Quote of the day, from Simon Grindrod (yes, that one):
Table Mountain is under attack. If the mountain is under attack, we are all under attack.
He knows all about being under attack, having been shafted once or twice himself.
A week or so ago, I noted the release of a clever new tool that tracks changes to Wikipedia entries and the IP addresses where they originate. Some red faces ensued, as predicted. ITWeb journalists Paul Furber and Kim Guest have discovered a crude bit of vandalism to the entry on HIV/AIDS in South Africa. To wit:
Wikipedia`s edit history for the article “HIV/Aids in South Africa” shows repeated vandalism from IP address 164.151.130.36. This address resolves to a machine called mx1.statssa.gov.za, located just off the Ben Schoeman highway in Centurion, and is owned and operated by the South African government.
In the first change, the person removed the introduction to the topic along with supporting references.
This was replaced with the comment: “I think that was all bullshit, thats why i deleted it. Thank you motherf***er! [sic]”
The second edit sees the “effects” section of the entry removed. The third and fourth edits remove references to Pieter Fourie`s article: “The Political Management of HIV and Aids in South Africa: One burden too many?” and the Aids Portal SA Web page respectively.
What remained of the entry was the section describing the actions being taken by government to curb the spread of the disease.
Nice work. On Paul and Kim’s part, I mean.
Some people have too much time on their hands. Watch how this production line, built from Lego, is started by selecting a colour scheme, and then builds a car to order. It uses Lego Mindstorms programmable robotics. From Jalopnik, via GeekPress. Too cool for words.
That’s the title of a new film in which Kevin Leffler, an old schoolmate of Michael Moore’s, turns a camera on Moore himself. The thought of Moore waddling away from ambush interviews, which he abuses so frequently himself, is just priceless.
The film, according to Henry P. Wickham Jr. over at the American Thinker, is “a commendable documentary that shows Michael Moore to be something other than that self-anointed, compassionate advocate for the ‘little guy.’”
Wickham compares the propaganda techniques of Moore with those of the classic propaganda master, Joseph Goebbels, who wrote that arguments must be “crude, clear, and forcible, and appeal to the emotions and instincts, not the intellect”.
Having seen a few of Moore’s films — notably Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 911 — and knowing something more about the subject matter than what I saw in those films, I can only concur with this characterisation of his work.
I dislike Moore not because of his hypocrisy or outright lies, however. In fact, I grudgingly admire his ability to make a killing out of the gullibility of his audience, and that this audience has at times even included senior political figures, presidential candidates, and a veritable bevy of Hollywood All-Saints. The reason I dislike Moore is because so many people take him seriously. His hateful lies, partisan distortions and paranoid conspiracy theories infect popular political culture, to the detriment of sane and rational policy choices everywhere.
Michael Moore isn’t brave. He’s a shrewd exploiter of the left-wing lumpenproletariat, which is primed to believe everything he says, and takes even the most obvious misdirections at face value. He uses most — if not all — of the techniques in the famous Skeptical Inquirer essay, How to sell a pseudoscience. (Hat-tip: The Reference Frame, where Luboš Motl aptly applies the pseudoscience essay to the “science” of anthropogenic global warming.)
In short, Moore is a quack, and if he deserves any respect at all it is for his success at parting so many fools and their money.
That said, I can see where Wickham is coming from when he writes:
Shooting Michael Moore is a worthy rebuttal to Michael’s Moore’s pomposity, avarice, and dishonesty. The film helps us understand why Michael Moore, so filled with contempt for much of what is good, is himself so utterly contemptible.
