Monthly Archives: September 2007

Things I Like #1–Terry Pratchett

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I spend a lot of time writing about things that get me fired up and irritated. This is the beginning of a series with which I write regularly (hopefully) about things I really like instead of just dwelling on the things I don’t like.

It’s taken me a while to figure out what I wanted to write about in this first installment of this series because I ought to start with something I really like. For this inaugural installment have decided to write about my favorite author, Terry Pratchett.

I’ve read over 30 books by Terry Pratchett and I’ve liked almost all of them. In fact, I really like a large number of them. Here are some examples of Pratchett’s wit:

  • “Build a man a fire, and he’ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.”
  • “In ancient times cats were worshiped as gods; they have not forgotten this.”
  • “And therefore education at the University mostly worked by the age-old method of putting a lot of young people in the vicinity of a lot of books and hoping that something would pass from one to the other, while the actual young people put themselves in the vicinity of inns and taverns for exactly the same reason.”
  • “In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.”
  • “They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it’s not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.”
  • “Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.”
  • “But of course, what the eagle does not realize is that it is participating in a very crude form of natural selection.
  • “One day a tortoise will learn how to fly.”

And here are some of my favorite Terry Pratchett books. Check him out. You will thank me.

Enjoy!

And by the way, he sells a lot of books. According to Wikipedia:

According to the Bookseller’s Pocket Yearbook from 2005, in 2003 Pratchett’s UK sales amounted to 3.4% of the fiction market by hardback sales and 3.8% by value, putting him in 2nd place behind J. K. Rowling (6% and 5.6% respectively), while in the paperback sales list Pratchett came 5th with 1.2% by sales and 1.3% by value (behind James Patterson (1.9% and 1.7%), Alexander McCall Smith, John Grisham and J. R. R. Tolkien). His sales in the UK alone are more than 2.5 million copies a year.

If you are going to exercise free speech, at least make a decent point

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The editorial board of Colorado State University’s newspaper wanted to make a point about free speech in light of the kid who got tasered at John Kerry’s recent speech in Florida. To make the point they wrote, “Taser this … Fuck Bush.” Because that argument implies that Bush somehow ordered the kid to be tasered, the Editor in Chief had to write an explanation. He wrote in part:

On Friday, September 21, the The Rocky Mountain Collegian editorial board printed a statement bashing President Bush in its Opinion section in an effort to highlight the importance of free speech on a college campus.

I’m sorry, but their argument is just stupid. There’s nothing wrong with criticizing the President. And you can use vulgar words to make a point. But at least make a point that makes sense. In this case, Bush had nothing to to with the tasering of the kid in Florida. The local cops did. It may come as a surprise to the editorial board of the Rocky Mountain Collegian that President Bush doesn’t make every single decision for every single police force in the US.

If the editorial board wanted to make a point that made sense (and I’m not endorsing that they take this course of action) they could have quoted a certain infamous NWA song.

Dan Rather Isn’t Very Smart

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Dan Rather recently filed a $70 million lawsuit against CBS which claims that CBS made him a “scapegoat” on the fraudulent story 60 Minutes ran about President Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard. Rather claims, “It’s not about the money,” but rather “it’s about getting to the truth.” The problem for Rather is that even when the truth stares him in the fact, he can’t see it.

During the election season in 2004,  Rather ran a story which was very critical of President Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard. During the story they showed documents which they claimed were from Bush’s commander. The problem is that the documents were obvious forgeries.

Charles Johnson, who runs the website, Little Green Footballs, thought that the document looked a little suspicious because it was supposed to be from  1973, but the typewriter had a superscript “th”. Johnson open his copy of Microsoft Word and composed the letter, using the defaults, Times New Roman font, single line spacing, 1.25 inch margins, etc.  And low and behold the document was a perfect match.  Here is an animated gif that shows the Word document and the alleged memo. Johnson’s Word document is here.

Rather claims that “The facts of the story were true. . . . No one has proved those documents were a forgery.” Rather has lost it. If he can’t see that the document is an obvious forgery, he isn’t a very bright guide.

The document was supposed to have been written on a typewriter in 1973. What are the odds than the default settings for Word produce the exact same document? In case Dan Rather is reading, the odds are zero.

All of Charles Johnson’s posts on the memo are here.

Floyd Landis Found Guilty

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I’m pretty bummed that Floyd Landis was found guilty 2-1 by the panel of arbitrators. They dismissed one of the tests that was orginally used to find evidence of doping, but relied on another, more complex test:

In his dissent, Campbell [one of the arbitrators] latched onto the T-E ratio test, among other things, as proof that the French lab [LNDD] couldn’t be trusted.

“Also, the T-E ratio test is acknowledged as a simple test to run. The IRMS test is universally acknowledged as a very complicated test to run, requiring much skill. If the LNDD couldn’t get the T-E ratio test right, how can a person have any confidence that LNDD got the much more complicated IRMS test correct?”

I find that argument pretty persuasive. How can the lab mess up the easy test and then somehow administer the more complex test correctly? No matter what the World Anti-Doping Agency says, this was no victory for them. It shows how error prone and shoddy their labs and tests are.

Watch Trust But Verify for a complete break-down of the decision.

Novelist Robert Jordan Has Passed

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Robert Jordon, the author if the Wheel of Time series died today according to his blog.

A while ago I read the first four books of the Wheel of Time series (he was working on the 12th when he died). I loved the first book, The Eye of the World, but the story petered in the next few books. It seems like Jordon fell in love with his world and forgot to tell the story he set out to tell in the first book. Jordan was a good writer who could have been great with a good editor to reign him in.

I wish is family the best.

We’ll Know Within the Week About the Floyd Landis Case

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Floyd Landis, originally uploaded by rky mtn srfr.

Trust But Verify points to this article from the LA Times that report that the hearing record for the Floyd Landis hearing is closed. This mean the arbitrators will issue a ruling by September 23.

I really hope that Floyd is found innocent. We named our dog Floyd and I don’t want be reminded of cheating every time I call my dog.