From helmadik@midway.uchicago.edu Sun Sep 30 15:46:57 2001 Received: from mailscan3.cac.washington.edu (mailscan3.cac.washington.edu [140.142.32.15]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.11.6+UW01.08/8.11.6+UW01.08) with SMTP id f8UMktN99156 for ; Sun, 30 Sep 2001 15:46:56 -0700 Received: FROM mxu4.u.washington.edu BY mailscan3.cac.washington.edu ; Sun Sep 30 15:46:54 2001 -0700 Received: from midway.uchicago.edu (midway.uchicago.edu [128.135.12.12]) by mxu4.u.washington.edu (8.11.6+UW01.08/8.11.6+UW01.08) with ESMTP id f8UMkrQ18749 for ; Sun, 30 Sep 2001 15:46:54 -0700 Received: from [128.135.57.40] (h-dik.uchicago.edu [128.135.57.40]) by midway.uchicago.edu (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id f8UMkrc14803 for ; Sun, 30 Sep 2001 17:46:53 -0500 (CDT) Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: helmadik@nsit-popmail.uchicago.edu Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 17:46:52 -0500 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: Helma Dik Subject: On ... (sigh) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sadly, recent events seem to have led to a kind of amnesty for the more trivial pests of our existence. > >BTW, where did the Phoenicians take "their" writing system from? >Has anyone done a "rigorous" study? > The deal is that if you want to be part of civilized discussion, you engage existing theory, you don't just say that you don't believe it. That is, If you don't "believe" in gravity, evolution, or Indo-European, you can come up with arguments for rejecting those theories in favor of other, stronger hypotheses, or you can just shut up, since nothing you have to say is likely to be of interest to many others. Alternatively, you simply find your own sect of believers in an alternative universe, and be happy. Leave the classics list out of it. We're a conservative bunch, who tend to prefer evidence and argument to your blather. Please go re-invent the wheel elsewhere. HD (resetting my filters) -- Helma Dik Dept. of Classics University of Chicago helmadik@midway.uchicago.edu http://humanities.uchicago.edu/classics/ .