Origyptian Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It's very simple to see that the team was a tiny
> enterprise that got itself into a huge
> communication project. Two maverick investigators
> and a fledgling filmmaker trying to manage world
> communication of the event. It's not rocket
> surgery to see that Höfer (or whoever else was
> involved in press releases), with negligible, if
> any, prior training in hieroglyphics, certainly
> may have overextended himself, feverishly writing
> copy for various media venues, and at least once
> confused the phyle glyphs at the far end of the
> chamber, which Görlitz likely recognizes as being
> the tag line to a cartouche hidden behind the
> joint, as Khufu's cartouche. This mistake clearly
> did indeed happen at least in that one web report
> at news.com.au.
>
> But for that understandable error to be
> interpreted as a deliberate coordinated attempt by
> Höfer, et al. - endorsed by the investigators -
> to lead the public to believe that the real Khufu
> cartouche was sampled and that this somehow is an
> example of a scheming team caught in a gotcha
> contradiction due to a "bungling criminal liar" at
> the helm is a very naive interpretation of how
> that kind of marcom mistake happens. Nothing
> devious about it.

And here we have the ludicrous red herring of “prior training in hieroglyphics”—as if Höfer hadn’t shown in his preview that he knew perfectly well what a cartouche is and knew which one is Khufu’s. (As far as I can tell, the frames in the preview showing the cartouche are lifted from the film in which Houdin appears. Femano hasn’t seen the preview, but this doesn’t stop his ego telling him that he “knows better”.)

And then we have the pure fantasy of Höfer “feverishly writing copy for various media venues”. Really? Höfer used the same copy for YouTube and Indiegogo—and if Femano alleges that Höfer wrote bespoke pieces “for various media venues”, then he should specify which, shouldn’t he? Sensible people do what Höfer did: write one piece of copy and reuse it. Femano even mentions press releases. Does he not know what a press release is?

And now (pass the sick bag) it’s not scapegoat Höfer, but poor, feverish, overworked Höfer. Yeah, poor Höfer, actively soliciting donations on a false prospectus. He was tired. He made mistakes: understandable errors. He didn’t mean it, honest, gov.

Funny how Femano is markedly more lenient to those he sees as useful to his own agenda.

M.