So, here’s the Professor’s second attempt at the same explanation, and I dare say it went much better than the first.

Perhaps people should try to get in touch with their inner teenage barbarian more frequently in such situations, for it seems that a hormone-addled, violence-focused, underdeveloped brain is great for simplifying things. Naturally, that works mostly by breaking them…so the approach should only be applied to explanations, presentations and other fields were the breaking is in the abstract. Those stretches of history were teenage barbarian brains were applied to physical reality on a large scale aren’t really considered halcyon days for anyone but the teenage barbarians involved.

Of course, the yield of the clarification is still modest – but that’s the plot’s fault, not the Professor’s. In real-life, there might be from zero to several (sometimes even many) people responsible for any given mishap – in basement bargain fiction, it’s more often zero or infinity. Either it was an accident, and no-one’s fault (not even the Romans’)…or they’re all out to get you, having somehow managed to set all of their mutual differences aside to concentrate on you as a common enemy.

One would expect that somebody who convinces themselves that the whole world is out to get specifically them would then go on to conclude that they must have done something wrong to incur that sort of universal enmity…but one would be wrong to expect that.

Staying true to that pattern, the Professor doesn’t present any reason as for why every sort of secret cabal or group would have conspired to mess up the experiment – it’s just what they do. Well… perhaps the Kushites would have a reason to have it out for the Professor. He wrote that research paper once, where he dissed their pyramids…

More on Thursday.