse gesture" -- are
> you attempting one of your usual feeble and farcical exculpations (this
> is the perishable internet, my mouse made me do it, etc.)?
All the browser commands are programmed into the screen
instead of the tool bar or shortcut menu so you can do about
a dozen operations with just a slight twitch of the mouse. It's very
unintrusive and fast.
I had to delete the rest of this post because you were squeezing
all you could out of it and it wasn't pretty.
Elizabeth
Elizabeth Weir
> In article <efbc3534.04011...@posting.google.com>,
W E B B
THIS IS POST NUMBER 52.
IT IS TI M E TO STOP OBSESSING ABOUT
SOUTHAMPTON'S CROSS-DRESSSING.
LET IT GO.
Tom Reedy
> "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote in message
news:<david.l.webb-5550...@merrimack.dartmouth.edu>...
> > In article <efbc3534.04011...@posting.google.com>,
>
>
> W E B B
>
> THIS IS POST NUMBER 52.
>
> IT IS TI M E TO STOP OBSESSING ABOUT
>
> SOUTHAMPTON'S CROSS-DRESSSING.
>
> LET IT GO.
Why don't you answer his question and maybe he'll stop asking it? After all,
you are the only one with the knowledge about where you got the claim,
Southampton was overly fond of drag and used to hang about the theatres
hoping to play female roles."
So if you're tired of hearing about it, answer the question. It's very
simple. Or admit you made it up, like you did when you said "The term
'shake-scene' was Elizabethan theatre slang for the factotum who toted
scenery around between acts."
(And it sounds to me as if you're the one obsessing. I doubt that David
knows how many times he's posted on it.)
TR
Tom Reedy
mentally ill I feel bad every time I make fun of her, which is why I hardly
ever respond to any of her posts except when I experience a weak moment.
TR
"Tom Reedy" <reed...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:p2rNb.9326$1e....@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...
Phil Innes
> Actually, I apologize for posting that. Elizabeth Weir is so obviously
> mentally ill I feel bad every time I make fun of her,
In my experience, people who feel secure in their own case do not write this
sort of thing, and being secure, are able to hear other's ideas with
equanimity.
On usenet the three common defamations are (1) other's drug use, (2) a
mental illness or reduced intellection commentary, and (3) general
denigrations of the correspondent's personhood instead of their ideas!
I don't know particularly about Southampton's underwear preferences, but
perhaps "Tom Reedy" here can prove conclusively once and for all where
Southampton bought his knickers? After, is it now 54 posts (?), perhaps all
protest too much?
However I did write some possible stem-words for 'shake-scene' from A.Sax
which seem likely contributing components; after all, such a person would
have a name or some tag for their activity, no? If this inquiry were
sincere, why not contest the matter of it if it seems false, or the inquirer
had other information...?
The way to interogate someone's proposition, if they have presented no
evidential material, is to question their method - even satirically, but
certainly! For writer to _only_ say 'Nonsense!' is not in itself a method of
inquiry, nor does it establish anything. It is a refusal to look. That two
academics (?) in this newsgroup have adopted this practice is nothing to
recommend it.
> which is why I hardly
> ever respond to any of her posts except when I experience a weak moment.
Then you get to beat on the little woman?
Cordially, Phil
Tom Reedy
>
> "Tom Reedy" <reed...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:YirNb.9340$1e....@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> > Actually, I apologize for posting that. Elizabeth Weir is so obviously
> > mentally ill I feel bad every time I make fun of her,
>
> In my experience, people who feel secure in their own case do not write
this
> sort of thing, and being secure, are able to hear other's ideas with
> equanimity.
You sound like you paid attention to your kindergarten teacher, not your
experience.
>
> On usenet the three common defamations are (1) other's drug use, (2) a
> mental illness or reduced intellection commentary, and (3) general
> denigrations of the correspondent's personhood instead of their ideas!
On usenet the most common purpose for posting is to ridicule the sort of
idiocy people like you and Elizabeth Weir post regularly. The most common
motivation is self-amusement. My posts executed both admirably.
>
> I don't know particularly about Southampton's underwear preferences, but
> perhaps "Tom Reedy" here can prove conclusively once and for all where
> Southampton bought his knickers?
I never made any claims toward such.
> After, is it now 54 posts (?), perhaps all
> protest too much?
All I'm doing is asking her to back up her statement. If she did, David Webb
would quit bringing it up. Is that so hard for a normal person to
understand?
>
> However I did write some possible stem-words for 'shake-scene' from A.Sax
> which seem likely contributing components; after all, such a person would
> have a name or some tag for their activity, no? If this inquiry were
> sincere, why not contest the matter of it if it seems false, or the
inquirer
> had other information...?
You're even more of a moron than she is, if that's possible.
>
> The way to interogate someone's proposition, if they have presented no
> evidential material, is to question their method - even satirically, but
> certainly! For writer to _only_ say 'Nonsense!' is not in itself a method
of
> inquiry, nor does it establish anything. It is a refusal to look. That two
> academics (?) in this newsgroup have adopted this practice is nothing to
> recommend it.
You're even more of a moron than I said you were 62 words back. And I am not
an academic.
>
> > which is why I hardly
> > ever respond to any of her posts except when I experience a weak moment.
>
> Then you get to beat on the little woman?
Well, you know, we're all only human. If she can't take responsibility for
what she posts, my only conclusion would be that she is mentally challenged
in some way.
TR
Lynne
> "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote in message news:<david.l.webb-0681...@merrimack.dartmouth.edu>...
>
> > Because Lynne has informed us that her nickname is "Mouse," and she
> > has even signed posts that way:
> [...]
> > and many others. It is a pity that you would not recognize a jest
>
> How could I take it as a 'jest' from someone as negative and
> bitter as you, Webb. I'm sorry that I mentioned the slang because
> I don't want to offend Lynne but since Lynne doesn't participate in
> this thread I though you were making a joke about her, not to her.
I have come in on the middle of this. I'm not sure what David said,
Elizabeth, but my nickname is indeed Mouse, and that is also the name
of the protagonist in my next novel. I thank you, however, for
speaking up on my behalf.
I try never to make such accusations, and I would certainly not make
them against either of you, as I consider you both friendly
acquaintances.
>
> > Finally, when Lynne is caught out in a mistake, she
> > gracefully acknowledges the error, and thanks those who drew attention
> > to her lapse for the correction.
>
> (NOTE: Here's where Webb transitions from politiking to
> propagandizing and I'm sure if Lynne were to read this
> she would instantly see that Webb's has made her into a
> stick to beat me over the head with--I hope she does
> see it)..
I see the thread now, or at least this part of it, as I have ten
minutes until the next round of socialising with my mum's friends
(sigh), and I would ask you both not to argue over me or anything I've
done or said or anything that's been said about me.
>
> > She does not distort grotesquely what
> > others have said
snip.
Thank you for championing me, Elizabeth, and for being kind about me,
David. I'd just like to say that I've now met several hlas
participants of different stripes, and all those I've met are
absolutely charming people whom I'd like to consider my friends. As I
consider both of you friends too, at least in a virtual way--even
though you, David, are a Marxist <g>--it troubles me that something
has happened which has caused you to argue over me.
Best wishes to you both.
Lynne
Christine Cooper
++++
While I hesitate to agree with Tom Reedy AGAIN so soon,
I *finally* managed to locate the thread that is the subject
of the "discourse" between Elizabeth and David.
http:groups.google.com/groups?dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=utf-8&threadm=efbc3534.0205...@posting.google.com&rnum15
(I hope I got that right)
It appears that Elizabeth's response to a request for citation to
her source material for her "cross dressing" reference was
off-hand at best, to the extent that I would agree that she
failed to state her sources to the extent that they could be checked.
The fact that others have also failed to do the same is neither
an excuse nor a reason to follow their example, and implies that
she doesn't take her own position on the authorship question
seriously.
(I'm fairly sure that there are posters who find the entire subject
a source of amusement rather than scholarship).
Her response that, "Why else would a site on queer studies have
a book on Southampton listed in the bibliography," doesn't qualify
as an "inference" about anything, and the reference to "queer"
in reference to the site was sarcastic at best and disrespectful
to persons not involved in the conversation at worst.
Her response to Tom Lay that, "You wouldn't know a fact if it
flew up your nose," indicates that she is happy to dish it out,
so she shouldn't object to having it returned in kind.
I must say, I'm disappointed, but perhaps if she refrains from
such commentary, she might receive less of it in return in the future.
(but I wouldn't bet on that at this point)
Cordelialy,
Christine
P.S. I have posted a response to the "hogfish" reference
that I hope is a sufficiently pointed "backatcha"
without endangering my Judith Martin seal of approval. ;-)
David L. Webb
elizabe...@mail.com (Elizabeth Weir) wrote:
> "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote
> [...]
> > One is inclined to doubt that you were taught there that Einstein
> > "plagerized" "equasions," or that the geometry of Minkowski space is
> > hyperbolic.
> I wasn't taught there how to deal with the mania of obsessive
> personalities. I'm having to work that out on my own.
>
> There are thousands of hits for 'Minkowski hyerbolic geometry,' most
> from university math deparment sites. Is you panic attack over the
> fact that I didn't write 'Minkowski hyperbolic Lorentzian geometry?'
> I've seen that. The rest are all like this:
>
> PDF] Math 605 ? Minkowski Model of Hyperbolic Space
> File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
> November 10, 2003 Math 605 ? Minkowski Model of Hyperbolic
> Space Denote points in . . .
> www.math.temple.du/~hijab/courses/2003/Fall/Math605/
> Homeworks/minkowski.pdf -. . .
As I have taken pains to explain to you before, the so-called
Minkowski model of hyperbolic space is *not* Minkowski space -- rather,
it is a certain spacelike hypersurface in Minkowski space, a two-sheeted
hyperboloid given as a level set of a certain quadratic form. Minkowski
space itself has an *indefinite* metric tensor (the Minkowski or Lorentz
metric) of *zero curvature* (i.e., *flat*), while the induced metric on
the hyperboloid in question is *positive definite* (hence Riemannian)
and has *constant negative curvature* (i.e., is *nonflat*). The
assertion that the geometry of Minkowski space is hyperbolic is simply
false: only a certain *subspace* of Minkowski space -- the hyperboloid
to which I alluded above -- has a hyperbolic metric.
You can find a succinct explanation at
<http://superstringtheory.com/forum/geomboard/messages3/132.html>:
"You asked me to speak to Minkowski. Minkowski's geometry, although
it has hyperbolas and hyperbolic trig functions in it, is not
Lobatchevskian. The term for it is 'Pseudo-Euclidean' or
'Lorentzian'." ["Lobachevskian geometry" is synonymous with
"hyperbolic geometry."]
Another explanation can be found at
<http://www.math.miami.edu/~larsa/MTH551/hyplect.pdf>,
where you will find that the (2-dimensional) Minkowski model is the
hyperboloid given by
-x^2 + y^2 + z^2 = 1,
as a subspace of the (3-dimensional) Minkowski space with the Minkowski
metric tensor
-dx^2 + dy^2 + dz^2.
Finally, I realize that you eschew books in favor of web sites (the less
reliable the better), but you can find the Minkowski model (also known
as the hyperboloid model) explained on page 12, as well as at great
length in chapter 3, in John Ratcliffe's beautiful monograph
_Foundations of hyperbolic manifolds_.
But I explained all this to you at even greater length before;
indeed, you can find the full explanation at
<http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=150520021730317351%25David.L.Webb%4
0Dartmouth.edu&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain>;
below I merely reproduce the pertinent extract:
-------------------------------------------------
I have already mentioned the Minkowski model
of hyperbolic space as the most probable source for Weir's ridiculous
misconception that Minkowski space is hyperbolic geometry. Indeed,
when Weir earlier wrote "Minkowski's spacetime is hyperbolic geometry,"
I explained:
"For the fifth time, the Minkowski spacetime of Special Relativity
is *NOT* " hyperbolic geometry": Minkowksi space has an *indefinite*
(semi-Riemannian) metric tensor, while hyperbolic geometry has a
*definite* (Riemannian) metric tensor; moreover, the Minkowski
spacetime of Special Relativity is *flat*, i.e., *not curved at
all*, while the hyperbolic metric has constant curvature -1....
I have *no idea* where you got the absurd notion that a flat,
indefinite space is "hyperbolic "; my best guess is that you are
confusing this issue with the fact that hyperbolic 2-space (the
"Poincaré disk") can be isometrically embedded in Minkowski 3-space."
The well-known isometric embedding of hyperbolic 2-space into Minkowski
3-space mentioned in my last sentence above is *precisely* the
so-called Minkowski model of hyperbolic space whose definition Weir has
so completely misunderstood, exactly as I suspected.
However, the geometry on hyperbolic space inherited from this
enbedding is *NOT* Minkowski geometry. To furnish an analogy which
everyone (except Weir) should be able to understand, an ordinary
2-dimensional sphere embeds isometrically into ordinary Euclidean
3-space. Yet the geometry on the sphere inherited from its ambient
3-space is *NOT* Euclidean geometry. If Weir doubts this, she should
consider the geodesic triangle on the earth whose edges are the
Greenwich meridian (from the north pole to the equator), the 90-degree
longitude meridian (from pole to equator), and the segment of the
equator from the Greenwich meridian to the 90-degree longitude
meridian. This triangle has right angles at all three of its vertices,
yet the sum of the angles of any Euclidean triangle must add up to 180
degrees. Thus the geometry of the sphere is *not* Euclidean (since it
has a triangle whose angle sum exceeds 180 degrees), despite the fact
that the sphere is isometrically embedded in a flat Euclidean 3-space.
(Indeed, this example exhibits in rudimentary form the celebrated
Gauss-Bonnet theorem which relates curvature with the phenomon of
holonomy -- one is detecting the sphere's positive curvature.) In a
similar way, the Poincaré model of hyperbolic geometry embeds
isometrically into Minkowski 3-space, yet its geometry is emphatically
*not* that of its ambient Minkowski space; indeed, the hyperboloid with
the induced metric has a *definite* metric tensor of constant curvature
-1, while Minkowski space itself (the geometry of special relativity)
has an *indefinite*, *flat* metric tensor. [...]
In fact, hyperbolic geometry has been known since Gauss; Minkowski
geometry is a comparatively recent geometry, devised by Minkowski for
the pupose of "geometrizing" special relativity. Minkowski geometry is
*not* hyperbolic geometry, nor is it Euclidean (although it shares the
property of flatness with Euclidean geometry).
------------------------------------------------------
You must be beset by amnesia again.
> Now if there is something in 'Minkowski Model of Hyperbolic Space'
> that doesn't meet with your requirements
>
> BE SURE TO WRITE ME TWO OR THREE
> HUNDRED POSTS OBSESSING ABOUT IT.
There is no need -- indeed, the post I have already written should
have explained the main idea quite adequately to someone with a command
of freshman calculus. I keep hoping that you will actually bother to
*learn* at least basic calculus and thereby discontinue your practice of
making a fool of yourself, but I'm ever the optimist.
> There's no point in reading any further Webb, because we've seen
> it all at least
>
> FIFTY-TWO TIMES BEFORE.
Then why have you learned nothing from it?
[...]
Phil Innes
"Tom Reedy" <reed...@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:WVyNb.11342> >
In my experience, people who feel secure in their own case do not write
> this
> > sort of thing, and being secure, are able to hear other's ideas with
> > equanimity.
>
> You sound like you paid attention to your kindergarten teacher, not your
> experience.
I am a Brit Tom, I never had a 'Kindergarten Teacher', must have been yours.
> > On usenet the three common defamations are (1) other's drug use, (2) a
> > mental illness or reduced intellection commentary, and (3) general
> > denigrations of the correspondent's personhood instead of their ideas!
>
> On usenet the most common purpose for posting is to ridicule the sort of
> idiocy people like you and Elizabeth Weir post regularly. The most common
> motivation is self-amusement. My posts executed both admirably.
Sure sure! I am liberal as all get-out :0
As long as its only a jolly good time, and not an attempt at scholarship,
and no one is hurt.
Surely! Ho Ho! Jolly good jest fellows!
Do you yodel too?
> > I don't know particularly about Southampton's underwear preferences, but
> > perhaps "Tom Reedy" here can prove conclusively once and for all where
> > Southampton bought his knickers?
>
> I never made any claims toward such.
Perhaps he put a mouse in them? <wink>
> > After, is it now 54 posts (?), perhaps all
> > protest too much?
>
> All I'm doing is asking her to back up her statement. If she did, David
Webb
> would quit bringing it up. Is that so hard for a normal person to
> understand?
What is absurd is to repress inquiry, especially if you know no better
yourself.
> > However I did write some possible stem-words for 'shake-scene' from
A.Sax
> > which seem likely contributing components; after all, such a person
would
> > have a name or some tag for their activity, no? If this inquiry were
> > sincere, why not contest the matter of it if it seems false, or the
> inquirer
> > had other information...?
>
> You're even more of a moron than she is, if that's possible.
Such exquisite feeling for the alliterative mode in English! Lots of arrrr
sounds in there. Reminisent of the countryside and many a buccolic barnyard.
I particularly likes the You're + more + moron. You should try writing for a
living!
Anyway, lets kill two birds with one scene.
SKAKE-SCENE:-
It was Greene who wrote it. 'Trust them not" he said to Nashe, Peele and
Marlowe. Sarcastic denunciation was the man's style, no doubt fueled by
envy, besides, he was dying, and not exactly a cheerful bloke anyway. He
puts Shakespeare down as less than an actor:-
There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with
his 'Tiger's heart wrapt in a player's hide' supposes he is well
able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being
an absolute /Johannes factotum,/ is in his own conceit the only
Shake-scene in a country.
Then he goes on to entreat their rare wits to be employed more profitably
[than..] continuing...
'and let those apes imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaint
them with your admired inventions.'
The Crow was Shakespeare, and 'tiger's heart' from Henry VI, as spoke by
Margaret.
So did this term, initially derogatory, become the anodyne description of
someone who merely shifted the furniture around on stage. I don't know, but
there is its source.
The rest is.....................
Cordially, Phil
PS, I note below ## that you commit to newsgroup defamation #2 [mental
derrangement], to which I have just referred David Webb. Perhaps this is
considered witty or in place of method in your milieu?
> >
> > The way to interogate someone's proposition, if they have presented no
> > evidential material, is to question their method - even satirically, but
> > certainly! For writer to _only_ say 'Nonsense!' is not in itself a
method
> of
> > inquiry, nor does it establish anything. It is a refusal to look. That
two
> > academics (?) in this newsgroup have adopted this practice is nothing to
> > recommend it.
>
> You're even more of a moron than I said you were 62 words back. And I am
not
> an academic.
>
> >
> > > which is why I hardly
> > > ever respond to any of her posts except when I experience a weak
moment.
> >
> > Then you get to beat on the little woman?
>
> Well, you know, we're all only human. If she can't take responsibility for
> what she posts, my only conclusion would be that she is mentally
challenged
> in some way.
##Which is the excuse freeing you to not take responsibility for your own
posts, and can call thereby call people morons and so on. How..... deep.
John W. Kennedy
> On usenet the three common defamations are (1) other's drug use, (2) a
> mental illness or reduced intellection commentary, and (3) general
> denigrations of the correspondent's personhood instead of their ideas!
This is known as the "Microsoft defense". Misbehave in court until the
judge loses his temper, and then file an appeal on the grounds of
judicial bias.
--
John W. Kennedy
"But now is a new thing which is very old--
that the rich make themselves richer and not poorer,
which is the true Gospel, for the poor's sake."
-- Charles Williams. "Judgement at Chelmsford"
David L. Webb
elizabe...@mail.com (Elizabeth Weir) wrote:
[...]
> > your total incapacity for recognizing humor might have
> > saved you the trouble of excoriating my supposed Marxism when I
> > expressed qualified approval of an utterance of Groucho -- not Karl --
> > Marx. (Of course, your repetition of the *same* stupidity leads me to
> > doubt seriously whether you can even distinguish between the two.)
[...]
> > It is also a great pity that you evidently do not read Lynne's posts
> > -- you could learn a great deal from her.
[...]
> > Finally, when Lynne is caught out in a mistake, she
> > gracefully acknowledges the error, and thanks those who drew attention
> > to her lapse for the correction.
> (NOTE: Here's where Webb transitions from politiking [sic] to
> propagandizing and I'm sure if Lynne were to read this
> she would instantly see that Webb's has [sic] made her into a
> stick to beat me over the head with--I hope she does
> see it)..
There is no propaganda whatever in my reporting your failure to
acknowledge your many ludicrous errors (and your risible "Why else would
a site on queer studies have a book on Southampton listed in the
biography [sic]"-style attempts to justify them). Nor is there any
propaganda inherent in noting your many misquotations, misattributions,
and misrepresentations, which are far more serious. If you ever so much
as acknowledged such lapses, let alone made a good faith attempt to
rectify them, you would generate far fewer critical followups, and you
would be taken far more seriously, as Lynne is.
> > She does not distort grotesquely what
> > others have said (as you just did yet *again* in the case of Professor
> > J.P. Hsu),
[...]
> > misattribute recklessly, or fabricate bogus "quotations."
> > She even recognizes her own words, and does not attribute them to
> > others! Finally, she does not try to pass off pure invention as fact.
> >
> > Finally, it is a pity that you cannot use the Google archive
> > competently.
> Webb. I promise I will find the post in which I
> satirized you and Stephanie and I'll show you that the
> Cross-Dressing Webbs were a joke.
>
> I repeat. The Cross-Dressing Webbs were a joke.
>
> I laughed so hard when I was writing it that I hyperventilated.
That condition may perhaps be medically treatable.
> That, however, was not nearly as hysterical as your irrate
> reaction!
Your lack of a sense of humor evidently handicaps you in
distinguishing ire from mirth. But for once you're right about one
thing: your attribution of virtually everything ever written by any Webb
on Usenet *was* funny -- it it was the perfect self-parody by someone
who attributes her *own words* to others, who carries on bizarre online
conversations with herself because she doesn't recognize her own posts,
etc.:
<http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=bvqfb.135530%24bo1.61194%40news-ser
ver.bigpond.net.au&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain>.
> > Beyond that, I have no idea why you invoke a "mouse gesture" -- are
> > you attempting one of your usual feeble and farcical exculpations (this
> > is the perishable internet, my mouse made me do it, etc.)?
> All the browser commands are programmed into the screen
> instead of the tool bar or shortcut menu so you can do about
> a dozen operations with just a slight twitch of the mouse. It's very
> unintrusive and fast.
>
> I had to delete the rest of this post because you were squeezing
> all you could out of it and it wasn't pretty.
If so, that circumstance arises solely from your own tastelessness in
linking Lynn's nickname with tampons. But as I said, it is a great pity
that you evidently do not read Lynne's posts (there are about twenty of
Lynne's posts containing a reference by Lynne to herself as "Mouse").
Christine Cooper
> > "Tom Reedy" <reed...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> > news:YirNb.9340$1e....@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> > > Actually, I apologize for posting that. Elizabeth Weir is so obviously
> > > mentally ill I feel bad every time I make fun of her,
> >
++++++++
OOPS! ;-p
I forgot the two //
Christine
bookburn
> Actually, I apologize for posting that. Elizabeth Weir is so
obviously
> mentally ill I feel bad every time I make fun of her, which is
why I hardly
> ever respond to any of her posts except when I experience a
weak moment.
>
> TR
Bad show. Not decent, at all. Ms. Weir is always in good taste,
even when responding to nettlesome comments. Perhaps her
willingness to participate in this thread addressing her
personally invites such debased remarks. Better you desist from
reading her posts than indulge in such distressing invective
intended to amuse others, IMO.
bookburn
Neil Brennen
"bookburn" <book...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:100eagh...@corp.supernews.com...
>
> "Tom Reedy" <reed...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:YirNb.9340$1e....@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> > Actually, I apologize for posting that. Elizabeth Weir is so
> obviously
> > mentally ill I feel bad every time I make fun of her, which is
> why I hardly
> > ever respond to any of her posts except when I experience a
> weak moment.
> >
> > TR
>
> Bad show. Not decent, at all. Ms. Weir is always in good taste,
> even when responding to nettlesome comments.
This must be another example of the sort of irony and double-meanings that
the anti-Strats are always reading into Jonson.
Elizabeth Weir
"Tom Reedy" <reed...@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<p2rNb.9326$1e....@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net>...
> "Elizabeth Weir" <elizabe...@mail.com> wrote in message
> news:efbc3534.04011...@posting.google.com...
> > W E B B
> >
> > THIS IS POST NUMBER 52.
> >
> > IT IS TI M E TO STOP OBSESSING ABOUT
> >
> > SOUTHAMPTON'S CROSS-DRESSSING.
> >
> > LET IT GO.
>
> Why don't you answer his question and maybe he'll stop asking it?
The answer, Reedy, is irrelevant. Webb is only interested
in the inquisition.
Webb likes to play the authoritarian so he keeps this tedious
game going by repeatedly denying that Southampton
was a cross-dresser--see pdf below--even though hundreds of
articles have been published on the discovery of a portrait thought
for 400 years to be of a young woman but discovered to be of
Southampton..
Southampton's identity as the 'young woman' has been verified
by top experts in Elizabethan portraiture.
The experts agree that Southampton is wearing drag.
I've posted at least fifty links to articles on the subject of
Southampton's cross-dressing portrait but Webb has chosen
to reject the evidence.
One of his excuses involved the fact that I used the word
'drag' and not the word 'camp.' As far as I know camp is
drag with an attitude but perhaps you can correct me,
Reedy.
This is hardly the first time I've posted this portrait:
From The Guardian:
In the portrait by an unknown artist, dating from the
early 1590s, the teenage Henry Wriothesley, third
Earl of Southampton, is wearing lipstick, rouge and
an elaborate double earring. His long hair hangs down
in very feminine tresses and his hand lies on his heart
in a somewhat camp gesture.
<http://www.observer.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,687778,00.html>
> After all,
> you are the only one with the knowledge about where you got the
> claim, Southampton was overly fond of drag and used to hang
> about the theatres hoping to play female roles."
What Webb has failed to convey is that I said, conversationally,
that 'somewhere I read Southampton was fond of drag.'
Webb is trying to make it appear that I claimed that I had
an authoritative source but was unwilling to cite it. It was
just something I read while browsing online and I did not
attempt to conceal that fact.
Webb doesn't have a case because I didn't make any claims
that it was taken from an authoritative source.
Keeping in mind that this was not a formal post that required
citiations and in the spirit of fwiw, I also said that I had seen
Akrigg's book on Southampton's homosexuality on a Queer Studies
page and I candidly divulged to Webb that it was only a bibliography
citation.
I also read that Southampton played female roles, not
in the public theatres, of course, but in private playhouses.
There is no documented contemporaneous source but there
is a tradition that Southampton played a female role in MSND.
The point here, Reedy, is that I was in a *conversation* with
Webb.
I don't believe that remarks in passing made in an informal
exchange require citations.
Webb is inventing this extraordinary demand so he can
keep up the harassment on the pretense that he is only
'seeking the truth.'
I told him the truth, up front, in my first posts to him and
of course Webb knows this.
Here are the facts but this is not in the way of a formal argument
so you can take it or leave it:
1. Southampton and Essex were regulars at the public theatres
but Southampton was an aficionado so he had a private theatre
constructed at Southampton House.
It's in the record that Richard II was played at Southampton's private
theatre.
So we may conclude that the theatre groupie Southampton 'liked to
hang about the theatres.'
2. Webb also denies that Southampton was a homosexual but
Akrigg and others have printed an eyewitness account by
one of Southampton's officers that Southampton was having
sex with a 'favorite' in a tent in Ireland near the field of battle.
Southampton was the disasterous 'Master of the Horse' and
showered this 'favorite'--some man from the ranks--with
favors including a prize saddle horse, the latter gift causing
scandal because of its high price.
.
I couldn't find Akrigg's out-of-print biography of Southampton
although Webb was able to cross the quad to the library
and page through the index--but I stumbled onto the pertinent
quote taken from Akrigg's book in an old review from a journal
archived online.
And yes, I cited the review, not the book.
I am not responsible for Webb's inability to manage his anger
but I am really getting bored with his misrepresentation of
what I have stated and posted.
> So if you're tired of hearing about it, answer the question.
Reedy. Webb doesn't want the answer.
Webb wants to hold on to the the question because making
authoritarian demands gets Webb excited.
Best regards,
Elizabeth
Neil Brennen
> You're even more of a moron than she is, if that's possible.
I would agree with that statement. Phil's latest threat to me, part of a
string of them going back to 2001, is to contact a publisher to complain
about my fair-use quotation of copyrighted material in a newsgroup post.
That was several days ago; needless to say, nothing happened.
Neil Brennen
--
Anyone care to guess which HLAS poster wrote the following mind-boggling
statement?
"Good God! He [Henry Miller] is perhaps the only American writer of note
after Clemens."
IIRC, that was none other than our own fourth-hand Joyce imitator, Phil
Innes. Makes you wonder if he's read anything published after 1950, doesn't
it? Or anything before 1950, as far as that goes.
-Tom Reedy
Tom Reedy
> news:YirNb.9340$1e....@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> > Actually, I apologize for posting that. Elizabeth Weir is so
> obviously
> > mentally ill I feel bad every time I make fun of her, which is
> why I hardly
> > ever respond to any of her posts except when I experience a
> weak moment.
> >
> > TR
>
> Bad show. Not decent, at all. Ms. Weir is always in good taste,
> even when responding to nettlesome comments.
You mean like when she calls David Webb a "silly fuck," an "asshole," a
"shit?"
Perhaps her
> willingness to participate in this thread addressing her
> personally invites such debased remarks. Better you desist from
> reading her posts than indulge in such distressing invective
> intended to amuse others, IMO.
Who said anything about amusing others? You'd better watch it, bookburn.
You're beginning to read meanings into statements that you assume are there.
You might be on the road to becoming an antiStratfordian.
TR
>
> bookburn
>
bookburn
> "bookburn" <book...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:100eagh...@corp.supernews.com...
> >
> > "Tom Reedy" <reed...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> > news:YirNb.9340$1e....@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> > > Actually, I apologize for posting that. Elizabeth Weir is
so
> > obviously
> > > mentally ill I feel bad every time I make fun of her, which
is
> > why I hardly
> > > ever respond to any of her posts except when I experience a
> > weak moment.
> > >
> > > TR
> >
> > Bad show. Not decent, at all. Ms. Weir is always in good
taste,
> > even when responding to nettlesome comments.
>
> You mean like when she calls David Webb a "silly fuck," an
"asshole," a
> "shit?"
Well, if she did that, I can imagine how one would suspect her of
a certain loss of temper; perhaps her "weak moment." But I can't
pretend to walk in her moccasins; maybe that is her way of
inviting Webb to get down and vent a bit. Hear that, Webb? You
and Weir can try walking in each others' moccasins. Try being a
Baconian for a day.
> Perhaps her
> > willingness to participate in this thread addressing her
> > personally invites such debased remarks. Better you desist
from
> > reading her posts than indulge in such distressing invective
> > intended to amuse others, IMO.
>
> Who said anything about amusing others? You'd better watch it,
bookburn.
> You're beginning to read meanings into statements that you
assume are there.
> You might be on the road to becoming an antiStratfordian.
>
> TR
Oh, I though you were amusing. I probably could be an
antiStratfordian if that meant not agreeing with everything
assumed by the Central Committee. bb
-
Elizabeth Weir
> "bookburn" <book...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:100eagh...@corp.supernews.com...
> >
> > "Tom Reedy" <reed...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> > news:YirNb.9340$1e....@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> > > Actually, I apologize for posting that. Elizabeth Weir is so
> obviously
> > > mentally ill I feel bad every time I make fun of her, which is
> why I hardly
> > > ever respond to any of her posts except when I experience a
> weak moment.
> > >
> > > TR
> >
> > Bad show. Not decent, at all. Ms. Weir is always in good taste,
> > even when responding to nettlesome comments.
>
> You mean like when she calls David Webb a "silly fuck," an "asshole," a
> "shit?"
According to Google, I've never called Webb 'a shit.' I've
referred to 'Webb's shit' once, referring to the harassing
spam Webb specializes in and I accused Webb of 'heaping
shit' on Crowley.
I've written about 2000 posts in the past four years and
my rude word useage runs approximately one rude word
per 200 posts plus or minus. I don't think a dozen or so
rude words in four years is that bad. That's like three rude
words per year although most of my rude words are clustered
in late 2003 after I realized Webb was back to stay.
Best regards,
Elizabeth
Elizabeth Weir
> "bookburn" <book...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:100eagh...@corp.supernews.com...
> >
> > "Tom Reedy" <reed...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> > news:YirNb.9340$1e....@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> > > Actually, I apologize for posting that. Elizabeth Weir is so
> obviously
> > > mentally ill I feel bad every time I make fun of her, which is
> why I hardly
> > > ever respond to any of her posts except when I experience a
> weak moment.
> > >
> > > TR
> >
> > Bad show. Not decent, at all. Ms. Weir is always in good taste,
> > even when responding to nettlesome comments.
>
> You mean like when she calls David Webb a "silly fuck," an "asshole," a
> "shit?"
According to Google, I've never called Webb 'a shit.' I've
Phil Innes
"Neil Brennen" <chessno...@mindnospamnews.com> wrote in message
news:I2GNb.9817$i4....@newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net...
>
> "Tom Reedy" <reed...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:WVyNb.11342$zj7....@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> > You're even more of a moron than she is, if that's possible.
>
> I would agree with that statement. Phil's latest threat to me, part of a
> string of them going back to 2001, is to contact a publisher to complain
> about my fair-use quotation of copyrighted material in a newsgroup post.
> That was several days ago; needless to say, nothing happened.
Who is threatening whom? Does Neil Brennen threaten other's copyright? What
an odd way to express himself; that he has become the victim!!
I am unsure if Neil Brennen wants me to agitate the e-publisher 'to
complain' about him, or to clarify publishing policy, which ostensibly does
claim copyright!
What is he taunting me about now? The strange thing about people who write
continuous ad hominem posts is that they assume that this might make them
slightly interesting (the only way?) even if it means cross-posting material
from a private yahoo discussion group to a Shakespearean newsgroup.
Mr. Breenen need not fear myself. However the famous woman chessplayer whose
name he mocks in his titles has recently declared herself unamused to the
extent of formally inviting a lawyer to examine abusive reporting and has
made this known publicly. It also is no direct concern of mine whether the
e-publisher will take offence. Indirectly I support publisher's copyrighted
material, and writers cannot earn an income if some sort of standard is not
maintained.
If Mr. Brennen wishes to continue these cross-postings in a provocative way,
what shall I do but become more active in the situation? Mr Brennen does
address copyright issues, he mocks me because apparently no-one has noticed
the breech.
I have cross-posted this material to the chess newsgroup from where it also
appeared, and to the yahoo group where it originated.
Phil Innes
David L. Webb
> "David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote in message
> news:<david.l.webb-A52B...@merrimack.dartmouth.edu>...
>
> >
> > > We've had this discussion before, perhaps you'll remember.
> > Yes, I remember quite clearly that you outrageously misrepresented
> > the work of a scientist whose work you plainly had never even read,
> I understand that Hsu has demoted Einstein's kinematic
> STR to a special case
If this is so, then your assertions that Einstein's theory is wrong
and Hsu's is right are completely untenable -- if a special case of a
theory is wrong, then so is the theory itself.
> for the simple reason that a kinematic
> theory is incapable of describing an electrodynamic universe.
As I have noted before, Einstein's theory is not a "kinematic theory"
-- it has a dynamical component as well. Rather, Einstein's main
*innovation* lies in kinematics. Indeed, the dynamical equation itself
in special relativity is not new, as it takes *exactly* the same form as
the dynamical equation in Newtonian mechanics (the interpretation is
slightly different, as the vectors in question -- momentum, force, etc.
-- lie in Minkowski space rather than Euclidean space). And I have no
idea what you mean by an "electrodynamic universe." Finally, Hsu did
not "demote" Einstein's theory; indeed, to refresh your memory,
Professor Hsu himself wrote:
"You are absolutely correct in thinking that our work on Taiji
Relativity is not a repudiation of Einstein's work at all. As
you know, abundant experimental evidence exists showing the
utility of special relativity for predicting and explaining
physical phenomena.
"'Taiji relativity' is a formulation of special relativity which
is operationally equivalent to writing the Lorentz transformations
using the same units for length and time (as done by Taylor and
Wheeler in Spacetime Physics)...."
> I don't think you understand that.
I fear that it is quite evident who doesn't understand.
> > and
> > that you made absurd accusations about my supposed sexism, racism, etc.
> What do you call harassing me in HLAS for three years?
Huh?! Where is the supposed sexism? You are not the *only* woman
who participates in h.l.a.s., and I find virtually all the others I can
think of charming interlocutors. All are obviously intelligent, and
most are very sensible as well, and indeed I have enjoyed the posts of
Alisa Beaton, Ann Carrigan, Geralyn Horton, Lynne Kositsky, Jo Lonergan,
Rita, and (recently) Christine Cooper, etc., and I have said as much in
many cases. Nor are you yourself the *only* person whom you have
accused me of harassing: indeed, if you will reflect for a moment, those
whom you have accused me of harassing include people like John Baker,
Paul Crowley, Art Neuendorffer, and Paul Streitz, all of whom, as I
trust that even you realize, are *not women*. Your *own accusations*
are not even mutually consistent.
And where is the racism? You have never furnished a *single* datum
to substantiate such a serious charge.
[...]
Elizabeth Weir
Why don't you be a gentleman and drop it? Oh, that's right.
Ideologues have to turn every means to an end, even
embarassing means that should just be dropped.
There are no 'ends,' Webb. Ends are a fictional artefact of
The Text(s) and all who labor to find means and turn them
to ends are just workers in the factories of orthodoxy.
Stratfordianism being just one of the several orthodoxies
where you've found full-time employment.
> [...]
Snip of Webb's transparent attempt to wring all the
humiliation he can out of it at the expense of everyone,
especially himself.
Elizabeth
David L. Webb
[...]
> > Why don't you answer his question and maybe he'll stop asking it?
Indeed.
> The answer, Reedy, is irrelevant. Webb is only interested
> in the inquisition.
>
> Webb likes to play the authoritarian so he keeps this tedious
> game going by repeatedly denying that Southampton
> was a cross-dresser--see pdf below--even though hundreds of
> articles have been published on the discovery of a portrait thought
> for 400 years to be of a young woman but discovered to be of
> Southampton..
>
> Southampton's identity as the 'young woman' has been verified
> by top experts in Elizabethan portraiture.
>
> The experts agree that Southampton is wearing drag.
>
> I've posted at least fifty links to articles on the subject of
> Southampton's cross-dressing portrait but Webb has chosen
> to reject the evidence.
None of your supposed "sources" yet has asserted that Southampton
used to hang around the theatres hoping to play female roles, let alone
that he was given several parts and was quite convincing as a girl.
> One of his excuses involved the fact that I used the word
> 'drag' and not the word 'camp.' As far as I know camp is
> drag with an attitude but perhaps you can correct me,
> Reedy.
>
> This is hardly the first time I've posted this portrait:
>
> From The Guardian:
>
> In the portrait by an unknown artist, dating from the
> early 1590s, the teenage Henry Wriothesley, third
> Earl of Southampton, is wearing lipstick, rouge and
> an elaborate double earring. His long hair hangs down
> in very feminine tresses and his hand lies on his heart
> in a somewhat camp gesture.
>
> <http://www.observer.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,687778,00.html>
As I noted at the time:
---------------------------------------
Huh? All this suggests is that Southampton's appearance was
androgynous or even feminine, which was never in dispute. Where does
it assert that Southampton was "overly fond of drag" (the term "drag"
is generally understood to mean full feminine *attire* worn by a man,
not merely the use of cosmetics or jewelry, practices that are not
gender exclusive), or that he used to "hang about the theatres hoping
to play female roles"? [...] Even if the portrait depicted
Southampton in a dress and carrying a purse, it certainly would not
constitute evidence that he used to "hang about the theatres hoping to
play female roles."
And where does Akrigg, whose book you cited as "evidence," say
anything about Southampton being "overly fond of drag" or hanging
around theatres "hoping to play female roles"? As I already noted,
Akrigg writes:
"It all adds up to one thing: nothing would be less surprising
than to learn that during certain periods of his early life
Southampton passed through homosexual phases but, until better
evidence is found, only a fool will declare that he did."
One need scarcely add that only one with even *less* sound judgment
than a fool would attempt to infer the content of a book she had never
read from its mere appearance in someone's bibliography!
And what is the source for your assertion that "shake-scene" was
Elizabethan theater slang -- unless by "Elizabethan" you mean "invented
by Elizabeth Weir"?
----------------------------------------
> > After all,
> > you are the only one with the knowledge about where you got the
> > claim, Southampton was overly fond of drag and used to hang
> > about the theatres hoping to play female roles."
> What Webb has failed to convey is that I said, conversationally,
> that 'somewhere I read Southampton was fond of drag.'
No, you did not say "somewhere I read Southampton was fond of drag,"
as is readily checked via Google -- indeed, there is not a *single prior
post* to h.l.a.s. authored by you containing the phrase "somewhere I
read." You have actually misquoted *yourself* here!
You did *not* proffer the factoid about Southampton as a suggestion,
a conjecture, a piece of hearsay, or anything of the kind; rather, I
quote your post below in its entirety, snipping only the quoted text
from KQKnave and others that prompted your followup:
"Paul may have gotten one right.
Southampton was overly fond of drag and used to hang about the
theatres hoping to play female roles. He was given a few parts
and was apparently very convincing as a girl.
"Southampton probably looked very much like that portrait when
he was sixteen or seventeen--about the time that the V & A
and Lucrece were dedicated to him.
"The V & A may have been written for Southampton
at Burghley's request. Burghley wanted to match one of his
grandaughters to Southampton and there was Southampton all
got up like his grandaughters.
"The first seventeen Sonnets were obviously written to get
the most elgible young peer, William Herbert, holed up in
his apartments writing religious poetry, to come out and
dance with the young ladies of the Court.
"Francis Bacon, who was at Court through the 1590s,
wrote the Sonnets either for Burghley or at the request
of his childhood friend the Countess of Pembroke
[both were wards of Burghley].
"Or Bacon may have written them for his boss, Elizabeth,
who was the chief matchmaker in the realm. Elizabeth knew
Bacon could write sonnets since part of a sonnet he wrote to
her is still extant.
"If Strats didn't have the wrong candidate they would be
able to see that the Sonnets were written by a courtier
for the Court and that they were privately published for
the Court in 1609.
"That eliminates both Oxford, a faltering alcoholic
with no invitation to the Court and Shakespeare,
the tradesman of Stratford whose low rank would bar him
from Court and who was back in Stratford by 1597 in any event."
<http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=efbc3534.0205131259.2971c408%40post
ing.google.com&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain>.
I have no idea why you persist in making an ass of yourself with your
revionist history, which is easily refuted by the simple expedient of
quoting your own words from the Google archive.
> Webb is trying to make it appear that I claimed that I had
> an authoritative source but was unwilling to cite it. It was
> just something I read while browsing online and I did not
> attempt to conceal that fact.
When you posted it, you said nothing of the sort, nor did you ever
furnish a source. Matters being so, there appear to be two obvious
possibilities, and it only remains to decide which of the two is the
correct one:
(1) You read it at some farcically unreliable online site which you
cannot quote, and indeed can no longer even *find*, or
(2) You just made it up.
Since so many of your factoids are demonstrably false (e.g., "Verulam
means 'state of truth' in Latin"), one wonders where on earth you could
possibly have read them. Indeed, one is not sure which is the more
charitable assumption: that you are so comically credulous that you
accept everything that you read online at fact value without so much as
consulting a Latin dictionary, or that you merely make things up.
> Webb doesn't have a case because I didn't make any claims
> that it was taken from an authoritative source.
You never furnished *any source whatever*. Matters being so, the
only remaining question is whether you read it at some online site you
cannot quote (or for that matter, cannot even find) or whether you
simply made it up.
> Keeping in mind that this was not a formal post that required
> citiations and in the spirit of fwiw,
You did not say "fwiw"; rather, you said:
"Southampton was overly fond of drag and used to hang about the
theatres hoping to play female roles. He was given a few parts
and was apparently very convincing as a girl."
I quoted your posts in its entirety, and there was no such qualification.
> I also said that I had seen
> Akrigg's book on Southampton's homosexuality on a Queer Studies
> page and I candidly divulged to Webb that it was only a bibliography
> citation.
But you offered it as evidence of your farcical factoid about
Southampton's hanging about the theatres hoping to play female roles!
If you think making an assertion and then citing as "source" a book that
says something altogether different is persuasive, then your grasp of
rational argument is seriously deficient.
> I also read
Where?
> that Southampton played female roles, not
> in the public theatres, of course, but in private playhouses.
Source?
> There is no documented contemporaneous source but there
> is a tradition that Southampton played a female role in MSND.
What "tradition" is that? Source? You are continually asserting
that things are "in the record" or "there is a tradition that..."
without ever specifying *any* source, let alone any *credible* source.
> The point here, Reedy, is that I was in a *conversation* with
> Webb.
No, once again your history is wrong. As you can readily check via
the Google archive at
<http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&threadm=efbc
3534.0205131259.2971c408%40posting.google.com&rnum=2&prev=/groups%3Fq%3D%
2B%2522overly%2Bfond%2Bof%2Bdrag%2522%2Bgroup:humanities.lit.authors.*%2B
author:weir%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26selm%3Defbc3534
.0205131259.2971c408%2540posting.google.com%26rnum%3D2>,
I had not participated in the thread *at all* until you made your
unqualified assertion that "Southampton was overly fond of drag and used
to hang about the theatres hoping to play female roles. He was given a
few parts and was apparently very convincing as a girl." Thus the
"conversation" was a trifle one-sided.
> I don't believe that remarks in passing made in an informal
> exchange require citations.
Not if they are clearly *identified* as speculation or hearsay. On
the other hand, you did nothing of the kind; rather, you wrote:
"Southampton was overly fond of drag and used to hang about the
theatres hoping to play female roles. He was given a few parts
and was apparently very convincing as a girl."
> Webb is inventing this extraordinary demand so he can
> keep up the harassment on the pretense that he is only
> 'seeking the truth.'
I am only seeking a reliable source for certain of your bizarre
assertions stated straightforwardly as fact, not qualified as unreliable
speculation or hearsay. I have been seeking such sources for well over
a year, thus far without success; it seems increasingly likely that many
of your "facts" are mere inventions, so your inability to furnish any
source is not surprising -- but being ever the optimist and perhaps
overly charitable, I am still prepared to give you the benefit of the
doubt and hence to assume that you may have had some credible source.
If so, what was it?
> I told him the truth, up front, in my first posts to him and
> of course Webb knows this.
>
> Here are the facts but this is not in the way of a formal argument
> so you can take it or leave it:
>
> 1. Southampton and Essex were regulars at the public theatres
> but Southampton was an aficionado so he had a private theatre
> constructed at Southampton House.
>
> It's in the record that Richard II was played at Southampton's private
> theatre.
"In the record"? Where? Can you be precise for a change, so that
one can gauge how reliable your argument (if any) actually is?
> So we may conclude that the theatre groupie Southampton 'liked to
> hang about the theatres.'
That does not mean that he did so in hopes of playing female roles,
let alone that he was given such roles and was very convincing as a girl.
> 2. Webb also denies that Southampton was a homosexual
No, I do not *deny* that he was; rather, I question whether there is
sufficient *evidence* to reach such a conclusion. Akrigg evidenly did
not think so, as he wrote -- in the book that you never read -- the
following:
"It all adds up to one thing: nothing would be less surprising
than to learn that during certain periods of his early life
Southampton passed through homosexual phases but, until better
evidence is found, only a fool will declare that he did."
> but
> Akrigg and others have printed an eyewitness account by
> one of Southampton's officers that Southampton was having
> sex with a 'favorite' in a tent in Ireland near the field of battle.
Source? If Akrigg indeed printed such an account, then why on earth
did he write the following?
"It all adds up to one thing : nothing would be less surprising
than to learn that during certain periods of his early life
Southampton passed through homosexual phases but, until better
evidence is found, only a fool will declare that he did."
> Southampton was the disasterous [sic] 'Master of the Horse' and
> showered this 'favorite'--some man from the ranks--with
> favors including a prize saddle horse, the latter gift causing
> scandal because of its high price.
> .
> I couldn't find Akrigg's out-of-print biography of Southampton
> although Webb was able to cross the quad to the library
> and page through the index
If you actually believe that the quotation from Akrigg reproduced
above came from the index, then you plainly have not read Akrigg's index
either!
> --but I stumbled
That's a good word for what you've been doing.
> onto the pertinent
> quote taken from Akrigg's book in an old review from a journal
> archived online.
What "pertinent quote"? The one I reproduced above, in which Akrigg
quite explicitly *denies* that there is sufficient evidence to draw a
conclusion concering Southampton's supposed homosexuality? If not, then
what "pertinent quote" do you have in mind? Do you actually have a
source for a change?
> And yes, I cited the review, not the book.
I thought not.
> I am not responsible for Webb's inability to manage his anger
My almost infinite patience (nearly anybody else would have concluded
long ago that you merely made it all up) pretty conclusively belies my
supposed "anger."
> but I am really getting bored with his misrepresentation of
> what I have stated and posted.
How does quoting your exact words constitute "misrepresentation"? As
we have seen, you misquoted *yourself* above!
> > So if you're tired of hearing about it, answer the question.
> Reedy. Webb doesn't want the answer.
Certainly I do. However, it appears that I am destined to be
disappointed -- evidently you can produce no source, a circumstance that
strongly suggests that your factoid was a mere fabrication, like the
ones about "Verulam" and Old English.
Incidentally, what about a source for your assertion that
"The term 'shake-scene' was Elizabethan theatre slang for the
factotum who toted scenery around between acts."
-- in this case as well you did *not* offer the factoid in question as
speculation or hearsay, but as fact. Matters being so, one presumes
that you must have *some* credible source for it (that is, assuming
charitably that you did not just invent it), yet for a year and a half
you have failed to produce any such source, yet you have neither
retracted the assertion nor identified it as unreliable hearsay or
invention. Which is it?
[...]
Tom Reedy
post purporting to give the motivations for David's actions (something you
have no way of knowing) is not an answer to the question.
How about saying, "I don't know. I was obviously commenting on a subject
beyond my knowledge." I'm sure that would do it.
TR
Phil Innes
> None of your supposed "sources" yet has asserted that Southampton
> used to hang around the theatres hoping to play female roles, let alone
> that he was given several parts and was quite convincing as a girl.
>
> > One of his excuses involved the fact that I used the word
> > 'drag' and not the word 'camp.' As far as I know camp is
> > drag with an attitude but perhaps you can correct me,
> > Reedy.
> >
> > This is hardly the first time I've posted this portrait:
> >
> > From The Guardian:
> >
> > In the portrait by an unknown artist, dating from the
> > early 1590s, the teenage Henry Wriothesley, third
> > Earl of Southampton, is wearing lipstick, rouge and
> > an elaborate double earring. His long hair hangs down
> > in very feminine tresses and his hand lies on his heart
> > in a somewhat camp gesture.
He was anticipating Monty Python?
"I'm a playwright and I'm alright!"
> > <http://www.observer.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,687778,00.html>
>
> As I noted at the time:
> ---------------------------------------
> Huh? All this suggests is that Southampton's appearance was
> androgynous or even feminine, which was never in dispute. Where does
> it assert that Southampton was "overly fond of drag" (the term "drag"
> is generally understood to mean full feminine *attire* worn by a man,
How many men actually wear lipstick at Dartmouth? And, you know, rouge?
> not merely the use of cosmetics or jewelry, practices that are not
> gender exclusive),
How many Dartmough guys wear lipstick and rouge who are not actually gay,
David?
> or that he used to "hang about the theatres hoping
> to play female roles"? [...] Even if the portrait depicted
> Southampton in a dress and carrying a purse, it certainly would not
> constitute evidence that he used to "hang about the theatres hoping to
> play female roles."
That's right. He probably only kept his mouse in his purse.
~~~~~~~~~
> Incidentally, what about a source for your assertion that
>
> "The term 'shake-scene' was Elizabethan theatre slang for the
> factotum who toted scenery around between acts."
Didn't I answer that three times, four?
> -- in this case as well you did *not* offer the factoid in question as
> speculation or hearsay, but as fact. Matters being so, one presumes
> that you must have *some* credible source for it (that is, assuming
> charitably that you did not just invent it),
She didn't invent it. Greene did.
Phil
Elizabeth Weir
> So why don't you answer his question and maybe he'll stop asking it? A long
> post purporting to give the motivations for David's actions (something you
> have no way of knowing) is not an answer to the question.
>
> How about saying, "I don't know. I was obviously commenting on a subject
> beyond my knowledge." I'm sure that would do it.
Obsessive compulsive fixations are not 'beyond my knowledge.'
Best regards,
Elizabeth