Friedman v Dyson
I am astounded at the cheek of Thomas Friedman. For the first time, I saw him on Charlie Rose last month and I hardly imagined that anyone could blurt so many buzzwords per minute. But it isn't that his rehash of things many in our profession already understand (after all, we conceived and built the tools that are the infrastructure of the practices which. It's that he uses all of this in a half-assed attempt to slap around GW Bush. It's really pathetic that smart people use all of their powers in such trivializing ways.
I believe that you have to accept when people do the right things for the wrong reason, and it is in this spirit that I welcome the hype to be associated with Friedman's 'vision'. It was clear that he's doing what I've been doing in generating an ontology for things I observe to be true. But at best, all Friedman can do is guess where these concepts will lead, and in that regard, considering the depth of the thought of the people and institutions who generated the artifacts of his 'flatism', Friedman is wasting his prescriptions on Bush and gives up too easily.
I would like to point out one thing that I believe may be very influential in the short term and I hope gains favor here and elsewhere, and that is Dyson's Utopia.
Now you look at a mind like that of Freeman Dyson and you have someone who clearly can visualize the world in a novel way, but doesn't waste it all for political cookies.
Oil Storm
The Peak Oil meme has made it to Hollywood. Hopefully, it will give the Greens something more constructive to talk about than global warming. Please understand the extreme irony of the situation. It's got to be one way or another. Either we run out of fossil fuels in the next 50 years or not. If we run out, there's no way we can heat up the planet appreciably. So please spread the news of the dualism.
24 Moments
This week's episode of 24 was pretty decent. Finally somebody said 'torture' instead of interrogation and they managed to get some gay pimpslapping into it. I really am astounded, however, by the kneejerk associated with "the public's right to know" in the case of a disaster. Do people think a missile launch could go so undetected?
Recent Comments