Talk:photon belt

Moved from the rfd page

I don't believe that photon belt really exists - it seems to be some sort of New Age thing. Torroid seems to be a spelling mistake for toroid - doughnut shaped. SemperBlotto 21:26, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• These both appear in a published work, and so should be kept. -dmh 00:08, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• I would delete both, but the quotation at torroid could be transferred to the page with the proper spelling. It's a good illustration of the word's use. Eclecticology 00:12, 2005 Jun 17 (UTC)

First, why are we so sure this is a different spelling of torroid and not a separate (but quite possibly related) word describing the shape of a photon belt? Second, on what grounds are we calling this a spelling mistake? It occurs in a published work, not some random chat room or blog. Third, on what grounds would we delete photon belt, a clearly well-formed but novel term (novel to Wiktionary, that is) with an idiomatic meaning? Leaving aside its privileged status owing to its appearance in a published work, it's also not hard to find on the web.

As far as I can tell, photon belt is an impeccable entry:

• It appears in a published work which is still readily available (indeed, at a local bookstore) 11 years after its first publication.
• It has seen more than a decade of use.
• It is still in current use.
• It has an idiomatic meaning.

One could perhaps argue that the work it first appears in is blatant bullshit from cover to cover, but even if this can shown to be true I'm not sure how it's relevant. -dmh 03:56, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• I can't guess what a photon belt is without looking it up - is it like an asteroid belt or is it something at an atomic scale? It does seem to get quite a bit Internet space. I would think this is enough basis to make it a new word worthy of definition. Whether such things really exist only relvevant if we can't find an entry for unicorn in any print dictionaries. None of the regular online dictionaries seem to have anything but I just turned up this: http://ashelf.com/wordlists/t/tsl/www/words/photonbelt.html — Hippietrail 04:16, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• • The Tesla Society sense is very different from the impression left by the quotation in our article, which is taken from the world of science fiction. An effective invention in the SF world need not be connected to reality. The impression that I have from the quote is that it is a belt of light that one wears (presumably around the waist) to produce certain changes in one's chakras and DNA. If you want to define a belt in Tesla's or Conan Doyle's sense one would do well to avoid speaking of effects of the belt on an individual person. If we are to keep this one it will need serious revision. Eclecticology 19:30, 2005 Jun 17 (UTC)

I don't quite understand the assertions that You are Becoming a Galactic Human is a science fiction novel. According to the front matter, it is simply an edited transcription of a series of messages channeled from Washta, a Sirian counselor and galactic presence, through one of the authors. I haven't read all of it, but I haven't yet discerned any obvious story line.

The quotations I pulled seem very much in line with the Tesla society notion, which I quote here for reference:

Theoretical region of space where some kind of light energy is present in greater amounts than in the region of space which our planet has been travelling through during recorded history. It has been said by several prophetic sources that once Earth moves into this area, there will be radical shifts in climate and consciousness.

Just to remove any doubt, here is a longer excerpt from the beginning of Chapter 2, "The Photon Belt". I've bolded the term torroid to emphasize that this is how the printed text reads (you seemed to have the impression that the original entry was not drawn from the printed text). Any other unusual spellings are typos in my transcription.

We are here to share the fact that your solar system is presently poised to enter a vast region of light called the photon belt sometime during the period between March of 1995 and December of 1996. This photon belt — a huge mass of light — will be the vehicle for your restoration to full consciousness and for the complete transformation of your DNA and chakra systems. These unbelievable changes will forever alter not only yourselves, but also your planet and your solar system. This is because the photon belt will move your solar system into a higher dimension (from 3rd to 5th), allowing your planet, within the solar system, to move to a new position in space closer to the Sirius star system [...] The photon belt, a huge torroid shaped object composed of photon light particles, was first discovered by your scientists in 1961 near the vicinity of the Pleiades by satellite instrumentation.

The accompanying figure (Figure 1: Configuration of Photon Belt) depicts an elongated belt spanning several stars, prominently labeled "Pleiadian Photon Belt or Manasic Ring". It is not clear whether the outline is an ellipse, as would be implied by a toroidal belt, and it seems plausible that torroid is a specialized term denoting a distinct shape similar to a proper toroid. The book certainly appears to use photon in some specialized sense connoting properties that ordinary photons are not known to possess, and it explicitly introduces several other new terms and concepts. Note also that the frontmatter explicitly acknowledges the assistance of two copy editors and asserts that the text has been repeatedly edited for clarity, so the chances of a typo seem quite small.

The two terms Pleiadian Photon Belt and Manasic Ring from the figure, being proper nouns, would probably not merit Wiktionary entries, but may well merit Wikipedia entries. Other terms, however, such as ascendant master, dinoid and reptoid should be entered. I'll see if I can find time. I also note that the section explaining the concept of photon light particles mentions an English physicist named Paul Derac. This person should receive a biographical entry in Wikipedia, to avoid confusion with the English physicist Paul Dirac.

In all, this work looks to be a fertile source of future entries, both in Wiktionary and Wikipedia. I'm beginning to see the advantages of working from reliable printed works instead of trawling through the internet for whatever dodgy creations may turn up. -dmh 05:19, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• This is all total nonsense. "Paul Derac" is an obvious spelling mistake, as is "torroid". I would not call this a "reliable printed work" by any stretch of the imagination. It is just pseudoscience. SemperBlotto 07:12, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Semper, I believe dmh is trying to throw a barb in at me for not excluding blatant bullshit in my attempt at clarifying CFI/Attestation. Silly me, I thought what I had said earlier was perfectly clear. Dmh will now attempt to claim that the 23 google sites that seem to contain complete copies of this work (and journals discussing it) would not have played out similarly here on WS:RFD... --Connel MacKenzie 07:46, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

When you define "torroid" in terms of "photon belt" and vice versa you create a circular item. I accept "torroid" as a documented misspelling, and have so marked the word in the quotation. It should be OK now. Thank you dmh for verifying that the spelling error was not yours.

I don't think that the issue of pseudoscience enters into the picture here at all. A work of science fiction should not be regarded as making scientific claims, and if it does not make such claims it cannot be regarded as pseudoscience. Tesla's work has always been controversial, and evaluations of it have been mixed. I don't think that we are in a position to comment on its scientific validity. Still, I would prefer Tesla's views to those of someone who claims to have sent scientits to the Pleiades to take measurements. As for dmh's additional proposals from this novel, I find it difficult to take them seriously. Eclecticology 06:03, 2005 Jun 19 (UTC)

So many ways to go with this one ...

First, really, it's not a novel, it's not intended as science fiction and I doubt many people who read it (and evidently there are quite a few) read it as such. It's an open question whether the authors actually believe what they're saying, but I'm quite confident the book is presented and quite often taken as what it says it is: messages channeled from an alien being. We may all have our own opinions on the existence of such beings, but as far as genre, YABAGH is clearly not science fiction. I daresay most actual science fiction writers would agree.

Second, if there is any implication from the Tesla Society's mention of photon belt that such a notion has any connection to Tesla himself, I don't see the basis for it. Much more likely that the Tesla Society is simply cataloguing odd or interesting notions loosely having to do with energy and electronics. Why this should carry more or less weight than YABAGH (which, for what little it's worth, claims that the photon belt was detected by scientists on Earth using satellite instrumentation — and it's lapses like these that occasionally make me wonder whether any of the more serious points are getting through) is not obvious to me.

Third, though, why does it matter? If we're going to try to distinguish our sources on the basis of whether they are fictional or whether they contain reliable accounts of actual events, we're on shaky ground indeed. We can toss out Shakespeare (fiction — do we really know that Bergamask refers to something real as opposed to an invention of Shakespeare's fertile imagination?) and the Bible and derived works (not particularly reliable when considered as historical accounts). As Hippietrail points out, we can toss out terms like unicorn. This may be less a problem to us, but considering the quotations in Webster 1913, was not the approach of earlier lexicographers.

I will now overuse the word clearly. Please bear with me.

Clearly, we should include photon belt because the notion has clearly remained in currency and is clearly discussed outside YABAGH.

Clearly, to me at least, we should steer clear of giving published sources per se any particular weight in CFI. We might be able to establish a well-defined class of "carefully reviewed" published sources, but I'm not optimistic. The criterion of "something you could find in a library or bookshop" clearly lets in material no better reviewed than the average blog (possibly less so, if the average blog is run through a spell-checker before posting).

Trying to separate internet sources and printed sources into seprate strata overestimates how well checked some print sources are, and underestimates how well checked some internet sources are. There is clearly crap in both places. CFI should be biased toward filtering out uninteresting crap, neutral with regard to interesting crap, and actively encouraging toward other interesting terms.

The approach that tends to get labeled "descriptivist" and then derided as "anything goes as long as there are some google hits" is aimed at trying to deal directly with these issues. In this view, it's not important at all whether a term is "a monstrosity" or "incorrectly formed" or "used incorrectly" or the creation of MBAs, or only used by semi-literates in chatrooms, or any of the other arbitrary bases that have been put forth for objections. Under rules like that, I can RFD sacerdotalism because, hey, I don't like it. It's promoting a religious view. It's got too many consonants. Whatever. So what if it's in the OED? This isn't the OED. The OED can make mistakes (and for that matter, it wouldn't be the first time a term in the OED got RFD'd). Why not RFD anything at all, for any reason or none at all? We're already apparently perceived as fussier than "real" dictionaries. Why not make a game of it?

Or ... we can go back to relatively objective measures like whether and when people were observed to use a term. If it matters that a term stems primarily from chatrooms, or appears to be used mainly by people trying to sell something, or is being used in a manner inconsistent with its Latin derivation, or whatever, we can note that appropriately.

In my estimation, that would eliminate much of the traffic on RFD, perhaps moving some of it to RFC or even a new category for items needing caveats on usage. The residue would be mainly uncontroversial entries noting obvious vandalism. -dmh 04:13, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

dmh, as a side note, my local library system apparently refuses to carry "You are Becoming a Galactic Human" but they do have "You are being lied to: the disinformation guide to media distortion, historical whitewashes and cultural myths" (which seems to reference it) in stock. They also carry "You are going to prison" but is unclear if that is also directly related. --Connel MacKenzie 14:55, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That's because they don't want you to know this life-changing information (do I really need a smiley here, or can everyone see the tongue in the cheek?). -dmh 15:26, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Here's another interesting link on photon belt: http://www.salemctr.com/photon.html — Hippietrail 05:12, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• I've found more actual published citations in pulpy New Age books: — Hippietrail 04:55, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Eclecticology 04:16:09, 2005-08-02 (UTC)