He has one good idea — water erosion on the Sphinx — which he borrowed from SchallerdeLubicz; he’s a lifelong professional journalist who calls himself an “independent Egyptologist” (hey, who isn’t?). Generally I enjoy his humor, but he began just a little goofy and has now moved inside goofville village limits. In the otherwise excellent “Mystery of the Sphinx” documentary (mid- to late-1990s) there’s some footage that wasn’t broadcast but is available on the extended version on disk (hmm, I may have to watch that at bedtime), and shows Richard Hoaxland giving his “face on mars” talk in the conf room he rented in the UN building for that purpose (he wanted to be able to say he gave this talk at the UN, see). And of course, during the years 2001 to 2009, JAW went postal over the War on Terror and the Bush administration.
Whomever you wish to attribute the notions to, I am glad West has brought together so many issues. I am especially impressed with the explanation of Nabta Playa. Isn’t it astonishing to you that someone thousands of years ago, arrange stones a distance from a sighting point using the light years distance to those stars in the calculation of the distance from the sighting point in the Nabta Playa circle? I am blown away that someone a few thousand years ago had a feel for the distance to those stars such that they could use a table of distances to locate viewing stones.!
And I confess to be somewhat taken aback at the vitriol you display toward West. It seems almost ... personal.