Honey, I Finished The Internet

10 Replies to “Honey, I Finished The Internet”

1. Uh-oh; does that mean all the HK jokes are now passe?

2. Well, as long as the Einstein story remains fully integrated…

3. Never did.

4. Another one that seemingly doesn’t add up is Shakespeare:

   https://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/why-would-anyone-have-needed-to-fake-shakespeares-authorship/

   From the linked piece:

   “But is there any reason to doubt that Shakspere of Stratford was the author? While we have about 90 documents about him from his lifetime, they identify him merely as a mundane businessman. A few indicate he was a sometime actor and theatre shareholder. None of them identify him as a writer of any kind. There is no evidence he ever went to school (it is merely assumed that he went to the Stratford grammar school), nor that he ever wrote a letter or even owned a book. His parents were illiterate, as were his daughters. His six accepted signatures suggest he had difficulty writing his own name.”

   (Shakspere was how his name was written on his birth and death certificates.)

   1. Shakespeare just might have been another writer who was part of a team. His sponsors included a woman who didn’t publish under her own name, but did write poetry. I’ve seen arguments that while she wasn’t free to act, hang out with theatre people, or publish plays, she could have exchanged manuscripts with him. She was rich, and had lots of time to sit around and sew. Maybe she wrote more than she sewed.

      Then of course there’s the theory that Francis Bacon really wrote all Shakespeare’s plays. They don’t sound at all like anything Bacon wrote, but who knows–Bacon could have done a lot to improve Shakespeare’s phrasing. And confidence.

      1. Yes, it’s quite the whodunit.

         The essay linked below suggests that Lord Thomas North was the author of most of the plays, while the one I provided a link to above suggests it was Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford.

         https://dennismccarthy.substack.com/p/the-full-faq-on-north-and-shakespeare

         Both arguments have merit.

5. Now do the ‘modern’ bible!

   1. If you’re referencing the various books collectively referred to as “the New Testament”, you may be on to something. As well as the book of Esther.

      Ditto for the Qur’an.

6. This is one of the least consequential frauds/lies of our modern society. If the news in front of our faces is fake, then history has almost certainly been crafted to fit a narrative. Another laughable example of ridiculous fakery is Stephen Hawking…

7. I don’t know that it takes anything away from Helen Keller’s achievement to recognize that she was one of several “creative” people who’ve done their best work as half of a team. She wasn’t even the only one whose team included someone called Sullivan.

   Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane each published writing under her own name. Only the books they wrote together went into reprints.

   Auguste Comte and Henri de Saint-Simon each wrote books under his own name. Only the ones they wrote together were translated and reprinted around the world.

   Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein each wrote some songs independently. Their best known work was collaborative.

   So, maybe we were told an incomplete version of the Helen Keller story. Very likely Keller felt entitled to make use of other people’s ability to describe lights and colors she could only barely remember; certainly she did that. Very likely both Keller and Sullivan felt shy about discussing their opinions without literally clinging on to each other. That they were remarkable as a team doesn’t change the fact that they were remarkable. And unique. (And also, sometimes, wrong.)