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

Is rudeness excused when what I say is true?



I think not. I think I'll go and take a sabbatical from h2g2, and hide my head in shame.

Even though it is true.

I thought I noticed an 'in vino veritas' moment there my dear fellow. Everyone else was being far too insincere and polite and then you came along and I really laughed, honestly I enjoyed it.

I've yikesed my own posting. But I'll say the same again tomorrow when I've sobered up, I predict.

It seemed a perfectly reasonable comment to me... I'd ignored commenting on that entry because... err well its so badly written I couldn't even get to 'take' the actual content from it... but I guess the 'content' was equally as... badly thought out So... come back

Have I missed something?

I'm sure if you hunt around enough, you'll find it. Or you could just look here:

F48874?thread=7043943&skip=11

Thank you lanzababy and 2Legs. You're both people whose opinions I respect.

Good Lord!

You and GB are our experts. If you can't call a spade 'a spade', then who can?

lil x

Well the real question is whether I'm capable of recognising a spade after three glasses of wine. But that looked like one.

It's definitely not a trowel, my gentle Irish man!

Don't worry about it, Gnomon.

I'll sort it out in the morning. But now I have to make a lunchbox for my daughter who is back to school tomorrow.

Perhaps I've had a couple too many shots of Bushmill's to judge it either, but it doesn't really appear to say anything.

The first few graphs are, I suppose, a generally factual recap of the history of basic celestial mechanics, but even the basic terms the researcher uses are not defined. Precisely what, for example, might the author mean by 'wavy'?

Yes, the orbits of the bodies are most often drawn as beautifully smooth ellipses, but isn't that just for easier depiction of the general paths? Don't the multitude of the planetary bodies cause irregular perturbations at any point in time, not to be exactly repeated? As drag affects each body, don't most of the orbits degrade over time?

These things may be part of the point that the author is trying to make, but it doesn't appear that way to me. It sounds as if what is under discussion is a epiphanic reappraisal of celestial mechanics' formulae.

Parts of the discussion are even reminiscent of the Squirrel-on-a-tree/Photographer dilemma.

Of course, all of the paths are 'bumpy', because of the various tugs by the gravity of other bodies, but this whole thing looks like an attempt to get people, for whatever reason, to go to the link included.

At the end, I never got the impression that any alternative to currently stated paths was discussed.

Gnomon, if you're too buzzed to see any value here, so am I. Although, if you find that value tomorrow when you're sober, it doesn't guarantee that I will.



PS: On the actual subject of rudeness, I'm told that we are to be generally positive and supportive, even if we do have to bring a dose of reality, science, or instinct to the discussion.

I'm sure Gnomon will be able to explain himself tomorrow and I don't think he was very rude at all. He did say he wasn't sober (lots of researchers have written stuff in an inebriated state without saying so and then regretted it)

I didn't understand the entry except that it seems to be saying that the sun is not to be considered as a static object to base all calculations of orbits on (so what is the starting point for measuring movement in the universe then - nothing is static, is it?) What bothered me is the lack of articles, giving the entry a breathless, hurried style. Maybe the writer is Polish, which would explain why he mentions Copernicus first. .... No, on checking, he's possibly Indian.

Please, *I* am not an expert. I'm just an enthusiastic amateur, with no knowledge of physics! My first instinct on seeing that PR thread was to run for help, hence my in the thread, and I also alerted Deke, who, unusually, was first to answer me F41297?thread=4594155&post=87882260#p87882260

I did make a comment about the pdf file the author linked to, as I'm pretty positive that's not allowed. I couldn't make head nor tail of the entry, and was hoping Gnomon would drop by soon. I admit I laughed at Gnomon's comment which I just read, and wrote something in reply, but then deleted it before I posted.

As to your question about rudeness, if it's a load of rubbish then it doesn't belong in the EG and I am glad you have the courage to say it.


GB

Hm, to answer your question, yes it is possible to tell the truth and be inexcusably rude doing so

"This does appear to be a load of bilgewater" is rudeness, no doubt about that. Salutary? Possibly, but you could have put it more gently.

Clearly you didn't want to. So why ask?

Interesting point: in law the truth of a libellous statement has been historically no defence. In fact there is a saying "The greater the truth, the greater the libel".

Why ask? Because it is possible to be ruder than one intended, and to try and justify it afterwards.

I believe that Gnomon was offering a valid opinion, and that it was his truthful feeling about the entry. Add to that the fact that he used a metaphor, and that the entry was obviously not literal bilgewater. It may be harsher than the guidelines suggest, but he is in a better position to judge that than I.

However, truth can be a defense against libelous defamatory speech.
A pretty good synopsis of the rules can be found here.

http://www.website-law.co.uk/resources/website-libel.html

If I had written the entry, I would accept Gnomon's opinion without censor. It would be a comment on the quality of the entry, not a reflection on me as a person; so, I would not consider it defamatory.

My opinion would probably been along the line of 'wtf'.

Wow, this is a tough one. I see that the guy calls himself a retired electrical engineer - so that probably that he didn't have to take a course in basic dynamics which would have given him a much more accurate and compact way of explaining whatever it is that's bothering him about apparent motions.

...except that a basic course would have prevented him from having a problem with apparent motions in the first place.

"instantaneous linear speed" is strange language indeed - a quick search reveals that the words 'velocity' and 'acceleration' do not appear which is surprising to me.

I don't think he deserves to have anyone grind his face into the dirt, but a slap on the back of the head and a challenge to write something befitting a person with a technical education might be in order.

Thanks, pailaway. I'm suitably reprimanded.

Thanks to FT for the libel link. I said that historically truth was irrelevant to libel, because that is how it used to be. Now the law is changing, but not so fast in the UK as other countries. That is what makes London the libel capital of the world, where foreigners charge foreigners for libels in other countries (if the British press had also carried the story).