A Winter's Fairy Tale

Dan Winter is an associate of Roger Green who has accompanied him on the lecture circuit. Winter bills himself as "a respected academic," because he comes "from an academic background." (The "academic background" consists of a bachelor's degree in psychology.)

Under these circumstances it's disingenuous to use the terms "respected academic" and "academic background." It's tantamount to impersonating an academic.

Roger and Dan can toss some otherworldly word salad. Consider this explanation by Winter of the concept "sacred geometry":

A blueprint of creation … an interface between the seen and unseen, the manifest and the unmanifest, the finite and the infinite. All actions obey distinct mathematical laws, and Sacred Geometry describes these laws through a language of numbers, angles, shapes, forms and ratios. It is a universal language of pure mathematical truths based on the inner workings of nature that has played an integral role in the art, architecture and philosophy of numerous cultures for thousands of years …. think of the world as waves and sacred proportions …

This flowery nonsense resonates with people who are frightened by modern science. They can tolerate the new scientific words only if they're used within the 19th-century worldview they hold dear.

This language is worthless when you step out of the New Age bubble

Below the Planck scale, conventional notions of "space" have no relevance and ordinary geometry — sacred and secular — is replaced by noncommutative geometry. (Greene p. 379) It would be difficult to use Winter's idea of how things work to explain DNA. Edwin Schrodinger demonstrated that to understand the stability of the genetic code in DNA you have to use quantum mechanics. (Thuan p. 273)

Winter seems to prefer a word salad of Neo-Platonism, which works quite nicely with the 19th-century worldview of his audience. Winter also makes outlandish claims about "human-engineered power grids" (as if there are other kinds) using the planet as

a huge dump-path for hi-amperage information pollution. The cable companies provide a path for carrying the hi-amperage waste into the earth in the form of magnetic noise, which causes the earth to bleed.

In the New Age bubble no one can hear you ask sensible questions like

• How do you know this is happening?
• What is your definition of dump-path, hi-amperage, and information pollution?
• How about hi-amperage waste? Magnetic noise?
• What are you defining as blood and why?
• How many amperes does it take to make this alleged "bleeding" occur?

Because statements about "dump-paths," "blood," and evil cable companies don't impress sensible people until you provide evidence for such claims, Winter is excitedly anticipating the deaths of many experts. He is especially anticipating the deaths of scientists who promote what he personally believes are "useless aspects" of science, and those who don't agree with his contention that "life force" is matter inseparable from spirit or soul or energy.


It seems his primary reason for wishing experts to die soon is that they have the audacity to insist that he provide extraordinary evidence for his extraordinary claims. The experts also keep releasing research that refutes his claims.

Dan Winter sees himself living the uniquely American myth of the self-educated genius fighting against a pompous, closed-minded establishment. (Park p. 112) In that sense he is a kindred spirit of the perpetrators of baubiology.

The proof issue Winter struggles with may also be a visceral reaction to the proofs furnished in the 2001 court case that shut down his Web presence (for civil contempt, among other things). Claims made against Winter were dismissed with prejudice (meaning that he can be sued again). The court-ordered corrective notice Winter had to add to his new Web presence included a refutation and apology for alleged racist remarks, among other things. See court case 6:94cv/7934, New York U.S. District Court, 23 May 2001.