On Sep 2, 4:34 pm, JohnO wrote:
On Sep 2, 1:38 am, Denny wrote:

On Sep 1, 1:21 am, Bret Ludwig wrote:

From his website:

"Moller International has developed the first and only feasible,
personally affordable, personal vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL)
vehicle the world has ever seen."

This is a lie, pure and simple.

Moller has run out of suckers in the USA and feels that europe is his
next best bet afor the fleecing...

denny

The world has an unending supply of suckers.

The late Prof. Revilo Oliver has an interesting take on this. You
will of course overlook the political specifics:



Now, a serious examination of the problem of "liberal intellectuals"
must, I believe, begin with recognition of one fundamental fact --
that we are dealing with the phenomenon that is know in biology as
*symbiosis*. In other words, we are examining not one species, but
two, that are interdependent, just as in the example of symbiosis that
will come to everyone's mind: many species of ants maintain aphids in
their nests, and in such an arrangement, the ants could not live
without the aphids nor the aphids without the ants.

As I have said, I consider this symbiosis as the fundamental fact in
our problem tonight, so let me illustrate it with two or three
examples that will make it clear.

In the second half of the 19th Century lived a distinguished French
mathematician, Professor Michel Chasles. He was the author of a number
of treatises that you will find cited in any reasonably complete work
on geometrical theory, prisms, or conic sections. He developed a
method of analytical geometry independent of the calculus, and his
treatise on the displacement of solids is regarded as a mathematical
classic. He was a member of the French Acad,mie des Sciences, which
means that he was recognized as one of the 66 best scientific minds in
all France, and he was furthermore the recipient of the highest honor
that the Royal Society of London could bestow.

Now Professor Chasles was quite wealthy, and one day there came to him
an enterprising young intellectual named Vrain-Lucas, who was -- he
said -- a specialist in finding old documents, particularly
autographs. He sold the good professor an original letter which proved
that Descartes had anticipated all the discoveries of Newton.
Professor Chasles was elated to be the possessor of a document of such
vast significance in the history of science, and his appetite was
whetted for more. So he made Vrain-Lucas promise to bring to him all
his sensational finds. Vrain-Lucas did; he supplied remarkable
documents, first, one at a time, then by the dozen, and then by the
score.

In a few years, M. Chasles had a much smaller balance at his bankers,
but he owned a collection of treasures unmatched in the world, unique
documents, almost all of them autographs, written by the great figures
of history. He had original letters by Pascal, by Montaigne, by
Amerigo Vespucci, by Charlemagne, by St. Jerome, by Plato, by
Socrates, and by many others. It would be hard to say which item in
his collection of more than 600 letters was the most remarkable, but
my favorite is the autographic love-letter written by Cleopatra to
Julius Caesar -- a letter that Cleopatra wrote with her own fair hand
-- with a steel pen -- on rag paper -- in 16th-Century French!

Now it may not be fair to single out the French mathematician from
among the thousands of men like him, but just the same, if I had
anything to do with running a college, I would see to it that a statue
of Professor Chasles stood at the gates as a reminder of what
education can do for a man.

If you ask which was the "intellectual," Professor Chasles or Vrain-
Lucas, the answer, of course, is both of them. They are complementary
types, like the *yin* and *yang* in the Chinese monogram, and one
could scarcely exist without the other. One, indeed, is to a large
extent the cause of the other.

Our (society) always has been, and probable always will be, afflicted
with well-meaning people, usually well educated and sometimes
brilliant, who simply cannot keep their imaginations under control.
They are born to be the dupes of any scoundrel or adventurer who takes
the trouble to put out a little bait for them, and they are often so
generous that they do more than half his work for him and practically
dupe themselves.

snip


Now I have not mentioned these fur examples, out of the many hundreds
that could be cited, merely to amuse you. I intended them to
illustrate the principle of symbiosis. The phenomenon that is called
"liberal intellectualism" depends on the conjunction of two distinct
species, the intellectual sucker and the intellectual shyster. Of
course, in all societies there is a copious supply of both species.
The late P.T. Barnum used to utter the philosophic dictum that a
sucker was born every minute, but, as we all know, since Barnum's day
the birth rate has increased enormously.

((For "liberal intellectualism", "Financial suckerism" may be
interchanged here-Bret))

Some years ago, it was customary for fast-talking confidence men to
find some chump with five or ten thousand dollars in cash and sell him
the Brooklyn Bridge or the Holland Tunnel. And I hear that when the
Pennsylvania Railroad began to demolish its station in New York City,
someone bought it for $25,000 cash. Now the swindlers in all those
cases are undoubtedly wicked men. They deserve exemplary punishment.
But, you know, there must have been something wrong with the
purchasers too. Much as we may sympathize with them, we shall have to
agree, I think, that they were not overly bright."