Saturday, January 16, 2010
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Fabulous photo with this article, awash with iridescent, synaesthetic swirls of chromatic sound.
ReplyDeleteIt has to be said that the lad has kicked around a bit, heavyweight multitasker, can he fly the Concorde? ah well, does have his limitations after all.
ReplyDeleteAmazing how many people who were in at the start of stuff eventually turn and bite, Bobby Oppenheimer etc.
Thing is though, the Internet ain't like being locked in a dungeon full of screaming nutters, the placky box that it emanates from has a thing called an on/off switch.
Or the plug on the wall.
Linux, clunky? hmmmm.
Exactly what I was thinking, Malty.
ReplyDeleteCurious thing, "cyber-bullying." Victims seem to forget that each of the acts required of them - turning on PC, logging into chatroom/blog, creating an identity, reading insults - is optional.
I don't know, Brit/malty, that sounds too much like the fellow whose all-purpose answer to TV is to just turn it off. To tell a modern young person to shun the Net is like telling them to avoid any social life and stay home and read the Bible instead.
ReplyDeleteI remember from my early blogging days how devastating an attack from someone with a handle like "crazybiker476" (or even more chilling, "anonymous") could feel, even if we weren't even talking about anything personal. And I, of course, was mature beyond my many years and bursting with self-esteem. I think the Net and blogosphere have a grip on peoples' minds in ways we are just beginning to understand, and many of them aren't pretty.
Bryan: Turbocharged Darwinism? What a wonderful, wonderful term. Is it copywrited or may I use it shamelessly as my own?
That should read "sexualized TV"
ReplyDeleteYes, Peter - I didn't mean that comment in a sneery tone, as in "just turn it off you idiots", I meant it really is a curious thing that people forget they can turn it off, or create a new identity, or start again at a different site. These social networking things have a strange ensnaring quality.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Jaron Lanier. Perfect examples of his "Hive mind" can be found at Pharyngula, Panda's Thumb, After The Bar Closes and richarddawkins.net. There one can find the dregs of humanity gathered around their heroes, Paul Zachary Myers, Wesley Elsberry and Richard Dawkins, incendiary atheists all. Anonymity should never have been encouraged, let alone allowed. Those intellectual cesspools contribute nothing of value and should be treated publicly with the utmost contempt.
ReplyDeleteWell, what a coincidence. I confess I've not been following Bryan's postings or articles for a little while. Nothing personal. But tracking the latest on Climategate has taken up the time I'd might have spent elsewhere I guess.
ReplyDeleteHowever as part of that process I just spotted World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown in the Sunday Times and thought "We talked about glaciers on Thoughts Experiments some time back. Who was I chatting to about that?" Ah yes, a certain John A. Davison. Didn't expect to see you so soon John. But I think we can agree it's official now: not all glaciers are in retreat.
Generally, of course, they have been, going way back to the end of ice ages past. But the arrogance and sloppiness of the IPCC (a particularly bad combination when trillions are at stake) is beginning to be spotlighted even by Bryan's august newspaper, as well as mad denialists (and The Guardian) more than two months before.
Not asking the sprogs to cut their umbilical cord Peter, just telling the person who has stuck their hand in the fire that they can, if desired, remove it.
ReplyDeleteRE turning off the TV, it's called freedom of choice.
I no longer respond to anonymous comments. A person who is unwilling to sign his full name to his words does not exist in my world either here or anywhere else. That is exactly the complaint that Jaron Lanier has registered and is the primary thrust of this thread. Internet blogs are all too often little more than therapy for the disadvantaged and the unqualified.
ReplyDeletejadavison.wordpress.com
http://jadavison.wordpress.com/2008/01/23/why-banishment/#comment-2583
ReplyDelete#699
In this link I reveal both Wikipedia and Google as examples of what Jaron Lanier calls the "hive mind." Both venues swim in the same Olympic cesspool with Christopher Hitchens, Paul Zachary Myers and Clinton Richard Dawkins, atheist Darwinian mystics all.
jadavison.wordpress.com
John A. Davison is misinformed, and pushing misinformation. I am not an atheist. I am a member of the United Methodist Church. This information has not been concealed, and while I can't immediately show that it has been brought directly to Davison's attention, I rather suspect it has come up more than once before now.
ReplyDeleteAs for what one finds useful online, "De gustibus non est disputandum".
My personal viewpoint is that the "intelligent design" creationism movement is a socio-political attempt to rubbish science education, and is bad theology to boot.
Non-anonymously yours,
Wesley R. Elsberry
http://austringer.net/wp/
Dear Wesley Elsbrry
ReplyDeleteI did not say you were an atheist even though being a Darwinian, which you most certainly must be, leaves little room for a personal God. Incidentally, you banished me from Panda's Thumb long ago, just as I have been banished from Pharyngula and richarddawkins.net and for the same reasons. I have challenged the Darwinian hoax and even offered an alternative hypothesis.
And please do not attempt to identify me with the "Intelligent Design" movement as I have been banished (4 times)from Uncommon Descent as well. I accept a designed universe as a given upon which all science firmly rests. I have no more respect for the "Fundies" than for the "Darwimps" like yourself.
If you are going to harangue me, wouldn't it be more appropriate to do it on my weblog or yours? You know you are welcome on mine. Why am I not welcome on yours?
I am sorry about this Bryan but I feel compelled to respond.
jadavison.wordpress.com
I am sorry Wesley R. Elsberry but Professor Davison is correct in his assessment of you.
ReplyDeleteIf you were indeed a Christian man you wouldn't be so set on suporting a world wide atheist movement.
The fact is that Darwinism is a "future" science its gaps filled with expectations, "HOPE", rather than provable, repeatable experimentation.
Professor Davison has exposed you and Myers, so deal with it. If you weren't such cowards you would face him in a debate. But you would rather character assassinate and hide like scared rabbits.
Correction.
ReplyDeleteNeither I nor my sources would dream of "debate." Scientists don't debate. They prefer to confront their adversaries and enlighten receptive minds of which there have always been precious few. We several critics of the Darwinian hoax have not been allowed to exist in the literature of the "evolutionary establishment," a "hive mentality" still extant in the last surviving bastions of Darwinian mysticsm - Panda's Thumb, After The Bar Closes, Pharyngula and richarddawkins.net.
"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions."
Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, page 28.
"Science commits suicide when she adopts a creed."
Thomas Henry Huxley
Slow perhaps, but certain!
jadavison.wordpress.com
I can confirm that Dr Davison was informed by an email some time ago from me which he acknowledged that Dr Elsberry is an active member of the United Methodist Church. As John is over 80, he can perhaps be forgiven for forgetting!
ReplyDeleteWhat was the phrase that got you banned at Pandas Thumb, John? Something about Nazi tactics and gas chambers, wasn't it?
Elsberry better not let Dawkins know that he is a Christian. Remember what Dawkins did to Ken Miller, another religious Darwinian?
ReplyDeleteI see that Alan Fox has surfaced. Alan is a great admirer of Richard Dawkins and a one man goon squad for the Myers/Dawkins/Elsberry triumvirate, the perfect demonstration of Jaron Lanier's "hive mentality."
I doesn't get any better than this.
Ooooooh, how sweet it is!
Jackie Gleason
Alan you can't have it both ways. There are many poeple who are part of a churh but are they Christian? The answer if no. I see over on Wesley R. Elsberry no sign of chritianity just the opposite. Your deeds will betray you it says in the Bible and his has. Also you can't serve two masters. There fore as I said I satnd at my original statement. You can't have a religious faith in both Darwin and Christianity.
ReplyDeleteExodus 20:3 (KJV)
“ Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/05/davisons-soapbo.html#comment-panels
ReplyDeleteThe above link chronicles my last days at Wesley Elsberry's "Panda's Thumb" and his "inner sanctum," "After The Bar Closes." I will let others judge that history. I hope they enjoy it as much as I did and still do!
jadavison.wordpress.com
This is weird.
ReplyDeleteThat a fruitcake like JAD agrees with Lanier says a lot about Lanier.
ReplyDeleteIt is revealing that only anonymous cowards find the courage to insult those who use their real names.
ReplyDeleteIsn't it revealing that it is invariably an anonymous coward that must stoop to such language? Anonymity is the enemy of rational exchange and always heen. Imagine a decent literature on any subject that could thrive on what has become commonplace on internet blogs and so called "forums." Anonymity is nothing more than autotherapy for degenerate wannabes who never contributed anything of value to society in their entire empty pathetic lives.
ReplyDelete