One of the best April Fool's day articles ever was about Udo of Aachen, a Medieval Monk with an ultra density mind who purportedly had been studying probability and fractals in the 13th century, with the help of his sidekick monk Thelonius, leaving a Bethlehem Star in the shape of the Mandelbrot set in an illuminated manuscript. "Not since the Piltdown-Sokal Theorem was discovered to have first been proved in 1907 by a provincial Russian electrical engineer, and not in 1979 by Piltdown and Sokal as originally had been thought, has the date of a first proof been so misjudged."
I am sure I saw yesterday a post here at Qlipoth featuring that illuminated ms and a link to the original April Fool's article, and then it disappeared! I suspect it was intended as a kind of a wry comment on the gullibility of "conspiracy theorists"(?) but it's rather more suggestive of the ability to disseminate hoaxes enjoyed by the authoritative spectacle...
I, a humble qlipoth, am the red- faced culprit. So instantly smitten was I by Udo the Monk that I didn't even notice his sidekick Thelonious...
ReplyDeleteI discovered the story was a hoax almost exactly five minutes after posting it, so I covered my traces and removed the evidence toot sweet (but not sweet enough, it seems...).
"I suspect it was intended as a kind of a wry comment on the gullibility of "conspiracy theorists"(?)"
Mais non. No Udo-conspiracy was ever suggested or even theorised. Indeed, the hoax was a one-man job. (Take a bow, Ray Girvan!)
"it's rather more of suggestive of the ability to disseminate hoaxes enjoyed by the authoritative spectacle"
Yes indeed. But it also indicates the mighty Interweb's ability to debunk such hoaxes comprehensively.
Apropos, here's the excellent Dave McGowan debunking an infinitely more successful hoax:
http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr86.html