It must be legit: It has the word "science" in the title!

[TZ]

Science forum seems to be attracting a lot of woo these days..Including a recommend on this book called "Forbidden Science" which someone posted as "not junk science" cause it has stuff about Tesla and all in it! Forget that it talks about ancient wisdom! Or psychic phenomena or how thought patterns effect the word..with photographic "proof" with water crystals....
Oh and since I objected to pseudoscience in the science forum I am apparantly "cold and dismissive"!
:banghead:

[Deep13]

1. "water crystals?"

Isn't that called "ice?"

[Deep13]

2. Read that post. What a smug bastard.

I hate being lectured by people who are dead wrong.

[Warpy]

10. Yeah, it's so hard to keep a straight face

Someone posted this in the Women's Rights Forum and I think it applies to all of us who have tangled with the ardently ignorant antivax crowd:

Men Explain Things to Me
Facts Didn't Get in Their Way

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174918/rebecca_solnit_the_archipelago_of_arrogance

It contained the best line I've read all week, "Surely one of these men has died of embarrassment, but not nearly publicly enough," about men who tried to nitpick one of her books but only displayed the fact that none of them had actually ever read it.

People who Know invariably fall into that trap of being too incompetent to know they're incompetent. They include people friends in Egypt tell me about who show up at the pyramids and talk over the guides about their favorite outlandish theories about the pyramids and half wits on the Health boards who rave about their magic homeopathic water while raging against people who have devoted their lives to preventing and curing real illnesses.

It isn't the fact that they're wrong. You nailed it: it's the fact that they're all such smug bastards about it.

[Orrex]

3. The "Science" forum is becoming more like The Discovery Channel

A place where, once long ago, actual science could get a fair airing, but it's long since degenerated into idiotic pap about motorcycle customizations and "how to blow shit up."

[madinmaryland]

4. And why does the History Channel not show any history?

:shrug:

How can monster machines be considered history?

:wtf:

[Orrex]

6. If you can't understand the historical significance of "Ax Men," then I weep for the future

It's a widely swinging pendulum, from the all-WWII-all-the-time channel that it used to be to the current no-history-at-any-time channel that it's become. Pretty sad at both ends, but at least one was informative.

I have to disclaim that I enjoy some of the the series The Universe, even if it's steeped in doomsday asteroids and "weird" science...

[TZ]

7. I still like a bunch of stuff on Discovery

Mythbusters isnt that bad..and I LOVE Dirty Jobs. Deadliest Catch is pretty interesting. But yeah, there is a lot more junk on there including "Smash Lab" which I refuse to watch.

[PVnRT]

8. As an engineer, that show angers me

Smash Lab fucking sucks. C'mon, an "ideas guy"? You gotta be fucking kidding me. If there were someone in Engineering here who was just an "ideas guy," he wouldn't have a job because he'd be fucking useless. Everything seems to be guesstimated, they don't show any of the actual design work that goes into building something, nor any theoretical basis to speak of....grrrrrrrrrrr.

Not to mention promoting this idea that "engineer" means you tinker with machines and electronics. There are many more varied, specialized fields, and you need all of them, not just someone smart who can make good guesses.

[trotsky]

14. Smash Lab is just like Mythbusters

With half the action and NONE of the personality!

4 ACTORS vs. a staff of REAL EXPERTS with incredible chemistry. (Pun intended.)

No comparison.

[PVnRT]

17. The four on Smash Lab are engineers

They have just apparently forgotten what it is an engineer does.

[trotsky]

18. No way!

Really? They didn't strike me as actual engineers at all. I thought they were fakes for sure.

[dropkickpa]

9. Mike Rowe is MINE!!!

Back off!

[onager]

13. I liked the "Engineering An Empire" series on HC

Though I've only caught a couple of the shows. One good episode was called "Engineering An Empire--Napoleon." But it was a lot more than Napoleon. It covered French engineering projects from the building of Notre Dame cathedral to the Eiffel Tower. The only bad part was Peter Weller popping up to describe French history in really bad American slang. Completely unnecessary and distracting.

My Egyptian satellite company carries the History Channel and several Discovery channels. But judging by the descriptions in here, the Egyptian versions are about the same as the Stateside channels.

Lots of monosyllabic blowhards waving tools around, and unfortunately they are not in slasher flicks, which would probably be more entertaining.

Since I'm in Egypt, I keep an eye out for shows on that topic. A good one I caught...the French again...was called "Napoleon's Obsession: Egypt." I think that was the title.

The narrator mentioned that Napoleon's famous "Battle of the Pyramids" took place quite a ways from the actual Giza Pyramids. (You can barely see the Pyramids from the battlefield). He noted that the battle would have been more accurately titled "The Battle Of Imbaba" or "The Battle of the Melon Patch." But neither of those titles appealed to Napoleon, for some strange reason.

Weird Random Trivia: You very rarely hear a mention of the first, pre-Pyramids place where Napoeon fought the Mamelukes on his way to Cairo. But I pass pretty close to it twice a day on my work commute. It's a village named Shubra Kit.

[Orrex]

20. Not bad shows, perhaps, but...

They don't belong on Discovery. Put them on Spike or some other channel not nominally devoted to fostering enlightenment. Mythbusters isn't bad, but it's case-by-case does little IMO to encourage critical thinking.

I also remember when TLC was The Learning Channel, and back then it had some of the finest programming I've ever seen. Now it runs weekly 168-hour marathons of The Secret Life of a Soccer Mom. James Burke should get that arclamp from the beginning of Connections and shove it up somebody's orifice, gosh dang it!

:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

[regularguy]

5. If it's "forbidden" then

how come it's in a book?

[semillama]

11. Because that's what sells, baby!!!

His other works include

Forbidden Religion: Suppressed Heresies of the West, in which you learn: "Following the model of his bestselling Forbidden History, J. Douglas Kenyon has assembled from his bi-monthly journal Atlantis Rising material that explores the hidden path of the religions banned by the orthodox Church--from the time before Christ when the foundations of Christianity were being laid to the tumultuous times of the Cathars and Templars and the Masons of the New World. Revealed in this investigation of the roots of Western faith are the intimate ties of ancient Egyptian religion to Christianity, the true identities of the three magi, the link forged by the Templars between early Christianity and the Masons, and how these hidden religious currents still influence the modern world.

This book serves as a compelling introduction to the true history of the heretical religious traditions that played as vital a role in society as the established faiths that continuously tried to suppress them. Born in the same religious ferment that gave birth to Christianity, these spiritual paths survived in the heresies of the Middle Ages, and in the theories of the great Renaissance thinkers and their successors, such as Isaac Newton and Giordano Bruno. Brought to the New World by the Masons who inspired the American Revolution, the influence of these forbidden religions can be still found today in The Star Spangled Banner and in such Masonic symbols as the pyramid on the back of the dollar bill." (from Amazon.com).

and of course, Forbidden History: Prehistoric Technology, Extraterrestrial Interventions, and the Suppressed Origins of Civilizations - I think the title says it all there...

[realisticphish]

12. What pisses me off

or, rather, confuses the shit out of me, is WHY? WHY? WHY?

Why the FUCK would archaeologists "suppress" ancient technology, or the origins of civilization. Archaeologists would KILL to get stuff like that; they would have their careers made, like that.

I wonder if the "Suppressed Origins" stuff is some of that "civilization started in Europe, but it's not PC so 'They' say it started in the middle east" stuff

[semillama]

15. That's because we archaeologists are part of TEH EVUL!!!1!

We're all part of the worldwide plan to keep the truth from the people. We're totally in bed with Big Pharma, that other oppresor of the people. We've actually discovered that the Mayans had a cure for autism given to them by aliens from the Pleiedes. Of course, it does involve sucking the eyeballs out of a living baby seal, but that's the price you pay for alien cures (the baby seal eyeballs don't actually have an effect on autism, the aliens just have an animal abuse fetish and like to watch).

[realisticphish]

24. ah HA!

we got 'em now! if they want to cure autism, they have to murder baby seals, and thus be on the side of Big Everything

[TZ]

19. Great work in the thread

I love the review you posted..
"Conclusion: If you want to just believe wildly implausible and totally unsupported claims without looking for actual proof, then this book is for you. If you want to find support of potentially valid ideas, natural processes, conspiracies, etc, then skip this book as it doesn't contain any them."
BTW..that thread got locked as probably not appropriate for the forum..heh.
:)

[moggie]

16. "Tesla was so cool a band named themselves after him"

:rofl:
Either this poster is a skilled parodist, or they're about twelve years old. Or, I suppose, they're a fucking moron, but it's Friday, and I don't want to feel depressed.

[onager]

21. Check out this Seeker Of Ancient Wisdom...

Found on Yahoo Answers:

What types of history and/or books were burned in the ancient library of Alexandria? I would like to know ESPECIALLY on the subjects in books regarding astrology, maybe paganism, anything mystical (tarot perhaps) that they may believe were destroyed in these (this fire) in Rome?

Was the Alexandria library in Rome?

No, it was located right beside the Vatican Library, in Mexico City...

:banghead:

And I bet it had a lot of data on paganism, since the whole world was "pagan" at the time. Sheesh.

As most of you no doubt know, the woos are spellbound by the notion that the ancient Alexandria Library had a collection--maybe--called "Ancient Wisdom."

Some Woob-sites spin this idea out to incredible visions of wizards and miracle-workers hanging out at the library, running into the stacks to find this ancient scroll on mixing love potions or that ancient grimoire full of Lovecraftian curses. Etc.

Some DU grump--probably Warpy--once theorized that the real scholars at the Alexandria Library probably set up that "Ancient Wisdom" room so they could easily identify the crackpots and stay away from them.

:rofl:

Since I've been living in Alexandria I've collected some great books on the ancient Library, written by real researchers and scholars. If you're interested, many of them are published by the American University In Cairo and available from Amazon.

But for the purposes of refuting this "Ancient Wisdom" hooey for the 4,587th time, I went looking for a short, fact-based Web explanantion of what really went on at the ancient Alexandria library. Here you go:

Since this paper is an overview of the work and scholarship carried out at Alexandria, I will adhere to the subject divisions first set forth by Callimachus in his Pinakes, of mathematics, medicine, astronomy, and geometry, as well as philology.

I have added the Aristotelian category of mechanics for some of the applied science which grew out of Alexandrian studies.

Well, that sure is dull, compared to flinging around curses and levitating and such.

Oh, and the Alexandria Library probably put some Ancient Woo-Woos out of business:

For Alexandria, whose lifeblood was export of grain and papyrus to the rest of the Mediterranean, developments in astronomy allowed sailors to do away with consultation of oracles, and to risk year-round navigation out of sight of the coast.

http://www.kingtutshop.com/freeinfo/the-library-of-Alxandria.htm

[Deep13]

23. "What types of history and/or books were burned in the ancient library of Alexandria?"

We don't know. They were burned. Does the writer think that they burned the books but spared the card catalogue?

[semillama]

22. Someone on Fark.com came up with this:

The user who posted it goes by "Kavis" - the guy in the image is the Bad Astronomy guy.