March 2004 Archives

Ego blogging again! I put my name into Feedster to check how my RSS feed looks from the other side. Honest. One of the feeds that came up was a "Search Poem by Ivy Alvarez called Pauline Hansen"

In May 1997, the Sydney Futurian Science Fiction Society met, and
as a tiny part of the meeting we discussed One Nation party "leader" Pauline Hansen's book. I wrote up the meeting, Ivy's search engine found it, and thus I had the honour of being included in her poem.

The meeting included discussions of stories in which the themes of
"Orientals in science fiction", "Confucian societies in science fiction", "North America invaded by the Yellow Hoardes", and "Australia invaded by the Yellow Peril" were explored.

This is a kill or cure for paranoiacs, with an embarrassment of riches of conspiracies - complete with detailed evidence which is easily referenced. The mout outrageous and silly conspiracies are true (the Principia Discordia quotes are real), and some of the more believeable stuff is false. Wilson and Shea call it "guerilla ontology". Some people may find the viewpoint character changing so often to be distracting, but I enjoyed it as part of the trip. Its very seventies hippy culture, and very funny and perceptive. Its mind-blowing to realize it was written before Watergate and the Nixon insanities were publically known.

An Introduction to Critical Thinking: How to: Win an Argument, Defend a Case, Recognize a Fallacy, See Through a Deception

A witty and entertaining tutorial on the art of informal logic. He shows you how to recognize when logic is being abused, by teaching you how to win arguments by abusing the rules of informal logic. So you learn the rules by being taught to cheat!

You are introduced to all of the logical fallacies you may have felt were wrong, but previously never had a name for, and then how they can unfairly be used to win arguments. This way you learn how to conduct fair arguments and to avoid the fallacies yourself. Every high school student and undergrad should be given a copy to study, certainly everyone who has ever been in an argument.

Image via Wikipedia

Longevity ego blogged across the decades! In 1985 I wrote this following essay on longevity and anti-ageing science for my first year biology course. In 1994 I updated it with new telomere information and posted it on my website and had it published in "The Sydney Futurian", the newsletter of the Sydney Futurian Science Fiction Society
Today I did an RSS search on anti-ageing medicine and found Anti-Aging Medicine & Science Blog , and lo and behold, they have "my article on longevity linked from a Futurian mirror site as one of their references!
The "Plausible Futures Newsletter"focus on large scale social change and the implications of emerging technologies on the world system." Their lens looks to the Futurian mirror of my article, too.

This is enough to persuade me that I should be paid to write.

The least I can do is blog this.

Dr Jay Goldstein of the Chronic Fatigue Sydrome Institute has finally released his new book on how to treat the illness.