Memories of kooks past

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

Am I the only one who, upon reading Cecil’s column immediately thought of the famous Iowa State mathematics professor, Dr. Alexander Abian? His idea was to slam the moon into Venus to push it into a “near earth-like orbit” thereby creating a “born again earth”. I swear I’m not making this up. That plus his time/mass equivalence theory and his endless advocacy of both insured his writeup in the Net.Legends FAQ.

Alas, I just read that Abian passed on last year (the obit. doesn’t mention the date, but other web pages imply he died in Sept. of 1999) and, as such, cannot add to the cost/benefit analysis presented by Cecil. Although, upon further reflection, maybe that’s a good thing.

2

I didn’t think of Abian, but I certainly should have. Someone needs to tell Cecil about the great benefits destroying the moon will have!

Too bad Abian passed on. It would have been fun to invite him to post on this board on the subject of moon-destroying. Maybe we can invite Archimedes Plutonium to speak on his behalf?

3

Abian’s gone? I was a physics/math/computer engineering major at Iowa State in the 80s, and I sort of knew him. This is the first I’ve heard of his Venus/moon idea; he always seemed to be a pretty normal guy for a math professor.

I also was in a couple of math classes with his daughter – she was pretty cool. If I weren’t such a geek, I’d had asked her out.