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Trailblazers: Virtual Tours

[Fleamistress]

OK.  I am revisiting "Tom Sawyer" because The Kid is reading it.  Mark Twain was a genius and wasted on children! 

What are you reading?

 

[Baja Bush Pilot]

Might I recommend Into A Desert Place by Graham MacKintosh, non-fiction, and King of the Moon by Gene Kira, a novel.  Graham, an acquaintance, and Gene, a friend, write about my favorite place on the planet. 

I forget.  Book titles are underlined?

And Simon Winchester's Krakatoa and Crack in the Edge of the World, and 1491 by Charles O Mann.

Let me know if underlined is wrong.

[Fleamistress]

Dear Barry,

Where is it, this favorite-place-in-the-world of yours?

[Baja Bush Pilot]

[Fleamistress]

That was my first guess. 

Could you provide some key-words?  I'm doing market research on a possible book club out here.

Cheers!

[scribe]

I study rather than read most of my books, so they probably don't count as a reading list.

For general reading, I like something lighter. I used Samuel Pepys to get myself to sleep after a divorce. Been grateful to him ever since.

The modern author I have enjoyed most is Umberto Eco. Foucault's Pendulum had me in stitches, the way it poked fun at hermeticism.

My favourite all-time author is Dickens.

[Bart]

Sit down, buckle up, and hang on... On the forum just now, I found a link to an Amazon book and it's reader reviews. The book is titled History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1), and written by Anatoly Fomenko, a Russian mathemetician. Thirty two of forty readers gave the book a five star rating, the highest. Virtually all the readers have become the authors 'converts' to a great degree, yet all state they do not believe everything the author states. If the basic concepts of the book they agree with that seemingly make us here at HH viewed as imbeciles that got my attention. Below are a couple of reviews that ought to start the discussion. One reader put it this way - " This book will turn your world upside down. Literally. "

Bart

By  Peter A. Cunningham (Oxford, UK) 

This review is from: History: Fiction or Science? (Paperback)

   "When I picked up "History: Fiction or Science?" for the first time, it was out of sheer curiosity. I appreciate crackpots and crackpot conspiracy theories of all sorts - one could say that I have a private freak collection on a separate bookshelf. Therefore, this entire history revision business looked very much like it belonged there as well, so I decided to give it a go. My initial reaction was disappointment; the author sounded perfectly sane, which is simply out of order, if you ask me (a good crackpot theorist is always stark raving mad, hence the interest - never a dull moment anywhere). Then I started to read deeper into the book and, as I submerged about thirty pages deep, the remnants of my ironic grin dropped to the floor along with my jaw. The stuff actually made sense. No hysterical overtones or complex paranoid theorizing anywhere - it is certainly a scientific work written in a manner that has academia stamped all over, no doubt about it.

   The critic in me would keep arguing with the authors every now and then - yet they never fail to emphasize the hypothetical nature of their reconstructions. Some of the hypotheses make perfect sense, others do not - which pleases me greatly, since I am most wary of books that make me agree with everything instantly; their integrity is nearly always heavily compromised in some way, yet never too obviously (the best crackpot conspiracy theorists are the ones you can't help agreeing with, and once you agree with enough, you find yourself ready to agree with the bloke who says reptiles rule the world). Here, you may be offered several contradictory renditions of the same historical event. Once again, I wouldn't have it any other way - anyone who is gullible enough to believe simple and unequivocal explanations offered by the official historical sources is usually unaware that those, in turn, contain numerous gaps, inconsistencies, and contradictions.

   I always knew that history, especially ancient history, has been a collection of fairy tales all along; still it took me some time to accommodate the thought that, for want of a better metaphor, even the fairy tales it consists of were culled from a wide variety of books, shuffled together like a very dodgy deck of cards, then put into a random sequence, given a new index and proclaimed the only authorised collection of fairy tales in the world (and children who ask silly questions about why certain things make no sense or whether there are any other, more interesting tales available elsewhere need spanking, of course - a time-honoured tradition, isn't it then?). Well, the Russian mathematicians do ask questions. Lots of questions.

   Questions which there was a very long tradition of not asking; ones that concern the very foundations of modern chronology (although "modern" might be a misleading term here, since said chronology is a child of the Middle Ages). And the historians who demand a spanking shaking fists and frothing at the mouth make me want to put every book on history that I own on the crackpot shelf - certainly not Fomenko and team. Indeed, I haven't put them on any shelf yet, since I'm reading the book for the third time over, and eagerly anticipating the second volume.

[Bart]

 History and Astronomy are not compatible, April 29, 2005
By  Dr. PhD Bela Lukacs (Budapest, Hungary) 

This is a most unusual book, one that undermines the very foundations of History. According to the author and his team of researchers, History as it has been taught in Europe ever since the Renaissance is fundamentally false, verified history beginning around 1250 AD the earliest. Jesus Christ was born in 1053 and crucified in 1086, the First Crusade being an immediate reaction to his Crucifixion. Homer identifies an anonymous poet of the second half of XIII century AD, and the event led to the creation of the Iliad had been the fall of the Latin Empire of Constantinople in 1261 AD. The list goes on and on.

   Historians generally oppose the author's views without making much commentary. The author is not a historian, they say, period. He is only a leading differential geometrician, successful and respected, author of many advanced textbooks. A. Fomenko is also a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences; his main argumentation is of a statistical and astronomical nature. I happen to be a physicist myself and not a historian. However, astronomy and differential geometry are known to me well from the area of general relativity, and I cannot recommend this book enough, since its author approaches History, usually a highly emotional discipline ascribed to the field of humanities, armed with impartial mathematics.

   History is collective memory; yet even our own memory errs at times, and no real memory extends beyond three generations. There are written sources, but each one of those might easily prove a forgery. There are material remnants of archaeological nature, but they may be misadated and misinterpreted.

   Astronomy is precise by definition, and a historical dating that can be calculated from information about eclipses should satisfy any researcher. Yet the XIX century astronomers did not use the lunar tidal friction value in the equations of lunar motion, which would make ancient lunar eclipses appear several hours off the mark and relocate completely several total eclipses of the sun geographically (assuming tidal friction value has remained the same all the time but there is no reason to believe it hasn't). How could XIX century calculations have conformed to consensual history?

   I must say that a methodical recalculation of ancient eclipse datings shall invariably bring surprises; in the unlikely case these datings are correct, we shall prove the existence of erratic changes in telluric rotation over the last 4,000 years instead. Both possibilities are highly alarming.

   Fomenko demonstrates the incompatibility between consensual history and modern astronomy. This incompatibility is a sad fact. (He exposes a number of other contentious issues as well, but those do not fall into my professional scope). Which is more reliable - history or hard-boiled scientific facts? Science cannot afford subjectivity; most of us would feel the same way about history as well.

   Chronological problems are very serious indeed; Fomenko offers a viable solution to most of them, and a radical one at that - a "Copernican revolution" of history, no less. I am not using the term to predict the final and total victory of his version; that is a matter for a multitude of scientific and scholarly discussions to come. But the contradiction between history and astronomy that becomes graver with the day cannot and must not be tolerated, in the best interests of both history and the theory of telluric rotation.

Dr.PhD B. Luk�cs

[Bart]

 Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. , April 8, 2007
By  Jonel Mandres "jonelmandres" (Lakewood, OH USA)
     

This review is from: History: Fiction or Science? Dating methods as offered by mathematical statistics. Eclipses and zodiacs. Chronology Vol.I (Paperback)

   There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.

   For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done.

   I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.

[Fleamistress]

I think that the closer the "history" is to actual history the more suspect it is.

[Baja Bush Pilot]

"The Log from the Sea of Cortez", by John Steinbeck.  (Just the narrative)