Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site ecsvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!mcnc!ecsvax!dgary 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 massive, as yet unpublished treatise in which was solved each and 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 USENET: {seismo,decvax,ihnp4,akgua,etc.}!mcnc!ecsvax!dgary