I'm with Stupid

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My week-long writing sabbatical actually lasted 6 hours. Good thing too - there's a thin line between a place being an isolated, calming and peaceful retreat, and it being so crushingly dull you want to take up cactus juggling just to have something more interesting to do.

The Isle of Weight is a long way past that line. There's poor rural parts, affluent urban parts, and gaudy nightspots, and they've all had the happiness and hope surgically removed.

It's like the mirror version of Stepford where all the real people have been replaced by robots incapable of emotion except vague simmering resentment.

Probably the ideal place to be inspired to write murder mysteries.

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Someone once defined writing as staring at a blank sheet of paper until your forehead starts to bleed. Odd how banging your head against a brick wall has exactly the same effect.

Speaking of which, I spent most of today tweaking, installing, deinstalling, reinstalling and testing various sound programs, trying to find out why none of them made any sound. Then finding by accident that on the master volume control, the "mute' box had somehow got ticked.

This is a bit like completely dismantling your television to find out why there's no picture - before noticing it wasn't plugged in.

Only it's slightly more annoying, because (1) I'm the man who fixes other people's computers and (2) I'm constantly telling them to check the obvious things first.

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My latest enthusiasm is OTR. Old Time Radio - a term describing surviving radio broadcasts of drama and comedy from c1920 to c1060, mostly from Britain and America.

I've been listening to such classics as Dragnet (a police procedural from, I think, before the term was invented), Johnny Dollar (wild western disguised as hardboiled gumshoe), Gunsmoke (hardboiled gumshoe disguised as wild western), Dimension X (great classic sci-fi) and Buck Rogers (unbelievably jaw droppingly buttock clenchingly awful sci-fi).

Them, plus "Abbot & Costello Meet Bela Lugosi".

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Can you forgive me for trawling Conservapedia again? I know I shouldn't, but there's something curiosly alluring about juvenile biblebashers trying to write authoritatively on subjects they don't understand.

They're so keen to show they're knowledgable about science and history like the proper experts they're trying to supplant. There's such an air of earnestness about it.

So, from another random walk through the garden of conservatrive wisdom...

Element:
All atoms that contain the same number of protons.

From Right-to-work laws:
Right-to-work laws prohibit requiring union membership of workers.

From Plankton:
Plankton consists of the tiny organisms that float in the water and drift with it. Not mentioned in the Bible.

From Money-supply rule:
Increasing the money supply at a faster rate causes inflation.

From Gulf War:
The United Nations commanded Saddam to leave Kuwait but he rejected the idea.



Some entries are factually correct, but somehow missing something. Like a second sentence.

Joseph Smith:
Joseph Smith founded the mormon church in 1830

Swahili:
A Bantu language widely spoken in East Africa.

Pacific ocean
Largest ocean in the world.

Pancho Villa:
Pancho Villa was one of the most important generals in the Mexican Revolution.



A few manage to be informative. Sort of:

Thigmotropism:
A growth response to the tooth

Tenochtitlan:
The capital of the Aztec empire, built on an island in Lake Texcoco.

From Constants:
1.000 calorie = 4.184 Joules

Hugh Capet:
Hugh Capet was the first of the Capetian kings.



And there are those that are the oppposite of informative:

Reconstruction:
Reconstruction is the act of rebuilding something after it has been damaged or destroyed.

Mahayana Buddhism:
Mahayana Buddhism is the Chinese branch of Buddhism, which focuses on a philosophical approach to life.

Lake:
A lake is a body of water surrounded entirely by land.

Katana
The weapon of choice for "Bushi". Is usually curved.



Then there are entries that are subtly wrong:

Isotopes
Two or more atoms that have the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons.

(It's actually two or more elements)

Eukaryotic cell
A cell with organelles

(It's true that, according to one system of nomenclature, eukaryotic cells have nuclei and internal compartments, while prokaryotes don't, but...

It's a little like defining a feudal society as one without factories.)

Mitosis:
The duplication of a cell's chromosomes to allow daughter cells to receive the exact genetic makeup of the parent cell.

(Alternatively, it's what we mean most of the time when we talk about cell division - one cell dividing into two genetically identical cells)

Ancient World
A general term which describes the world from the creation until the fall of Rome.

Subtraction Property of Equality
The Subtraction Property of Equality states: if a = b then a - c = b - c.

(Is this a precondition for numerical equality, or a consequence of it? It seems a little unclear.)

Pathogen
An organism that causes disease.



Not forgetting those that are unsubtly wrong:

Mutation:
A radical chemical change in one or more alleles of an organism.

From Musical Harmony:
Musical harmony was invented in the late 800s A.D....

From Storm Troopers:
The Storm Troopers were a fascist group in Germany during the time directly prior to World War II. They were also known as "Brownshirts".

From Karl Marx:
Karl Marx (1818-1883) founded communism by his book "The Communist Manifesto"...Communism prohibits a full right of private property and in its place attempts to force people to be equal in wealth.

Marx drew heavily on the ideas of the German philosopher Friedrich Engels.

Money:
A bartering tool, usually backed by some form of precious metal, that is perceived by others to have value and is used to acquire desired items

From Epic of Gilgamesh:
Written around 2500 BC, the tale takes place a few hundred years after Noah and the Great Flood.

(if the writer knew anything about the epic, he'd know the time setting is unknown, and the flood occurs halfway through the story.)

From Dinosaur:
Most scientists...claim the fossil evidence supports their beliefs. However, there are a number of lines of evidence that point to dinosaurs and man coexisting. For example, trained scientists have reported seeing a live dinosaur.

Adam:
...the first human being on the planet. The Lord made him out of His own image and loved him even after he disobeyed Him. His wife was named Eve.

Mutations had not yet begun to degrade the human genetic code from God's perfect Creation.



Oh well. I finish with the entire entry for Is democracy even possible in Iraq?
"Yes!!!"