1900: "Look at those wacky Wright brothers in their Tinfoil hats! They think that they can actually FLY in machines made from bicycle parts!! BWAAHHAHAHAHA!"

1905: "Look at that wacky Einstein, the peon clerk in the patent office! He's too stupid to get into graduate school and has been muttering lately about what it would be like to ride on a beam of light and how time and space are intermingled...how absurd! Just another one of those wacky tinfoils!"

1500s: "Look at that crazy Leonardo in le tinfoil cap! He's made all these strange drawings of rockets and flying machines. Must be inspired by the devil."

1500s: "That Galileo. Another tinfoil. Everybody knows that the universe revolves around the Earth."

1929: "Hey! Hot diggity darn! There's another humdinger of a tinfoil who thinks that there's going to be a terrible crash in the stock market, followed by a massive global war with the Krauts! Hasn't he heard of the Kellog-Brigand(sp?) pact? War is outlawed! The markets are making us all rich! Ain't we got fun, baby?"

Every so often the tinfoils are correct.

-- coprolith (coprolith@rocketship.com), September 13, 1999

Answers

ROFL!

-- mmmm (mmmm@aol.com), September 13, 1999.

..only a true Tinfoil could compare himself to Einstein and Galileo with a straight face...You guys crack me up.

-- Y2K Pro (y2kpro1@hotmail.com), September 13, 1999.

Pro,

You're missing it. Call it trollbait but considering that *tinfoil* is almost your exclusive I'd guess the post....well you know. Bite gently.

-- Carlos (riffraff1@cybertime.net), September 13, 1999.

Y2K pro. I'm really glad you saw this and had a good chuckle! Whatever works to bring a laff to you, Homes.

But really, I don't think I or any other tinfoil-hat can be directly compared to Galileo and Einstein. Their raw brainpower is probably several standard deviations to the right of ours on a Gaussian curve. Furthermore, they wore hats of a different composition than my own tinfoil variety.

Still, the point is that conventional wisdom is sometimes (once in a blue moon) incorrect. While we may nowhere near the caliber of Einstein, the fact that he was written off as a dullard or a spacey kook by his schoolmasters can't be denied. So while he can be compared to a Tinfoil, we tinfoils can't be compared with him. Got it?

-- coprolith (coprolith@rocketship.com), September 13, 1999.

I just love a good laugh and a man with a sense of humor!

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), September 14, 1999.

And who was that nut in 1492 who figured out that the earth wasn't flat?

I don't know why the doomers get the tinfoil label. The pollys must be wearing something to keep all the Y2K information from getting to their brains.

Tick... Tock... <:00=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), September 14, 1999.

I let him off the hook. I'll wait for more bites next time. Sorry guys.

-- Carlos (riffraff1@cybertime.net), September 14, 1999.

Sysman,

Numerous cultures around the globe knew the world was round in 1492. Babylonians knews it 3000+ years before that. Greeks, Chinese, Assyrians, Aztecs, Mayas, etc.

But the comparison with the tinfoils is apt. It'll probably be several centuries before you catch up with the rest of the world and admit that Y2K was cleaned up, solved, finished mostly before the end of 1999.

-- N.Arro (N.Arro@Itza.Secret), September 14, 1999.

Sysman ??? 1492 ???

You mean Cristobal Colon ?

Um . . well . . he just went sailing. And anyway, the idea that nobody had ever crossed the ocean to America before him is rather outdated. Theres good evidence for many civilisations having sailed to America long before Colon. He just got a good press.

But about the Flat vs Round Earth concept to which you referred...

The ancient Greeks, 4000 or more years ago, were calculating the geometry of a spherical earth and a geocentric universe. Many attribute the formal (modern) concept to Pythagoras (569-475BC), but evidence is sketchy. The idea has clearly been kicking around for some time.

The other key character, regarded by many as the first to have proven mathematically that the earth was not flat, is CLAUDIUS PTOLEMY (85- 165AD). He later related this calculation to his own "Ptolemeic" model of the universe. It was mainly wrong, but he had the shape of the earth right even then.

As for anyone "discovering" anything in 1492 . . I think maybe the native americans, (both North and South), discovered shortly after that date that their "status quo" was being turned "base over apex".

Ill see your factoid, and raise you three semantics. :)

W

-- W0lv3r1n3 (W0lv3r1n3@yahoo.com), September 14, 1999.

"..only a true Tinfoil could compare himself to Einstein and Galileo with a straight face...You guys crack me up."

Absolutely!

Everyone knows that aluminum is much better for blocking mind-control RF from the reptilians! Only those dumb red-necks still use tin-foil!

-- Anonymous99 (Anonymous99@Anonymous99.xxx), September 14, 1999.

You high-falutin folks may like that new-fangled aluminumn, but for me tin carries a certain amount of sentimental value. If thicker, tin blocks out the rays just as well and has a nice "ding" when I bump my head.

-- coprolith (coprolith@rocketship.com), September 14, 1999.

I really hope there is no big deal because I won't be able to buy anymore tinfoil if I mess my hat up.

got aluminum foil?

got sheet metal?

got sheet metal tools?

sniffin' at the strange odor...

The Dog

-- Dog (Desert Dog@-sand.com), September 14, 1999.

coproltith, you wrote:

"Still, the point is that conventional wisdom is sometimes (once in a blue moon) incorrect."

Of that fact, I will not quibble. However the converse is also true: conventional wisdom is most often correct. The list of failed Doomsayers over the last millenium is testament to that.

-- Y2K Pro (y2kpro1@hotmail.com), September 14, 1999.

Here are a few quotes from mainstream media reports that I've collated on Floyd....

------------------------

FEMA dispatched a 29-member team of disaster specialists to Atlanta, where emergency food, medical and housing supplies, generators and other equipment, were stockpiled. More than 100 tons of ice and 30,000 rolls of plastic sheeting were ready.

"You have an absolute catastrophe out there heading in this direction. If it doesn't turn, we could all get hammered. If you are not prepared, it could cost you your life."

Even that predicted path carried Floyd too close for comfort to Florida, and that left those 1.3 million coastal residents confronting a ghastly choice this morning:

Seek shelter inland or stake their confidence -- and their lives -- on forecasts that it will turn away at the final hour and only brush the state.

Many chose to stay. Many chose to leave.

Fourteen shelters opened at 6 p.m., and more might open later.

"This is a very serious storm," (Miami mayor) Penelas said. "We must take action. We must prepare for the worst, and pray for the best."

Congestion and near chaos ruled at many stores, including the Publix supermarket on Hollywood's Young Circle.

Bread and batteries were sought like jewels. By noon, the store's stock of bottled water was gone. Shoppers jostled to get by one another, carts nearly locked together.

"We need traffic signals here," Michael Mangual said.

Hospitals also prepared for an onslaught.

At Broward General Medical Center, employees emphasized that though a hospital might seem a safe place to weather the storm, it is only for the sick.

"We are not a shelter," said spokeswoman Sara Howley.

And shelter was precisely what much of the state needed this morning.

-----------------------------------

Sound familiar? Y2K is coming. Itmay well make Floyd look like a spring zephyr. "Many chose to stay...." DGI's... Darwin would be proud.

----------------------------

"This ship is unsinkable".

The Titanic sank on an ocean that was 99% free of icebergs.

-- Dennis (djolson@pressenter.com), September 14, 1999.

No tinfoil here. Got colander. Needed some air...

-- Gia (laureltree7@hotmail.com), September 14, 1999.