I think Phil Plait's one-dimensional assessment of the Face on Mars is due partly to his inability to view Martian anomalies free of Richard Hoagland's inane breed of scientific analysis. Which isn't a unique problem by any means.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
I like Bad Astronomy as much as the next guy, but this is one banner I won't be hosting on this blog.
I think Phil Plait's one-dimensional assessment of the Face on Mars is due partly to his inability to view Martian anomalies free of Richard Hoagland's inane breed of scientific analysis. Which isn't a unique problem by any means.
I think Phil Plait's one-dimensional assessment of the Face on Mars is due partly to his inability to view Martian anomalies free of Richard Hoagland's inane breed of scientific analysis. Which isn't a unique problem by any means.
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2 comments:
"Cosmos and Psyche" . . . sounds interesting!
Hoagland makes the perfect straw man for them to bash, but otherwise (like most self-proclaimed "skeptics")they don't seem to have much familiarity with any of the other writings or perspectives on the Face. The consistant sneering "voice" that so many of the posters employ gets real tiresome real fast.
Recently someone decided to have a thread there that was going to methodically go through the first edition of Hoagland's The Monuments of Mars. and show what was wrong. Given that the book is in its fifth edition at this point, it might have been fairer to compare it with the fifth edition to see what Hoagland might have changed his mind about over the years.
They got to talking about the book's subtitle, "A City on the Edge of Forever." It's the title of a television episode from the original Star Trek (note that it's used in a different context, and different medium), and evidently Roddenberry had some sort of row with Harlan Ellison (who'd written the original treatment) over how it was changed. They figured both Roddenberry's estate and Ellison would have been ticked off at Hoagland for his use of it, though I can't trace any complaints about it from either one.
There was tut-tutting about how wicked Hoagland was to steal this title (even though titles can't be copyrighted). Then it was pointed out to them that Phil Plait's book Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing "Hoax" took its title and a major word in the subtitle from a book published several years before it:
Bad Astronomy : A Brief History of Bizarre Misconceptions, Totally Wrong Conclusions and Incredibly Stupid Theories
Zimmermann, Linda
ISBN: 0964513307
Publisher: Eagle Press, Chester, New York.
Strangely enough, the discussion ground to a halt after that and never resumed. ;)
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