So…Wiki is not Lucy's husband???

This use of unsupported sources happens all the time, particularly in the media itself.  How often have you heard someone on TV say that the bloggers are reporting such and so?  Bloggers?  What the heck is a blogger and why does a bloggers opinion count more than mine?

The local daily down here ran an Op-Ed piece from the Director of International something or other who was also the Chairman of the Blah-Blah trying to scare us all into doing something about something.  And sending in money.

I looked up the website for that organization and it was a thing of beauty with all manner of buttons for various things and links galore.  It even had a “.org” URL!

It also had a phone number on the “Contact Us” section so I called it.  (Call me old-fashioned.)

I found out that the “organization” was a woman with a computer in her kitchen…in this case literally…who indeed had strong feelings about that of which she wrote and had a fund-raising mailing list…of about 2500 people and tremendously good intentions to put the money to work if she ever got any.  Her contributing membership was less than 20 counting herself and just about paid for the printer paper, ink and stamps for her mailings and they had never done a thing directly in support of that about which she had strong feelings because they never got it quite off the ground financially.

Yet and all, the local paper ran her piece as if it were Holy Writ and clothed her in a gown of “expertise” when in fact she knew as much about her subject of interest as I did, which was practically nothing.  She didn’t know much about it, but she was enthusiastic about it!

The problem is that we also do exactly the same thing…except that we know a lot about our subject.  With all good intentions, we freely opine as to solutions and suggestions which in some cases can expose people to danger and if not outright danger, then certainly some liability or embarassment if whatever we suggest is misunderstood or just plain fails.

Should we stop?  Of course not!  That’s what this PRIVATE list is for…to share thoughts and ideas about our “art and science” with the good of the other guy in mind.  It’s when those things get laid before the general public on an uncertain platform that we have problems.  It’s when our solid ideas get mixed in with the $900.00 braided organic-copper power cords and when the public doesn’t know any better that it can be a problem.

Wikipedia is in such a mode.  Personally, I have not found gross inaccuracies in Wiki pieces which were not called out in the piece as possibly wrong but I have likewise never seen anyone write a piece admitting error and seeking to correct it.  I have, on the other hand, found Wiki to often be incomplete…as though the article was just a precis of a longer, more detailed work.

Typically, I use Wikipedia as a source for other sources…not clicking on their highlights necessarily, but searching the names, places, events,  and suchlike in different sources.

So there is the expanding universe which fits the Einstein time and gravity model, which “red-shift” (Hubble) supports, and which means that if it’s expanding, it might well collapse someday (Jiggers!) and then there’s the Hoyle Static Universe which doesn’t but which more strongly allows for entropy (actually both do) and keeps the anti-evolutionists happy.  My question then, under Super-String, has to be what happens to the various dimensions within that structure…or is it a structure?

Oh, and yes, it seems that electrons can be as big as they need to be so one perhaps could fill Albert Hall (and his cousin Monty.)

Keep it out of the red!