--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: tgpedersen@...
> To: cybalist@...
> Sent: Monday, March 19, 2001 12:42 PM
> Subject: [tied] Re: House and City
>
>
[snip]
>
> > I will admit that you caught me on the wrong foot when you asked
me to document the claim that Danes came from Asgard na Donu, so I
probably won't get 10 for style. But it was fun. I read on the net
that Heyerdahl now subscribes to the same idea. So if you should
happen to see from your windows a reed boat cruisin up the Odra,
would you please post it here? If on the other hand he should try the
Tanew route, would you help him get a visa? There seems to a lot of
bureaucrats in Poland trying to keep other people off their
waterways. I still haven't got one:)
>
> I can only see the Warta from here, and the Tanew is approximately
as distant from Poznan as Copenhagen is. But here's good news for
you: as a Danish citizen, you don't need a visa to come to Poland for
up to 90 days (same for Thor Heyerdahl and all other Scandinavians)
-- enough time to do some rowing, I suppose. It's been like that
since 1991, which just goes to show how little people know about the
countries next door.
>
Erh, I forgot to put smileys. I know that, actually I drove through
Poland and the Baltic countries in 1997. Now I can say "nierozumiem"
almost without an accent. I was trying to be sarkastic and ... blabla
never mind.
The joke was supposed to be like this: I got the great idea that the
Danes had been trading/travelling up the Tanew, and then I put that
idea on this list and then some East European bureaucrats stopped me.
Ha-ha. Funny;-) (It sounded better before).
> > Your fringe is my center. And vice versa. I'm sorry you guys
won't drink tea with me, but that's what science is like. Sometimes
you get ostracized. That doesn't necessarily mean you're wrong. I
thought you knew that?
>
> Gosh, this does sound dramatic.
It wasn't meant to be.
This is how it looks from my point of view:
English language etymology book:
Den-mark, erh, well, everyone knows the Danes attacked England like
savage beasts, so erh, Den-mark must be the *mark where they had
their *den's.
German language etymology book:
Däne-mark, erh, everyone knows Denmark is flat, and there is OHD
<tensch> 'Danish', so it must be 'Tenne', flat as a threshing floor.
(This is because of the sacred geography of Germany: There is a high
country to the South East (Austria), and a flat country to the North
West (Holland), and there is a high country to the South
(Switzerland) and therefore (with great logical force) also a flat
country to the North (Denmark)).
It's not that these etymologies don't give the Danes their due, but
they were obviously disinterested and left-hand.
So I meekly suggest that perhaps the word was related to the d-n-n-
word that everyone was throwing around, and suddenly I realize I'm a
heretic. Everyone had something to say, and I am trying to answer to
the best of my ability. Should I have stopped before I ran out of
arguments in order to improve the social coherence of this list? Say
the word, and I'll do that.
Piotr:
A nice cup of tea with you would be just fine, though a couple of
beers would be still better. Can't we disagree and argue in an
entirely friendly way?
Torsten:
Moi, not friendly?? I am baffled:)
Piotr:
Or do you identify with your hypothesis so much that you feel
personally persecuted if people attack it? As for science, you are
demonstrably wrong on a number of vital counts, including the
location of Proto-Austronesian
Torsten:
You mean, it shouldn't be in Eastern Indonesia? See the latest issue
of Science.
Piotr:
> and your completely confused dating of the submergence of the Sunda
Shelf -- all that crackpot science you borrowed from Oppenheimer. As
some wise person said, you're entitled to your own interpretations
but not to your own facts.
Torsten:
As I understand it, the existence or non-existence of the "third
flood" is an interpretation, not a fact, or?
Piotr:
I understand that your centre is where you are, but I'm afraid it
isn't just on "my" fringe. Of course there are a number of scholars
(Greenberg and his followers, for example, or the cold fusion team)
who have deliberately chosen to work on the fringe. They are
evidently gambling, against all odds, on the possibility that their
methods and theories will be vindicated by posterity ("When Wegener
first proposed the theory of continental drift..."), and that's what
encourages them put their academic reputation at stake. Personally, I
prefer less romantic but better substantiated theories and
conclusions that are not quite over the top.
>
> Piotr
Personally, I prefer unsubstantiated theories, because then I can try
and substantiate them myself. Usually first attempts come out bad,
but they get progressively better. And if they are disproved I come
up with a new theory.
If I find something interesting my tombstone will say he found
something interesting. If not it will say I'm an idiot. Other
people's will say that they meticulously carried out their jobs.
Torsten