h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Did you actually make reference to Wikipedia in your article? My kids aren't even allowed to do that in grade 4. As useful as that site may be for getting a birds-eye view of a topic, I can't see using it for reference material. Doing so does not help the credibility of the lost time hypothesis.

Just the same, your article was very interesting. I had not been aware of the topic.

Wikipedia is getting a bad rep, isn't it? I know the kids aren't allowed to quote it. Good thing, too - lately, I've been suspecting that some of their articles are paid propaganda.

I'm glad the entry found some other people (besides me) who hadn't heard of this. I was thunderstruck, myself - funny, but as I said, what difference does it make what year you put on the calendar?

well, i think wikipedial is a good thing

its a great internet encyclopedia and it IS monitored for validity by a huge population
probably in some ways it has more chance to have valid information
than your regular physically booked encyclopedia
with its board of directors and contributors in the physical real world...



and i dont really think hootoo competes with wikipedia
the two entities are completely different

Amen. I think we're quite different.

As far as Wikipedia goes, I find it useful as a starting point. Just look carefully at the footnotes.

Truth defined by popular majority is vulnerable to historical revisionism. Then again, maybe we need some of that. What else is there to do with a history degree? You can either try and prove some historical account was wrong, or you can teach the current version.

Good point. I like to keep pointing to the inconvenient contradictions...

Dmitri said "lately, I've been suspecting that some of their articles are paid propaganda."


that's interesting and probably possible in some instances
however, here is an example of wiki coverage which probably hasnt been paid for
even tho the subject could well-afford paying
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto

Well spotted. Now let's see if somebody comes in and changes the spin on that one.

I swore off on 'belief' ages ago.

I'd been reading the 1959 Encyclopedia Americana article on traditional epistemology, a summarization of 12 mutually contradictory points, not one of which makes any sense except in context of the other points, shuddered with revulsion, and after due consideration decided I could do without 'belief', if not without any of the other 11 points.

The 'phantom time' years are also the age of the Vikings. Scandinavia wasn't brought completely into alignment with Christian western Europe until after the 12th century.

Ireland was also something of an 'outlier' realm during the period.

On the scientific method, re: dendrochronology, opinion is supposed to give way if material facts (things that can be physically weighed and otherwise measured) contradicting it are discovered.

Places I would look for clues is in the chronicles of the conquests of the Teutonic Knights, a crusading order created to the purpose of Christianizing the Baltic countries (however paradoxically, an extraordinarily litigious lot who conducted one of the most complete genocides in history during the conquest of Prussia, originally a Russian colony) and the founding of Kiev as a Viking colony.

I don't know whether anybody's doing anything with the Viking chronology on this subject. That would be interesting.

The 'Russ' were originally a Viking tribe involved in the founding of both Prussia, before the conquest by the Teutonic Knights, and the city of Kiev.

This is true.