Monday, April 2, 2018

"Editorial and Contents," Shroud of Turin News, March 2018

Shroud of Turin News - March 2018
© Stephen E. Jones
[1]

[Previous: February 2018, part #1] [Next: April 2018, part #1]

This is the "Editorial and Contents," part #1, of the March 2018 issue of my Shroud of Turin News. I have listed below linked news article(s) about the Shroud in March as a service to readers, without necessarily endorsing any of them.

Contents:
Editorial
"Traveling Shroud of Turin education exhibit to visit St. Philip Church," The Rhode Island Catholic, Laura Kilgus, 1 March 2018
"The Turin Shroud: Divine Likeness or Bogus Relic?," Historical Blindness, Nathaniel Lloyd, 5 March 2018
"Blood on the Shroud: An Interview with the Blood Investigator of the Shroud of Turin Research Project," Ancient Origins, 6 March 2018, Dr Peter J Shield
"Shroud of Turin's 3D encoded info -- how'd it get there?," WorldNet Daily, Myra Adams, 22 March 2018
"This 3D `carbon copy' of Jesus was created using the Shroud of Turin," Aleteia, Lucandrea Massaro, 28 March 2018
"Shroud of Turin inspires professor to create a 3D image of Jesus," Daily Express, Laura Mowat, 29 March 2018


Editorial
Rex Morgan's Shroud News: My scanning and word-processing of the 118 issues of Rex Morgan's Shroud News, provided by Ian Wilson, and emailing them to Barrie Schwortz, for him to convert to PDFs and add to his online Shroud News archive, continued in March up to issue #98, October 1996. [Right (enlarge)], i.e ~83% completed. Issues in that archive are up to #93, February 1996.

News: As mentioned in my "25 March 1988: On this day 30 years ago in the radiocarbon dating of the Turin Shroud," I was emailed on 26 March by ["STOP PRESS"[2].] a leading Shroud pro-authenticist who told me that he has been "repeatedly mulling over" my "Linick/computer hacking hypothesis," and as October this year will be the thirtieth anniversary of the announcement on 13 October 1988 [see 23Jul15] that the Shroud's radiocarbon date was "1260-1390", he is likely to be talking on this topic in both the UK and USA. In those talks he is thinking of suggesting my Linick/computer hacking as one of two scenarios he most favours for having skewed the Shroud's radiocarbon date! I thanked him for taking my hacking theory seriously. That led me to start preparing a media release outlining my hacking theory which I will post here when it is completed. I may then email a copy of it to news outlets in anticipation of an upsurge in media interest in the Shroud's radiocarbon dating as 13 October draws near. Arising out of this, I also on 31 March emailed the "well-known Shroud author" for clarification of the April 1989 phone call he received from a male with a German accent who said had committed "espionage" in falsifying the results of the 1988 dating. I will post any response I receive from him.

Posts: In March I blogged 4 new posts (latest uppermost): "25 March 1988: On this day 30 years ago in the radiocarbon dating of the Turin Shroud" - 25th; "11th-10th centuries: Shroud's 1260-1390 radiocarbon date is against the preponderance of the evidence (4): Steps in the development of my radiocarbon dating of the Turin Shroud hacker theory #12" - 18th; "Obituary (3): Dr. Alan Duane Whanger (17 July 1930 - 21 October 2017)" - 3rd; and "Editorial and Contents," Shroud of Turin News, February 2018" - 2nd.

Updates in the background of past posts in March: I continued adding footnotes to my "Chronology of the Shroud ... First century."

Comments: On 10 March I received an Anonymous comment under my 17 April 2010 post "`Ian Wilson's Turin Shroud theories are the worst kind of junk history'." The comment started with (my numbering in square brackets):

[1]"You raise some fine points, but frustratingly neglect the role of bias in judging the usefulness and reliability of historians and their contributions. [2]You seem fine to frequently, incessantly point out Walters' Metaphysical Naturalism, [3]yet conveniently fail to examine your pro-Wilson, pro-Shroud, pro-Christianity bias, [4]Wilson's bias (and how it's made evident by his other texts), and even his former Oxford teacher's bias in his endorsement of him ..."
My response included:
[1]"That was irrelevant to the purpose of my post, which was to respond to Walter's article critical of Wilson." [2]"I only pointed out Walters' Metaphysical Naturalism ONCE (or twice if my `see below' sentence is counted)." [3]"I don't `fail to examine' my `pro-Wilson, pro-Shroud, pro-Christianity bias,' I am well aware of each of them. But again that was not the purpose of my post (see above)." [4]"EVERYONE is biased, and it gets us nowhere debating it. Wilson and I present EVIDENCE for our positions and leave it at that. We also take the time to read the other side. I (and I am sure Wilson) own and have read every anti-Shroud book available. See my online "My Shroud of Turin books and articles" in which my anti- or non-authenticist books and articles are marked `(A)'. But Walter's bias in his criticism of Wilson was EXTREME and UN-SCHOLARLY in that he admitted he had not read ANY of Wilson's books! The Telegraph.co.uk website presumably thought so too because it took Walters' article off-line..."

Then on 12 March, I received a comment from a Dillon under my 22 March 2008 post, "Shroud News - January 2008," that started, "[1]You said that the Man in the Shroud has a ponytail. [2]Bear in mind that Jesus was a 1st century Galilean. Is there any evidence that Galilean men had ponytails?" My response included:

[1]"That was in 2008. I no longer maintain that the vertical feature below the man's hair in the back image is a ponytail. For example, I did not include it under "The man on the Shroud #8" in my "The evidence is overwhelming that the Turin Shroud is authentic!" series. See Shroud Scope https://goo.gl/qf4FDY As can be seen, it is NOT a ponytail (it does not even come from the centre of the man's hair as a ponytail would) but is a feature of the weave. I have added to my post above in square brackets: `I no longer maintain that this is a ponytail.'" [2]"According to Stevenson and Habermas they did:
"As a matter of fact, the traditional style for an orthodox Jewish man of two thousand years ago is much the same for him today: a ponytail of hair and sidelocks-precisely what we see on the Shroud." (Stevenson, K.E. & Habermas, G.R., 1990, "The Shroud and the Controversy," Thomas Nelson Publishers: Nashville TN, p.151)
But since it is now clear that what was once thought to be a ponytail is NOT part of the image of the man on the Shroud, I don't care to argue it, one way or the other. ..."
My radiocarbon dating hacker theory: As can be seen above, I blogged about my radiocarbon dating of the Shroud hacker theory in the STOP PRESS" above my ""25 March 1988: On this day 30 years ago in the radiocarbon dating of the Turin Shroud" post, about "a leading Shroud pro-authenticist who" is going to start publicly supporting my "Linick/computer hacking hypothesis"! Also, at the end of that post, I pointed out that, after Dr Michael Tite's letter to Nature of 7 April 1988, the alleged hacker, Arizona laboratory physicist Timothy W. Linick (1946-89)'s programing task would have been made easier by Tite's confirmation that: 1) there would indeed be only "three ... radiocarbon laboratories ... Arizona, ... Oxford and ... Zurich"; 2) each laboratory would test "a sample from the shroud, together with two known-age control samples"; and 3) the test would not be "blind" ..." In that post I also promoted a point that I had made in a footnote [24] of my, "The 1260-1390 radiocarbon date of the Turin Shroud was the result of a computer hacking #11" that:
"... it is significant that Linick is standing in front of his Arizona laboratory leaders and colleagues in this historic group photograph (taken by Gove who is not in it) of the very first `1350 AD' dating of the Shroud[46], because this is evidence that Linick was in charge of the actual AMS computerised dating process at Arizona laboratory and those present were acknowledging that."

My book: In March I continued to give this a higher priority and completed the "Fourth century" and "Fifth century" in "Chapter 6, "History and the Shroud," in the dot-point

[Right (enlarge): The planned cover of my book.]

outline of my book, "The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Sheet of Jesus!" (see 06Jul17).

Pageviews: At midnight on 31 March 2018, Google Analytics [Below (enlarge)] gave this blog's "Pageviews all time history" as 871,539. This compares with 718,747 (up 152,792 or 21.3%) from the same time in March 2017. It also gave the most viewed posts for the month (highest uppermost) as: "The Shroud of Turin: 3.3. The man on the Shroud and Jesus were scourged," July 15, 2013 - 343; "Re: Shroud blood ... types as AB ... aged blood always types as AB, so the significance of this ... is unclear," Mar 18, 2011 - 266; "The Shroud of Turin: 3.5. The man on the Shroud and Jesus were crowned with thorns," Sep 8, 2013 - 166; "`according to John chapter 20, Jesus was wrapped in linen cloths (plural) ... If Scripture is correct ... lets throw out the shroud'," Jul 11, 2012 - 123; "Three-dimensional #20: The man on the Shroud: The evidence is overwhelming that the Turin Shroud is authentic!," Feb 5, 2017 - 106." This is the first month that I can remember where none of the most viewed posts were current ones!


Notes:
1. This post is copyright. I grant permission to extract or quote from any part of it (but not the whole post), provided the extract or quote includes a reference citing my name, its title, its date, and a hyperlink back to this page. [return]
2. "STOP PRESS – AG Opinion in Huawei v ZTE published today," The CLIP Board, 20 November 2014. [return]

Posted: 2 April 2018. Updated: 6 May 2018.

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