Throughout history, many people have developed what they thought were perpetual motion machines. None of them worked. Do they still qualify as inventions? Probably not.
How about a case where someone tries to invent something, it does not work, but others have invented one that does work. Almost definitely not!
Case in point: voting machines. Larry Sarner tried his hand at inventing voting machines. They did not work, even though the project was well funded by the likes of Peter Paul Luce.
The company folded, and there was a lot of litigation.
Sarner describes himself as a mathematician. To be sure, there are many technical details to be worked out, but all he set out to do was to automate a process that’s been well understood for quite some time.
Why did he fail? Could his attachment to various pseudoscientific ideas have had something to do with it?
Sarner may or may not be a Scientologist, but he does run propaganda sites on the reprehensible topic of child torture, and these sites use techniques very similar to Scientology’s sites.
Scientology has many strange ideas. Xenu, a “galactic tyrant” used nuclear weapons to destroy alien beings trapped on Hawaii. Man evolved from clams. “Blinkers” are evil, cat like aliens that are the sworn enemies of Scientology. Calculus is useless. Calculus was not invented by Newton or Leibniz, but by Henry Luce (father of Sarner investor, Peter Paul Luce!). Radiation lurks in fat cells. Radiation sickness can be cured with vitamins.
Adhering to even a few of these ideas would give anyone, including Sarner, a rather warped world view. Maybe he saw a calico cat, thought it was a blinker, and he dropped a decimal point somewhere? Anything is possible, and Sarner is understandably reluctant to discuss the matter.
Filed under: calculus, failure, l. ron hubbard, larry sarner, mathematics, propaganda, pseudoscience, quackery, scientology, voting machine | Tagged: black magic, blinker cats, calculus, calico cat, cat, cats, child torture, hawaii, henry luce, l. ron hubbard, larry sarner, nuclear weapons, perpetual motion, peter paul luce, pseudoscience, quackery, sarner, scientology, siamese cat, tabby cat, voting machine, xenu
