(no subject)

[prog]

I wrote the Oil Drum people. Boy did it take a long time to find their email address... I'm not sure how I feel about the whole [at] [dot] address munging that I suppose is pretty ubiquitous across the Web now. I mean: you can do it if you like, but it probably reduces the number of people who would otherwise send you legitimate email. Well, if you can't be bothered to type in an email address, I guess you didn't have much to say, hm? Oh... don't get like that...

Anyway, "profgoose" (the blog is maintained by three anonymous university profs) wrote me back to agree that the LJ post's tone clashed with the Drum's, and now I see that the site's sidebar now has five primers, organized by "Defcon". The Wikipedia article I suggested is at the top, with 5, while the LJ post is rated 2, and two "learn to use a plow and stock up on ammunition" sites are Defcon 1. Whee!

It's LJ-syndicated at oildrum_feed.

---

I've been using gmail for about a week now. Yes indeed it does have tagging, and the spam filter is pretty good (one false positive (of a list-invite) and three or four false negatives out of several hundred hits, so far). I like the "conversation" views, too, which show my own emails in context with others'. It's more Usenetty. This is a good thing? Yes, it is. I wish more things were like Usenet. I wish LiveJournal was, actually.

---

I stumbled across the "Brights" website. Another candidate for the label I should affix to my worldview. I've known about this use of the word for a while (via randi.org), but I haven't encountered a collection of essays about it before. Interesting (but not surprising) to see some by thinkers I admire like Richard Dawkins and Daniel C. Dennett; I didn't know that they've been trying to seed the meme in NYT-level media.

I'm still not thrilled about the word, though. It seems to contain built-in smarter-than-thou arrogance, no matter what its proponents say. They compare it to "gay", but it's not like homosexuals were fighting a stereotype that they thought they were so much happier than everyone else. Confounding this, of course, is the fact that many "brights" probably do consider themselves the intellectual superior of non-"brights"... meh.

Comments

[cortezopossum.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, while the Wikipedia article on 'Peak Oil' isn't as alarmist as that LJ guy's the LJ guy seemed to explain the situation more clearly whereas Wikipedia danced around some issues and wasn't very concise.

[melskunk.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've found anyone interested in the term Brights to be the sort of people I tend to dislike, usually arrogant and dismisive. :/

[cortezopossum.livejournal.com]

I'm still not thrilled about the word, though. It seems to contain built-in smarter-than-thou arrogance, no matter what its proponents say.

There's some other group one of my old roommate's was into -- a kind of Ayn Rand libertarian derivative. They kept throwing about the word 'reason' and kept shoving it in people's faces thus implying that anyone not following their way of thinking was 'unreasonable'.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Concur with your feelings about the "Brights" label. They come across as all holier-than-thou, and while I happen to be in agreement with a lot of their ideals, I wouldn't want to associate myself with that attitude. They seem like a whole lotta other really bright people I've known who, when the slightest thing offends them, put on this whole, "Well, if you'd really written what I wrote, you'd have seen that I really meant /this/." I saw this in their response to some radio program (?) coverage that, well, apparently made them look like self-righteous arrogant dips.