🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1159@ut-emx.UUCP> ethan@ut-emx.UUCP (Ethan Tecumseh Vishniac) writes:
>In article <5167@uwmcsd1.UUCP>, markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins) writes:
>> 
>A lot of stuff which I will summarize as saying that most scientists have no
>imagination and that OMNI is a good science magazine.

Whether it is most or not remains to be discussed, as I never used that 
qualifier.
>Now my impression of this argument is that after Mark sang the praises of
>OMNI a lot of people wrote back and said that OMNI, whatever its virtues
>as a fiction magazine, was painfully credulous and promoted belief
>in pseudoscience.
>
>Mark then responded by saying that, in fact, he believes every piece of
>pseudoscientific drivel that has been popular some time in last fifty years.
>(I may be exagerating this point.  I remember some praise of Velikovsky,
           ???????????
	   You can`t exxcuse yourself for lying.
	   Another smear tactic, I suppose?

>Astrology, various forms of ESP belief, and a little New Age stuff.)
            ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????
	    Persistent, aren`t we?
>
>It seems to me that he has conceded the main point.
You mean to tell me that there is a point to all of your smearing and
bickering?  You just lost all your credibility in all your lying above.

As far as my beliefs go, there is absolutely nothing that I have posted to
indicate where I stand on the various pseudo-sciences.  I`ve purposely done
that to show right before your very nose what tactics one would go through
to smear someone who SEEMS to be slightly sympathetic to any of the pseudo`s.
I caught you and you seem to be screaming for having been caught in the act.

This is my stand: nobody has the right to try to suppress one or show
irrational hostility just because that person is working in a different
paradigm.  It is wrong and slanderous.  Yet you persist.  Stop it once and for
all.

I do not really read OMNI that much.  I have a couple back issues, also of
Sci.Am. and Discover.  The irony of it all is that both magazines (Sci.Am.
and OMNI) have the same kind of articles presented in much the same way.
Actually, OMNI`s coverage of the Ozone Hole (which predated Sci.Am.`s by
a month.) was a bit better.  OMNI also had fairly decent articles in this
month`s issue about Tesla and about the research in Growth Factors ... 
which I trapped other respondants into conceding are perfectly respectible
scientific topics.  The coverage was in no way superficial.

So the question in my mind was whence the incongruity?  
Shannon would be badly insulted to know that some of you posters had called
him a pseudo-scientist for his having been interviewed.  The only thing that
one could even call fiction or fantasy is whetever lies in the anti-matter
sections and the fiction section.
I would hardly call the Physicists` research into galaxy formation pseudo-
science, yet many of you are guilty of that very thing.

Obviously the hostility had nothing to do with me, as it was there in prior 
postings.  So the only thing that leaves left is hypocriticism ... a defensive-
ness at seeing one`s own paradigm crumble before himself. Such is to be expected
of people still living in the twentieth century whereas it is nearly the 
twenty-first.

None of the magazines mentioned would be very good for a good exchange of 
information on a deep level.  The true armchair scientist is one who would not
go to the library (which is exactly where I`m at) instead of buying one of 
those magazines.

So my true stand on these magazines: I use the library, what`s your excuse?