Don... had company and missed a couple days of posts and so missed your remark:"In other words cosmology is a game anyone can and should play, from early philosophers to sci fi writers to astrophysicists forcing square 3D pegs into hyper dimensional holes.

I see your point as it relates to your basic thesis, but I can't quite agree. In order for 'anyone' to be relevant in any useful way in such areas, there needs to be an easy way of sorting the 'just plain silly' from the 'totally crackpot' from the 'hey...that really sounds plausible'.

Don.. I don't know if you 'do' UseNet, but there is, in GoogleGroups and forums called alt.sci.physics.new-theories

In it you will find all of the above categories I mentioned... and more. Some of them have websites.. like http://jdkabc.blogspot.com/2012/05/occams-universe-cmbr-as-space.html or http://www.bibhasde.com/magmass.html

and ummm... this! (George Hammond has been on this group for years, shouting and declaiming. It is very difficult to decide whether he is a genius or....)

Reading posts to the group is something between exhilarating and laughable as you watch them nodding wisely in agreement or calling each other crazy.

When I said *I* am not qualified to sort it out, it is partly because I am ..ummm... bound, for want of a better word, to analytic, philosophic logic in evaluating the very language and thought structure used to propound these theories. My very being recoils from trying to enter the debate by embedding my own thoughts in the free-form bits of imagery required.
I am aware that many of the great ideas in Cosmology were ridiculed and not comprehended in their early stages, but all I can make myself do is to read, listen and look for substantive progress by those who DO have the fortitude and concepts to pursue it all.