OTA/Are you pondering what I’m pondering, Pinky?

Pinky and the Brain, Vol. 1

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Well, I’m not planning to take over the world, in the manner of the Brain, but I have been pondering several things recently.

• The differences between reading ebooks and hardcopy. Fiction is fine for me in ebook format; non-fiction not so. The more info-dense and thoughtful the text, the more I prefer haveing a physical page to peruse, savor, mark up and annotize.
• How the lowest common denominator dominates our society… and what the deleterious effects of the dominance of “mass man” are. We have sown the wind.
• What the differences between blind, head-in-the-sand, pollyanna-ish “optimism” and reality-based (*heh*) optimism might be… (not to be conflated or confused with reality-based fantasies of Loony Left Moonbats or Academia Nut Fruitcakes, etc.)
• How the perversity of the universe really does tend to a maximum… and why that’s not all that bad a thing. If left to their own devices, stupid people would tend to prove that axiom by winning Darwin Awards, and so the world would be a better place. Unfortunately *sigh* OSHA and a host of other nannystate busybodies are bent on preserving the stupid against all odds… to the detriment of society as a whole.
• Why the “red shift” does NOT have to mean that the universe is expanding in the way Stephen hawking prefers to think it does, and what that reveals about how even really smart people can invest themselves in an idea to the degree that they cannot see its most obvious, fundamental flaws.
• How subliteracy affects even really bright people. (Latest example that jumped out at me: a really bright, well-educated engineer/novelist who derided the saying, “The exception proves the rule,” because he had no idea of the etymology of the saying.)

So, are you pondering what I’m pondering, Pinky?

😉