Re: Yet Another Roswell Thread

On 12 Jul, 21:23, eina...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Rand Simberg wrote:
On Thu, 12 Jul 2007 08:09:39 -0700, in a place far, far away,
eina...@xxxxxxxxx made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way
as to indicate that:

<snip>

If you really want to discuss this properly I suggest you and I might
set up a MODERATED discussion group. I am fed up to the back teeth
with both Fred McCall and Rand Simberg. It is bad enough being called
an idiot when you are wrong.

Fred McCall is priceless. I do a calculation as it would be done in
Bac. What do you have in Iceland? Some version of bacculariat I'll be
bound. He says "Rubbish". He now expects me to take him seriuoly. He
says I take things out of context. He does not seem to expect me to
take these things personally or lying down.

And yet when we're insanely accused of believing and writing things
that we don't believe, and didn't write, we're supposed to simply
ignore it?

When I was a kid, I experienced being picked on by my classmates. Let
´s say I have a thick skind. There is a lot of annoying people.

Yes, I suppose it is annoying to have your irrationaliity and
delusions about other people pointed out. We will continue to defend
ourselves anyway.

Well, I recall the time I was participating in discussions on the
discussion phorum run by Astronomy.com. This was around the time Bush
was making up his mind about invating Iraq. I took at the time the
stance that such an invation was a bad idea, recalling the defence
Bush' own father had employeed when he was telling people why he had
not chosen to oust Saddam during the first US/Iraq war. As I had
allways believed that his given reasons were sound, I argued that
invating Iraq was likelly to end in tears.

I am mentioning this due to the reactions my careful arguments, often
written at a considerable length but after all my university degree is
in the realm of international politics, and I had been watching
developments in the Middle East with interest for a long time, so I
had plenty of arguments. Mind you, as most present on that phorum were
Americans the reactions ranged from cool over to outright hostile,
some of the hostile ones feeling as I was arguing against invation I
must be no less than a supporter of Saddam Hussain.

I could have employeed language of anger in reply, that would have
been the easy way, but the whole time I persisted with replying in
what I considered to be the calm voice of reason, avoiding harsh
words. A number of those were ex military, but it appears that some
retired military men are interested in the field of astronomy as a
hobby.

This is interesting. I think you should fill in a profile, it would
help people getting to know your position. I can see where you are
coming from.

My background is as described on mine. My subject of study and my
thesis was in Physics. I am afraid I expect the sort of behaviour one
is led to expect in scientific conferences.

There is one thing that might interest you. My interest in AI has
taken me into languages. Now I spent 2 years ay ESOC (not ESTEC) at
Darmstadt, so I know a bit about the ESA set up and my German (and
French) is fairly fluent. Spanish I have started to learn, largely
because I feel that if I give my examples in Spanish they will be
better understood.

Translation is a baromer of understanding.

"Le bateau est allé par une serrure" indicates that you can't discuss
your holiday on the canals with Alice. To cut a long story short I was
responding to threads in Google translate and I asked an Arab - He is
in fact a Syrian living in Canada about whether the Arabic translation
was contextual. I know that French, Spanish and German are not. There
are of course runours about high quality translation. He told me that
it was no better than Spanish.

Now he also told me how distrusted the West was in the Middle East,
and how every kind of conspiracy theory was believed. Now I do believe
that it would be far better if all the countries of the Middle East
were democratic. They cannot however be made democratic at the point
of a gun.

When I was a teenager we discussed whether it was right to fight for
ones country. Yes it is but where you are going into another country
and fighting as a third party you have to have a deep understanding +
an element of trust or you can make a bad situation even worse. The US
has neither of these and it is hard to see how American military might
can possibly improve the situation in the Middle East. The US is
killing off Al Qaeda members but for every one killed two are taking
their place. The statistics in Iraq indicate this.

The one weapon which I think is relevant in the war on terror is in
fact Google. Everyone I know scoffs at this but I feel it is cerainly
the case. You see we will eventally be watching the television that
Google finds for us. Traditional broadcast is on its way out. One can
for a start have good webpages and good arguments on Islamic theology.

On this topic I particularly cringe when they scoff. I wonder
sometimes whether the CIA has secret plans to bring Google into their
orbit. I think it would probably be difficult to do.

I now return to Mars. I sometimes wonder whether the desert has played
its part in creating Wahhabism. You have a caravan crossing slowly and
harsh memes. BTW - It is not just Dawkins that talks about memes. All
sociobiologists talk about memes, Dawkins talks about religion being a
virus which others tend not to. Martian memes are likely to have the
hashness of Mars about them. Mars is a caravan, it is not Corduba,
Damascus or Baghdad (before recent events). Do you see where I am
coming from?

It could well be that the Internet will (eventually) bring about a
super city, and lead to greater understanding.

I can say one thing, at a scientific conference Rand Simberg and Fred
McCall would be asked to apologise or be chucked out. You rubbish
theories, you don't rubbish individuals particularly when they are
right on the technical points involved.


- Ian Parker

.

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