Day: August 8, 2005

Posted on

Green

Here’s a Keyhole satellite view of one of the most highly-developed portions of America’s Third World Countyâ„¢. If you look very, very carefully (and know exactly where to look—heh) you can see our house in this pic.
In spite of the manmade “scars” (roads, buildings), I can walk out on our back deck and see almost nothing but green from there…

Color theme of the week or some such thing picked up from Nancy and Christine. Check their ideas of green at their blogs.

Of course, I can’t really enter the photo theme challenge with this cos I didn’t take the photo, but maybe I can participate as an auxilliary in appreciation of their photo entries.

Posted on

Peter Jennings 1938-2005 RIP

It shoulda been Dan Blather

I haven’t watched network news for years. And, frankly, when I did I thought Peter Jennings’ genuinely pleasant demeanor and projection of a sympathetic personality made him the most dangerous of the Mass Media Podpeople.

But. No one who’s not a mass–murdering Islamofascist subhuman monster deserves to die of lung cancer. (Though of course mass–murdering Islamofascist subhuman monsters deserve to die the death of a thousand paper cuts while suffering from every cruel disease known to man—and maybe a few as yet unknown.) No, not even those who essentially give it to themselves by lifestyle choices deserve death from lung cancer.

Sorry you had to go that way, Peter.

My sympathies to his family.

FWIW, his book, The Century, was a little less biased than his nightly broadcasts, from what little I gather from skimming it. The book at least is not a bad legacy, IMO.

Posted on

Make Chaos Manor a regular stop

What? You don’t already visit Jerry Pournelle’s website at least once a week? *sigh*

🙂

Here’s a very brief sample of why you should:

“The last place in the world that Marxism is entrenched and solid is in the Modern Language Association and our college departments of English and other ‘Humanities’. Now I understand the urge to moderation in enthusiasm about Science as the only thing worth understanding and studying. There is more to life. Man does not live by bread, free trade, and maximum production efficiency alone; at least not and stay human. C. P. Snow tried to show some of this, and rightly. Science is a way to address certain problems, and to answer many questions. It generates technology. It has changed the world.

There can be and are legitimate criticisms of science from the Humanities. C. S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man did a splendid job of raising important questions, and his That Hideous Strength is a demonstration in fiction of what can happen when we apply technology without thought to ends. That, however, is not what ‘deconstruction’ and Feminist Theory and the rest of this academic shamanism is about.”_*_

Dr. Pournelle and his readers discuss such a wide array of topics that that sample could be misleading. Just take it as given that you will find something of interest on one of your visits. Give it a while. At least one of your own “hot topics” will be discussed by folks who are smarter than I.

You can thank me later.