neocon's Journal: Recent Threads

This accepted story of mine (that makes two for eight) generated some interesting discussion, most of it on topic. Of course, any discussion of the CIA brings out the black-helicopter types as well.

A few threads in particular from this story show two of the left's key characteristics:

• An ability to forget recent history -- it wasn't really a surprise to see the Iraqi information minister deny all fourteen of the illegal ballistic missiles Iraq fired into Kuwait during the war, but it's a little odd to see that some on /. are still denying them.
• A firm belief that anything one doesn't like in the world must be America's fault -- the continuing attempts by the left to blame the US for Pinochet's rise to power gets punctured in this thread. In on the mix, we get a good look at who Salvador Allende really was, and, tangentially, a look at Marc Herold's absurdly inflated casualty numbers.

Apparently, a shaky grasp on grammar doesn't hurt either, as this post and response amusingly demonstrates.

I see neocon is still...

[Trolling4Dollars]

...lowering the quality of Slashdot postings with his pretzel logic and sleight of word. At least Trollip appears to have left. Good riddance.

Yea

[GMontag]

I got the same feeling on this story:
Build Your Own Fuel Injection Computer [slashdot.org] reading through this thread [slashdot.org]. I responded in there just twice when the babble got to be too much.

The reader might say "Montag, this is gearhead stuff, not assassin stuff" and I would respoind "True enough, but the issue is how the /. community reacts to things".

I was amazed at how the level of misinformed comment has increased. The thread I linked to began with an innocent enough question and speculation that sowballed into all

Re:Yea

[ces]

I was amazed at how the level of misinformed comment has increased. The thread I linked to began with an innocent enough question and speculation that sowballed into all sorts of nonsense. For one thing, the answer was on the MegaSquirt web page. Even the folks that claimed to be on the list sounded identical to those just seeing this for the first time.

I see the same thing all over the place on slashdot as well. Comments that show a complete lack of understanding of how a business works. Comments written

Re:Yea

[GMontag]

And to make matters worse, my latest batch of my Jeep [franceisoc...ermany.org] posts is getting trashed!

I suspect the Greenpeace [xmission.com] conspiracy.

Re:Yea

[ces]

BTW Gary Locke may be many things, but I wouldn't call him "the President of North Korea". For one thing Gov. Locke is boring, really boring, he's the kind of guy who would hire actuaries to entertain at his kids birthday party. Pres. Kim by contrast is kind of exciting, he tells jokes, he watches Daffy Duck cartoons, he's unpredictible in the way the insane often are.

To give Locke some credit though, he did propose a budget that made up for Washington State's shortfall by cutting spending instead of raisi

Re:Yea

[Trolling4Dollars]

Comments that show a complete lack of understanding of how a business works.

Therein lies your problem. Why would people who read Slashdot care at all about business? Most (not all) geeks aren't businessmen at all. Business has absolutely no importance in our lives whatsoever. Other than putting some food on the table, business is merely something we tolerate for the time being. What IS important here is technology. And yes... technology can develop without the need for business to be involved. Was

CIA == America?

[elmegil]

So you presume that because some people recognize that the CIA has been proven to have done some pretty nasty and illegal things (my personal favorite is slipping LSD to unsuspecting businessmen and completely fucking their worldviews), and believe them likely to have done other nasty and illegal things, that this is "blaming America"?

Personally, I blame stuff like that on the leaders of the time when the events occurred, not the country. It seems pretty foolish to conflate the leader with the country; unl