.... .. Egyptian Electrification .. ....

July 8, 2002

Note : Updated with slight revision. I've had to recreate the commentary on the posts I replied to on this thread from memory, because Stephanie Cass deleted them before I got around to saving them. Don't worry, though. You'll get to see something equally strange out of their friends, shortly.

By chance, I did hold onto copies of most of the posts that I made on this thread, which you'll see reprinted below, in context.

Is it unfair that you are only seeing my side of the argument? Yes, it's very unfair - to me. I'd be delighted to show you the original text of the posts on the other side of the discussion and let my opposition on it be heard in its own words, if only I had access to those words. This situation is unfair to me because while I can relay the absurdity of what I was reading, I can't give you a very good sense of just how abusive JamStone, "Bob" and their friends became. Dry sarcasm is more my style when I get angry online, and these folks took a crawl through the sewer.

Think about how it is that you remember a discussion. The whole thing is not going to be sitting on the tip of your tounge. You'll remember a sentence here, a phrase there, and you'll try to fill in the blanks. In your head, you'll start to carry out the discussion as you remember it, replacing the parts you forget with something that sounds natural to you. One of those tries will jog your memory and another blank spot will be filled in. Eventually, you will remember the discussion to a greater or lesser degree. The more natural that the words would feel coming out of your mouth, the easier you will find the effort to repeat the discussion in its original phrasing. This is why we can't remember a lecture just by repeating the words we heard this morning to ourselves, and yet we can recite our roommate's tales by heart. This is why, as a teacher, I make an effort to re-express the material in terms of my student's own experiences. A finance major who struggles with the notions of exponential growth, suddenly finds the material easy when it is illustrated with the example of compound interest, to take a case that often arises.

Content-free diatribes do not roll naturally off my tounge. The end result : trying to fill in the blanks in the scraps of invective that I briefly remembered was difficult for me, and within a few weeks, I had forgotten even the scraps, which I suppose is just as well, for the most part. Certainly, it's good for my blood pressure and general productivity. However, this may leave the reader with the illusion that the only thing provoking my sarcasm was the mind-bending stupidity that I was encountering. No, far from it.

Let us note that Ms. Stephanie Cass, the less-than-impartial board monitor, moved very quickly. By the time I got up, after a very late night on the boards, the thread was gone. The intent on her part to thwart efforts to document what happened here, couldn't be clearer. (Note the legally unenforcable (1) demand that one not reprint posts from the board elsewhere, backed up with veiled threats of legal action based on what could only be termed a "creative" reading of copyright law). In fact, Ms. Cass would later, in a letter you will see printed here on our Netjer page, come out and openly announce that as a matter of policy, she wouldn't allow us to "discredit" people on the board and that she had and would continue to engage in censorship in support of that policy.

Imagine that! A guaranteed right to never lose an argument. It's a fool's fondest dream, come true. The long term consequences of that policy should be obvious. When one sets out the honey, one should expect to see a few flies.

The silliness began when "JamStone" made a post entitled "Egypt is not really dead". Nothing terribly original, the post gave us the standard politically correct (and historically inaccurate) claims that the ancient Egyptians invented everything, more or less, with the Greeks apparently stealing the credit. JamStone even went so far as to claim that the Egyptians invented Greek architecture and created the precursor to most of the modern Western languages. To the lengthy list of alleged accomplishments, he added the astonishing possibility that the ancient Egyptians had harnessed electricity! Even by Internet standards, this was outrageous. I had to respond.

Antistoicus (Guest) 6/3/01 01:32 PM 208.223.151.1 Re: Egypt is not "truly dead". Um ... no. Pre-Hellenic Egyptian Mathematics is devoid of the concept of proof. From what I have seen of it, it is an improvement on bookkeeping techniques that arose when people were still fumbling around, looking for a less cumbersome arithmetic notation. Where there is no proof, there is no true Mathematics. Government? Which part of government? You certainly can't mean the development of democracy, because Egypt was a monarchy throughout the entirety of the pharaonic period, pretty much by definition, and that period reached into late antiquity. Architecture? Well, both used columns and were fond of putting decorative capitals atop the columns, but that is about where the resemblance ends. I refer the reader to any reputable book on architecture in the ancient world, and invite him to look at the photos. Be sure to take a look at the Roman section as well, as most of their work, by their own account, even late in the Imperial period, was being done by Greek architects who the Romans had - um - "borrowed" from their homeland earlier on. (Later on, when citizenship was more freely granted, it was opportunity that brought them). Claims of pre-classical electricity and some of the other Afrocentric whoppers I just saw are to be greeted in the same way one greets reports of the Vedic air force. With the observation that assertion is not proof, and that not one scrap of evidence has ever been advanced for any of these claims in a reputable academic press. Did somebody write something in a book, somewhere? Yes, and people write things in tabloids, too. Does that mean that one takes them seriously? Sorry, but Hellenic civilization is not just warmed over Kemetic civilization. A great deal was added on top of the original Egyptian (and Mesopotamian) contributions. Oh, and by the way, the original alphabet that is alleged to lie at the root of all others is the Phoenician, not hieroglyphics, and Egyptian, being a Hamitic language, would make a most unlikely precursor to the Indo-European languages we are used to. I would go into detail on this, but I have already wasted far more time than I care to on this particular crackpot movement. (See "A rebuttal to some Afrocentric Commentary"). Reputable references on these subjects are easy enough to find, though, for anybody who is more interested in historical reality than in postmodern posturing. Anybody who thinks that our ideas in scholarly matters are purely a matter of making arbitrary choices really needs to spend a little more time studying, and maybe have better taste in reading material.

JamStone immediately went on the attack. Pardon me if I take the personal abuse out of his commentary, as it didn't seem to be worth memorizing at the time. His counter-argument was that "good scientists" were in the business of proving things true, not proving them false. This is pure nonsense, as the latter is what constitutes "peer review", one of the cornerstones of all legitimate scholarship. Adding that "the absence of proof is not the proof of absence", he tried to then argue that his claims regarding Ancient Egypt's "harnessing" of electricity were beyond debate, because he merely said that it was "possible" that this had occured. Besides which, he said, a key hanging at the end of a kite string (as in Franklin's experiment) would count as a "harnessing of electricity".

Yes, he really argued that he had no need of the facts, because his theory couldn't be disproved. It was time to set him straight.

Antistoicus (Guest) 6/4/01 01:00 AM 208.223.151.1 Re: Egypt is not "truly dead". Nice try, JamStone, but no go. There is a logical principle called "Occam's razor". Look it up. The burden of proof lies on the person who alleges the existence of something (such as the knowledge of how to harness electricity in ancient Egypt), not on the person who denies it. Anybody who has ever come near a graduate program in the sciences knows that one by heart, so kindly refrain from giving anybody lectures on what constitutes good science, until you at least know the basics. Speaking as somebody who, among other graduate degrees, is close to getting one in Electrical Engineering, I am intrigued by the depth of your lack of comprehension, displayed by your claim that a glowing key at the end of a kite string constitutes a "harnessing" of electricity. Even were lightning so cooperative as to arrive when and where desired, Franklin's apparatus could not have been used in any practical way. The heat of the lightning stroke (hotter than the surface of the sun) would be more than adequate to melt if not vaporize the collector in steady use. Nor could Franklin have stored the energy of the stroke for later use, as even present day storage devices can't hold that much energy. Further, we should keep in mind one very important fact about Egypt: the desert surrounding it is incredibly dry. Papyrus from thousands of years ago is still good. Yet we are asked to believe that far less perishable conductors have either all been lost to the ravages of time, or mysteriously never been scattered to the rim of the desert surrounding that very narrow river valley, in how many thousands of years? In this case, absence of evidence IS evidence of an absence - especially in an era in which it is a simple matter to find reconstructions of complex geared mechanisms from millenia old shipwrecks. Compare what seawater will do to bronze to what dry desert air and a little dust will do to copper. No comparison. If there was electrical equipment to be found in the refuse out there, it would be unmistakable. Let's see ... we're also supposed to believe in the development of electrical generators (in the total absence of any evidence for such) in a time when not only the theory of the electromagnetic field was not even present in the crudest form, but Calculus, the most basic form of Mathematics used in the development of that theory was not in existence yet. In fact, as I've indicated, we have NO examples of what laymen would refer to as being Advanced Mathematics in pre-Hellenic Egyptian Mathematics. Who expunged the record on this one so thoroughly, not even leaving a trace of a branch of Mathematics almost notorious for its tendency to work its way into every other branch? The technology-loving Arabs, who could have put it to excellent use, in so many ways? In fact, the Medieval Arabs were still working out the rudiments of Algebra, and kudos to them for doing so. It was original and essential work, without which the Differential Calculus could not have been developed. In short, imagining that the Pharaonic Egyptians "might have" harnessed electricity, as the 19th century Westerners did, is like saying that the Romans "might have" succeeded in building an ion drive and paying a visit to Neptune. They were nowhere close. Last, but not least, is the game of "bait and switch" which you're attempting here. The idiomatic significance of saying that the Egyptians might have harnessed electricity is clear: one is not merely claiming possibility, but plausibility as well. That this was the meaning you intended the reader to take is made clear in context, as you claim this thing that "might be" as an accomplishment of the Egyptians that lives on. Does one walk through a field pointing to random clots of dirt, noting that a priceless diamond might lie under each, merely because on rare occasion, buried diamonds have been found? You defend on literal terms, what context makes clear you wished to be taken in idiomatic terms. Exploiting a double meaning like this, or any other quirk of the language, is profound intellectual dishonesty. Shame on you.

At this point, "John" decided to bless us with his presence. Mainly, he just ranted abusively, as mentioned in "Dealing with John". (The details immediately follow a copy of the message he sent at about the same time, in a feeble attempt to pressure me into silence. The "behavior" referred to is nothing more than the making of the counterarguments you are now seeing).

"John" decided to speak in support of JamStone's remarkable claim, regarding the harnessing of electricity in Pharoanic times. He started by citing a list of the accomplishments of the ancient Egyptians, such as the pyramids, which he claimed that we would be unable to build today. This, of course, is utter nonsense. The only things standing in the way of such a project are the increased cost of labor and the lack of desire to undertake such a project, and its costs. The increase in pay (and resulting prosperity) that the common man has come to expect can hardly be sensibly viewed as being a step backward.

Having run off this list of accomplishments, he then concluded that since the ancient Egyptians were so bright, obviously they could have harnessed electricity. My response to this was to point out that one could cite an even longer list of accomplishments for the Renaissance Italians. Certainly, one would agree, Leonardo da Vinci was far more intelligent than most (if not all) of the aircraft designers at Boeing. Therefore, by this logic, one would conclude that there were (or might have been) supersonic aircraft during the Renaissance! Absolutely absurd.

This lead me to a very serious question. Just how serious were the people posting here? As I pointed out, even my six year old cousin could understand (without adult prompting) that each generation of scientists builds on what the previous generations did before it. Aside from the gains in theoretical understanding, there is also what is known as "technological maturity". That is, the gradual improvement in the quality of tools available to the workman and in his resulting capability to construct the things that engineers design, using the knowledge of natural law and other theory that scientists and mathematicians provide them with. For example, the concept of solid state circuitry was around in the 1920s, but nevertheless, analog computing was still going strong in the 1940s, because those designs could not be practically implemented using the technology of the time.

Again, as mentioned in the file regarding "John", there was much ranting and raving about my use of "polysyllabic, pseudo-intellectual (expletitive deleted)", and the Greeks destroying Egyptian culture by referring to the cities and gods of Egypt by different names than those used by the Egyptians, leading me to point out that this hideous practice was one known as "having a different language", leading to the aforementioned question of how the Egyptians had survived "the horrors of translation" for so long. No reasonable man could think that to offer gentle teasing in response to coarse personal abuse would be objectionable, but Craig Schaefer, the Nisut's second-in-command, took exactly that position, warning me that "mockery" wasn't allowed on the boards. Yes, Craig actually tried to forbid the use of wit on the House boards, even in small doses. Some would say that he succeeded.

Note: The weaknesses of Johns's metaphysical theories regarding the significance of language are discussed in another article on this page, entitled "Formal vs. Magical Usage".

Continuing the childishness, "Djed" protested my decision to bring up something as unimportant as the facts, on the basis that "one shouldn't have to be an egghead in order to have fun speculating about something interesting". In other words, knowing what one was talking about, as one spoke, was intolerable, because one would ruining the fun of those who didn't. (2) With some dismay, I started to notice that a theme was developing here: a belief that one was obliged to lower oneself to the level of the lowest common denominator, so that others would not feel inadequate. If another can't think, one must not make sense. If another can't write, one must not be too articulate. Such a creed brings out the worst that is in man, rather than the best.

Disappointing if true, I thought to myself, but irrelevant at that point. I proceeded as if the House would be motivated by concerns nobler than the desire to appease those moved by petty spite and gave it the chance to live up to the respect it was shown by this action. Summing up the craziness already seen, I wrote:

Antistoicus (Guest) 6/4/01 01:59 AM 208.223.151.1 Re: Egypt is not "truly dead". While I was on the subject of semantic games, I could have pointed out JamStone's attempt to redefine the word "harness" into meaninglessness after the fact, when called on a remarkable claim. Let the evasiveness you, the reader, have witnessed serve as evidence of one basic truth. "Alternative" scholarship is not seeking to find the truth, it seeks to evade it. It is exasperation, and not closedmindedness, that leads people to ignore it. I am concerned, though, that eventually so many people like this may find this forum, that it will become Usenet in minature. I hope that it doesn't come to that, but a response is made to Neppy (3), and now we see this pitch of JamStone's, in short order? The short response time is not a good sign of things to come.

JamStone was back. His next stroke of genius was to try to argue that the mythology surrounding Asclepius, the Hellenic god of medicine, was derived from the real life story of Imhotep. His methodology, as usual, was suspect, glossing over the differences in approach between modern scholarship and ancient theology.

Antistoicus (Guest) 6/4/01 12:04 PM 208.223.151.1 Re: Egypt is not "truly dead". Once again, JamStone, nice try. Imhotep, a real and documented historical personage, was honored as a son of Ptah, not Ra. Ptah is not a solar deity. After the fact associations between pre-existing mythological figures, such as Asclepius and the deified Imhotep, reveal little, except that the Greeks, as usual, sought correspondences between their own deities and foreign ones. Asclepius was their god of medicine, Imhotep, apparently, became the Egyptian one, and so the two become equated. Nothing deeper than that. Even the most casual student of the subject can't help but notice just how many spurious mythological associations there were throughout Classical antiquity. (Consider the Roman equating of Odin/Wotan with Mercury (their Hermes)). You have confused mythological with historical association, and cause with effect. You have seriously argued that because two things were blended (the mythological Asclepius and the mythological Imhotep), they must come from a common source. Please, let us be serious, and stop playing that hedging game where you keep saying "I said it MIGHT be true", as if the recitation of that mantra could render your commentary immune to criticism.

"Khen", who had behaved so curiously during the "Religion and Empowerment" thread, once again went out of her way to appease the belligerent (JamStone, in this case). She tried to rationalize JamStone's latest claims, by pointing out that the historical Imhotep was the high priest of Ra, the sun god, arguing that this validated JamStone's analogy. This, however, was incorrect :

Antistoicus (Guest) 6/4/01 05:20 PM 208.223.151.1 Re: Egypt is not "truly dead". Em hotep, Khen. I thank you for the information, but in this particular context, it is not on point. JamStone has drawn a parallel between Imhotep and Asclepius. The latter was not a historical figure who was a high priest of Apollo, he is a deity/mythological figure who was the son of Apollo. This, I think you will agree, is a much different relation than that you mention between Imhotep and Ra - Imhotep being Ra's high priest. If somebody is going to draw a parallel here, the relevant relationship is not who Imhotep, the historical personage, served or was a priest of, but rather who Imhotep, the mythological figure, was alleged to be the son of. That would be Ptah, not Ra, and hence JamStone's analogy doesn't hold up at all.

JamStone wasn't about to give up. Given his postmodernist stance, I'm not surprised. The other guests on the list, and at least one of the shemsu ("Bob"), were supporting him. From the standpoint of somebody who understands the value of serious scholarship, this is an indictment of the intellectual atmosphere the House had fostered on its boards. However, from the point of view of a postmodernist, somebody who believes that all reality is subjective, this collective lunacy became a source of vindication. "The facts be (deleted), because there are no facts, only politics", as some would put it.

Politics, indeed. JamStone's next move was one straight out of the Usenet playbook - character assassination via the use of an inflammatory accusation. JamStone said that I was "censoring" him. How could I be doing that, given that I wasn't a member of the House and had no editorial control over the board? Simple. By discrediting his arguments, I was "censoring" them. "Bob", the shemsu I mentioned, concurred. Ironically enough, this would be the same "Bob" who would soon ask Stephanie Cass to delete the entire thread on the basis that by winning the argument, I had "degraded" his side. The only remedy, "Bob" argued, was to destroy all evidence that the argument had ever happened. To her everlasting shame, Ms. Cass would soon choose to go along with that argument and engage in some real censorship, by deleting the entire thread.

Continuing the persecution theme, an intriguing one out of a member of a philosophical camp notorious for its eagerness to harass those who disagreed with it into silence, JamStone spoke of the great effort that I was putting into painting him as a "closeted pseudoscientist". "The desert is a big place", he said. "Who cares if no evidence of such equipment has surfaced yet? Who know what might be out there? And what does Occam's razor have to do with any of this, anyway?" or words to that effect. Not only was this nonsense, but it wasn't even original nonsense. The demand that one begin any discussion by acknowledging that one can't really know anything about the subject discussed, is a postmodernist cliche.

I already was quite tired of this discussion, but responded anyway. The issue here wasn't possibility, but plausibility, and a failure to grasp the concept of relative certitude.

Antistoicus (Guest) 6/4/01 07:43 PM 208.223.151.1 Re: Egypt is not "truly dead". So, let us see where your proposed "possibility" stands now, JamStone. First we had the Egyptians harnessing electricity. I called you on that one. You responded by trying to wriggle out of that one by changing the meanings of your words after the fact to something that runs contrary to common usage, and we now had the "possibility" that the Egyptians had done so. "Possibility" here, aparently being defined in the sense that the random clod of dirt I mentioned earlier might have a priceless diamond under it. But the same could be said of any other clot of dirt, so this fact does not make that clot of dirt special. Here, you tried to backpedal in a hurry and put your claims regarding Egyptian electrification on that same, content-free basis. But if we are to believe that this was your original intent, why did you put this meaningless, information-free claim in a list of Egypt's accomplishments? The same argument could have been used, mutus mutandis, for any other society existing prior to the modern era. Like the clot of dirt mentioned in my earlier example, with its "possible" diamond, we are not given grounds to think Egypt any more special than we otherwise would, by a meaningless claim like the one you've tried to remake your original one into. Is the backpedalling done yet? No. I point out the absence of ancient electrical equipment from the rim of the Nile Valley. You try to dodge the point by arguing that there are parts of the desert unexplored, glossing over the fact that the issue here is the absence of something that one would reasonably have cause to expect to find in the parts already visited, were this Pharaonic electrification program we're supposed to acknowledge the "possibility" of, in existence. Your response? Oh, maybe it was a very small program that produced very few parts. And no evidence that it ever existed, because somebody braved duststorms, desert nomads and other dangers to hide the equipment in some secret corner of the desert, for some unknown reason. But, it still won't fly. You know why? Because the Egyptians weren't Puritans and it is a matter of record that the Priesthood could really appreciate a good, mechanical toy, especially when it seemed almost magical. I'm reminded of a description of an old temple device for opening the doors (slowly, obviously) to a room, by lighting a fire. Darn cool, and their priesthood was not above enjoying such things, it would seem. And yet, mysteriously, we have them, in this hypothetical case, which you feel no need whatsover to offer any evidence to support, passing up the toy to end all toys. A 'magical light', glowing without fire and without air, and yet not being extinguished! How likely is it, that such a development would not spread? Especially given that, in what you seem to be deeming the "possible" case that there were pre-Ptolemaic electrical generators (!), the same technology that allows one to build a generator, allows one to build motors as well. It also gives one access to electrical lighting. In a country in which firewood would be as expensive as it must have been in Egypt, that would be no small gift. So, again, we find that your theory has added yet another unlikely assumption, to a steadily growing list. Do you still need me to explain where Occam's razor comes in, JamStone? As for your claim that one doesn't need mathematics to make things work - what exactly is your background in Engineering, JamStone, that makes you feel qualified to offer an opinion on that subject? Because, speaking as a graduate school trained professional, I'm telling you that you don't know what you're talking about, especially when it comes to Electrical Engineering. The very laws of Physics that this work uses aren't even expressible without the use of Mathematics, much less possible to make use of, or find the consequences of. Am I working hard to paint you as a closeted pseudo-scientist, as you have claimed? No, JamStone, you're well out of the closet at this point. You've seriously tried to argue that you need no facts to make a substantive point about your subject matter. When confronted about remarkable claims, you've tried to evade rebuttal by changing the meanings of the words you just used. This is classic crackpot behavior. You've even tried to do this with my words, turning a charge of evasiveness into one that you didn't know the meaning of your own words. I see that you have posted some more replies to one of my posts. I will not read them and have no interest in hearing about them, because there is no point to having a conversation with somebody who plays this sort of semantic game. Try this one on for style: suppose that somebody told you "I've been asking around the police station, and it is possible that your sister is a prostitute and a drug-pusher in the local elementary schools". Would you object? Presumably so, which should tell you just how close to common usage you are coming, as you attempt to evade counterarguments here, instead of answering them honestly. Suppose, you did object to somebody going around and saying this and their response was "well, when I say prostitute, what I mean by that is "kind loving person" and when I say drug-pusher, I mean "person who volunteers her time to tutor disadvantaged students", so really, I'm speaking quite kindly of her". How seriously would you take such an evasive defense of such a misleading remark? Language, when we talk to anybody but ourselves, is there for the purpose of communication and in order to serve that purpose, it must be used in a commonly understood manner, and that means, in terms of common, idiomatic usage. Did you know "what you meant"? Wrong question. The real one is, assuming that you weren't lying outright, could the reader reasonably be expected to know what you meant? If the answer is no, then you have printed an untruth, whatever your mental reservations might have been.

Naively hoping that it was all over, now, I wrote :

Antistoicus (Guest) 6/4/01 09:01 PM 208.223.151.1 Re: Egypt is not "truly dead". Re : JamStone. Keep an eye on this one. The thing about people who are this crudely manipulative is that while their characters seldom change, their skill levels often do. May we view this non-issue as having been sufficiently beaten to death, at this point? It would have been one thing if we were evaluating the conclusiveness of an argument and "possibility" was being used in the context of playing devil's advocate, as we searched for gaps in the argument. There is no confusion between possibility and plausibility, in that context. But this was quite another, and I think that we all know this, JamStone included. Consider this to be a strong recommendation to ignore anything that this user may write in the future. Who needs this?

JamStone had one last trick up his sleeve. During the course of debate, when he would find that he was pinned down and his position was no longer tenable, he would simply change it and act as if the new position was one that he had been arguing all along. As he probably expected, the others on the thread were happy to let him get away with being this evasive.

The downside to this strategy, for those unconcerned with honesty, is that it leaves one contradicting oneself on a regular basis. JamStone tried to turn this drawback into a tactical advantage. You've already seen me confront JamStone about some of the backpedalling he had done already. In a moment of pure, classic, memorable chutzpah, JamStone responded by saying that I was the one who was backpedalling, because first I said that he had said one thing and then I said he had said another. As usual, he was trying to bluff the reader into not noticing the blindlingly obvious, and I called him on it :

Antistoicus (Guest) 6/5/01 03:24 AM 208.223.151.1 Re: Egypt is not "truly dead". JamStone, given that you reversed yourself repeatedly, often within the same post, as you went for increasing degrees of vagueness in your subsequent posting, it is difficult to see how I could accurately report what you had written without the comments I attributed to you contradicting each other, almost as often as you contradicted yourself. There is no "backpedalling" on my part involved at all. Merely a faithful reproduction of your own internal contradictions. If sophistry and belligerence fails, why not go for character assassination and equivocation, eh? Unfortunately for you, a good many people have already seen this thread and your own postings, in all of their incoherent glory, so lying about who said what will get you nowhere. Speaking as somebody who already has four years of university teaching experience, I might say the same about your level of academic and professional maturity. Trying to whip up the hysteria by equating criticism with censorship, in a forum where your freedom to post has not been hindered, even as you violated the policies of the forum with rare gusto, sets a new low. One that I feel great confidence in your ability to sink below, which is why the warning. You've discarded even the most basic ethical standards that are to be expected of a professional or academic and you've done it with self-righteousness and indignant pride. I've taught enough students to know a terminal case when I see one. You're going to get worse, not better, and you're not going to turn around. The level of hysteria and whining from you that has followed my challenge to cite your credentials alone, would be enough to make that clear. The 1990s are over, little one, and we're all quite used to the kind of game you're attempting to play here. Don't hold your breath waiting for it to pay off. PS. What a surprise that you didn't actually have any credentials to mention. Almost as surprising as cold weather in February.

Somewhere along the way, during all of this silliness, a miracle occured, and JamStone actually made a thesis statement which he could be pinned down on. Responding to it was a great way of summing up the whole thread. I didn't feel good that I had come. A great deal of my time was wasted by it and I wasn't sure why I had even bothered. Maybe I was writing for the lurkers. But now, at least I could leave this nonsense behind me in the archives, and feel good about the fact that I had left. My rebuttal was an easy one to write:

Antistoicus (Guest) 6/5/01 04:21 AM 208.223.151.1 Re: Egypt is not "truly dead". Quoth JamStone : "Science is a funny thing ... almost anything can be 'proved' or 'disproved' using science". (Elipses his/hers). The reader should keep in mind that when JamStone was asked what his/her credentials were, (s)he failed to produce any. May I be so bold as to suggest that his/her opinion on this particular subject may not be worth a great deal? Anybody who seriously believes the statement quoted above, has never witnessed a thesis defense. Claims are one thing. Claims that are supported by arguments that have withstood scrutiny are quite another.

By now, no matter how much he might try to posture to the contrary, "Bob", the shemsu who had tried to support JamStone's side of this insane debate, couldn't hide the fact that his side had lost the argument and lost it badly. Worse still, from a troll's point of view, I was walking away in a moderately good mood, and nobody else seemed likely to be sucked into the craziness. His response, as I've mentioned, was to take one last parting shot by asking the moderators to destroy all evidence that the discussion had ever occurred and erase my posts. That, and resort to endless backbiting in another forum by way of retaliation, but why obsess?

What was the basis for this absurd request? Willfully turning a blind eye to the fact that a rational, if blunt, series of arguments on my part had been responded to with an endless stream of personal abuse and occasional profanity from him and his friends in the forums, and threatening private messages from one of his friends ("John") warning me of unspecified nasty consequences if I continued talking back, "Bob" actually had the nerve to complain that I had been too mean to his side. (Translation : I stood up for myself). Harsh language didn't belong in an educational forum, he said. Obviously, somebody had never been to grad school. As an educator and an academic, though, and still having a far higher opinion of the House than it actually deserved, I posted a rebuttal, and commentary about his theory of education.

I had over-estimated the House. Like the posts above, this article was censored within the day. Most of the posts that I had made elsewhere soon followed it into oblivion, even where no flammage had occured. I had never witnessed such utter cowardice. My only regret as I left the House of Netjer webboards behind, was that I had ever wasted a moment on them to begin with.

Side note: JamStone has since popped up elsewhere to boast of his intellectual triumphs on this thread, now that his friends have succeeded in getting the evidence to the contrary destroyed. (This came in response to a post by somebody who had reacted to what he saw here with incredulity. To say that he took liberties with the truth would be akin to saying that O.J. Simpson was not the perfect husband. (So, what else is new?)

Re: JamStone smokes some good (deleted) ! ____________________________________________________ [ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ My Message Board ] [ FAQ ] ____________________________________________________ Posted by JamStone's Fan Club Now Accepting New Members on July 07, 2002 at 22:10:57: In Reply to: JamStone smokes some good (deleted) ! posted by Jack Smith on July 07, 2002 at 20:25:09: > ... Yo, JamStone! > ... Been lookin' up your name on Altavista. Read some > ... strange (deleted) about you. Says you went on this > ... other board at http://www.netjer.org, and said > ... the Ancient Egyptians maybe "harnessed > ... electricity". Wow. King Tut used lightbulbs? > ... Did you mean that? Not dissin' you, just sayin' > ... whatever you been smokin', you oughta share. hahaha! that's some old (deleted)...the dude twisted up what i had said just so he can front on his intellegence (remember goodwill hunting? how ya like dem apples?) well i clowned him with facts, established theories and logic and instead of trying to debate in a serious manner he chose to post angry tirades with personal attacks and thusly got booted from the board...so then he goes and makes a (deleted) webpage dedicated to ME (it's great to have fans!) but he left ONE thing out -- MY (deleted) posts and rebuttles to his posts (he claims that they got deleted but his somehow miraculously survived...how (deleted) convient!) well anyways this was well over a year ago and i see that he is still in love with me because his webpage has been updated since i checked it last...oh and why the (deleted) you looking up (deleted) about me for??? are you a fan too???? -JamStonesirus.

Profanity cut by me, in keeping with my provider's Terms of Service agreement, but the rest of this is pure, unadulterated JamStone, misspellings and all.

Seperating truth from nonsense should be easy for the reader at this point. Quoth JamStone : "well i clowned him with facts, established theories and logic ..." Yes, JamStone, you sound like a real intellectual. Realistically, does this person sound capable of establishing either theories or logic? Having carelessly acknowledged that the posts you see above were, indeed, the ones I placed on the board, JamStone continues : "and instead of trying to debate in a serious manner he chose to post angry tirades with personal attacks", which, as you can see merely by looking at what I wrote, is a bald faced lie. JamStone asserts that I "thusly got booted from the board", but, as you will see in "Groupthink in Action", by the testimony of none other than the Nisut, the leader of the House of Netjer, months after this flamewar, I had still never been banned from the Netjer boards. If, as is so often the case online, the reader is left wondering "how do I know who to trust", he need only look at the facts.

And that is exactly what Ms. Cass is trying to keep the reader from being able to do, much to the delight of kooks like JamStone, who can then lie to their heart's content about what went on, now that the evidence is being suppressed. Or, should we say, most of it, because being too cocky to realise it, JamStone was kind enough to expose himself in the post quoted above. In response to JamStone's statement "but he left ONE thing out -- MY (deleted) posts and rebuttles to his posts (he claims that they got deleted but his somehow miraculously survived...how (deleted) convient!)", we offer an invitation and a challenge: repost those lost articles in a public place. We would be personally delighted to place the original text on our page and if JamStone could find the articles posted by the others, we'd love to have those too. Or, even better, could he persuade the House to stop blocking access to that thread? Because unlike he and "Bob", we have nothing to hide.

As for JamStone's blustering about the alleged strangeness of my still having copies of my own posts, I would invite the reader to do what is best when somebody attempts to substitute attitude for argument. Go out, get a nice cup of coffee or hit a museum, and when you get back, having shaken off the emotions dropped on you, ask yourself just how much sense the argument really seems to make. You've been online for a while? You've known other people who've been online as well? Then, in your own experience, exactly how unusual is it, really, for somebody to hold onto backup copies of his own work? Anybody who isn't throwing the bull in order to "make a point" will have to concede that it isn't very unusual at all, and that JamStone is clutching at straws.

The policy statement on the board at the House of Netjer says all. Posts on the board may not be copied without the permission of the House of Netjer or the authors according to House policy, the House claiming a copyright on the posts made on its boards. Such a claim, as we explain elsewhere, is without legal merit under the laws of both the United States and United Kingdom, where our webpages reside, as it runs contrary to the Fair Use doctrine. But, in real life, more than a few system operators "shoot first and ask questions later", taking action in response to groundless complaints, stubbornly refusing to listen when their users explain why the complaints are ludicrous.

We've found that our providers and our sysops seem to have a lot more class than that. But, until that much became clear, we were left dealing with a group of would-be "copyright terrorists" (people who attempt to abuse the legal system with frivolous copyright-related suits, or the threat of such, in order to muzzle their critics). We weren't about to endanger the existence of our own homepage just to include a few old posts. This being the case, copying down the posts not due to Shrine members became a very low priority. What we were seeing is exactly what one would expect from the writer of the quote above: garbage. There was nothing there which we would have any reason to wish to read ourselves, and we were still unclear as to whether or not we'd be able to show it to anybody else.

There is nothing more than a writer, even an amateur writer, hates more than having some of his writing be lost, and some of my work had already been capriciously deleted. Just to be safe, I stayed up, downloaded copies of a number of my posts and then, since it was an ungodly hour and the sky was starting to light up, I decided to go to bed. JamStone seems to feel that this is evidence of something, and he is right. It is evidence of the fact that I have a life outside of the Internet.

And that, dear reader, is one thing for which I shall never apologise. Click here to return to the main page of the review of the House of Netjer, here on the homepage of the Shrine of the Sleeping Gods.

(1) The reprinting of posts used to document an account of events on the board clearly falls under the protection of the "fair use exemption" recognized by the Berne convention, and all copyright law written in accordance with it (such as in the United States and the United Kingdom of Great Britain), as it is a non-commercial use of material of no commercial value, necessary for the purposes of critical commentary.

Did I mention that my family includes a line of attorneys going back into the early middle ages, to say nothing of my friends ? Being from a Jewish background has its advantages.

(2) This note was to be repeated by a swarm of people who entered the thread, most of them after I had downloaded the last copy of one of my posts, still in my possession. (This thread ballooned to a great length in its last day or two of existence). JamStone's insistence that he was being persecuted was parroted, and calls were made for the House to step in, and 'take action'. So much for free and open discussion.

(3) Neppy was the afrocentrist who started the thread about Cleopatra's alleged blackness.