This is a topic I repeatedly had my quibbles with Jed already. I find the analogy -- May-Rossi -- appropriate and interesting, he not.
Now this is not something to be decided in a duel, but the community at large should and has to. As a boy, aged 11-13, I read read about 50 of May's >60 or so of his books. Some where censored of sorts. The last one I read: 'die Herren von Greifenklau', which was sort of a puritan wet dream of an unearthly mystical love affair, which deeply shapes a young adult's conception of 'love'. Not a bad thing. Each of his books about 500 pages. I was deeply impressed, which somehow explains the German mindset even nowadays wrt American Indians and the Muslim world, which is deeply romantic and has a deep positive affection despite all the politicians arguing against. Not an easy task. Therefore I values Karl May despite his outrageous claims. Now Karl May, who spent quite some time in prison for trivial reasons, actually BELIEVED what he wrote. This is the strange aspect. Later in his life he tried to reassure to himself, after accusations, that his phantasy matched his imagination. This is such an extraordinary case of inversion of backward reasoning, that I advise everybody to study the case. Now Rossi seems to be a similar case, albeit on a smaller scale. (if you want to understand parts of the undercurrents of the German soul, which is seriously deformed now, read Karl May. But us Germans should take care of that, because this is a difficult issue for foreigners to understand. 25 000 pages of myth is a lot, and probably not worth the effort to understand the soul of a compromised nation. In contrast, reading eg Ayn Rand is nearly impossible for non-Us-citizens without a cleaning vomit. But the american soul seems to digest this without problems. THE CLEANUP OF ALL THOSE PILES OF BULLSHIT, EVERY NATION GENERATES, IS THEIR PREMIER DUTY !) In the case of Karl May: He had millions of believers in his time who believed in his tales. And he himself too! This is most astonishing! Karl may had a difficult time when visiting Egypt, to match the reality he encountered to his fantasy, which was much moore vivid Which lasted for some 100 years until now, including my humble boy-self, until 'I' finally woke up, and said: Hey! This is a wonderful dream, but where are we? 'I' in apostrophes, because 'I' am just an agent of belief. Understand? His -Rossi's- 'land of belief' is commercializable LENR. Karl May had his 'Silberbüchse', a rifle which the operator shot right into the middle of the opponents head, from 1000 feet distance. His believers were excited and somehow enlightened, went home, where their cold room at home warmed up by the power of belief. Not lasting long. Karl May finally showed his fake rifle at presentations, but never put it to work. Careful scientific analysis showed that this was impossible. The rifles and pistols of our western heroes were so poorely designed, that they rarely targeted a sparrow in 30feet distance. Do You see a resemblance? Now change the scene: The propensity of Germans to belief in LENR currently is round about zero. Why? Because their belief is adjusted to solar and wind, which is based on a completely different worldview. Which is so ,because there is s a peculiar blend between romanticism and rational belief, where the 'rational' is sort of a partisan, which infects the mind as a belief, or a meme. As long as it helps the case, I am content with that. So I claim sort of a super-rationality for myself, which is a difficult issue. Then: BELIEF is the ultimate healer of inconsistency, right? Guenter
