Too funny to leave in comments

[james_davis_nicoll]

The secret history of a forgotten era.

Comments

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's among the highest paragraphs-to-exploding-bullshit-meters I've gone through.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

"By the way, one of Jerry's two doctorates is in psychology, specifically in testing. He was one of the white-coated sadists who put the Mercury astronaut applicants through an endless series of tests (How often in medical research do you get extremely healthy subjects who are so motivated they'll put up with any test, no matter how maniacal?) In the movie version of "The Right Stuff," Jerry was the guy who makes the astronauts blow into tubes of water until they pass out, although they changed his character into a woman for the movie." -- Steve Sailer, 10/21/2005.

YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE STEVE? I WAS IN A UFO. DAMN RIGHT THE GOVERNMENT HUSHED IT ALL UP BUT THAT'S WHERE WE GOT THE BACKGROUND FOR FOOTFALL. THEY WEREN'T ELEPHANTS THOUGH THAT WAS NIVEN'S THING HE WROTE ABOUT IN ONE OF THOSE AWFUL SVETZ STORIES AND THOUGHT IT WOULD BE CUTE. NO THEY WERE BUGS JUST LIKE MR. HEINLEIN PREDICTED.

[rosefox]

Surely you mean "Admiral Heinlein".

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Actually, "Mr. Heinlein" is an authentic bit of JEPpy style.

It frightens me, sometimes, how easily fake JEP flows from my psyche. Fortunately I am not at risk at joining any of his enthusiasms.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

I'd better start prepping some crazy-ass stories about my life in case I get some really gullible readers.

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

I entered the Canadian Forces in 1989. By the time I left, the Warsaw PPct disbanded, the Soviet Union had fallen apart, Germany was reunited, and democracy was breaking out through Easter Europe. My task done, I left the military. Just in time to become a geologist, a scientist studying the planet. Shortly thereafter, planets outside the solar system started being discovered in droves.

Coincidence? Not by the time I'm finished by bullshit biography.

[narmitaj.livejournal.com]

Famed Goon Spike Milligan did this sort of thing in the titles of various bits of his autobiography:

Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall (1971)
Monty: His Part in My Victory (1976)
Mussolini: His Part in My Downfall (1978)

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I was just getting to think, what if you could cross Zelig with Take The Money And Run ...

There may be something there.

[narmitaj.livejournal.com]

I meant to mention, for those who haven't heard of him, Gunner/Trumpeter/Comedian Spike Milligan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_Milligan#Second_World_War) really did make some contribution to Adolf Hitler's career slide (and Montgomery and Mussolini had an impact on Milligan's life), albeit vanishingly small - he was a lowly soldier in North Africa and Italy, and wounded at Monte Cassino.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Clearly I haven't been respecting him as he deserves.

[avram]

...and then they pissed on the Canadian Constitution!

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Robert Heinlein participated in the downfall of Communism. (Context: "Just months after his death, the Cold War ended; its great symbol, the Berlin Wall, was taken down, and the Soviet Union collapsed, unable to move into the future Robert Heinlein had laid out for us.")

[tandw.livejournal.com]

That was deliberate, of course--those Commies had to wait until he was dead, just so he wouldn't have the satisfaction of knowing he beat 'em.

[realinterrobang.livejournal.com]

*blink* I didn't realise that Jerry Pournelle hung out with Steve Sailer. Talk about wingnutty. Yeeeeesh...

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

There's wingnutty, and there's ratbag racist wingnutty. Sailer is the later.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Google how Pournelle feels about The Bell Curve sometime.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

Can't find it, though I did find a reference to him junking The Mismeasure of Man that leads me to guess as to Pornelle's feelings.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Oh, Pournelle's not shy, although he does weird things to his archives. You can find quotes of his opinions throughout the Internet.

Here's Steven Barnes on his collaboration with Pournelle and the other guy:

It was stressful, very stressful at times. I had some pretty profound differences with both Larry and Jerry politically, and there were some conversations about The Bell Curve I could have done without. In a way, it was sort of like going incognito into the enemy camp, and at the same time, it was a tremendous learning opportunity. I like Jerry and I love Larry, and I had these two tremendous writers who I respected tremendously for their minds, and for their accomplishments, even if we disagreed politically.

I wonder how many of the accomplishments Pournelle told Barnes about were truthful. But a Republic of Estonia Award of Honor winner would never lie, would he?

[(Anonymous)]

"a Republic of Estonia Award of Honor winner . . ."

Since (from a brief web search) that seems to have been awarded in 1968, I'm assuming it's from some splinter government-in-exile. Is there anything more entertaining to it?

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

He seems to be that award's only recipient.

[schizmatic.livejournal.com]

Were the roving gangs of black cannibals that eventually formed a new religion in Lucifer's Hammer Niven's or Pournelle's idea? (What's really, really embarrassing to admit is that eighteen-year-old me found it entirely plausible).

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

THAT WAS TAKEN FROM MAU-MAU INITIATION RITES WHICH NIVEN DID NOT KNOW ABOUT ALTHOUGH HE WAS DISTRESSED BY THE WATTS RIOTS AS WAS I.

(Note: the British seem to have made up the more lurid Mau-Mau stories, although one shouldn't overlook Screamin' Jay Hawkins.)

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The thing about Sailer is that he's utterly tireless, and has the full disingenuous-argumentation bag of tricks, and seems to have the time to camp out on fora and just take over by wearing everyone else out. He was the dominant presence on Matthew Yglesias's comment board for a while (on another thread I mentioned that Ta-Nehisi Coates is the most skilled comment-board moderator I've seen; Yglesias is the opposite).

[chrysostom476.livejournal.com]

Non-sarcastic comment: I wasn't aware Yglesias's comments WERE moderated.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Yes, me too. What does he moderate out? Actionable libel and things that are just '9/11 WUZ THE FAULT OF THE JOOZ AND THE FREEMASONZ' level rants?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I guess you could call him the null moderator. And the comment system keeps malfunctioning too. Lately people have been getting particularly upset that their stuff can't get posted when that spam that goes "DAD I AM HOMOSEX/SON I AM DISAPPOINT" can.

[(Anonymous)]

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[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I heard Jerry Pournelle formed the Painted Desert by lassoing a twister.

[lostwanderfound.livejournal.com]

Which "Painted Desert" are we talking about? There's one just east of Coober Pedy...

[zeborah]

Well, that seems likely to take the "Lolwhut" trophy for today.

[yorksranter.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

Amman(Queen Alia) to Tirana is about three times the operating radius (http://gc.kls2.com/cgi-bin/gc?PATH=AMM-TIA&RANGE=385nm%40AMM&PATH-COLOR=&PATH-UNITS=mi&PATH-MINIMUM=&SPEED-GROUND=&SPEED-UNITS=kts&RANGE-STYLE=best&RANGE-COLOR=&MAP-STYLE=) of the 1960s RJAF's Hawker Hunter F.6 aircraft (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawker_Hunter).

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the precise answer!

Query for the Nicollists: Is Dr. Pournelle known, in general, for fabulizing?

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

He's not known for it, due to fannish deference -- I suspect deep dysfunction among the southern California science fiction community; I gather there were drunken fistfights during the 1970s -- but he does it all the time.

The campaign manager and deputy mayor thing is one; the "we beat the Russians from Larry Niven's living room" is another. His account of being kicked off Arpanet is at odds with everyone else's, and there's ample documentary proof. I am pretty sure that Bill Patterson's imbecilic belief that Heinlein helped invent the modern think tank is a Pournelle-ism.

But really, if Pournelle says something is true, and it supports whatever fringe position of the day he's holding, it's probably false.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I found the link to the mail messages where it all crashed and burned; I assume he'd been asked, repeatedly, not to flaunt his access?

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Yup.