Slashdot

Back in '82 or so, I spent my time working up a Master's thesis at the U of T MechEng building. Every so often, perhaps once every two months, I'd be waylayed in the corridor by a complete stranger who had obviously wandered in off the street. Invariably, this stranger would be looking for a professor to legitimize his perpetual-motion/free-energy device/idea/theory.

That was 25 years ago. How many such would-be revolutionaries have come and gone in the years since? Hundreds. How many at all the universities in all the world? Thousands.

None of them have been right. All of them have been wrong. Why? Because their ideas violate the basic laws of the universe that we have learned through the application of the scientific method.

To suppose that the genius embodied in the known laws of physics can be swept aside by double talk that at it's core is nothing more than the verbal manifestation of a glib sense of dismissive entitlement is breathtaking. That Slashdot panders to this ignorance places this community on exactly the same level as creation science. Meanwhile, the editors cower behind the juvenile delusion that powers Fox News; that every dissenting viewpoint, no matter how insane, deserves equal time.

Perpetual motion is not news, for nerds or anyone else. It is not stuff that matters. It may, however, be interesting to the uniformed uneducated train-spotting passive-aggressive conspiracy lunatics that make up the vast majority of Slashdots newly targeted advertising demographic.

I'm to spend my time thinking of quality posts to cast before such swine, why exactly? I'm to be troll-censored by a thirteen year-old, why exactly?