C'mon guys...

Cheesh, you know what, all I am is a Diesel Mechanic/welder/heavy
equipment operator, but dang, the language you guys use on here in
what's supposed to be a sort of scientific newsgroup kind of puts me to
shame.

I'd like to have my wife and a couple of my kids participate here since
we're trying to learn about astronomy, but the crap that gets posted
here is beyond anything they'd hear at one of our union picnics.

I always thought that I and the guys I work with had no class. You all
make us look like a bunch of pikers. Would love to get one of you on
the sidehill or in a tunnel sometime, see what you're really made of..

Not so best regards,
Bert



--
Molon Labe. To those who have served or are serving the cause of
freedom whether in peace or in war at home or abroad thank you. Si vis
pacem para bellum. "Let's roll!"...Todd Beamer, United Airlines Flight
93, September 11, 2001.

On Friday, April 25, 2014 11:10:48 PM UTC-5, Bert Olton wrote:
Cheesh, you know what, all I am is a Diesel Mechanic/welder/heavy

equipment operator, but dang, the language you guys use on here in

what's supposed to be a sort of scientific newsgroup kind of puts me to

shame.



I'd like to have my wife and a couple of my kids participate here since

we're trying to learn about astronomy, but the crap that gets posted

here is beyond anything they'd hear at one of our union picnics.



I always thought that I and the guys I work with had no class. You all

make us look like a bunch of pikers. Would love to get one of you on

the sidehill or in a tunnel sometime, see what you're really made of..



Not so best regards,

Bert







--

Molon Labe. To those who have served or are serving the cause of

freedom whether in peace or in war at home or abroad thank you. Si vis

pacem para bellum. "Let's roll!"...Todd Beamer, United Airlines Flight

93, September 11, 2001.

I agree with you 100%

A bit of civility please!

UncRollo

Uncarollo2 wrote:

I agree with you 100%

A bit of civility please!

UncRollo

Thank you, sir.

Bert
--
Molon Labe. To those who have served or are serving the cause of
freedom whether in peace or in war at home or abroad thank you. Si vis
pacem para bellum. "Let's roll!"...Todd Beamer, United Airlines Flight
93, September 11, 2001.

On Saturday, April 26, 2014 5:10:48 AM UTC+1, Bert Olton wrote:

Cheesh, you know what, all I am is a Diesel Mechanic/welder/heavy

equipment operator, but dang, the language you guys use on here in

what's supposed to be a sort of scientific newsgroup kind of puts me to

shame.


The swearing and personal insults mean nothing,it is the content of what they say which should draw your attention. In the engineering sector you will find individuals who talk a good game but when it comes down to dealing with different sorts of situations and problems they are lost and it is no different in astronomy.

I have come up from that tough environment where a few swear words ain't going to make a difference but when you have dealt with genuine people you discover that you have nothing in common with those who have set themselves up as 'geniuses' by chanting voodoo and bluffing. You downplay yourself as "all I am" is a welder yet watching and understanding how fluids flow through your shield is a great groundwork for considering how the Earth's interior fluid flows,using heavy equipment gives you a type of responsibility for motion and space that the academic wouldn't have,mechanics will give you an appreciation how innovative people actually are and so on.

Astronomy is not merely a magnification exercise at night,it requires that you use every part of your brain and experience to work out cause and effect or how to make sense of the celestial arena.

You cannot reason with Gerald - I worked with students on the autistic spectrum for many years and once they had made up their minds about an issue it was virtually impossible to get them to change their opinion.

You will not get Gerald to debate or discuss his views. He will, however, repeat minor variations of the same material for years on an almost daily basis.

Gerald cannot see situations from any other viewpoint than his own. This is a characteristic of his condition. He neither knows nor cares if he is annoying or upsetting other users of the group.

Posting to the group is an important part of his life. It is hard to imagine that he is in gainful employment or that he has a "normal" social life so he has become a "keyboard warrior" instead.

The solution is simple. Ignore him. Never respond to his posts, turn him into a non-person.

On Saturday, April 26, 2014 12:00:47 PM UTC+1, wrote:

The solution is simple. Ignore him. Never respond to his posts, turn him into a non-person.

A non-person you say !,I am sure the academics have enjoyed the privilege of turning everyone else in non-persons by using astronomy as a vehicle for all the contrived rubbish that enters their heads however genuine astronomers don't suffer things like isolation or being 'sent to Coventry'. You poor thing created a game for me,didn't have to play yourself and you still lost but that is all bluster stuff that I have no interest in from minds that just don't like astronomy.

I have my work cut out for me in trying to demonstrate that modern tools change things in a very specific way but then again you need common sense to realize this. The most useful element of contemporary tools is the ability to condense long term observations into more manageable form where the observer can make sense of motions going on in the celestial arena .

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap011220.html

Watching the Earth overtake the outer planets is now a cinch for those who are not afraid to use these tools however there is no set of observation dedicated towards describing the motions of the inner planets around the Sun from a different perspective.

Try the motion of the background stars over a long period due to the orbital motion of the Earth ,along with the motions of the planets,from delightful graphics which make it so easy for everyone -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeQwYrfmvoQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdFrE7hWj0A

The voodoo and bluffing of the empirical cult obscures what people can do with modern tools and all it takes are a few people to get into that stream of reasoning beyond the ability to identify objects in the celestial arena and make the effort to picture long term motions as astronomers once did.

The day may come when astronomy is simply a part of life and people make no huge deal over all those basic experiences and the dynamics behind them,unfortunately you empiricists can't match one rotation with all the effects within a 24 hour day.

oriel36 wrote:


The swearing and personal insults mean nothing,it is the content of what they say which should draw your attention.



Absolutely correct sir, and the reason I'm here. I've learned a lot in
the short time I've been reading here at SAA and truly appreciate the
membership's experience, expertise and patience with a new member.
Unmoderated Usenet newsgroups (this one included) are exactly what they
are supposed to be and I've participated in them for just over 16 years
because I prefer the format to gui forums.



In the engineering sector you will find individuals who talk a good game but when it comes down to dealing with different sorts of situations and problems they are lost and it is no different in astronomy.

grin...over the years there have been a number of times when I've had
a particularly difficult repair to make and I've said in effect, "...I'd
really like to meet and chat with the engineer who designed this." But,
in those years I've also gained enough understanding of how things go
together that I've come to know that design is a nearly impossibly
complex activity in which making everyone happy is equally impossible.



I have come up from that tough environment where a few swear words ain't going to make a difference but when you have dealt with genuine people you discover that you have nothing in common with those who have set themselves up as 'geniuses' by chanting voodoo and bluffing.


That one I'll leave alone, not wanting to fan any flames any further
than I've already done.

You downplay yourself as "all I am" is a welder yet watching and understanding how fluids flow through your shield is a great groundwork for considering how the Earth's interior fluid flows,using heavy equipment gives you a type of responsibility for motion and space that the academic wouldn't have,mechanics will give you an appreciation how innovative people actually are and so on.

Compliments humbly accepted, but more germane than that, a great point
for anyone -particularly any newcomers to amateur astronomy - reading
he it's a natural impulse to look up at the stars and wonder about
them. For those of us who've had no prior training in doing so on a
more in depth level, with the assist of groups like this, our life
experiences can actually help us to successfully begin.



Astronomy is not merely a magnification exercise at night,it requires that you use every part of your brain and experience to work out cause and effect or how to make sense of the celestial arena.



Nicely put.

Best regards,
Bert
--
Molon Labe. To those who have served or are serving the cause of
freedom whether in peace or in war at home or abroad thank you. Si vis
pacem para bellum. "Let's roll!"...Todd Beamer, United Airlines Flight
93, September 11, 2001.

On Sunday, April 27, 2014 8:23:26 PM UTC+1, Bert Olton wrote:
oriel36 wrote:

In the engineering sector you will find individuals who talk a good game but when it comes down to dealing with different sorts of situations and problems they are lost and it is no different in astronomy.



grin...over the years there have been a number of times when I've had

a particularly difficult repair to make and I've said in effect, "...I'd

really like to meet and chat with the engineer who designed this." But,

in those years I've also gained enough understanding of how things go

together that I've come to know that design is a nearly impossibly

complex activity in which making everyone happy is equally impossible.



The timekeeping systems we inherit from antiquity and more recently the development of clocks are more enjoyable than any technological advancement you see today including computers and the internet. A carpenter who was basically turned himself into a one man version of NASA in terms of engineering innovations worked in the hostile atmosphere of academics is a great story and not least that John Harrison never downplayed himself among the academics of Oxford and Cambridge -

http://books.google.ie/books?id=_6dV...ge&q&f=fal se

The same academics today still won't accept the 24 hour AM/PM system and the Lat/Long system as they fully believe the Earth doesn't turn once in 24 hours nor the system of references that make it that way -

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/JennyChen.shtml


There is any amount of venom directed towards the explanation which fixes the Earth's position in space using the number of times it turns in 4 years/4 annual circuits of the Sun. Those in the engineering sector do not suffer wild guesses and flights of fancy otherwise things don't work or responsibility goes out the window yet these academics feel that they can simply ignore history so they can indoctrinate students into rubbish.

The fact that the Earth turns once in 24 hours is a result of very specific reasoning and a history that is even more enjoyable than the development of engines,computers and things like that.

On Sunday, April 27, 2014 8:23:26 PM UTC+1, Bert Olton wrote:
oriel36 wrote:


Astronomy is not merely a magnification exercise at night,it requires that you use every part of your brain and experience to work out cause and effect or how to make sense of the celestial arena.







Nicely put.



The vast bulk of astronomy was done before telescopes emerged around the time of Galileo including the innovations of Copernicus and to a lesser extent Kepler. Contemporaries have a habit of skipping over history lightly -they simply say that Copernicus discovered the Earth goes around the Sun and then run off with the late 17th century notion which give a cause for that motion.

It is a lot more complicated than that for although previous astronomers had assumed the Earth moves they were unable to find just the right arguments to satisfy the contention.For instance,the magnificent Plutarch wrote about an attempt which uses the dual motions of the Earth but falls down on the point of declination -

"do not bring an action for impiety against us, just as Cleanthes thought it right that the Greeks collectively should impeach Aristagoras the Stoic, of impiety, for overthrowing the altar of earth, because the fellow attempted to account for visible phenomena by supposing that the sky remains fixed, and that the earth rolls round down an oblique circle, turning at the same time upon its own axis." Plutarch 80 AD

Copernicus retained daily rotation using the return of the Sun each day but shifted the orbital component to the observed motions of the other planets and especially the forwards-backwards-forwards motions of the other planets known as retrograde motion -

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap011220.html

So,there is a huge difference between Copernicus discovering the proper arguments for the Earth's motions and the flawed view that Copernicus discovered the Earth moves because it downplays what other astronomers had thought and even the Catholic Church who had valid reservations about the type of astronomy that predicted events such as eclipses and conjunctions with the arguments which proved the Earth has dual motions -

"Here lurked the danger of serious misunderstanding. Maffeo Barberini, while he was a Cardinal, had counselled Galileo to treat Copernicanism as a hypothesis, not as a confirmed truth. But 'hypothesis' meant two very different things. On the one hand, astronomers were assumed to deal only with hypotheses, i.e. accounts of the observed motions of the stars and planets that were not claimed to be true. Astronomical theories were mere instruments for calculation and prediction, a view that is often called 'instrumentalism'.. On the other hand, a hypothesis could also be understood as a theory that was not yet proved but was open to eventual confirmation. This was a 'realist' position. Galileo thought that Copernicanism was true, and presented it as a hypothesis, i.e. as a provisional idea that was potentially physically true, and he discussed the pros and cons, leaving the issue undecided. This did not correspond to the instrumentalist view of Copernicanism that was held by Maffeo Barberini and others. They thought that Copernicus' system was a purely instrumental device, and Maffeo Barberini was convinced that it could never be proved. This ambiguity pervaded the whole Galileo Affair."

http://www.unav.es/cryf/english/newlightistanbul.html

I use these websites as a means to present that things are not always as historically and technically simple as they seem and that there is a tremendous amount of work to be done recovering astronomy from historical revision that is meant to favor those with different agendas than the ones which occupy astronomers.

Thank you Bert - also concur 100%!

While legitimate disagreements are almost guaranteed, there is certainly no need to resort
to personal verbal assaults. Most unfortunately this is a frequent occurrence in this
group.

A solution - the kill file. A beneficial result of which is I no longer see any posts
from Kelleher, Oriel, and others who are incapable of remaining civil or just carry on
with what others accept as being incorrect.

On the other hand - have learned much from many group members, which outnumber the cranks,
and therefore continue to benefit from the majority of postings.

The kill file is your friend!

Regards,

Doug






Bert Olton wrote:


Cheesh, you know what, all I am is a Diesel Mechanic/welder/heavy
equipment operator, but dang, the language you guys use on here in
what's supposed to be a sort of scientific newsgroup kind of puts me to
shame.

I'd like to have my wife and a couple of my kids participate here since
we're trying to learn about astronomy, but the crap that gets posted
here is beyond anything they'd hear at one of our union picnics.

I always thought that I and the guys I work with had no class. You all
make us look like a bunch of pikers. Would love to get one of you on
the sidehill or in a tunnel sometime, see what you're really made of..

Not so best regards,
Bert