tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post879585652457373149..comments2024-02-12T23:25:09.583-08:00Comments on Overweening Generalist: The Drug Report: December 2013: Inhalants, From the Mundane to Outremichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-75691076649440374422014-12-28T11:31:04.241-08:002014-12-28T11:31:04.241-08:00Only a year later!
I associate the "fried oni...Only a year later!<br />I associate the "fried onions" quote with William James or Oliver Wendell Holmes, but with the smell of petroleum or turpentine.<br />For detailed discussion, check this out <a href="http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/03/31/turpentine-prevails/" rel="nofollow">here</a>Tobyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02741749822242029185noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-47648354186854325742014-01-05T01:50:08.173-08:002014-01-05T01:50:08.173-08:00I must have read the stuff that was "slightly...I must have read the stuff that was "slightly to the right of Genghis Khan," but I really regret slagging a writer that someone else liked; I had minimal contact with one of his books and I didn't like the guy, but I can't even name the book, so I probably shouldda kept the tempus tacendi idea going there.michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-72419514357230070402013-12-30T13:03:51.642-08:002013-12-30T13:03:51.642-08:00I don't recall anything Dr. Pournelle saying a...I don't recall anything Dr. Pournelle saying anything vaguely fascist. I remember him tearing apart the right left political model, and I think that helped prepare me for reading Bob Wilson. I just glanced at his Wikipedia page, and I can see where he called himself "slightly to the right of Genghis Khan." Since I saw him as a hero in high school, I may look at him through rose colored glasses, much as I do his friend Robert Heinlein, my biggest high school hero.Eric Wagnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04312033917401203598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-26172625559264014822013-12-27T14:52:18.211-08:002013-12-27T14:52:18.211-08:00This seems a good example of both Platt and myself...This seems a good example of both Platt and myself using "fascism" as a vague, floating signifier. Rather, I found Pournelle right wing authoritarian-ish, and too enamored of killingry. <br /><br />"Fascism" should be extensionalized, and just for starters:<br /><br />1. Mussolini's fascism? (extensionalize from there, starting between what was said and what was done?);<br /><br />2. Hungarian, Romanian, Spanish fascism.<br /><br />3. Pound's fascism and what he thought Mussolini was about (Pound unbearably naive?), vs. say, Santayana's assents.<br /><br />4. Some definition and how this Abstract Noun-epithet might fit, anywhere: corporations rule the State and pay little or no taxes. Labor unions/workers are squashed with extreme prejudice or harassed as freeloaders run by organized crime; politics is run like a morality play/entertainment, with the citizenry expected to only give a thumb's up or thumb's down every now and then, there's no real participation; dissent is met with imprisonment or torture or slander by the State or its apparatchiks; Bread and Circuses and Super Bowls and entertainments for everyone!...so they don't get involved in the Corporate State; a bellicose foreign policy and very high spending on the War Machine; a rigid class structure exists but it's not allowed to be talked about because the myth of the Corporate State is that anyone can become rich if they just work really hard, and the mouthpieces for the State invent stories about the weakest and most defenseless in the society being the cause of social ills, rather than those benefitting from the Corporate State. An extraordinary abuse of language becomes evident to a very few who take the time to machete through the haze.<br /><br />5.) Issues that, in some philosophies would have to do with real human freedom, creativity, open inquiry, public discussion, sex and love and work and health...are thickly over with a thick caste of mysticism, gobbledygook, patently bullshit anti-science ideas, fairy tales for grownups, Authoritarian patriarchical assumptions about "reality" and persecution or marginalization of anyone who tries to punch through this haze if idiocy.<br /><br />We can extensionalize from there, onward and outward. I have barely touched the surface of "Fascism." Pournelle struck me as the kind of guy who would have advocated for Reagan's "Star Wars" or the rapid militarization of space, so Murrka could kill efficiently anyone who got out of line...which I admit: comes from my interpretations of his signs. Others have read more of Pournelle and can give a finer-grained assessment than I.michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-20240003369419526372013-12-27T09:19:16.092-08:002013-12-27T09:19:16.092-08:00I loved Pournelle's writing in high school. I...I loved Pournelle's writing in high school. I have never had any sense of him as fascist. I loved his science column in Galaxy magazine.Eric Wagnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04312033917401203598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-46815004281825296452013-12-26T18:42:29.913-08:002013-12-26T18:42:29.913-08:00Anon-
I had a heavy local anasthetic when I had a...Anon-<br /><br />I had a heavy local anasthetic when I had all four wisdom teeth pulled at once. I was "out of it" and aware the orthodontist and his female assistant were having a rough time with one of the four. It was like, "Here, hold me steady while I put a foot up here for leverage..." But I didn't care. What an utterly odd state that was. <br /><br />Turns out I had one of those wisdom teeth that grow in sideways; later the ortho told me that's fairly common. <br /><br />I was going to include some stuff I'd researched on nanotech drugs, but the piece was already too long. <br /><br />You mention targetted inventions. This seems to be a way bigger deal, far more exciting than most people realize. Why? Because so far most of the breakthrough efficacious drugs that have stood the test of time were "happy accidents." I think most people think scientists said, "Hmmm...people are anxious. Let's make drugs that make them calm," and then they engineer something. It hasn't really worked like that. So far. But with logarithmic advances in knowledge about the neurobiology, it looks like They will be able to do targeted things with nano, genes, stem cells, etc. This could be HUGE.michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-37431387193895972092013-12-26T18:32:23.641-08:002013-12-26T18:32:23.641-08:00Eric-
I think RAW said his interview time with Pl...Eric-<br /><br />I think RAW said his interview time with Platt was not exactly friendly, and to me that comes across. <br /><br />I tried to read Pournelle once and found it quasi-fascist and couldn't finish it. I tried to enjoy reading someone whose views on fellow human beings seemed to differ so much from mine, but the prose wasn't good enough to warrant the effort.michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-18480052974480990002013-12-20T22:51:51.752-08:002013-12-20T22:51:51.752-08:00I'm glad to see science marching onwards to ma...I'm glad to see science marching onwards to make the kiddies new ways<br />to ruin themselves.<br /><br />Twas a pleasure to read. I'm still<br />pondering the Maggie KB article on<br />consciousness. I am glad that the<br />MDs are trying to avoid the alert<br />while under problem. Having had<br />far too much awareness during a<br />recent procedure. But you can't get<br />experience without experiences to<br />remember.<br /><br />My scurrilous taste in obscure<br />erotic literature should have had<br />a copy of Platt at some point but<br />alas I'll have to scare up a copy<br />now. Most of the vintage SF like<br />that was pretty tame stuff except<br />PJFarmers Blown. Jerry P was a<br />bit too narrow minded to make a<br />decent fascist but that didn't <br />stop him from being a pain to a<br />few better people. He's never made<br />the big time with an Elron award<br />for his fiction so there must be<br />some good in him.<br /><br />There seems to be a lot of effort<br />going into nanotech medical drug<br />transport these days, the idea of<br />targetted interventions seems to<br />be quite promising if it can be<br />made to work. It may turn out to<br />be as revolutionary as antibiotics<br />in the long run.<br /><br />I'm still digging into the blog<br />before this one, fascinating stuff.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-43873023138779396282013-12-19T18:14:10.241-08:002013-12-19T18:14:10.241-08:00Terrific piece. I did not find it a trial to read...Terrific piece. I did not find it a trial to read. I met Charles Platt and heard him speak at two World Science Fiction Conventions. Back in 1981 he wrote a piece calling Jerry Pournelle a fascist. Shortly thereafter at the WorldCon in Denver they both appeared on a panel on politics and SF, Jerry at the extreme right and Charles at the extreme left. I had read Pournelle's science column for years, and I found the panel very intertwining.Eric Wagnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04312033917401203598noreply@blogger.com