Yvette d’Entremont might have pissed off David Avocado Wolfe with her article, DAVID AVOCADO WOLFE IS THE BIGGEST ASSHOLE IN THE MULTIVERSE, because he went on an angry Twitter spree against those damned people who think science works recently. Or maybe he just howls angrily all the time…I don’t know, it seems like that’s the latest thing for big assholes, just spluttering away on the Twitter. I wonder if historians will look back on this decade, wonder what people were thinking, and call this time the Twitting Twenty Teens (I’m kind of afraid there won’t be any historians looking back on the next decade, and if there are a few survivors, they’ll call it the Smoldering Wreckage of the Twenty Twenties.)
Anyway, Wolfe’s latest weird assertion is about lunar and solar eclipses.
You see, gold cannot ‘crystallize’ during a solar eclipse because, like Superman, it derives all of its power from the rays of our yellow sun (just to remind you, the nonsense about “wavelengths” and “vibrations” is common currency in nerd literature, as well as in the New Agey BS), while similarly, silver will not solidify during lunar eclipses, because obviously, it shares mystical wavelengths with the moon.
Wolfe does not explain how he knows this. He also does not give details; is it only in the track of totality during the brief period of the eclipse that gold and silver become recalcitrant, or is it worldwide? Do the metals just mold more slowly during a partial eclipse? Do dentists find that gold fillings set more rapidly if they make them in front of a sunny window than if they do them under fluorescent lamps? How does gold and silver ‘know’ what wavelengths are bouncing around in the room? Inquiring minds want to know, because we could actually test this claim. Woo-woo minds don’t want us to know, because we could actually test this claim.
It reminds me of the time back in the Dismal Nineties made the mistake of telling us that gelatin would not set during a void-of-course moon. He gave us all the details we needed, and since gelatin is cheap and easily available, so guess what a number of us eagerly did? We tested his claim!
It didn’t work.
The annoying thing, too, is that if Wolfe did give details, which he might do since he is the Biggest Asshole in the Multiverse, there are people who would waste their time while in the eclipse of doing the experiment of testing the physical properties of certain metals. There will be no change. And afterwards, like my astrologer, he’ll invent new excuses for why it didn’t work.
So don’t bother, people.
Demand that he demonstrate the phenomenon first, and document it. Or better yet, ignore him, because he is a big lying asshole.
Who’s still using gold fillings anyway?
Apparently during an eclipse you get ads even if you’re paid up and logged in. So there’s that.
(Might want to get your elite IT fixing that.)
“Near” an eclipse?
I fondly remember all the speculative fiction that relied so heavily on the magical properties of “rays” that probably started with the discovery of x-rays and continued seemingly into the 40s. Electricity as a magical story-making excuse probably began even before Frankenstein, and continues to this day.
In other news, a 100 year old fruitcake is still, a fruitcake. How many eclipses has that cake weathered without transmuting to something artificial and inedible?
Ye gods, someone in the 21st century who actually believes (or, at least, purports to believe for profit) in the tenets of astrological alchemy. That has absolutely ancient origins. The Greeks were at it as far back as we can go, and it’s why we use alchemical symbols for the planets in some astronomical charts. Silver for the moon, Copper for Venus (cypris, from Cyprus, our word even preserves traces of that one), Quicksilver for Mercury, Gold for the Sun, Iron for Mars, Tin for Jupiter, Lead for Saturn. The seven metals known to ancient man mapped out onto the seven wandering stars and assigned to the domains of seven gods. Far from being New Age, this is about as antique as it gets.
Even an obsession with rays of influence is Medieval in origin. Robert Grosseteste, Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon were all spilling ink on the subject in the Thirteenth Century.
I don’t know, d’Entremont seems a bit mealymouthed to me. She should have come right out and said what she thought.
It looks to me like Wolfe is becoming more and more unstable.
Well, the yellow color of gold is an effect of relativity. No fooling, it really is.
What about partial fillings?
@1, I have a gold filling, done this century, in a back molar. Easiest fix.
@cartomancer
Ironically, they were correct.
:D
Seems to me this is one of the least dangerous things he has said.
I see him being ridiculed regularly on one of the pro vaccine groups I read.
@cartomancer:
Can you recommend any reference works on how astrology was thought to have worked?
d’Entremont really needs to find a better quality of nemesis.
To be fair, gelatin doesn’t set if you put pineapple in it.
David who? *does search* Wait, he’s literally a flat-earther?
Owlmirror, #12
The best scholarly work on Medieval astrology in general (in the context of the whole Western tradition of astrological thought) is still John North’s Horoscopes and History (1986), although Stephen J. Tester’s A History of Western Astrology (1999) is also good.
Waaaay back when I first followed PZ’s blogs during the Primordial Innocent Era I asked myself the question: “Where the hell does this guy find this shit?”
I’m asking myself that same question still.
In the long time between I have been vastly entertained by the scope of human weirdness as filtered through PZ’s capable take.
The fruitcake, err avowoowooo, has an entry at The Encyclopedia of American Loons (January-2015). The conclusion: “[…] Wolfe’s product line must count as one of the more ridiculous ones even on the Internet. It’s not hard to see how some could come to suspect that Wolfe may not himself be convinced by every aspect of his own marketing, but we’ll give him the benefit of doubt and just call him out as a ridiculous loon.”
However, the really amusing entry is at RationalWiki, Just a few excerpts (RationalWiki edits in {curly braces})::
Ah, yeah, right. Even guacamole reasons better than this nitwit.
So that’s why goldsmiths never work at night!!! /Sarcasm
I’m always amazed at how many fallacies he can fit in one statement.
Fillings are traditionally a mixture of silver and mercury, and are “molded” into the cavity by the dentist. Gold is very biocompatible, and the gold alloy used for dental inlays, onlays, and full crowns melts and casts just fine during solar eclipses. I’m sure an eclipse will have a simialr effect on the gold foil used to make a porcelain jacket crown, though I’ve never had a dentist request that type of restoration. All ceramic crowns that are milled by machine have been slowly replacing the standard porcelain fused to metal technology over the last 20 years.
Modern fillings don’t have any metal. They are a light cured acrylic which is also used for bonding to close gaps, or repair broken or chipped teeth without having to grind or drill on them.
I too had to look him up because I am out of it…meaning I haven’t been interested in woo in a long time. Thank you RationalWiki for enlightening me. Now I will strive to forget David Avocado Wolfe. (Or is that DAW?)
I wonder if he’s aware that there is always an eclipse going on. In other words, there is a point in line with moon, opposite the sun, and at the right distance from the moon where the moon blocks the sun. Of course, generally the umbra is in space where it’s difficult to see.
If he’s worried about the effects of the eclipse, perhaps he should wear a wire pyramid on his head. I’m sure he can figure out the right metal to use. I knew a guy once who wore a copper wire pyramid on his head everywhere he went. He was a damn good pianist but weird and creepy. Probably too many acid trips.
cartomancer @#16: Thanks!
blf@#18, citing RationalWiki:
Technically this is sort-of correct, in a stopped-clock sort of way: Entropy is indeed irreversible. The sun is indeed “draining” (or losing) energy (although this is true regardless of whether solar photons are absorbed by solar panels). And the energy from the sun cannot be renewed — in the very long term of the billions of years of the sun’s lifespan.
But given all the other lunacy he spouts, I sincerely doubt that’s what he is actually thinking.