Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Imitation is the Sincerest Form XII
The name of this blog makes reference to an old dead white guy who lived a long time ago. Hundreds of years before the notion of the “flat earth” was toppled from the pedestal of orthodox science, indeed, hundreds of years before anyone anywhere had the balls to articulate any serious doubts about it, this fellow calculated the circumference of our spherical domain. He was a library administrator. We’ve named ourselves after him, not to capture the spirit of getting the answer right when everybody else is wrong — but as a reminder of what goes into doing that. Taking the initiative to figure out the facts for yourself. Coming up with solid opinions that are derived from those facts. Ignoring halfwits (like the guy who’s been popping in here all week even though he says we’re boring) who try to bully and intimidate you. People who attack your assertions not with logic, but by calling out the physical volume of those assertions, and the difference between those assertions and the egghead orthodoxy.
It turns out the egghead orthodoxy isn’t terribly useful. For thousands of years, when the egghead orthodoxy happens to be correct, it’s correct because it copied that which was proven to be correct, after it was advanced by some intellectual maverick somewhere. At which time, said maverick received a thorough beat-down from the egghead orthodoxy, up to & past the moment where reasonable doubt about the maverick’s idea, was permanently removed. Rather a craven, unoriginal, cowardly thing that egghead orthodoxy is. By definition, I would add.
We also name ourselves after this individual as a reminder of how much his kind of independent, critical thinking can accomplish. It’s a reminder that everything we have, we owe to him, and people who think the way he thought. Twenty-two centuries before man’s feet could leave the ground, the size of the globe was calculated by means of simple trigonometry. By a guy who looked down, into holes, not up into the sky. By a guy who wasn’t an astronomer, and as a philosopher, had no formal credentials, just an entirely informal education. By a library administrator. A guy whose nickname was “Beta” because he always came up second-best in everything he tried.
A lot of us don’t think on things the way this guy did just before he calculated the size of the earth. Instead, most of us think on things the way people do just before they achieve…nothing. This is a real problem. It impacts everything we do, and beyond everything we do, all those troublesome things that impact us, over which we have little or no control. This blog has said so on so many occasions, that were I to undertake to round up links, this would be a futile exercise in favoritism, tedium, overindulgence and redundancy. Suffice it to say the link-capture-exercise is, practically, useless. It would be more efficient to list the posts in my blog that do not make reference to this.
I do not know if Thomas Sowell reads my blog. I would suspect hardly anybody does. (Except, of course, for the forementioned halfwit who pops by every twelve hours to make sure we’re still boring.) But how, then, do you explain this gem which appeared this morning at Real Clear Politics.
One of the many failings of our educational system is that it sends out into the world people who cannot tell rhetoric from reality. They have learned no systematic way to analyze ideas, derive their implications and test those implications against hard facts.
“Peace” movements are among those who take advantage of this widespread inability to see beyond rhetoric to realities. Few people even seem interested in the actual track record of so-called “peace” movements — that is, whether such movements actually produce peace or war.
Take the Middle East. People are calling for a cease-fire in the interests of peace. But there have been more cease-fires in the Middle East than anywhere else. If cease-fires actually promoted peace, the Middle East would be the most peaceful region on the face of the earth instead of the most violent.
I’ve been robbed, but I’m not calling the police. I’m quite flattered.
Seriously, though, this is must-read stuff. Of course, columns by Dr. Sowell generally are. Go read.
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