Free Republic

These are public airwaves. They are owned by us, we the people.

Hey, can anyone tell me where I can go to sell my share of these? Since the internet, I don't really watch television or listen to the radio much, and I'm trying to liguidate some assets right now.

Hm... 30 mo's... during two "good" business years, I could exchange $120,000 for 30 mo's in jail. But my son would have the money. It might be a good trade.

That story was Harrison Bergeron. And you're right-- it's a good story.

I reserve most of my Vonnegut ire for Breastfast of Champions, a novel which can, in essence, be reduced to one sentence: "The writer stamped his foot, screamed 'life isn't fair!' and stomped off to his room to sulk."

Of the examples I listed here:

Player Piano: One of the most wrongheaded predictions on future society... ever. The premise was that automation puts almost everyone out of work. Again, this is a viable premise if you assume that all 'work' is handed out from a central point-- for instance, if the government needed a certain amount of workers, and found automation to do the job. Player Piano is a possible situation in a communist society, maybe, but it's a hopelessly off-base prediction for a free society and puts no faith in man.

Cat's Cradle: Here's a conundrum... a novel expressing both the knowledge that there is a God, and the oblique hopelessness that we are just chess pieces on his board. Though it's my favorite novel by Vonnegut, (well, maybe tied with Galapogos) it also demonstrates a totalitarian society as moral-- see the 'religious leader' versus the 'political leader' theme within. Again, a novel about man, with no hope or regard for man's finer points. It truly expresses the thoughts of a good philosopher who just doesn't meet any people, and bases his ideas about people on abstactions, not actuality.

That's funny.

My brother called me and told me some building collapsed, and it was on TV. Could I go on the internet and find out where it was?

Such a pity... I was a great admirer of Vonnegut in my liberal teenage years. However, the more I read his books, the more I began to view them as simply novel-length rants-- with Breakfast of Champions being exhibit A.

A few of his books, like Player Piano, Cat's Cradle and Galapagos raise interesting philosophical points, although something like Player Piano is certainly an obsolete philosophical point in the wake of the tech revolution in this country (there aren't fewer jobs with automation... there's more).

All in all, when a liberal writer like this makes 'predictions' he gets it wrong from the start. All the hellish 'utopias' predicted by liberal writers in the 60's come with a centralized 'overseer' running it. Writing about this, you'd think they'd be against a centralized state, especially when viewing how all their predictions for the 'bad' future come true on the causative end, but bear fruit on the effects end simply because the wide scope of American experience and ingenuity can make a buck off anything.

In some science fiction stories by Fred Saberhagen, "Goodlife" were human beings who willingly helped the artificial intelligence machines that were attacking men.

I'm a computer programmer and lover of gadgets, thus....

Not enough lumps.

United States, Europe and Japan share part of the blame for the poor performance. In other news, water to blame for wetness.

Bumping myself

Can anyone contribute other incorrect "predictions" that were made about the war? "Quagmire" is the obvious front runner, as well as "They will unleash terrorist hell on U.S. cities."

I'm looking for more obscure predictions that have turned out to be obviously wrong. Thanks!

Anyone know a place where you can get these online? Stores around here don't have 'em.

This makes me rethink the decision to declassify homosexuality as a mental illness.

There's two many indicators that ride along with homosexuality. Maybe gayness in itself is simply a symptom.

Meanwhile Ontario has a state of emergency.

Ontario has to declare a state of emergency because their health services are state run, and they can expect a serious lag in reaction time and efficiency for whatever is going to be done.

They didn't die, but I don't know about recovery. Evidently it simply wasn't severe enough to warrant hospitalization.

Well, don't know the actual numbers, but I know that the two cases in Michigan weren't even admitted to the hospital.

Some specifics on this would be nice.

Hey Bones, you seem pretty rational and out of the "it's UNKNOWN! UNKNOWN! UKNOWN MEANS DEADLY!" loop.

I'm curious what you think ... there have been a lot of "mystery flu" deaths in a couple states this year-- always in clusters. The cases specific to my state were some kids on the west side of Michigan.

There's also been a lot of flu going around this year-- it's the first year I got flu since I was a teenager-- and everyone in my extended family got it, that's never happened before. Since this broke in November last year, d'ya think it's already here and about, and the only reason we're seeing "so many" cases is because we know what to look for now, and it's not just getting dismissed as "a bad flu?"

I have read and have participated in many of those threads.

The sensationalism on them is almost breathtaking. The worst thing about this disease-- the thing that has the WHO and CDC up in arms, is that they haven't identified it yet. That's their red flag, not the transmission rate, not the death rate.

Again, I reiterate my points:

o This is a disease that started in China, November last year. During that time, in CHINA, it has infected 800, and killed 34. Agreed, the numbers are most likely very underreported... but a tenfold increase in those numbers, in CHINA, would still indicate a minor transmission rate.

o Most of the U.S. cases haven't even been hospitalized, and several have recovered. The two cases in Kent County, Michigan, for instance, stayed at home and got better.

o Chances are excellent that this isn't even a new disease in the U.S.-- new meaning the last month. All this year there have been reports of clusters of people dying from mysterious Flu-Pneumonia illnesses. The CDC was even dispatched to western Michigan because a suspiciously high number of kids died of the flu earlier this year.

o Toronto is the third-world disease center of the west. It was also Toronto that had the only western world case of Ebola. Look for ANYTHING to be worse in Toronto than anywhere else.

o Even going with just the last two weeks of data... we have a disease that, in the teeming crowd that is Hong Kong, has spread to less than a thousand people. What's the population over there? The people are crammed six deep.


Again, the red flag on this disease is that we don't know what it is. Once they identify it, look for it to drop right out of the news, vaccine or no vaccine. This is journalistic Milking the Mystery.

I come to this determination after a couple days of being utterly terrified. I'm only four hours from Toronto, and for a few days I postponed a doctor's appointment, and visits from relatives, just in case it was going to spread like wildfire. You're talking to a guy who has gone through the paranoia and come out the other side.

I notice Saddam and Uday have already signed on.

It's not 3,000 infected. It's 3,000 possible exposed. As in, around 3,000 people may have visisted the hospital in question during that time period.

Currently, there are about 1,500 confirmed cases worldwide, MOST of them in China, and most of the rest in Asia. At this moment, all U.S. cases are arrivals from that part of the world.

In the case of the two cases in Michigan, the people weren't even sick enough to be hospitalized.