March 17, 2005

• Oh, well if he has no proof.... I've seen this story pop up around the internet all month. Since I spend 28 hours a day online, that's unavoidable. But I do like this last paragraph: Keyser says he needs "about a year" to conduct a more precise analysis. He also needs someone to continue footing the bill.
• Oh dear. This really won't help the reputation of academic history. He apparently had really interesting stuff, documents no one had used before - that's like gold in well researched fields. But he had to go for sensational. Well, it will make him famous. But it really won't help me when I'm trying to explain how history isn't all subjective, and there are suposed to be standards of evidence. I wonder how much this has come about because he is an unaffiliated academic, and so is at the mercy of the publiching market, not free to publish boring, but deeply respected books that no one but historians and a few undergrad history majors ever read. (Trust me, some of the best history is dead boring, but you wouldn't want it to be more interesting if it meant it was inaccurate.)
• Hitler also lived on the moon and ate titanium. His best friend was a 90 foot robot called Ethel which was poised to kill the world. I have no proof for this, but please pay me to continue writing drivel and stay on the gravy train.
• If I remember correctly, last Wednesdays German Newspaper "Die Zeit" - easily one of the most respected Newspapers in Germany took a highly skeptical view. Most import points were that the nazis did not have plutonium and Karlsch speculated that the nazis triggered a nuclear fission by detonation of conventional explosives(!!!). An Armscontrol blog cited by article autor Gero von Randow in his blog (see where journalism is heading?) gives similar arguments. To sum it up, highly sensationalistic bullshit.
• Ach, this is yet more muddying of the waters. Some folk will place credence in a hollow or a flat earth, some in perpetual motion machines, and some gullible folk in the A-bomb which Hitler so inexplicably neglected to use even as his country stared defeat in the face.
• George Bush! /reverse Godwin
• I guess in a post about the nazis it is quite okay to mention Hitler. Godwins law was about comparing people you don´t agree with with Hitler. No need for special moves, Mr. Unusual. (May I call you I?)
• There is ample evidence to suggest that "Ethel" -- if that was really her name -- was no taller than 70 feet.
• somebody set us up the bomb!
• All this "historian" need do is spin a novel around the tale he's invented, publish it under the title The Berlin Code, and sit back and watch the millions roll in. Then he can continue his bizarre quest for a truth that fits his imagination, but at the cost of his stupid audience.
• Ha! Ha! Ethel! That's great. There never was an Ethel.