"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
OK, so here’s the deal. If you don’t know how these things work, then drop me an e- or a comment. I’ll check back later today, and there had better be a few good reads or I’ll come on over to YOUR blogs and drink up all your beer, put my feet all over the furniture and all other kinds of abominations of desolation.
😉
making a mess all over the place at Stuck on Stupid
ROFL, indeed. The English Guy (Hey, man! Crosspost that thing over here where I semi-regularly offend Internet Exploder users! –Just kidding, Woody 🙂 has posted: What Microsoft Employees Think of IE.
Please allow me to repeat that with a minor emphasis added:
What Microsoft Employees Think of IE
Oh, yeh. I’ve posted links before to IE problems admitted by Microsoft developers, but The English Guy’s brief post underscores things in a way those links did not.
Thanks, man. Great post.
Disclaimer: I don’t generally like or in any way appreciate didacticism. Especially not in novels, but generally not anywhere. I also don’t appreciate being preached to most of the time. (Mainly because most of the “preachers”-both from secular and “sacred” realms are usually so bad at it that any valid points they may have are obscured by all the rubbish they lade on top.)
That said, imagine my ambivalence when I picked up Michael Crichton’s State of Fear. The thing’s just one long polemic against the stupidity marketed as “global warming” and “climate change”. Yeh, I know I deliberately loaded that comment, but I’ll stand behind it.
But about the book. After dispensing with the suspension of disbelief deal breaker in the plot (a bunch of unlikely-totally implausible-Scooby-dos save the world from eco-feak wack jobs and ecology industry conspirators. OK, the last part isn’t so far-fetched, but the Scoooby-dos are), the stick-figure characterizations, sometimes wooden dialog and all the other lame plot elements, I was left with a run-of-the-mill adventure story well suited to Hollyweird (save for its perspective on global warming/whatever the latest lame catchphrase might be) and… some moderately interesting, though hardly new to me, citations of actual-GASP!-scientific research into climate change.
And frankly, for those who have been brainwashed by Hollyweird, the Mass Media Podpeople’s Army, Cracked Ivory Tower Academia Nuts, and the whole melange of Loony Left Moonbats, eco-freaks, eco-nazis and their ilk about climate, this book (and hopefully others like it but better-written) may hold out some slim hope of sanity.
Yes, the novel does exaggerate some things and postulate a semi-plausible conspiracy to manipulate people by inducing a “state of fear”, but the basic info about the non-scientific, UNREASONING and unreasonable nature of global warming posturers is spot on, and worth injecting into the public consciousness.
I’d suggest that those who don’t particularly appreciate Crichton’s fiction style (count me as one, although he seems to have his moments of good writing in every book of his I’ve read) nevertheless read the book’s appendices and check out the bibliography. Some good reading in the biblio, much of it-or abstracts of some-available on the internet. You will have to do your own searches for the material, though, unless you have dead tree copies in your own library (like the Rachel Carson cover-to-cover lie, Silent Spring I have buried in a box) or a decent public or university library available… and there’s always interlibrary loan, you know.
Frankly, most folks won’t be bothered too much by the massive implausibilities in the plot and would enjoy the read… although most will also-sadly, cos they are surprisingly good; the best parts of the book, in fact-skip over the lil sermonettes on science vs. eco-voodoo.
Crichton does make the common mistake of many accolytes of materialistic positivism in believing scientific knowledge is the only real knowledge, but I can forgive him that blind spot for the service he does in describing in vernacular some of the differences between the voodoo that’s presented as scientific knowledge by the media, politicians *spit* and dumbasses in academia who are either just playing pseudo-scientific politics or regularly speak with assurance about things they know nothing about.
BTW, I missed noting Rachel Carson, arguably the biggest mass murderer in history via the influence of her lies, in my roundup of “Worst Americans” and only realized my faux pas when I saw her on someone else’s list. Can’t get ’em all…
Review reviewed at Stuck on Stupid, TMH’s Bacon Bits…
Confession’s good for the soul… and bad for the reputation.
So be it. 🙂
Anyone do new year resolutions? I haven’t for many years, because, well, after leaving youth behind several decades ago, it seemed to me that there was nothing special about a new year as opposed to a new day, new hour or new minute. At any time, any moment in my life, I can make a new decision based on either old or new information, newly viewed, understood, evaluated or re-evaluated, and set a course change. “So why a new year’s resolution?” I thought.
Nevertheless, I’ll go ahead and codify a “resolution” already being implemented and incrementally practiced.
You see, I have a schizoid kinda lifestyle. In my kitchen (and although my Wonder Woman is a fine cook, she ceded that ground to me years ago based on a balance of personal preferences, talent and abilities, scheduling flexibility (or lack thereof), etc. And in my kitchen I very much prefer to have a place for everything and everything in its place, just as my Wonder Woman prefers in the rest of her house (she is a librarian, after all). Not that I have achieved such perfection of organization in the kitchen (though woe be to he who places the black-handled whisk on the nearly-antique metal spoon’s hook near the stove! :-), nor, of course, is Wonder Woman’s home in the perfectly organized and managed state she would prefer. Let me note: that’s not her fault-I’ll explain that in a sec.
But my office and my storage areas are… a disaster. Jerry Pournelle likes to refer to his home office as “Chos Manor”. *Pfui!* In the creation and maintenance of chaos, Pournelle is a patzer compared to me.
🙂
But. (And here’s a large part of the explaination for the mess in Wonder Woman’s living room, right now.) I’ve recently boxed and labeled (and have intermediately staged on the way to a reorganized storage space) four boxes of references, archived data (CDR, floppy, packed hard drives, etc.), boxed labeled, inventoried, etc…. in the living room, along with four more large plastice tubs similarly treated. All taken from my office.
I have at least twice that much left to go, but it’s progress.
For the first time since we moved into this home more than ten years ago, there is as much free space in the garage as there is packed-away junk.
Of course, in the process of shaking out and sifting, even the kitchen is cluttered, now. *sigh*
And then there are the still uncompleted remodeling chores… that are nevertheless progressing.
New year’s resolutions? I don’t need any. All I need to do is make steady progress, day by day, a bit at a time, making my office and storage areas over into my image of my kitchen, as it were.
Yeh, when I finish the bookcase/storage/entertainment center wall in the living room, that’ll help. Probably seven or eight boxes of books (freeing up storage spaces)-properly re-catalogued (not just in my head) with discarded library management software and card catalogs. 🙂
That’ll help.
But I really need to weed my parts farm. Haven’t even inventoried my “printer parts” (discarded printers I intermittently raid for repair parts) in a year. And I know there are a couple collections of old 286 and even 8088/6 computer parts/cases/power supplies I probably should have dismantled for smaller parts years ago, discarding all the large, completely unusable junk. It’s on the schedule.
So, while I’m making a temporary mess (Yeh, kids, I know: it’s an awefully looooong “temporary” – heh) of much of the rest of the house, things are thinning down in my office, storage is getting better, etc.
But it’s gonna be a bumpy ride for a while.
Thankfully, Wonder Woman is joining in the fun and purging her home office space, too. So, even when we are working on these things in different rooms, we have semi-compatible projects going, and that’s an encouragement to me to continue. Even if it’s at a 10-pounds to 1-ounce ratio of my stuff to hers.
Of course, even when all this is finished, including some of the remodeling, I’ll have the storage shed to deal with…
heh
We have waaaaay too much stuff. (And, according to that ineffable law of the universe that creates extra coat hangers out of lost paperclips and inexplicably appearing computer parts from missing coat hangers, the more stuff we discard… the more we have! heh. Really. It’s true… 😉
Baring my soul at The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns.