Day: June 30, 2007

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Algore’s Chance to Make an Honest Man of Himself

WIll Algore rise to the occasion and embrace the standard he claims to champion in his book, titled with unintentional hilarity, The Assault on Reason? You know what I mean. When he declared,

“We must stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo-studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public’s ability to discern the truth.”

…he either meant it honestly… or he was using typical political doublespeak. Now is his opportunity to make an honest man out of himself in the face of mountains of evidence that contradict almost all of his sensationalist claims both in that book and in his disingenuous, “An Inconvenient Truth” (more properly titled, “Gore’s Convenient Lies”).

One of the best short outlines of a few of the, urm distortions of fact (speaking generously: a more accurate word might be “lies”) in Gore’s book/movie is found in the recent SunTimes article, “Alarmist global warming claims melt under scientific scrutiny”.

Sample:

…Gore claims that Himalayan glaciers are shrinking and global warming is to blame. Yet the September 2006 issue of the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate reported, “Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains, confounding global warming alarmists who recently claimed the glaciers were shrinking and that global warming was to blame.”

The article lists several more examples of false claims made by Algore and his anthropogenic global warming alarmist cronies, along with verifiable facts refuting the false claims.

Will Algore come clean? Will he “…stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo-studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public’s ability to discern the truth.”?

Not a snowball’s chance in hell, my friends. Facts mean nothing to slime like Algore, as his record amply demonstrates over and over and over again. No lie is too convenient to foist on a gullible public, no deception too blatant to be used to advance his convenient lies. After all, he had the best training possible for this sort of thing: a political father and his own political life. Lies are mother’s milk to this guy.

The only real question is not whether Algore and his cronies will own up to their deceptions and lies and distortions of fact and embrace their opportunity to “stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo-studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public’s ability to discern the truth.” No, the real question is how many sheeple will continue to eagerly swallow their poisonous spew?

Trackposted to Nuke’s news and views, The Virtuous Republic, , Dumb Ox Daily News, and CatSynth.com “catback” weekend, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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Milking Card

So, here I am milking an Orson Scott Card article for another post. OK, so the riff yesterday on F42 was just a bit of (well-earned) dissing, not such a much. But further on in the same article Card notes a couple more things that are more than worth commenting on. The first is something I’d heard about but not seen/heard. View the clips below, then my comments.

And…

The show’s the British talent show that American Idol is based on, but it’s apparently quite different to American Idol in that all sorts of talent, not simply pop singing, is welcome. Read Card’s comments on that aspect. As far as Potts’ talent, well, Card’s exactly spot on there as well. Yeh, it’s been about 40 years since my bachelor’s degree in voice, but I agree that while Potts’ singing quite likely was a “breath of fresh air,” as was said, that was probably due more to the quality of the music itself and the lack of quality in other performers’ offerings than to Potts’ presentation, which was good, but not as good as described by Simon Cowell and the other judges.

But please do not mistake me: I think the guy has a very, very good raw talent. I do believe the defects Card and some YouTube commenters note are more defects of training and experience than fault with Potts’ talent. I’d seriously like to see/hear what he could do with good training. I’ve listened to old recordings of Enrico Caruso and John McCormack that were of comparable recording quality to the streamed YouTube recordings, and Potts’ showed nearly as much voice as those two greats could in the low-quality recordings made of them, so I’m not too quick to write Potts off as not having the instrument required to make it in his chosen music venue. I sincerely hope he gets some good training to go with a very nice instrument.

But on another subject. I have been completely turned off by American Idol and other so-called “talent” shows because of the crappy performances overall, along with the crap “music” often featured. So I was, very much like Card, completely surprised when I absently CLICKED through “So You Think You Can Dance?” and… CLICED back to see what the heck was going on… and was HOOKED.

Everything Card says about the show is true in spades. I have NO formal dance training, NO real experience, and yet I’ve been called on to do simple (very, very simple) choreography of a few shows (yeh, and some of them were with grade school kids) and teach what little of “interpretive movement” *heh* I’ve picked up over the years.

This show has been a complete joy to watch, except for the fact that some completely brilliant, wonderful dancers/entertainers must be cut each week for the show to progress. This may be the ONE show I buy DVDs of. Seriously. (OK, I’d buy DVDs of the OLD Dr. Who episodes or the Jeremy Brett “Sherlock Holmes” but that’s about it). This is one of the very few shows I have seen that is really worth my time to SCHEDULE to see it. Of course, a couple of my very fav dancers were cut this week, but those who are left are (mostly) brilliant talents. (OK, one dancer I just do not understand. “Weird” is the word I think of when I see him move. Don’t get me wrong, though: I do like his dancing; I just don’t “get” it. And that is very weird. :-))

Check the show out, if you have not already. Sure, it’s in the final few weeks, now, but that means you’ll see only the good stuff (though, after the initial tryouts, pretty much all of it has been “the good stuff”–so very, very different to American Idol, et al.)

[Oh, and I simply forgot to add earlier… ]

Card ends the “Uncle Orson Reviews Everything” article with a change of pace: some wonderfully snarky observations about my two “favorite” *cough* OSes:

Running a machine that runs Windows is like buying a car – only it comes with a chauffeur, and he’s the only one allowed to drive your car, and he will only take you places he thinks you ought to go, and you have to sit in the seat he tells you to sit in, and he takes days off without any advance notice to you.

The only difference between Windows and Apple, by the way, is that Apple’s chauffeur takes fewer days off, but goes to even fewer destinations, and only one of the doors has a button. So don’t tell me how I should switch to Apple and all my problems will be solved.

*heh*

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, The Magical Rose Garden, The Random Yak, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, The Amboy Times, Cao’s Blog, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.