Re: Fabian Pascal, completely different?

On Jul 20, 1:48 am, paul c <toledobythe..._at_oohay.ac> wrote:
> Paul Mansour wrote:
> > I miss Fabian Pascal's criticism of the database industry, and
> > contributions to clear thinking on the relational model, as
> > dbdebunk.com has been silent for some time now. I noticed recently,
> > however, that he is posting (though not writing) on his other passion
> > on a new site:
>
> >http://fallofknowledgeandreason.blogspot.com/
>
> > Interestingly (and, to me, unobjectionably) he seems to have done a
> > 180 degree turn in an extremely short time period - so short that I
> > suspect that it is not unrelated to the silence on dbdebunk.
>
> > I hope he doesn't have a similar conversion with respect to database
> > theory and start promoting XML.
>
> I miss them too and glad he's kept the dbdebunk archive online but I
> wouldn't fault him if he forsook the db stuff for his own sake, after
> seeing all the crap that various db illiterates, mystics and S-O
> salesmen have thrown at him. He was very patient about some stupid
> emails I sent him several times. I couldn't figure out much from going
> to the link because it all seemed to have been written by other people -
> what do you mean by 180 degrees?
>
> thanks,
> p

I am not *at all* surprised at FP change of area of involvement..When one takes as much beating as he did for little or no reward, it is perfectly understandable to get discouraged...In simple words, I think he left science for politics.

Fabian PASCAL has always made clear that he perceived the state of data management as a systemic problem caused by the replacement of education (and knowledge) in western culture by superficial product training. At several occasions he made an analogy between decadence of Western culture and decadence of Rome. Such analogy drove him to believe that, as Rome felt with the hand of barbarians, the West should fall with the new barbarians being Political Islam...I believe his new agenda is actually coherent with the idea that *since the fight of knowledge for Rome is lost, let's prepare for the fight against barbarians*...

In other words, I think he realized that trying to promote knowledge in western culture was a lost cause. As a consequence, he took a more radical political approach to denounce threats...

As far as I am concerned, and because I do not like the tone of his new blog, I consider above all that he is a *huge* loss to the database community and a gain to the political community...I really wish he would drop politics and get back to science. He seems much better at it. Received on Fri Jul 20 2007 - 08:35:35 CEST