DEBUNKING THE
RIDICULOUS AND ABSURD
or ASHLEY's
PIFFLE AND BALDERDASH
( one example
among quite a lot that
can be easily found***.
Look at one of my first finding here
and there )
This particular topic is as old as the two drawings given but I always desisted before from putting it in my pages, now at the risk of displeasing persons uncritically worshiping Ashley I have decided to "go public".
Ashley is far from being an idol or a God and even God and Idols may be criticized ( IMO) who cannot be honestly criticized for his shortcomings.
I will always urge people to read "critically".
"Critically" does not mean in the least "doing your utmost to rebuke or demolish".
It means : "apply all the might of your natural and educated intelligence to the honest, open, but not naive logical evaluation of what one read.( or hear, or see) *never, never* bow to authority ( high or low) or to reputation (good or bad), always make your evaluation without taking the author in account but only the idea that is proposed to your brain.
Ashley used (if my reckoning if correct) the word "revers(ed)(ing)(ly)" over 150 times.
Almost each time it is an inadequate usage of the word meaning in geometry.
Knots being
geometrical creatures the demand that words be used, in a technical
discussion about them, in a "guarded and strict"
fashion is
not too much IMO.
Asking that someone
asserting something should take the
greatest pain to experimentally
verify the validity of what is asserted
is not an extremist demand IMO.
Ashley falls very short on both counts as far as I am concerned.
Bad
use of words makes a message in the best case of null value, in the
worst case it
renders it outright stupid.
One
of the very first thing taught in professional writing courses to would
be Authors is to avoid, in a
technical
publication, using the same word with many different meaning.
You may do that in literature but not in technical matters.
They say in French that synonyms do not
exist :
each word has its very particular and delimited shade of
meaning so it is damageable when the usage of the word made by
someone
does not respect the meaning of this word in an educated
environment
who is applying the rule of meaning.
As I used to say to my
children when they were young :
"words have a very precise
meaning and must be employed in a perfectly
adequate manner". They say it from time to time when they hear
a less
than ideal use of a word with a twinkle in the eyes.
In technical publication it
is best to strictly adhere
to the rule (unless when absolutely
unavoidable and then
you better warn your readers that you intent a subtle changing
in the
meaning) : one
word, the simplest available without being
simplistic, one meaning only.
It is always best to avoid
every day, unguarded and
most often inadequate usage of words and concepts in
technical discussions. Always map for your readers the meaning you
are using the words for, forgot "usage", the more so if it is
"run of the
mill usage".
Think "academic", not the "nearest bar way of speaking".
If you mean back face don't
say reverse,
if you
mean upside-down don't say reverse,
if you lean mirror don't say
reverse,
only meaning/signifying 'backtracking' or 'opposite direction', that is
turning the directional vector by Pi radian ( 180°) allow you
to use
'reverse'.
(to clarify please read bat's belfry_3 : reverse and
mirror, with another of Ashley's blunder ;
you should think
too about read again bat's belfry_6 now and probably bat's
belfry_5
about mirror)*
How
can one utter such a thing, how can this sort of
"sottise" can have been left
unchallenged (that one plus almost a
hundred of other bad use of "reverse") ?
Now
I will leave the Thomases The Unbelievers among you experiment with
CROWN and WALL of opposite gyration and see what they can
find.
Being of opposite gyration they are of same sign which make
them comparable .
Just in case there exist one Lazy among the Unbelievers with an experimental bend of mind here is diagrams of the knots with opposite sign.
---------------
*** they are so numerous that I find it a chore to make a paragraph of all the entries where something of null value or even downright stupid is uttered by just using "reverse" in an always changing meaning , sometime "back" , sometime, "upside-down", sometime "mirror;" sometime indeed a reverse that is "going back on the immediately previous route followed".
Try your brain on
just a few :.
page 22 Tracing paper ...
#64
#112 #179 #278 #539
#587 #617
#671 #696 #750 #759
#764 #767
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#1660 #1676 #1681 #1727
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#2575 #2602 #2767 #2684
#2716 #2761 #2846 #2892
#2922
#2988 #3021
Url : http://charles.hamel.free.fr/knots-and-cordages/