Talk:Argos

I find it telling that Malaclypse the Elder sees fit to include sentences like this one:

No trace of the Argos was ever recovered, despite the numerous treasure hunters who to this day take their lives into their hands in search of it.

In a rare example of perspecacity, our colleague displays an awareness that this little article on the Argos is only tossed off for present consumption, without any pretense that it will, in time, pass into History to enlighten our successors in the ages to come. Will treasure hunters still be seeking the Argos ten Grand Orbits from now? We do not know, and that is the end of the matter. It is the place of an historian to report what has occurred, not to speculate on what may come to pass. Should a responsible historian deem it worthy of notice that treasure hunters and other riff-raff concern themselves with seeking the Argos at the time of writing, the best course of action is to specify that time as precisely as possible. In that way, the (admittedly, accurate) assessment that Malaclypse the Elder here puts forward would be of some small use to scholars yet unborn without presuming to tell them of conditions in their own time, which they will be in a far better position to judge than our esteemed colleague.

Would that all historians would employ the admirable service provided by the Thalassenic Academy of Sciences. (Surely no reputable institution of higher learning lacks the funding to pay their eminently reasonable fee.) Not only is the accuracy and precision with which their Megakronometrikon tracks the Golden Photon in its endless peregrinations from one crystal pane to another a triumph of engineering, it is also fitting that this peerless boon to historians the world over should be situated in the birthplace of our Art.

Giuseppe Magnifico, June 24,1887 Mk

How depressing for our future generations that scholars such as Dr. Magnifico have so little faith in the theoretical history students of the future. I feel quite confident that I, upon reading such a piece in my own youth, would have known, understood and appreciated the reference of "to this day" to mean "at the time of this writing." I believe most mentors would experience a great deal of consternation upon finding their charges unable to discern chronology when given ample context. I fear the day when we as historians must dim the intellectualism of our work simply to make it more palatable for the slavering masses.

Lubya Vasilevna

Future history will bear me out! And not in the manner that those ignorant bledlows bore me out of the last Farthingside Brotherhood meeting! --Malaclypse the Elder