Neanderpundit

Well, sure. Over at Vman’s place he’s talking about general blog suckage. And he’s absolutely right. The vast majority of blogs are like giant Electrolux vacuum cleaners, atop which perch feral cats. They suck at one end, blow at the other, and bite in the middle.We can’t all be Mark Twain. Hell, we can’t even all be Walter Mitty. Maybe ten blogs I read are substantively worth reading every single day, the rest I read because they amuse me. Vman’s blog has always been a source of some amusement simply because of the twisted humor, the strange links, the bizzarre turn of phrase. THe stories are good, the nembutol-induced dreams better. Myself, I don’t have any illusions. I write for the two people who come here every day by mistake and hope I make them smile once in a while, but I figure I have five good posts here, and all five were accidental or driven by unbridled rage. I appreciate it every time someone clicks through to here, and I like it when people comment. It’s like having an open conversation with friends, which is why I immediately ban all assholes. You wouldn’t let those people in your living room, I don’t want ’em on my blog.

So, yeah, Vman. You are spot on as usual. Don’t mean I don’t enjoy the hell out of your blog. And Tommy has something to say to you:

“Guys ask me, don’t I get burned out? How can you get burned out doing something you love? I ask you, have you ever got tired of kissing a pretty girl? ” Tommy LaSorda

Over at Moxie’s place, and here at Steve’s, there’s a couple fine folks referring to the likes of Moxie and Ann Althouse as the “axis of asshole”.

Now, I’ve been an asshole all of my life. I was born an asshole, and I have worked at it. And frankly, a lot of my friends are assholes. I was so objectionable that I was the only child my priest never tried to molest. I think, if THESE people are assholes, then frankly, I’m proud to be one. In fact, I have a logo I’d like to use, courtesy (in concept) of Kurt Vonnegut, the pacifist asshole himself. Let me know what you think!

Having struggled through the mind numbing over-the-topness of Ayn Rand, and jammed Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead into my skull, i can honestly say, this book is particularly refreshing and tasty.

Instead of fifty-seven page speeches by stony uberhumans who can prove what they’re saying merely by saying it, Crichton calls bullshit on the global-warming myth and has the cites and the resources to back up his claims. The book is classic Crichton, fast paced and dense with detail; the actual science is discussed in well written conversations by the characters, and those discussions are brief and devastating. Pitiably, in the book as in life, the moonbats are so immune to actual facts that they fail to see the stupidity of their positions until it kills some of them. Most gratifyingly, too, I might add. In one particular scene, a moonbat of superhuman stupidity goes on claiming there is and never was any such thing as cannibalisim right up to the moment he is eaten alive by his captors.

I reccomend this book for three reasons: One: the simple and concise logic used in the arguments. It’s amazing. Two: the cites used to prove the science. Most impressive- but then, Crichton has always been a man to do his homework- or get it done, properly. Three: there’s a simple phrase used in the book that people need to remember: any good science is done by, as Crichton says, “a true iterative process, externally assessed”. In other words, you try something, see if it works, and try something else to see if that works. And you don’t get to check your own work, because checking your own work by definition biases the results. It’s how industry has been doing it, right along, and it works, and works well. By the time you get to that phrase in the book, you will understand EXACTLY what it means. Now, go, read. Carefully read the end of the book, the author’s message, too. You need to hear that, to hear about marge Sanger, about eugenics, about some of the dirty laundry of the previous century; there’s some good information there that should be required reading in every classrom in America.