The Philospher's Stone

[pengolodh_sc at yahoo.no]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., rja.carnegie at e... wrote:

[snip]

> (insert rant warning)
> 
>   He's one of those odd people like Erich von Daniken - the
> type who believes (or claims to believe) that they've detected
> the secret behind human history that no one else knows.  

[snip]

> When these people are interested in religion, they count the
> words and letters in the Bible or the other holy book of their
> choice - or they're L. Ron Hubbard. 

As in Torah-code?

> When they're interested in politics, they see America's
> government subverting personal freedom to build a communist-
> fascist state.  

I thought that was the job of the United Nations?

[snip]

> (For European mediaeval history, it's the Knights Templar, the
> Holy Grail, the corpse of Christ.)

Not to mention the Ark of the Covenant.  These people pop up ever so 
often on Discovery Channel as well; one chap runs around Europe and 
the Holy Land chasing Templars carrying "San Greal" (or was it "Sang 
Real"?); another oaf runs around Europe, the Holy Land and half of 
Ethiopia looking for Templars hiding the Ark.

> The Internet is full of 'em, but they keep spilling out into
> real life, too.  Newspapers love them because they're just so
> much more _fun_ than serious scientists or scholars with
> better- developed critical faculties.  And they almost always
> have a book to sell.

I am presuming you do not know Norwegian (or Swedish, or Danish)?  If 
you do, however, you should look at 
http://www.chembio.ntnu.no/users/ystenes/sproyt/

It is a site run by a Professor of Chemistry at NTNU (Norwegian 
University of Science and Technology), and its name (Sprøytvarsleren) 
means "Nonsense-alert".  He debunks and corrects all sorts of 
scientific nonsense in Norwegian media, from mere miscalculations 
from a journalist who doesn't know how to add, to cases of blatant 
fraud and sensationalism (the DU-case, the alleged population-
explosion, etc.)..

A classic case was a newspaper-article on the installation of a 
segregated smokers' room in a cafeteria in Oslo.  If the numbers in 
the article on the ventilation-system had been correct, there would 
have been a constant force 12 storm blowing through the cafeteria, as 
well as emissions of several tons of nicotine per day...

[snip]

> Robert Carnegie
> Meretricious!

Best regards
Christian Stubø
who also used to read von Däniken once, but now prefers Rowling, 
Kerr, and Tolkien