Comets Are Electric - It's True! I read it on LRC

[Dragoneye]

Seems truth continues to appear in strange places. Again Mr. James Hogan writes a piece on the electric universe and again it appears on one of the premier POLITICAL sites on the web. Not that facts are determined by either dictatorial or democratic means but rather that this particular fact is spread widely by merely appearing on such a widely read site is indeed interesting. Here's the link to go read it for yourself:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig9/hogan5.1.1.html

[sourcerer]

No surprise this coming from the pen (or keyboard) of James P Hogan. For many years I had enjoyed his hard sci fi writings. IIRC, many of these dealt with alternative interpretations of scientific "doctrine". When I had read all of his fiction (except his recent catastrophism novels which I believe are influenced by EU and are hard to find -- curious, that?), I turned to his non-fiction and came across his book "Kicking the Sacred Cow". From there it was a direct line for me to end up here at EU a couple years ago (lurking... this is my first post, I believe).

Anyway, anyone with an interest in EU should certainly buy this book if you can find it. Mr Hogan is an engineer by training and hence more influenced by observable data than by imaginable theories. It is a great book to give to anyone you suspect may be afflicted with the incurable disease of open-mindedness. Within its pages, he finds many cracks in current scientific orthodoxies and uses the blade (occasionally the sledgehammer) of logic to pry them open and reveal the rotting infrastructure within.

Had I read this book while still a physics student, I am sure it would have kept me in the field - though not as a member in good standing, I'm sure. Four undergraduate and one graduate year of physics study (plus later a couple years of graduate CS work), and I had never heard any of these inconsistencies or anomalies mentioned (except, in the case of Velikovsky, in the context of outright dismissal or worse, jokingly). Some of these I had questioned myself, but always assumed that the answer would be revealed, the anomaly explained, at the next level of study. Disgusted with my ability to see what the establishment "saw", I finally left the field. Had I been aware of how many others were voicing doubts, I might have staid the course... it is, after all, so much easier to subvert from within.