Tue 27 Feb 2007
This is just bizarre, and wildly out of left field, but somebody clearly has a huge bone to pick with Prof. Jay Pasachoff.
NOTE — I am not opining on the veracity of these documents. If anything, they’re probably widely exaggerated, if not outright false. I’m only posting this link because I randomly stumbled across it on the web. I’m curious about the circumstances behind this (e.g., a store selling only 4 ebooks, one for free and the other three for $20 each about Pasachoff?).
Talk about random… and here I thought that I knew how to hold a grudge.
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Internet Archive shows first existence of the store in Sept. 05 and various diet and weight-loss products and the like being sold since then.
I can find no immediate other reference to the books, than the site hereabove referenced.
The site is hosted off of Towerstream, a wireless ISP in RI, and an odd arrangement.
No further information at this time.
Rumor has it that a deal to publish a popular astronomy book went sour. Unconfirmed rumors suggest that it involves the same individual that posted the advertisement featured at
http://fuckthatjob.com/archives/000338.php
Dear “anonymous coward,”
That’s certainly an interesting thread– regardless of whether it was or wasn’t the real Phil Sheldon– but praytell what alleged connection might Pasachoff have with PS and his alleged deeds, misdeeds, quirks, empire, and public personality?
“Rumour,” most foul, indeed.
If you really must know, you can read one side of the story at:
http://72.46.127.18/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=113
I’m sorry, but Phil Seldon is kinda nuts.
http://www.bestdealmagazines.com/downloads/~conciseguide.pdf
There seems to be a fine line between entrepreneurship and socio-pathology.
So how’d a self-respecting, bow-tie-wearing, mild-mannered professor and author of such classical works as The Field Guide to Astronomy come to brush verbal contracts with a hard-working, self-delusional, cancer-cat loving, and evidently slightly litigious chump such as Seldon?
All the sites above are hosted off TowerStream: pretty clear at this point who is selling the books.
now that was a quality distraction from transcribing interviews. thanks ken and lowell!
and Avenue Q says the Internet is for porn…and hilarious lawsuits!
The legal documents claim that the two parties have known each other since childhood, having met in the Junior Astronomy Club in New York City during the 1950s.
The lawsuit is probably not so hilarious for Prof. Pasachoff. It’s got to be a very costly and vexing thing to deal with.
“Costly and trying:” I suppose that’s a question of how one responds to bark versus bite.
It is interesting that there seems to be little to {k,}no{,w} public record of these events, save Mr. H. Seldon’s hosted sites. Court record or just …?
Story so far: typical obsessive & eccentric lunatic multi-millionaire with bizzare cross-marketed affiliate internet scheme and delusions of grandeur and historical importance (plus cat fetish) meets naive, cloistered science professor.
After an initial fling, they totally fail to understand each other or get it off– presuming that anything in Mr. Seldon’s wacky account (whose details don’t deserve a forum here) is vaguely “true.”
Greedy wacko furby-, er, cat-“philanthropist” then, having failed to extract dollars from the relationship by the purported semi-coerced, semi-fraudulent (on his part) “co-authorship” of a half-ass Astronomy book (with admitted “market potential”), then concocts a beautifully scripted (if entirely false; if entirely self-believed) fable about childhood friendships, {…}, and attempts to capitalize on this fable by huff-puffing about legal action and, that failing, by selling a book about the “tragedy” on above-mentioned bizarre internet affiliate network. Etc.
And probably gets told where to go by Cappy Hill and a few others, but isn’t the sort of personality to let such reality constraints get in the way: if you play this kind of game, you only have to bat .001, after all.
More or less.
Is that the whole story?
Who engineered the back-end to said aforementioned internet affiliate network?