[Novalug] Re: (more off topic)

[Moe]

I used to read SciFi about the "Brave New World" of very carefully 
regimented mediocrity -- just enough to do the routine crap-work of 
supporting the governing elite.  Noone really believed it plausible. 
Today, 22 years after Huxley's "1984", we have a government that 
"went to war with the army it had", and then, amazingly, got itself 
reelected.  The only problem with BNW is that it stopped short of 
current reality. 

Moe
-----------------
Dan Arico wrote:
> 
> On Sun December 3 2006 8:49 am, Alan McConnell wrote:
> > The following, for your amusement, is from the NYTimes.  There is
> > a slightly more serious note at the end.
> 
> I've been working on an article tangentially related to this. It seems to
> me that our educational/business systems are designed to recruit and
> train people to fit into already existing systems. The folks who run
> them aren't interested in people who are innovators except in small
> incremental changes.
> 
> So how do the real innovators, the ones who cause quantum changes in
> civilization, arise? It starts at a very early age when play edges over
> into new territory and young people begin to do things just to see what
> happens.
> 
> I got into chemistry in grade school when I discovered some science books
> in the school library. I started with the simple experiments I found
> there and moved into designing my own experiments. By the time I hit
> high school, I was into rockets and explosives. By the time I hit
> college, I already had years of experience in chemistry under my belt.
> 
> I have since discovered that almost all the real technological innovators
> got started the same way. Vint Cerf, for instance, built bombs and
> rockets in his garage. Today, we'd both probably have adjoining prison
> cells.
> 
> It's more than just a crackdown on anything construed as "terrorism",
> however. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is bad enough, but
> the more pernicious influence has come from the Consumer Products Safety
> Commission and the tort lawyers. They have "protected" us from harm to
> the point that it is impossible to buy a real chemistry set and any
> attempt by an amateur scientist to buy strong oxidizers or toxic
> chemicals is met by a forest of licensing and regulations.
> 
> Childhood and adolescence are being directed into channels that are
> taking the adventure out of life and insuring that the next generation
> of scientists will be dull plodders who never make an earth-shaking
> discovery.
> 
> Dan
> 
> --
> One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them,
> One OS to bring them all, and in the Darkness bind them,
> In the land of Redmond, where the Sales Reps lie.
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