<CPOV> Judaism, bus-stops and the question of original research

[Dror Kamir]

Hi,

There is nothing new about this idea, but it is still well preformed 
(just like Shakespeare can be performed on stage over and over again, as 
long as it is done in an impressive way :-) ).

This article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism_and_bus_stops 
(naturally nominated for deletion) is an attempt to prove that 
well-phrased well-sourced article can be written about any subject.

Wikipedia has a rule of "no synthesis", namely that creating a theory by 
combining existing well-established theories or fragments of theories is 
considered "original research", hence forbidden. However, this article 
shows quite nicely that this rule is very hard to implement, since 
novelty (or in this case, absurd) can be spotted only if one has strong 
intuition about its inconsistency with contemporary common knowledge. 
Actually, this article begs the conclusion that original research is 
like pornography - we cannot define it, but we know it when we see it, 
if our minds are conformed with the mainstream of cultural behavior. But 
please resist the begging and tell me if you think there are other 
conclusions :-)

Dror

PS - Where I live, whenever someone bring a pompous yet totally 
pointless topic for discussion, there goes the saying, "We might as well 
talk about 'The Elephant and the Jewish Question'". I had to bring some 
elephant into the picture...