From: psperson@old.netcom.invalid   
      
   On Wed, 14 Jan 2026 00:17:01 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D´Oliveiro   
    wrote:   
      
   >On Tue, 13 Jan 2026 11:28:29 -0000 (UTC), Charles Packer wrote:   
   >   
   >> Raise your hand if you're old enough to remember an eerily similar   
   >> controversy a generation earlier: "Worlds in Collision" by Immanuel   
   >> Velikovsky. Compare and contrast.   
   >   
   >Scientists live in deathly fear of being taken for cranks, or being   
   >misinterpreted by cranks.   
   >   
   >E.g. Soddy and Rutherford arguing over whether to use the old   
   >alchemical term “transmutation” when they succeeded in converting one   
   >chemical element into another.   
   >   
   >E.g. Bretz’s discovery of the glacial flooding episodes that created   
   >the Scablands of the US Pacific Northwest, at just about the time that   
   >geology thought it had got rid of the religious baggage of the   
   >Noachian Flood idea.   
      
   That only makes sense if a very literal interpretation is implied. Any   
   interpretation of a Really Big Flood (just not covering the entire   
   land mass of the planet) being behind it would be compatible with   
   Really Big Floods forming the Scablands.   
      
   Only an idiot who though that floods didn't occur before, say, 1800 AD   
   (or whenever the earliest /recognized as historical/ flood occurred)   
   would have a problem.   
      
   >E.g. Wegener being ridiculed over the idea that South America and   
   >Africa were once joined together, only to break up and drift apart   
   >over time. It took decades for him to be proven correct.   
   >   
   >Velikovsky was wrong, but Sagan argued that it wasn’t necessary to   
   >assassinate his character as well. And yes, it turns out worlds have   
   >collided, though perhaps not quite to the cosmic-billiards-type extent   
   >that he claimed -- one current theory is that our own Earth-Moon   
   >system was created by the collision of the precursor Earth with a   
   >(now-destroyed) body called “Theia”.   
   --    
   "Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,   
   Who evil spoke of everyone but God,   
   Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)