TIRED OF LOUSY WRITERS!

From: nenslo <nenslo@yahoox.com>
Date: Sat, Jun 5, 2004 11:21 PM

GOD DAMN IT. I have been looking and looking for something decent to
read that was written within the past few decades and what I find is
MOSTLY LOUSILY WRITTEN CRAP. I thought I would try something from
outside the usual genres and since Jim Lehrer of the PBS news has
written a dozen novels I figured he can't be too bad, so I got something
called No Certain Rest which is supposed to be a sort of archaeological
Civil War whodunnit, and what do I find but one of the worst types of
writing, Educating The Reader by having the characters LECTURE EACH
OTHER. Page after page of someone talking and talking punctuated by
descriptions of the other character LISTENING. So I tried a recent SF
book by some guy I already forgot the name of but he's allegedly a
Nebula Award winner, a book called Calculating God which was supposed to
be that numerous planets with intelligent life have identically timed
major extinction events in their history and it somehow proves the
universe's intelligent design and the existence of God, and I think I
would like a nice Dickian Ruckerian cosmic mindstretcher, and what do I
get? Alien comes to earth and LECTURES us. Page after page of the alien
TALKING, and not only that using the typical dumbass "intelligent
design" fallacies of "if gravity were an eentsy bit stronger there could
be no life, and the earth is in just exactly the right place for there
to be life, and if ice didn't float there could be no life, and if this
thing was two inches to the left there could be no life," which is to
say JUST MAKE UP AN IMAGINARY SITUATION THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN and say if it
did happen there could be no life THEREFORE IT'S ALL DONE ON PURPOSE TO
MAKE LIFE POSSIBLE. In short, a load of crap. I real quickly read
PKD's A Maze of Death, one of the premises of which is that deity does
exist and takes an active interest in the affairs of men on a daily
basis and he doesn't have people sitting around SAYING IT for page after
page, he just has it happening. This reminds me of the lousiest of
educational comics in my World's Worst Comics collection, in which
people are shown just walking or sitting around LECTURING EACH OTHER,
one of them so bad that at times it simply shows speech balloons full of
lecturing COMING OUT OF THE WINDOW of the room the people are in. So I
get this big fat book called A New Kind of Science by Steven Wolfram, a
HUGE book that appears to me to be an excellent catalogue of graphic
representations of simple programs like cellular automata and Turing
machines and that sort of thing, and the guy is educated at Eton, Oxford
and Caltech and got his Ph.D.. in theoretical physics at age 20 so I
figure he can't be totally dumb, and yet somehow he made it through
those institutions of learning without ever learning that words like AND
and BUT and SO and FOR and YET, when used as conjunctions, should NOT be
used to begin NINE OUT OF TEN SENTENCES. I wanted to read the book to
find out what it was. It got SO DAMN IRRITATING, I eventually settled
on reading only the captions of the illustrations which actually seems
to be working out. Even skimming the text from time to time I came to
see that ninety percent of it could be deleted, and when I thrust the
massive tome in Mrs. Nenslo's face, jabbing my finger at it and crying
MY GOD! LOOK AT THIS! HE EVEN STARTS A SENTENCE WITH "BUT SO
HOW..."!!!! she said well that's obviously the fault of the publisher,
and I looked to see who the dam publisher was, and it was WOLFRAM
HIMSELF, but I still can't believe that at no point did anyone ever say
look Steve, every time you say and and but here, that's just not
necessary and really only muddles it up. As I have been making my way
further I find that it is indeed a very very good compendium of what I
said above, graphic representations of various programs and mathematical
whatchamadiggies, but I greatly fear that all these hundreds and
hundreds of pages are heading for the conclusion that Complexity Results
From The Reiteration Of Simple Structures WHICH IF YOU EVER THOUGHT FOR
ONE SECOND ABOUT WHAT A COMPUTER PROGRAM REALLY IS, nothing but switch
on, switch off, THEN YOU ALREADY KNOW THAT. What the hell is going on
here. Like that one dumbass in another thread said, "The world is
LITERALLY coming apart at the seams." LITERALLY.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "nu-monet v6.0" <nothing@succeeds.com>

nenslo wrote:
>
> GOD DAMN IT. I have been looking and looking
> for something decent to read that was written
> within the past few decades and what I find is
> MOSTLY LOUSILY WRITTEN CRAP.

Ah, quit yer whinin' and read Carlos Castaneda.
If you make it through his first five books,
IN ORDER, you will become a demigod.

--
"Military intelligence is sifting
through the destruction..."
-- catchy quote from
The Washington Times

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: nenslo <nenslo@yahoox.com>

Is that what happened to you?

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: wbarwell <wbarwell@munnnged.mylinuxisp.com>

Boring stupid books.
But not as boring as "Linux Firewalls, Second Edition" by Robert Zeigler.
I haven't made it past Chapter One yet without falling asleep.

--
"I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun
in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to
Canada. So I chose to better myself and learn to fly airplanes."
- George W. Bush May 1984 to the Houston Chronicle

Cheerful Charlie

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Artemia Salina <y2k@sheayright.com>

wbarwell wrote:
> Boring stupid books.
> But not as boring as "Linux Firewalls, Second Edition" by Robert Zeigler.
> I haven't made it past Chapter One yet without falling asleep.

Yeah man! "Wastewater Management Processes Volume 1" Now THAT's boring.
The copious cartoons don't help either. If I never see Wastewater Willy
and Sam the Septic Clot again it'll be too soon.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: m <NOXwebmasterx@xmbstevensx.com>

nenslo wrote:
> GOD DAMN IT. I have been looking and looking for something decent to
> read that was written within the past few decades and what I find is
> MOSTLY LOUSILY WRITTEN CRAP.

Hep is ont thu way, bubbah. Just go to
http://www.dubyaspeak.com/

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "HdMrs. Salacia the Overseer" <SeventhSqueal@SlowOnTheUptake.edu>

Try Nightmare Abbey by Thomas? Love Peacock, Mr. Glowerpuss. It's a really
old gothic parody novelette, but the main character is all grumpy like you.
Plus, it features Mr. Listless and his indispensible valet.

I could use one of those.

~Salacia

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: nenslo <nenslo@yahoox.com>

Sweetheart, I got my copy of Nightmare Abbey / Crotchet Castle right
here. I'm looking for something I haven't read twice.

Try to outsmart me... you don't know who you're dealing with.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "HdMrs. Salacia the Overseer" <SeventhSqueal@SlowOnTheUptake.edu>

I hear those Harry Potter books are good.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: nenslo <nenslo@yahoox.com>

m wrote:
> nenslo wrote:
>
> > GOD DAMN IT. I have been looking and looking for something decent to
> > read that was written within the past few decades and what I find is
> > MOSTLY LOUSILY WRITTEN CRAP.
>
> Hep is ont thu way, bubbah. Just go to
> http://www.dubyaspeak.com/

When I heard him say reagan "had the humor that comes from wisdom" I
thought that guy's speechwriter seems to be developing a grudge against him.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: kdetal@aol.com (KD et al)

Nenslo wrote:
>GOD DAMN IT. I have been looking and looking for something decent to
>read that was written within the past few decades and what I find is
>MOSTLY LOUSILY WRITTEN CRAP.

<snip>

Page after page of the alien
>TALKING, and not only that using the typical dumbass "intelligent
>design" fallacies of "if gravity were an eentsy bit stronger there could
>be no life, and the earth is in just exactly the right place for there
>to be life, and if ice didn't float there could be no life, and if this
>thing was two inches to the left there could be no life," which is to
>say JUST MAKE UP AN IMAGINARY SITUATION THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN and say if it
>did happen there could be no life THEREFORE IT'S ALL DONE ON PURPOSE TO
>MAKE LIFE POSSIBLE. In short, a load of crap.

Attention-whore-arrogant-for-no-reason-except-for-pathetic-insecurity-usen
et-bastardess that I am, I must mention at the risk of delving into kookery
that it's actually the opposite of the above that is generally believed to be
true (as you probably already know). IE, the situation is random: circumstances
have come together a zillion times, and the fact that we are here with such
exact needs in order to exist theoretically proves that the circumstances
already came about zillions of times in other ways. Our little fluke is the
zillionth and first time.

I just started a sentence with "IE". Don't worry, I'll yell at myself.

I real quickly read
>PKD's A Maze of Death, one of the premises of which is that deity does
>exist and takes an active interest in the affairs of men on a daily
>basis and he doesn't have people sitting around SAYING IT for page after
>page, he just has it happening.

When all else fails, one can always rely on Dick.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Anachron" <nospam@noway.com>

> get this big fat book called A New Kind of Science by Steven Wolfram, a
> HUGE book that appears to me to be an excellent catalogue of graphic
> representations of simple programs like cellular automata and Turing
> machines and that sort of thing, and the guy is educated at Eton, Oxford

I bought Wolfram's book also. The premise is interesting but it doesn't make
for captivating reading does it? A
researcher friend of mine demoed Mathmatica which Wolfram originated and
then built in to a company that made him enough money to allow him to spend
years researching and writing AKOS. The program allows you to write
equations on the computer screen just as you would on a chalk board and then
it evaluates it. Frigging amazing. Bob is sadistic in the way he doles
out ability to human beings. Wofram must have been given the extra IQ points
from several hundred followers of W. We need people who can make science
entertaining and exciting to hold back the luddites and theocrats who would
love nothing better than a return to the middle ages. Hey I got it! Let's
tell the NeoCons that St. Pete hands out a science and logic test at the
pearly gates and you only get in if you pass. Maybe that's something they
can understand.

Wolfram's theory could help to explain evolution by reducing the need for a
sentient designer to get the process started. Simple rules can yield complex
behaviors. Look ma! No deity needed.

As for new reading - I bought "The Da Vinci Code" today. I've heard one too
many people talk about it the same way you would talk about an orgasm. I
got to gets me some of that.

--
Anachron

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "HdMrs. Salacia the Overseer" <SeventhSqueal@SlowOnTheUptake.edu>

Anachron wrote:
> As for new reading - I bought "The Da Vinci Code" today. I've heard one
too
> many people talk about it the same way you would talk about an orgasm. I
> got to gets me some of that.

Mini review: The Davinci Code is a banal piece of crap that will insult your
intelligence. Umberto Eco does it much, much better.

~Salacia

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: kdetal@aol.com (KD et al)

>Mini review: The Davinci Code is a banal piece of crap that will insult your
>intelligence. Umberto Eco does it much, much better.

Eco is interesting, if voluminous. Extremely intelligent and knows his shit.
But he's never been a fun read for me.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: nenslo <nenslo@yahoox.com>

Anachron wrote:
> > get this big fat book called A New Kind of Science by Steven Wolfram, a
> > HUGE book that appears to me to be an excellent catalogue of graphic
> > representations of simple programs like cellular automata and Turing
> > machines and that sort of thing, and the guy is educated at Eton, Oxford
>
> I bought Wolfram's book also. The premise is interesting but it doesn't make
> for captivating reading does it?

Well thank god I got it from the library. That's the only thing that
kept me from going through and crossing out every And, and But, and For,
and Yet, and So...

> We need people who can make science
> entertaining and exciting

Those people, wonderful though they may be, need EDITORS.

>
> Wolfram's theory could help to explain evolution by reducing the need for a
> sentient designer to get the process started. Simple rules can yield complex
> behaviors. Look ma! No deity needed.

I have a few books around here by folks I call "expansionists." It's a
variety of crankdom which takes a simple structure and reiterates it out
into the grand complexity of the universe. They always start out with a
different basic component, Athanasius Kircher's monochord, or the
enneagram for just two examples, and they always end up in the same
place. Which causes me to suspect that it continues to hold true that
you can make marks on paper mean just about anything, especially when
you get to symbolizing symbols of symbols of something which is
functionally infinite.

>
> As for new reading - I bought "The Da Vinci Code" today. I've heard one too
> many people talk about it the same way you would talk about an orgasm. I
> got to gets me some of that.

They're fun when they work for you. Mostly they just piss me off when I
spot the major flaw. I say, beware systems which apply a rational
system (like mathematics) to an irrational universe (like this one.)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Anachron" <nospam@noway.com>

I bought Wolfram's book also. The premise is interesting but it doesn't make
for captivating reading does it? A researcher friend of mine demoed
Mathmatica which Wolfram originated and then built in to a company that made
him enough money to allow him to spend years researching and write AKOS.
The program allows you to write equations on the computer screen just as you
would on a chalk board and then it evaluates it. Frigging amazing. Bob
is sadistic in the way he doles out ability to human beings. Wofram must
have been given the extra IQ points from several hundred followers of W.
We need people who can make science entertaining and exciting to hold back
the luddites and theocrats who would love nothing better than a return to
the middle ages. Hey I got it! Let's tell the NeoCons that St. Pete hands
out a science and logic test at the pearly gates and you only get in if you
pass. Maybe that's something they can understand.

Wolfram's theory could help to explain evolution by reducing the need for a
sentient designer to get the process started. Simple rules can yield complex
behaviors. Look ma! No deity needed.

As for new reading - I bought "The Da Vinci Code" today. I've heard one too
many people talk about it the same way you would talk about an orgasm. I
got to gets me some of that.

--
Anachron

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "fenian" <fenian@start.ca>

"KD et al" <kdetal@aol.com> wrote:
> that it's actually the opposite of the above that is generally believed to
be
> true (as you probably already know). IE, the situation is random:
circumstances
> have come together a zillion times, and the fact that we are here with
such
> exact needs in order to exist theoretically proves that the circumstances
> already came about zillions of times in other ways. Our little fluke is
the
> zillionth and first time.

Why did I come to exist only to learn that I'm going stop existing? Why did
I ever reach the state of knowing this? Why is it that I can see this place?
Why is the colour of the sky so perfect to me? Why is there one moon around
THIS planet? Why is it's apparent diameter almost the exactly the same as
the apparent diameter of the sun? Why does the earth moon system form a
basic diagram of the most basic atom? Why is the ratio of the radius to the
circumfence of a circle always 3.14? Why is the universe so fucking big? Why
don't we see life on other planets? Why don't we see evidence of it on even
Mars? Why is there only one species on this planet that can build flying
machines? Why did it take so long to figure out so many seemingly basic
physical principals, like gravity and lift? Why is energy so tricky to
harness? Why NOT a perpetual motion machine? Why don't we have a perfect
political system yet? Why do I doubt we ever will?

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Belanger <ready_TAKEOUTfight@hotmail.com>

GOD DAMN IT. I have been looking and looking for something decent to
read that was written within the past few days and what I find is
MOSTLY LOUSILY WRITTEN CRAP. I thought I would try something from the
day's talk.bizarre distro, but all I got was PAGES and PAGES of
UNFORMATTED RANTING. It seems some people cannot fathom the
intricacies of basic English, nay, WESTERN writing conventions and
must instead write TWO HUNDRED-LINE paragraphs about as LITTLE as
POSSIBLE and

Damn it, I'm out of steam already. How do you do it?

--
BELANGER

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: nenslo <nenslo@yahoox.com>

Belanger wrote:
> GOD DAMN IT. I have been looking and looking for something decent to
> read that was written within the past few days and what I find is
> MOSTLY LOUSILY WRITTEN CRAP. I thought I would try something from the
> day's talk.bizarre distro, but all I got was PAGES and PAGES of
> UNFORMATTED RANTING. It seems some people cannot fathom the
> intricacies of basic English, nay, WESTERN writing conventions and
> must instead write TWO HUNDRED-LINE paragraphs about as LITTLE as
> POSSIBLE and
>
> Damn it, I'm out of steam already. How do you do it?
>

Less brain, more hand.

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Original file name: TIRED OF LOUSY WRITERS!.txt - converted on Saturday, 25 September 2004, 02:05