Daryn Kagan tells me that I made my coffee and got dressed just in time to hear George Bush speak on renewable energy! KEWL! How are you today? (And now, 20 minutes later, Amy’s on. One must switch channels when, as Wilderness Wench calls him, the Little Prince is on.) This is one of Amy’s headlines today:
Is Sci-Fi Writer Michael Crichton Advising Bush on Global Warming?
Questions are being raised in Washington if science fiction writer Michael Crichton may be advising President Bush on global warming. A new book reveals Bush met with Crichton in 2004 to discuss his best-selling novel “State of Fear” which suggests that global warming is an unproven theory and an overstated threat. The meeting is recalled in a new book by Weekly Standard editor and Fox News commentator Fred Barnes. According to Barnes, Bush is ”a dissenter on the theory of global warming” and that he was in near total agreement with Crichton. Barnes added that Crichton’s visit “was not made public for fear of outraging environmentalists.” While Crichton’s novel is a work of science fiction, he was recently awarded a journalism award – by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. [COUGH!]
Fred Barnes is an interesting one. I caught him on Timmeh Russett’s CNBC program a couple weeks ago, and I heard him state firmly that waterboarding is not torture. I like people who can make such clear decisions. However, I believe Mr. Barnes might benefit from firsthand experience and thereafter, perhaps, review his opinion.
I think the world is coming to an end but I’m not sure what day.
Did you hear Alito’s bench is jumping right on the choice issue?
Feelin’ quite fine, susanhu — & I plan to keep it that way by avoiding the sound of The Little Prince shoveling his bullcrap. It’s simply a waste of good oxygen.
Amy’s show is just starting on LINK TV … switched in the nick of time!
What must it be like for George Bush to live in a world where he never once contemplates the effects of his policies on those in RubDMC’s diarise/
I s’pose George’s World seems utterly perfect to him; I’m sure he’s never seen beyond it.
It’s almost — but not quite — pitiful.
Everytime I see her I think about her and Rush Limbaugh. What a funny picture, the fat one and the thin one. Who is on first” She hasn’t been on much since that story about their dating broke a few months back. Are they still a couple?
(OT)Not to Whine, But….I can’t send email or post on Booman. I return to the mainland late Thursday. This is my message in a bottle.
You just did! Oh, do you mean you can’t post a story?
I told you to send me your password + whatever you want me to ghost-post for you. (Then watch me forget to log out as you.)
Looks like the comment posted, so I will try and post a story. It will be in the fridge, until you want it.
I just tried but I can’t post here, but the comments work. Can’t email you but my password is that “hot” word I sent you.
Is this the new perky SusanHu?
Top of the morning to you from across the strait of Juan de Fuca. It’s a little too frosty for me with all my seeds and seedlings waiting.
So sorry I missed the ace-environmentalist GWB giving advice on renewable energy. <guffaw>
Hello! Let’s do have tea today.
my dear Susan, meet you there.
(and we will walk over the The James Bay Tea Room.)
tried to post this on seattlefordean but couldn’t. I’m outta here!
Well, I suppose that Bush has spent enough time with the author of My Pet Goat.
I get the impression that Bush’s approach to renewable energy is basically this: Nice idea, if it ever pays off.
But it just wouldn’t be fair to require anyone (ie, corporate industry, who, after all, have stockholders to answer to) to finance extensive research into such energy sources until they can be proven profitable — and why bother, when oil is so cheap and plentiful? But if any company wants to take on the risk of such research on their own, well, more power to ’em. Maybe someday it’ll actually make some money, you never know….
Bush runs the country like he acquired it in a hostile corporate takeover…. get as much short-term profit from it as you can, plunder its resources, dump it when it starts to fail. All that matters is next quarter’s dividends, after all… that’s as far into the future as anyone needs to be concerned about.
What makes it even worse is that he and his handlers used to brag about him being “the CEO President” … despite the fact that he was an incompetent corporate exec before he was an incompetent politician. Bad enough that he and his cronies are plundering the country, but it adds insult to injury that they’re doing such a clumsy job of it.
I mean, if I decided to become a crook, I like to think that I’d try to be a good one.
is such a perfect look into the withered brains of the corporate “intellectuals” for hire. Global warming is just a theory. Evolution is just a theory. It’s just a theory that sending your 2-year-old off to toddle across the freeway will make bad things happen. I suggest these hirelings try out the latter theory for themselves and see what happens.
Bush: the alternative energy president, from the
Illustrated Daily Scribble…highly recommended.
Peace
If true, this explains… Quite a lot. Crichton isn’t just a science fiction writer, he’s a bad science fiction writer.
Worse than that, he’s a bad writer who writes bad science fantasy and pretends that it’s science fiction.
(“Science fantasy” is a term for fantasy with tech trappings. The “Star Wars” milieu is probably the most famous example. There’s nothing wrong with that sort of thing, when it’s done well and the pseudo-science isn’t taken seriously. But Crichton does it badly, and evidently does take his pseudo-science seriously, or pretends to.)
how Crichton got rich by peddling nonsensical fear-mongering entertainments, and now gets all pissy at real scientists exposing a real threat. Can’t take the competition?
I wonder if it’s an act. He’s always been a hack; if sales on his books have been falling, he may have decided to cash in on the corporate-sponsored “controversy” about climate change.
It’s not even really science fantasy. Star Wars is science fantasy because the science is really just there as a background for the characters. It’s no more about science than the Illiad is about battle tactics.
Crichton’s stuff is about the science, but it’s the wrong science.
Back, in the good ol’ days, when Tom Snyder’s talk show was on at 1 a.m., he’d often have Harlan Ellison on.
Harlan Ellison detested the term science fiction. Wouldn’t even let Tom say the term.
But I cant’ remember why. Oh, I wish Tom were still on. His interviews were priceless, many of them.
The revelation that Crichton met with Bush is not in the least bit surprising, considering the circles the author has been traveling in lately.
In January 2005, Crichton was a principal speaker on environmental issues before the American Enterprise Institute, as noted in this profile by the National Audubon Society.
Far more disturbing than that, however, was his appearance last September before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. On its face, Crichton’s remarks don’t seem to be too inflammatory, but the folks over at RealClimate.org took rather strong exception to his appearance.
Presumably waterboarding is not torture because we waterboard our own soldiers to teach them how to resist torture? There was some asshole lawyer named Rivkin on Warren Olney’s “To the Point” program today pursuing this line of argument.