110)CLARKE'S FIRST LAW: If an elderly but distinguished scientist says something is possible he is almost certainly right, but if he says that it is impossible he is very probably wrong.
Arthur C. Clarke New Yorker magazine (9/9/69) [OM]
753)CLARKE'S SECOND LAW: The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
Arthur C. Clarke "Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination" in Profiles of the Future (1962; rev. 1973) posted by Deven Naniwadekar [UAQ] (4/23/95)
109)CLARKE'S THIRD LAW: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke "Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination" in Profiles of the Future (1962; rev. 1973)
Commentary and Variations
First Law
751) Perhaps the adjective 'elderly' requires definition. In physics, mathematics, and astronautics it means over thirty; in the other disciplines, senile decay is sometimes postponed to the forties. There are, of course, glorious exceptions; but as every researcher just out of college knows, scientists of over fifty are good for nothing but board meetings, and should at all costs be kept out of the laboratory!
Arthur C. Clarke comment on Clarke's First Law in "Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination" in Profiles of the Future (1962; rev. 1973) posted by Deven Naniwadekar [UAQ] (4/23/95)
752) When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervor and emotion - the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right.
Isaac Asimov comment on Clarke's First Law Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (c.1977) posted by Joachim Verhagen [UAQ] (4/24/95)
111) When an official declares something false, chances are that it is. When he or she says it is absolutely false, chances are it is true. [...] The overemphasis sticks out like Pinocchio's nose.
Jack Rosenthal "On Language: Frame of Mind" New York Times Magazine (9/21/94)
Third Law
647) Clarke's Third Law doesn't work in reverse. Given that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," it does not follow that "any magical claim that anybody may make at any time is indistinguishable from a technological advance that well come some time in the future." [...] [T]here have admittedly been occasions when authoritative, pontificating skeptics have come away with egg on their faces, even within their own lifetimes. But there have been a far greater number of occasions when magical claims have never been vindicated. An apparent magical claim might eventually turn out to be true. In any age there are so many magical claims that are, or could be, made. They can't all be true; many are mutually contradictory; and we have no reason to suppose that, simply by the act of sitting down and dreaming up a magical claim, we shall make it come true in some future technology. Some things that would surprise us today will come true in the future. But lots and lots of things that would surprise us today will not come true ever.
Richard Dawkins "Putting Away Childish Things" Skeptical Inquirer (Jan-Feb/95)
754) Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Gehm's Corollary to Clarke's Third Law posted by Deven Naniwadekar [UAQ] (4/23/95)
755) Any sufficiently retarded magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Gehm's Other Corollary to Clarke's Third Law posted by Deven Naniwadekar [UAQ] (4/23/95)
1402) Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from doubletalk.
George Alec Effinger SF-LIT mailing list (10/11/95)
1013) Any sufficiently advanced chaos is indistinguishable from Usenet.
"sig" (signature) of Andrew Hackard, seen on rec.arts.sf.written (6/10/95)
1057) Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
Kulawiec (attributed) posted by Kevin Harris [UAQ] (6/16/95)
1853)CLARKE'S LAW OF REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS: Every revolutionary idea – in science, politics, art, or whatever – seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases:
"It's completely impossible – don't waste my time";
[OM] - The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations (1991) [UAQ] - Usenet alt.quotations newsgroup
Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began). As of today, there are 562 days remaining in the administration of the worst President ever.
SurveyUSA has released a poll done quickly tonight [Monday], measuring public reaction to the Libby commutation. The results among those respondents familiar with the case:
60% say the prison sentence should have been left in place.
21% agree with the commutation.
17% say Libby should have been pardoned entirely.
Among respondents, 55% were familiar with the case. And 40% of Republicans said the prison sentence should have been kept in place, along with 77% of Democrats and 56% of independents. The margin of error was 3.4%.
[Thanks to Peggy]
People who are all wrapped up in politics, and full of outrage for the state of the country brought about by Bush and Cheney and the Republicans, will undoubtedly be upset that only 55% of people polled were familiar with the Libby case, but it doesn't much suprise me. I've been saying for many months now that the Libby case (and indeed the entire Plame scandal) is not the kind that catches the interest of the general public, which is why it was never going to be "bigger than OJ" (as some have claimed), would never "bring down the administration," and why any claim that the scandal "has legs" is not supported by the evidence.
But that's not what's important about it anyway, and whether Libby goes to jail or not is inconsequential in political terms (although, of course, if justice were the only concern he would).
It's true that the whole thing has done some damage to the administration, and for that we can be thankful, but the damage is not fatal, nor is it really significant. It's more that it serves to confirm opinions that people have formed because of the war in Iraq, Katrina, etc. rather than that it has opened any new wounds. It also helps to confirm what is becoming the new conventional wisdom in the press -- that the Bush administration is on its last legs. That in itself is not a bad thing, but the press can whipsaw back and forth pretty quickly, so I think it's more significant in that as long as the media is touting the administration's weakness, the Democratic party will be more emboldened, especially around the edges, and the coherence of the Republican party will continue to fray. Those are factors which can have significant impact.
I see the situation more as the drip, drip, drip of the so-called "chinese water toture", or the legendary straws added to the camel's load that eventually breaks his back. We shouldn't be looking for (or working towards) dramatic incidents, the big splash, but instead keep the water dripping and the straws coming, so that when the 2008 election rolls around, not only will be Bush administration be thoroughly discredited and tainted, but also the entire Republican party at the national level. Now that's a goal that not only possible to achieve, it's hard to see how we can avoid it -- unless we aim too high and screw things up royally, so that the backlash revitalizes them.
I think the Democratic leadership, at least, if not necessarily the energized rank-and-file, understands that, judging by the way they've behaved since taking over Congress.
Still, it's best not to do too much on the basis of the media's turning on Bush. In baseball, they say that a player is never as good as he appears when he's on a tear, or as bad as he appears when he's in a slump, and I suspect that this applies to the state of the Presidency as depicted in the press. I would remind everyone about the whole "The President is still relevant" flap during Clinton's second term, after the GOP had remarkable gains in a mid-term election. The press depicted Clinton as toast, and this was a factor in the emboldening of the GOP which led to the whole impeachment mess. In fact, Clinton wasn't toast — almost no President would be with the kind of power and influence invested in that position — and impeachment turned out to be overreaching for the Republicans. The public didn't like it, and didn't want it, and Clinton was saved from potential ignominy.
Perhaps we should learn from history and not make the same mistakes? The press is very down on Bush right now, but they'll get bored with that stance soon enough, and if the Dems give them any excuse to the media will pounce on them again.
Sure, pressure needs to keep being applied to the media to tell the truth, but it should come not from the center of Dem power structure, but from semi-independent operations like Media Matters, Move On and so forth. That's what turned the press to the right in the first place, continuing attacks on it from the right-wing fringe before the fringe became the center of Republican power, by which time the press was so gun-shy about being "liberal" that they compensated by moving to the right.
As opposed to the past, when reporters thought of themselves as standing in opposition to power, mainstream reporters these days seem to identify with those in power, and favor them. I don't think that's so much a matter of political ideology as it is a difference in the psycho-social status of the job of journalists. Once they were outsiders, people looked on as scum who were raising themselves up from the lower classes; now, they come from the innermost core of our society, the college-educated suburban middle class, and (to generalize wildly) they're comfortable with social hierarchy because they come from a pretty good spot within it. That means they're more like to identify with those in power (Dem or Republican) and those with power then they are to challenge them.
Democrats have got to keep that psychology in mind when they try to manipulate the media.
I note that currently Google News is showing articles on flooding in India and Pakistan, Nigeria, central and northwest China, Australia, the northern UK, and the Plains States here in the USA.
That's a fair amount of flooding, on five of the six inhabited continents. I'm not sure if it means anything, but it's interesting, at the very least -- and it also provides more proof that satire is getting harder and harder to differentiate from reality.
This month marks the 32nd anniversary of the release of Lee Reed's Metal Machine Music, the album that the immortal Lester Bangs called "The greatest album ever made."
I know that I keep my own copy of the original release LPs (it's a double album) in mint condition by very deliberately never, ever, playing it.
absolutist
aggresive
anti-Constitutional
anti-intellectual
arrogant
authoritarian
blame-placers
blameworthy
blinkered
buckpassers
calculating
class warriors
clueless
compassionless
con artists
conniving
conscienceless
conspiratorial
corrupt
craven
criminal
crooked
culpable
damaging
dangerous
deadly
debased
deceitful
delusional
despotic
destructive
devious
disconnected
dishonorable
dishonest
disingenuous
disrespectful
dogmatic
doomed
fanatical
fantasists
felonious
hateful
heinous
hostile to science
hypocritical
ideologues
ignorant
immoral
incompetent
indifferent
inflexible
insensitive
insincere
irrational
isolated
kleptocratic
lacking in empathy
lacking in public spirit
liars
mendacious
misleading
mistrustful
non-rational
not candid
not "reality-based"
not trustworthy
oblivious
oligarchic
opportunistic
out of control
pernicious
perverse
philistine
plutocratic
prevaricating
propagandists
rapacious
relentless
reprehensible
rigid
scandalous
schemers
selfish
secretive
shameless
sleazy
tricky
unAmerican
uncaring
uncivil
uncompromising
unconstitutional
undemocratic
unethical
unpopular
unprincipled
unrealistic
unreliable
unrepresentative
unscientific
unscrupulous
unsympathetic
venal
vile
virtueless
warmongers
wicked
without integrity
wrong-headed
Thanks to: Breeze, Chuck, Ivan Raikov, Kaiju, Kathy, Roger, Shirley, S.M. Dixon
recently seen
i've got a little list...
Elliott Abrams
Steven Abrams (Kansas BofE)
David Addington
Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson
Roger Ailes (FNC)
John Ashcroft
Bob Bennett
William Bennett
Joe Biden
John Bolton
Alan Bonsell (Dover BofE)
Pat Buchanan
Bill Buckingham (Dover BofE)
George W. Bush
Saxby Chambliss
Bruce Chapman (DI)
Dick Cheney
Lynne Cheney
Richard Cohen
The Coors Family
Ann Coulter
Michael Crichton
Lanny Davis
Tom DeLay
William A. Dembski
James Dobson
Leonard Downie (WaPo)
Dinesh D’Souza
Gregg Easterbrook
Jerry Falwell
Douglas Feith
Arthur Finkelstein
Bill Frist
George Gilder
Newt Gingrich
John Gibson (FNC)
Alberto Gonzalez
Rudolph Giuliani
Sean Hannity
Katherine Harris
Fred Hiatt (WaPo)
Christopher Hitchens
David Horowitz
Don Imus
James F. Inhofe
Jesse Jackson
Philip E. Johnson
Daryn Kagan
Joe Klein
Phil Kline
Ron Klink
William Kristol
Ken Lay
Joe Lieberman
Rush Limbaugh
Trent Lott
Frank Luntz
"American Fundamentalists"
by Joel Pelletier
(click on image for more info)
Chris Matthews
Mitch McConnell
Stephen C. Meyer (DI)
Judith Miller (ex-NYT)
Zell Miller
Tom Monaghan
Sun Myung Moon
Roy Moore
Dick Morris
Rupert Murdoch
Ralph Nader
John Negroponte
Grover Norquist
Robert Novak
Ted Olson
Elspeth Reeve (TNR)
Bill O'Reilly
Martin Peretz (TNR)
Richard Perle
Ramesh Ponnuru
Ralph Reed
Pat Robertson
Karl Rove
Tim Russert
Rick Santorum
Richard Mellon Scaife
Antonin Scalia
Joe Scarborough
Susan Schmidt (WaPo)
Bill Schneider
Al Sharpton
Ron Silver
John Solomon (WaPo)
Margaret Spellings
Kenneth Starr
Randall Terry
Clarence Thomas
Richard Thompson (TMLC)
Donald Trump
Richard Viguere
Donald Wildmon
Paul Wolfowitz
Bob Woodward (WaPo)
John Yoo
guest-blogging
All the fine sites I've
guest-blogged for:
Be sure to visit them all!!
recent listening
influences
John Adams
Laurie Anderson
Aphex Twin
Isaac Asimov
Fred Astaire
J.G. Ballard
The Beatles
Busby Berkeley
John Cage
"Catch-22"
Raymond Chandler
Arthur C. Clarke
Elvis Costello
Richard Dawkins
Daniel C. Dennett
Philip K. Dick
Kevin Drum
Brian Eno
Fela
Firesign Theatre
Eliot Gelwan
William Gibson
Philip Glass
David Gordon
Stephen Jay Gould
Dashiell Hammett
"The Harder They Come"
Robert Heinlein
Joseph Heller
Frank Herbert
Douglas Hofstadter
Bill James
Gene Kelly
Stanley Kubrick
Jefferson Airplane
Ursula K. LeGuin
The Marx Brothers
John McPhee
Harry Partch
Michael C. Penta
Monty Python
Orbital
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
"The Prisoner"
"The Red Shoes"
Steve Reich
Terry Riley
Oliver Sacks
Erik Satie
"Singin' in the Rain"
Stephen Sondheim
The Specials
Morton Subotnick
Talking Heads/David Byrne
Tangerine Dream
Hunter S. Thompson
J.R.R. Tolkien
"2001: A Space Odyssey"
Kurt Vonnegut
Yes
Bullshit, trolling, unthinking knee-jerk dogmatism and the drivel of idiots will be ruthlessly deleted and the posters banned.
Entertaining, interesting, intelligent, informed and informative comments will always be welcome, even when I disagree with them.
I am the sole judge of which of these qualities pertains.
E-mail
All e-mail received is subject to being published on unfutz without identifying names or addresses.
Corrections
I correct typos and other simple errors of grammar, syntax, style and presentation in my posts after the fact without necessarily posting notification of the change.
Substantive textual changes, especially reversals or major corrections, will be noted in an "Update" or a footnote.
Also, illustrations may be added to entries after their initial publication.
the story so far
unfutz: toiling in almost complete obscurity for almost 1500 days
If you read unfutz at least once a week, without fail, your teeth will be whiter and your love life more satisfying.
If you read it daily, I will come to your house, kiss you on the forehead, bathe your feet, and cook pancakes for you, with yummy syrup and everything.
(You might want to keep a watch on me, though, just to avoid the syrup ending up on your feet and the pancakes on your forehead.)
Finally, on a more mundane level, since I don't believe that anyone actually reads this stuff, I make this offer: I'll give five bucks to the first person who contacts me and asks for it -- and, believe me, right now five bucks might as well be five hundred, so this is no trivial offer.
This month marks the 32nd anniversary of the release of Lee Reed's 
