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From: dgary@ecsvax.UUCP (D Gary Grady)
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Re: Cranks and Jeremy Bernstein
Message-ID: <666@ecsvax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 31-Oct-85 11:17:20 EST
Article-I.D.: ecsvax.666
Posted: Thu Oct 31 11:17:20 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 2-Nov-85 06:10:10 EST
References: <173@tulane.UUCP> <71@oce-rd2.UUCP> <1760@watdcsu.UUCP>
Organization: Duke U Comp Ctr
Lines: 45

> These are excerpts from an article by Jeremy Bernstein, from Science
> Observed: Essays Out of my Mind.
> One evening, about a year ago, the phone rang in my apartment. It was
. . .
> It soon became clear what he wanted. He had written, he informed me, a
> massive, as yet unpublished treatise in which was solved each and
> every problem that remained unsolved by my book (a hallmark of crank
> manuscripts is that they solve *everything*), and that furthermore,
> and for good measure, it contained a theory of the origin of the moon.
> (I thought of saying "Your beloved homeland?" . . .

I'm reminded that Arthur C. Clarke has also written of his difficulties
with cranks, who generally write him letters rather than telephoning
(one of the advantages of living in Sri Lanka, no doubt).  He came up
with his solution seredipitously.  He would awaken in the middle of the
night with the idea of the Great Terran Novel and write it all down,
only to discover in the morning that the prepositions and articles were
all perfectly legible, but the important nouns and verbs were mere
scribbles.  So he would answer cranks with a letter reading something
like this:

Dear Mr. scribble,

I was very scribble to receive your most scribble scribble.  I was
impressed by the scribble, especially the scribble part.  However, I
regret that I am scribble to give this work the scribble it so richly
scribble.  I am therefore scribbling you to scribble as soon as possible
to [this printed clearly]

	Dr Isaac Asimov
	[. . .]
	New York, New York

To change the subject slightly, I once got a booklet from a crank who
had developed a theory of "revrotation" that, of course, explained
everything in terms of turning.  One of his laws was that "all objects
are simultaneously turning in two directions."  The proof of this
proposition, he announced, is that "if you are standing on the North
Pole then the Earth is rotating counterclockwise, but if you are
standing on the South Pole then it is rotating clockwise."
-- 
D Gary Grady
Duke U Comp Center, Durham, NC  27706
(919) 684-3695
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