Small group of astronomers call for renaming the Magellanic Clouds, accusing Magellan of racism
They’re coming for you next: A new group of about fifty astronomers are now demanding that the Magellanic Clouds in the southern hemisphere be renamed because they don’t like it that Magellan was both a man of his time and also a white European explorer.
Magellan’s name is not fitting, astronomer Mia de los Reyes and colleagues argue. The leader of the first expedition to successfully circle the globe, Magellan enslaved and killed Indigenous people encountered on the voyage, which set out from Spain in 1519.
“Because we’re naming things in the night sky, which belongs to everyone, we think that it’s important to have names that reflect all of humanity,” says de los Reyes, of Amherst College in Massachusetts. She calls for the name change in an opinion piece published September 12 in Physics. Magellan’s voyage helped pave the way for Spanish colonialism in South America, Guam and the Philippines, says de los Reyes, who is Filipino American. “Many people see Magellan as a villain in the Philippines.”
No matter that Magellan was a great explorer who sacrificed his life to finally prove without doubt that the Earth was a sphere. No matter that he was the first person to document the existence of the Magellanic Clouds, which is why they are named for him. He was white and a European, and thus his place in history must be cancelled forever.
It also should not matter that the claims against Magellan are partly true, though magnified greatly into a slander by the use of Marxist terms. His prime mission was one of exploration, and the natives he kidnapped were taken not for purposes of slavery but to provide further documentation of what he had discovered.
No human being is perfect, and if we accept these demands to measure the past by these perfect standards we will have to cancel all history forever.
Which by the way is the real point. These radicals aren’t really interested in honoring the right people and taking honor away from the wrong people. What they want to do is to discredit all past Western history, and replace it with a Marxist fantasy that makes believe the achievements of European and Western Civilization never happened.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
They’re coming for you next: A new group of about fifty astronomers are now demanding that the Magellanic Clouds in the southern hemisphere be renamed because they don’t like it that Magellan was both a man of his time and also a white European explorer.
Magellan’s name is not fitting, astronomer Mia de los Reyes and colleagues argue. The leader of the first expedition to successfully circle the globe, Magellan enslaved and killed Indigenous people encountered on the voyage, which set out from Spain in 1519.
“Because we’re naming things in the night sky, which belongs to everyone, we think that it’s important to have names that reflect all of humanity,” says de los Reyes, of Amherst College in Massachusetts. She calls for the name change in an opinion piece published September 12 in Physics. Magellan’s voyage helped pave the way for Spanish colonialism in South America, Guam and the Philippines, says de los Reyes, who is Filipino American. “Many people see Magellan as a villain in the Philippines.”
No matter that Magellan was a great explorer who sacrificed his life to finally prove without doubt that the Earth was a sphere. No matter that he was the first person to document the existence of the Magellanic Clouds, which is why they are named for him. He was white and a European, and thus his place in history must be cancelled forever.
It also should not matter that the claims against Magellan are partly true, though magnified greatly into a slander by the use of Marxist terms. His prime mission was one of exploration, and the natives he kidnapped were taken not for purposes of slavery but to provide further documentation of what he had discovered.
No human being is perfect, and if we accept these demands to measure the past by these perfect standards we will have to cancel all history forever.
Which by the way is the real point. These radicals aren’t really interested in honoring the right people and taking honor away from the wrong people. What they want to do is to discredit all past Western history, and replace it with a Marxist fantasy that makes believe the achievements of European and Western Civilization never happened.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Can the Giant Magellan Telescope referenced in your previous post be far behind?
Related:
And Mara Largo, in Palm Beach has an estimated value of $18 million dollars. You know, for radical Democrat party machine attorney generals, prosecutors and judges purposes anyway.
https://i.insider.com/5fccf6c6eadd8400183df645?format=jpeg Looks to me like the pool would be worth $18 million.
Stupid is stupid, but stupid with a un-spoken political agenda of destruction and “Transformation” and a Subjective need to erase actual established history in order to fulfill that Subjective political agenda is still stupid. Subjective persecution, law and justice and the symbolic re naming of telescopes is plain for all to see what is what.
The entire radical Democrat party is about one thing over and above competency and allegiance to the country and that is symbolism.
This needs to be their new symbol: https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/07/170714-dead-donkey-feature-image.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1116
And it is very apparent to anyone who has two brain cells what they are currently executing is very dangerous to every and all Americans.
Did you paint your pig today?
Judging historical figures with modern day sensibilities. Shall we condemn our parents if they smoked cigarettes in the house we grew up in?
Follow up:
For a Florida real estate comp this is Rush Limbaugh’s estate that was recently sold after his death for $155 million.
https://www.toddstarnes.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Rush-Limbaugh-Palm-Beach-Estate.jpg
Looks like you can put the Limbaugh estate in one corner of the footprint of Mara Largo which appears to be 4 to 5 times larger.
Mara Largo worth $18 million dollars?
Show Biz Cheat Sheet: “Considering the original amount Trump offered to pay, he got a pretty good deal. Donald Trump reportedly paid $10 million for his Mar-a-Lago property. This is significantly less than his original offer of $25 million. The sale included 17 acres of land and all the original home furnishings. He also later purchased the beachfront property in front of the estate”.
NY Post: “One prominent Palm Beach real estate broker, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The Post, “It’s utterly delusional to think that property is only worth $18 million.”
If that property were on the market today, I would list it at around $300 million, minimum … at least. He also has the separate golf course minutes away.”
Whether it be the name of a telescope or the value of real estate the word delusional seems to be the appropriate word to use when “politically correct” politically based agenda is strategically and symbolically executed.
“. . . enslaved and killed Indigenous people encountered on the voyage, . . .”
All of whom did plenty of enslaving and killing on their own before Magellan showed up. Some people seem to have this idea that non-White people were living in some kind of conflict-free Paradise before Whitey showed up. That was, and still is, absolutely not the case.
“Because we’re naming things in the night sky, which belongs to everyone, . . .”
Uh, no. Things in the night sky belong to no one. Another example of projecting Human concepts onto the Natural world. Only things that can be controlled can ‘belong’ to an entity. If you cannot control access or use, it doesn’t belong to you.
: . . . we think that it’s important to have names that reflect all of humanity,”
Well, except the parts we don’t like.
Just curious if these astronomers publish under their own names, or ‘all of humanity’?
Blair Ivey: What is most disturbing to me is that scientists are supposed to be our best and brightest. These dimwits tell us that our best and brightest are not very best, or bright, which implies some terrible things about their education, the entire university system, and the culture we live. It is very dead, and will require an enormous effort to rebuild, over decades and maybe generations.
Logic has no place is this argument.
I think the scientists are just keeping their heads down. Starlinks everywhere…funding drying up.
You know all these new Hawaiian names is astronomy are just butter-ups so they won’t keep protesting new scopes.
It’s for survival
Alexa, define: “Midwit:”
“Midwit is a neologism, chiefly Internet slang, mildly derogatory. It refers to a person of middling intellect who is neither particularly dumb nor notably intelligent, especially if they act as if they are smarter than is true. A midwit is someone of middling intelligence, higher than lackwits, halfwits and *%&$wits, but lower than any genuine wit. The term was coined by Vox Day to describe individuals of above average intelligence, yet not too far from average. Midwits are often regarded as normies.”
“Many people see Magellan as a villain in the Philippines.”
Why do I doubt this?
Of course Magellan was racist. So was everyone else. What nonsense.
Shes a very minor observational astronomer (and I mean minor based on what’s published in the Astrophysical Journal) who is basically one step up from a grad slave / TA at that illustrious center of astrophysics excellence, Amherst.
When she is not working on very minor derivative research (you’d read exactly the same sort of papers 50/60 years ago) it looks like she dabbles in grievance / gender politics. So all the hallmarks of a quota hire. Not the brightest person.
White men are the only group that ever voluntarily shared power with other groups, exemplified by America extending the franchise first to all races, then to women.
Power was not just shared but it was shared equally, on explicitly colorblind principles of equal rights, maximum equal liberty, and equal treatment under the law, creating the ideal of a meritocracy where people are judged by their individual character/merit, not their group identity.
White men created the very idea of a non-racist society, and put it into the American Constitution, and it is this exact achievement that today’s left falsely labels as “racist,” on the purely racist grounds that it was created by white men.
By the definitions of Ibraham eXcrement Kendi and other racist anti-white leftists, MLK is a “white supremacist” because his dream was the full achievement of the American ideal of meritocracy, where everyone is judged by their individual character/merit, including blacks, who through King’s time had been blocked even by law from participation in American meritocracy by America’s party of slavery: our racist Democrats, who are still our party of racism and slavery today.
They still reject liberty and meritocracy, just as they did when they were fighting for slavery in our Civil War. Now they are anti-white racists, but their underlying ideology remains the same. It is liberty and meritocracy that they really hate.
They are communists (literally in the case of our actual current president Barack Hussein Obama, an acolyte of the leading American communist of the 20th century, Saul Alinsky), and communism is the system of universal slavery.
It isn’t just that Democrats are STILL, our party of slavery. They are even more for slavery than in 1860, and having successfully stolen the last presidential election, they are very close to fully overturning their loss of our Civil War and implementing universal slavery for the foreseeable future.
Through their usurpation, racism is empowered everywhere now to overthrow the universal colorblind principles of liberty and meritocracy that whites developed and established, and this new hatred of Magellan for the supposed crime of being white is just one more lapping wave as the primitive forces of tribalism, group identity, and slavery (heading towards universal slavery), pull down the universalist , non-racist, principles and structures that whites raised up, returning the world to the leveled muck of poverty and oppression that tribalism creates.
Mankind can all be elevated and prosperous and free by following the universal principles that whites pioneered, but if we fail to follow this course, for the racist reason that it was pioneered by whites, because a lot of dirty rotten nasty people think that being pioneered by whites is somehow bad, then the world will fall back into universal poverty and debasement and slavery.