Mental Illness in the Upper ranks of the ACCG?

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I must admit it never occurred to me that an explanation of the sheer illogicality of the arguments of the US coin dealers lobby was mental illness. Now I have seen two posts made simultaneously by two of them, I am beginning to think it a reasonable explanation of the inability of the officers of the ACCG to engage in meaningful debate. Look at this:

Our observations are as much ourselves as what we observe. It is a dance where we lead and the universe follows. Sometimes, a number of us get together within a temporary, and carefully constructed matrix and we build ourselves a box to contain what we create, together. [...] What is the universe's response to this? It forgets us, because we can no longer dance with it -- we are stuck in a box! Frustrated, by this, the universe then does its best to dance with all of the boxes together. It finds this quite difficult to do and often has to eliminate a few boxes who can't keep step with the rest. But at best, it is a clumsy dance full of trial and error. We call this evolution. Those of us who are vigilant quickly step outside of our box and say "I am here!" and the universe either starts to dance with us or at least marks us down on its dance card for later.

Deep philosophy? Wayne Sayles seems to think so, but put it in the context of the entire self-gratulatory text and try and work out what the author is trying to get at. Beats me. But - like Peter Tompa's conspiracy theories - it apparently appeals to Sayles' sense of reality.

Then we have this from the same stable ('What will it take to get their attention?'):

Indeed it seems that the Constitution of the United States of America, as presently interpreted by unelected bureaucrats whose biased interpretations are validated by left wing activist judges, might mean little these days. That is however an illusion. The Constitution is a supreme and eternally enduring covenant between the US Government and the people. It transcends the transient affairs and management of any Governmental agency, and also the judiciary, and will never become insignificant. Any bureaucrat or judge seeking to manipulatively negate or disregard that covenant might perhaps consider that being strung up on a lamppost along Constitution Avenue is by no means out of the question, when so-called “civil servants” charged with the administration of the affairs of our Government demonstrate that they have other allegiances, and that the desires of the American people are not important to them, or that the courts will not respect those desires. [...] it would [...] be wise for those who administer our nation's affairs to bear that possibility in mind.

If any US readers have any difficulty in seeing what is wrong with that, imagine its author had written instead of "US Constitution" - say - Magna Carta and see how it looks. In other words judges who decide that the law says something other than what coin collectors (for it is they - pars pro toto - constitute here "the American people") should bear in mind that they might fall victtim to the sort of of violence we see currently playing out of the streets of Cairo? think somebody is getting a bit carried away and revealing a bit too much of his true nature. I bet he has a gun at home, too.

I sincerely hope and trust that our present difficulties will not come to such an extreme. The conduct of those responsible for the State Department's notoriously abusive Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs does not, however, engender any feeling of confidence. It seems to me that those in control of this agency are very far out of touch with the concerns and feelings of many of our citizens. It can be affirmed that their actions and decisions completely disregard the legislative intent of Congress, and have provoked an increasing sense of anger, resentment, and a growing public view that the oppressive abuses of this out of control agency must be stopped. It could, and no doubt will, be argued that those offended by the oppressive conduct of this agency are a minority. That is true. But it is not the American way to take unjustifiable oppression of any minority lightly. A terrible Civil War with a huge death roll was fought over such an issue.

The slave owners would apparently not give up their practices any other way.

It seems to me that people who - apparently in all seriousness - come out with such Glennbeckery; warning lynch mobs may round up the lawmakers and judges of their state over a load of old dugup coins, and talking about dancing with the universe in little boxes, really should seek professional help.

Numbers.... Black is White and Mine is Bigger than Yours

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This seems the sort of silly yes-it-is-no-it-isn't argument which belongs on my metal detecting nonsense ghetto blog.

I like to keep an eye on who is reading what on my main blog and have noted that over the past few months it seems to have generated an expanding readership, which I find interesting and encouraging to compare with the blogs that give out the damaging propaganda for no-questions-asked collecting of dug up antiquities.

Peter Tompa started his blog before me, and not long ago was boasting he'd had 50 000 hits, which prompted me to look at my own counter and was interested to note that a few days after that, the number of hits to my own rants, comments and observations passed 150 000. Not long ago it passed 200 000 while Tompa's has still not reached 70 000. So the word is getting around, despite my own blog being a rather niche interest thing.

Dorothy King (Blogs and Cultural Property Propaganda ) disputes these figures:

What's that quote ...? "Lies, damned lies, and statistics" Just out of curiosity I looked at Paul Barford's blog figures, since he made such a point of gloating over his blog being more read than those of "coiney" types, and promoted Gill's table as proof to support his theory. Gill gives him 75 to 80 readers, Google Reader 1.

Aha, one reader? So on the days recently when there have been as many as 700 people looking at the blog, Ms King would have us believe that it is the same person, and the ninety or so "returning visitors" a day shown by the tracking software is the same bloke running for some reason from one computer to the next on at least two separate continents? Day after day.

King gloats that a blog she calls "Barford's nemesis, the butt of so many of his posts, Peter Tompa's Cultural Property Observer" has 58 subscribers.

Tompa has 58 times the subscribers of Barford, which does not tally with Gill's table ...

that is assuming that the PACHI blog does indeed have one subscriber. She notes Candice Jarman's recent efforts to contribute to the discussion:

I think starting a blog devoted to Paul Barford was wrong, but ... it has four times the subscribers of Barford's main blog [...]. And I admit that I do find that rather amusing.

So do I, since the actual identity of the author's followers on the home page is shown as six. Ms King claims about herself: "I can be a bit OCD - my footnotes are always accurate, and I like to be thorough with my research. So, I thought I'd check. And the results were surprising". Indeed, a bit of checking would be in order before she calls somebody a liar, because of course this lays one open to having claims like this checked too.

I do not know what figures Dorothy King is using for the readership of my PACHI blog, she says they are from Google Reader. When I looked just now, instead of "1" it says on my screen quite clearly "Liczba subskrybentów: 78". (Number of Subscribers 78). [But in fact what I was talking about was not subscribers but the number of people that have found or revisited my blog and looked at some of what I'd written.] I suspect that, in her efforts to come to the rescue of the honour of writers like Peter Tompa, the poor lady has in her haste mistaken the PACHI blog with this one (which last time I looked did indeed have - for reasons which are unfathomable since it deals exclusively with nonsense like this - one subscriber). *

But this cannot be the whole explanation. Something else is clearly going on here. She says:

Gill's (sic) Blogging Pompeii has well over a hundred subscribers. According to Google Reader it has 22.

On my screen, "Blogging Pompeii" has Liczba subskrybentów: 117 so more or less what Gill stated and not the reduced number PhDiva gives.

Looting matters, Ms King suggests has 68 while on my screen it says: Liczba subskrybentów: 290 so again the number Gill gives rather than the 'revised' figures Ms King would prefer her readers to believe.

So from where does Ms King get the 'revised' figures on the basis of which she makes her claims that the Swansea academic's comments (and my own) on online readership on cultural property matters are false? All very odd.

*UPDATE: For reasons which are even more unfathomable, it seems now to have four. I'll have to be more careful of what I say here now.
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Wayne Weighs In and Sides with Candice

Candice Jarman knows how to gain friends and make enemies. US coiney Lobbyist Wayne Sayles has come across her blog and has sent a message of encouragement. He admits that when it comes to my discussions of no-questions-asked collecting: "I simply consider the source and ignore his rants". You see, he explains Paul Barford, critic of the ACCG which he heads "has no standing in archaeology". But he fails to note that Candice criticises other archaeologists too, Barford, Gill and Renfrew. So how would Sayles dismiss them, for surely it would not be by denying that any of them have any "standing" in archaeology? How odd that Sayles however, who has no "standing" in the State department freely criticises it in the same terms as I use to address the no-questions-asked trading and collecting activities of his members. How odd to see the amateur student of history suddenly refer to "authority" (or lack of it) as the key argument whether or not words are worth heeding - surely the underlying idea of an avocational (independent) student of the past is the rejection of all such institutionalised authority.

Thus, neither Sayles nor Candice Jarman have any "standing" in archaeology either but feel wholly and uniquely qualified to dismiss it as governed by fear and controlled by the "radicals" and to cast aspersions on the motivation of all and any professional archaeologists concerned about looting. Despite her general lack of qualifications for such a task, Sayles throws her to the lions and encourages the secretary Candy:

If you focus on combating his disgusting rhetoric with truths, you will have done the world a great service.

So he himself is unable to do it, or get one of his coiney-Guild minions to do it, but wants to see a young inexperienced girl do the job for him. So, Candice, never mind researching how many degrees I have and from where, since I have no "standing", let us see my "disgusting rhetoric" contrasted with "the truths" about no-questions-asked collecting. Please, the Executive Director of the Ancient Coin Collectors' Guild does not want to put me straight, you do it. Saves him the work, he can get on with just selling the coins he does.

Candy, since you tell us the artefacts you collect are all recorded by the PAS, would YOU buy artefacts from this man Wayne Sayles? He obviously thinks you are on the same side. Are you? The same side as Wayne Sayles and Peter Tompa, John Hooker,? Are you, Candice?