“The 8 Tribes of SciFi”

[Lynn McGuire]

“The 8 Tribes of SciFi”
https://damiengwalter.com/2020/08/29/the-8-tribes-of-scifi/

“from any objective perspective, YA is the mainstream of sci-fi today”

1. Commercial Storytellers
2. The Weirds
3. Hard Sciencers
4. Military Conservatives
5. Progressive Fantasists
6. YA Adventurers
7. The LitFic Tourists
8. Sexy Beasts

Lynn

[Moriarty]

LOL at the description of Military Conservatives: "...appealing to a small but committed audience of Donald Trump supporting SF readers. Given their aggressive, paranoid tendencies it’s hardly surprising these fans are fighting an imaginary war against the other tribes of sci-fi by protesting the Hugo awards."

-Moriarty

[peterw...@hotmail.com]

Is the illustration possibly a still from _Mad Max: Fury Road_? Is the woman
with the partially bionic arm holding an SKS carbine?

_Harry Potter_ would seem to fit in both the commercial storyteller and
YA adventurer categories. Note how long it took for J. K. Rowling to find
a publisher. Tom Clancy had similar difficulties, as did Edward E. Smith.

Referring to what he calls "The Weirds", Damien Walter writes:

"Most writers at some point play around with the effects that can be
induced by engineering stories with internal inconsistencies, mashing
together disparate metaphors, or simply being weird for weirds sake."

It's not easy to construct a consistent imaginary world, and I
have great respect for the knowledge, intelligence, and skill
of people who become published SF writers. There was a
well-known author who called worldbuilding a game between the
writer and reader. When I come upon an internal inconsistency I
see it as a glitch. I have sometimes discussed these with the
author at a convention and they do not seem to be adverse to
talking about such things. I would be interested to hear about
SF stories with deliberate inconsistencies.

This is the first time I've read about "Donald Trump supporting SF readers".
I would be pleasantly surprised if any Trump fans had the curiosity, open
mindedness, and knowledge of the real world to enjoy any subgenre
of science fiction.

Peter Wezeman
anti-social Darwinist

[WolfFan]

On Nov 28, 2022, peterw...@hotmail.com wrote
(in article<83f7e464-43f6-48e5...@googlegroups.com>):

Tom Kratman.

John Ringo.

Terry Austin.
>
>
> Peter Wezeman
> anti-social Darwinist

[peterw...@hotmail.com]

Are these examples of authors whose works have deliberate
inconsistencies? I have read some of John Ringo's books and
I would be interested in what the inconsistencies are and
what books they are in. It occurs to me that you might mean
instead that these are authors whose books appeal to Trump
supporters. If this is the case I am interested in any evidence.
I note that the military SF category long predates Donald Trump's
political career or his media career. In either case thank you
for your reply.

Peter Wezeman
anti-social Darwinist

[Christian Weisgerber]

On 2022-11-28, peterw...@hotmail.com <peterw...@hotmail.com> wrote:

>> https://damiengwalter.com/2020/08/29/the-8-tribes-of-scifi/

>>
> Is the illustration possibly a still from _Mad Max: Fury Road_?

I don't think it's a still. More likely a composite combining
iconic pictures from the movie.

> Is the woman with the partially bionic arm holding an SKS carbine?

Yes.
https://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Mad_Max:_Fury_Road#Type_56_SKS

If you didn't know it yet, the Internet Movie Firearms Database is
the place to look up such things.

> I would be pleasantly surprised if any Trump fans had the curiosity, open
> mindedness, and knowledge of the real world to enjoy any subgenre
> of science fiction.

Arguably, knowledge of the real world is to the detriment of enjoying
science fiction. Or any fiction for that matter. Nowadays, my
most common thought when watching movies/TV is "it doesn't work
that way". (My second most common thought is "hooks!".)

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber na...@mips.inka.de

[James Nicoll]

In article <slrnto9c6a...@lorvorc.mips.inka.de>,

40 or so years ago I read a mystery by an author who clearly had
read one too many parlour scenes. His lead is a cheap detective
who specializes in grubby stuff like divorce, who is thrilled
to pieces when he realizes not only is he dealing with a murder
case but he knows who did it, it's someone he's not afraid of,
and for the only time in his career, he has the means and
opportunity for a classic palour scene.

Part way through his explanation, the little old lady who committed
the murder spots where's his chain of logic is headed and filets
him with a very sharp letter opener. He lives, but books later
he's still getting physical therapy.

ObSF: Joan Vinge's Media Man was inspired by watching a TV
movie in which someone, having seen a murder, tells the
killer to their face that they saw him and will at some
opportune moment talk to the police.
--
My reviews can be found at http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/
My tor pieces at https://www.tor.com/author/james-davis-nicoll/
My Dreamwidth at https://james-davis-nicoll.dreamwidth.org/
My patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/jamesdnicoll

[James Nicoll]

In article <83f7e464-43f6-48e5...@googlegroups.com>,

peterw...@hotmail.com <peterw...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>On Sunday, November 27, 2022 at 9:40:02 PM UTC-6, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>> “The 8 Tribes of SciFi”
>> https://damiengwalter.com/2020/08/29/the-8-tribes-of-scifi/
>>
>> “from any objective perspective, YA is the mainstream of
>sci-fi today”
>>
>> 1. Commercial Storytellers
>> 2. The Weirds
>> 3. Hard Sciencers
>> 4. Military Conservatives
>> 5. Progressive Fantasists
>> 6. YA Adventurers
>> 7. The LitFic Tourists
>> 8. Sexy Beasts
>>
>Is the illustration possibly a still from _Mad Max: Fury Road_?
>Is the woman
>with the partially bionic arm holding an SKS carbine?
>
>_Harry Potter_ would seem to fit in both the commercial storyteller and
>YA adventurer categories. Note how long it took for J. K. Rowling
>to find
>a publisher. Tom Clancy had similar difficulties, as did Edward E. Smith.

Clancy's gone full circle: thanks to the dire quality of the
books written in his universes by other authors, his stuff
is unsellable to used bookstores.

>This is the first time I've read about "Donald Trump supporting
>SF readers".
>
>I would be pleasantly surprised if any Trump fans had the curiosity,
>open mindedness, and knowledge of the real world to enjoy any
>subgenre of science fiction.

Oh, you don't have to be open-minded or knowledgeable about the
real world to like SF, just judicious in one's selection of SF.
Pick the right publisher--maybe one whose message board is filled
by angry guys ranting about how the 2020 election was stolen--and
it should be easy to find crap catering to RWNJs.

[Robert Woodward]

In article <tm2ise$13r$2...@reader2.panix.com>,

jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:

> In article <83f7e464-43f6-48e5...@googlegroups.com>,
> peterw...@hotmail.com <peterw...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >On Sunday, November 27, 2022 at 9:40:02 PM UTC-6, Lynn McGuire wrote:

> >> “The 8 Tribes of SciFi”
> >> https://damiengwalter.com/2020/08/29/the-8-tribes-of-scifi/
> >>
> >> “from any objective perspective, YA is the mainstream of
> >sci-fi today”

> >>
> >> 1. Commercial Storytellers
> >> 2. The Weirds
> >> 3. Hard Sciencers
> >> 4. Military Conservatives
> >> 5. Progressive Fantasists
> >> 6. YA Adventurers
> >> 7. The LitFic Tourists
> >> 8. Sexy Beasts
> >>

<snip>

>
> >This is the first time I've read about "Donald Trump supporting
> >SF readers".
> >
> >I would be pleasantly surprised if any Trump fans had the curiosity,
> >open mindedness, and knowledge of the real world to enjoy any
> >subgenre of science fiction.
>
> Oh, you don't have to be open-minded or knowledgeable about the
> real world to like SF, just judicious in one's selection of SF.
> Pick the right publisher--maybe one whose message board is filled
> by angry guys ranting about how the 2020 election was stolen--and
> it should be easy to find crap catering to RWNJs.

And before that, they were ranting about the "lies" of climate change
and Covid-19 vaccinations (which they still are) and President Obama
being born in Kenya. I will point out (having checked their publishing
schedule), that the publisher in question doesn't publish very many
books that would cater to them. I suspect that they are trading names of
authors they have found in Amazon's Kindle store.

--
"We have advanced to new and surprising levels of bafflement."
Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan describes progress in _Komarr_.
ã-----------------------------------------------------
Robert Woodward robe...@drizzle.com

[Andrew McDowell]

People get things wrong, and people hold opinions, especially political opinions, for all sorts of reasons, including family tradition. I do not think it is unreasonable to suppose that there are intelligent SF fans who hold political opinions I think are bizarre. I hope that if I was a true believing Democrat (which would be pretty unlikely for a UK citizen brought up in N.Ireland) I would concede that it would be possible for an otherwise intelligent SF fan to be an enthusiastic supporter of Donald Trump, especially as it appears that a considerable number of US citizens are - or have been. Also, as an engineer, I live in a world in which all sorts of single failures are to be expected and put up with, and believing that Donald Trump would make a better President than Joe Biden is at most a singe point of failure.

[peterw...@hotmail.com]

Googling RWNJ it seems to be an abbreviation for "Right Wing Nut Job".
Interestingly, the Online Slang Dictionary and some other sources call
it an acronym, which implies it can be pronounced as a word. Others
call it an initialism, which seems more reasonable.

On this subject I agree with Jerry Pournelle that a one-dimensional scale
such as right-left is not a particularly useful way to describe political
beliefs.

Peter Wezeman
anti-social Darwinist

[Joy Beeson]

On Mon, 28 Nov 2022 10:38:49 -0800 (PST), Andrew McDowell
<mcdow...@sky.com> wrote:

> Also, as an engineer, I live in a world in which all sorts of single failures are to be expected and put up with, and believing that Donald Trump would make a better President than Joe Biden is at most a singe point of failure.

Trump is incompetent, immature, and an all-around embarassment.
He was still a better president than Biden -- this isn't a low bar,
it's a trench.


--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at centurylink dot net

[Lynn McGuire]

On 11/28/2022 9:54 PM, Joy Beeson wrote:
> On Mon, 28 Nov 2022 10:38:49 -0800 (PST), Andrew McDowell
> <mcdow...@sky.com> wrote:
>
>> Also, as an engineer, I live in a world in which all sorts of single failures are to be expected and put up with, and believing that Donald Trump would make a better President than Joe Biden is at most a singe point of failure.
>
>
> Trump is incompetent, immature, and an all-around embarassment.
> He was still a better president than Biden -- this isn't a low bar,
> it's a trench.

OK, I laughed.

You know, half of our presidents were below average presidents.

Lynn

[WolfFan]

On Nov 28, 2022, peterw...@hotmail.com wrote

(in article<d466ae6d-ff23-4cff...@googlegroups.com>):

Kratman in particular is just made for Trumpanzees. He checks all the boxes:
violent, fascist, islamaphobe, antisemite, authoritarian, paranoid. He’s
very active on Quora. Have a look and decide for yourself.

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <tm41ij$26obb$2...@dont-email.me>,

That'd be below median presidents, wouldn't it?
--
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

[Quadibloc]

On Monday, November 28, 2022 at 8:55:04 PM UTC-7, Joy Beeson wrote:

> Trump is incompetent, immature, and an all-around embarassment.
> He was still a better president than Biden -- this isn't a low bar,
> it's a trench.

Really? Donald Trump was trying to *kill* Americans by opposing
vital public health measures in the COVID-19 pandemic.

I'm not sure how one can consider Biden as being worse than that.

And the Republicans under him tried to do better in elections by
hindering black people in voting. Isn't that enough to automatically
dismiss the entire party as pure evil?

John Savard

[Quadibloc]

On Monday, November 28, 2022 at 9:54:54 PM UTC-7, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
> In article <tm41ij$26obb$2...@dont-email.me>,

> >You know, half of our presidents were below average presidents.

> That'd be below median presidents, wouldn't it?

But that distinction is only significant if the distribution
is skewed! And so I can't find it to be a _serious_ error that
the statement was based on the original saying... "Think of how
stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are
stupider than that" by George Carliln.

John Savard

[Quadibloc]

Of course, there might be an earlier precedent. Lake Woebegon
comes to mind...

It wouldn't be so bad that half of the children in school were below
average if only the bottom 10% were unfit to attend college. So
why aren't we conducting an aggressive program to achieve this,
by improving both the educational system and the human genome?

John Savard

[Quadibloc]

On Tuesday, November 29, 2022 at 1:41:45 AM UTC-7, Quadibloc wrote:

> Of course, there might be an earlier precedent. Lake Woebegon
> comes to mind...

I have found an attribution of "Half the people in the world are below
average" to Napoleon.

John Savard

[Paul S Person]

On Tue, 29 Nov 2022 00:33:13 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc
<jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:

>On Monday, November 28, 2022 at 8:55:04 PM UTC-7, Joy Beeson wrote:
>
>> Trump is incompetent, immature, and an all-around embarassment.
>> He was still a better president than Biden -- this isn't a low bar,
>> it's a trench.
>
>Really? Donald Trump was trying to *kill* Americans by opposing
>vital public health measures in the COVID-19 pandemic.

But he was ineffective. His inability to understand how things are
done led to endless court reversals on the theme "you gotta comply
with established procedure, particularly when established by law".

>I'm not sure how one can consider Biden as being worse than that.

Biden at least knows how its done.

And, should the pandemic resurge (I hope it won't, but who can say for
sure?), he may even manage to do what Trump never even tried to do --
provide /national/ leadership, not just stir up the base.

>And the Republicans under him tried to do better in elections by
>hindering black people in voting. Isn't that enough to automatically
>dismiss the entire party as pure evil?

Those same Republicans (well, the ones in Arizona, anyway) are now
whining because they did all they could to suppress "them" and the
Dems /still/ won most of the major races.

Trump and his semi-fascist Trump-fanatic base/party apparatchiks
simply do not understand that, by actually achieving a 40-year goal
(reversing Roe v Wade) they unleashed a lot of resentment even in
(say) Arizona. Studies have apparently shown that, in some States, 20%
more females than males registered to vote in the mid-terms. Guess
which Party /they/ voted for -- the Party of Men Control Women's
Bodies, or the Party of No They Don't?

They are also hobbled by their view of how elections work:
1) Those graciously permitted by their Republican-controlled
legislature to vote do so.
2) All Republicans win.
3) Anything else is the result of massive voter fraud.
which, sadly for them, does not correspond with reality.
--
"In this connexion, unquestionably the most significant
development was the disintegration, under Christian
influence, of classical conceptions of the family and
of family right."

[Chris Buckley]

On 2022-11-29, Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> On Monday, November 28, 2022 at 8:55:04 PM UTC-7, Joy Beeson wrote:
>
>> Trump is incompetent, immature, and an all-around embarassment.
>> He was still a better president than Biden -- this isn't a low bar,
>> it's a trench.
>
> Really? Donald Trump was trying to *kill* Americans by opposing
> vital public health measures in the COVID-19 pandemic.
>
> I'm not sure how one can consider Biden as being worse than that.

OK, John, you've been trotting out your theories for quite some time,
unsupported by any factual information. I view your claims as
nonsense, just joining a conspiracy theory. Make your case!

Trump got a number of things wrong about Covid. But so did everybody.
The WHO and CDC finally said that Covid was primarily spread by aerosol
airborne transmission in April 2021! (It was surface transmission plus
direct being coughed upon before that.)

Chris

[pete...@gmail.com]

I don't think John can make a case that Trump (or anyone) *wanted*
people to die. However, his immediate response was utterly irresponsible,
with 'keep Trump looking good' the main goal. Asking for *less* testing,
for example, to keep the published numbers down.

There were a lot of mis-steps by others too; the CDC turned into a huge
bottleneck on testing early on. Most of the rest of the was due to authorities
responding to the call to "DO SOMETHING!", as well as scientists being asked
for solutions long before even basic facts about the disease were known.

Its already getting hard to remember the sense of panic we felt in the spring
and summer of 2020, when refrigerated trucks were being rented by hospitals
as overflow morgues, and people were disinfecting their newly purchased
vegetables. We've become far more complacent since vaccines became
available.

I wound up with an infection this August, caught at a DEFCON party. It immediately
spread to my entire household, but everyone was fully vaxxed, and got over it
quickly.

pt

[James Nicoll]

In article <e0a8b7d7-48e4-4d2f...@googlegroups.com>,

pete...@gmail.com <pete...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Wednesday, November 30, 2022 at 9:19:11 PM UTC-5, Chris Buckley wrote:
>> On 2022-11-29, Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>> > On Monday, November 28, 2022 at 8:55:04 PM UTC-7, Joy Beeson wrote:
>> >
>> >> Trump is incompetent, immature, and an all-around embarassment.
>> >> He was still a better president than Biden -- this isn't a low bar,
>> >> it's a trench.
>> >
>> > Really? Donald Trump was trying to *kill* Americans by opposing
>> > vital public health measures in the COVID-19 pandemic.
>> >
>> > I'm not sure how one can consider Biden as being worse than that.
>> OK, John, you've been trotting out your theories for quite some time,
>> unsupported by any factual information. I view your claims as
>> nonsense, just joining a conspiracy theory. Make your case!
>>
>> Trump got a number of things wrong about Covid. But so did everybody.
>> The WHO and CDC finally said that Covid was primarily spread by
>aerosol
>> airborne transmission in April 2021! (It was surface transmission plus
>> direct being coughed upon before that.)
>
>I don't think John can make a case that Trump (or anyone) *wanted*
>people to die.

I thought there was an early perception that more Democrats
would die than Republicans, thus giving Trump a much needed
edge? Although it seems now that team red's vaccine hesitancy
and refusal to take any counter measures is facilitating their
elevation to spiritual beings faster than team blue.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <83f7e464-43f6-48e5...@googlegroups.com>,
peterw...@hotmail.com <peterw...@hotmail.com> wrote:

(Hal Heydt)
Can't speak to world building inconsistencies, but when Poul
Anderson was asked about continuity errors, he would give a very
expressive shrug and say, "The name's Anderson, not God."

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <julhkp...@mid.individual.net>,

(Hal Heydt)
Mean, median, mode. Take your pick. 46 isn't a large enough
sample size to insure that all three will be at the same place in
a normal distribution.

[Andrew McDowell]

People like to make a big deal of the difference between the median and the mode, but in fact they can't get too far apart, relative to the general spread of values involved. The distance between the mean and median can never be more than one standard deviation - there is the beginning of a proof at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00031305.1990.10475743 and it is implied by the bounds of +/- 1 for the non-parametric skew at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonparametric_skew

[Thomas Koenig]

Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> schrieb:

> (Hal Heydt)
> Can't speak to world building inconsistencies, but when Poul
> Anderson was asked about continuity errors, he would give a very
> expressive shrug and say, "The name's Anderson, not God."

Didn't Asimov quote something along the lines of "A foolish
consistency is the hobgoblin of a little mind" or something like
that in one of his story introductions?

[pete...@gmail.com]

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in 'Self Reliance':

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and
philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He
may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now
in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though
it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.'
— Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates,
and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise
spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

Or:

“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Pt

[Robert Carnegie]

On Sunday, 4 December 2022 at 06:37:07 UTC, pete...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Saturday, December 3, 2022 at 5:43:00 PM UTC-5, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> > Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> schrieb:
> > > (Hal Heydt)
> > > Can't speak to world building inconsistencies, but when Poul
> > > Anderson was asked about continuity errors, he would give a very
> > > expressive shrug and say, "The name's Anderson, not God."
> > Didn't Asimov quote something along the lines of "A foolish
> > consistency is the hobgoblin of a little mind" or something like
> > that in one of his story introductions?
>
> Ralph Waldo Emerson, in 'Self Reliance':

And in more than one story intro or outro bits in
"The Early Asimov", I think. Such as what technology
did and didn't exist in Wendell Urth stories. Specifically,
assuming you'd read the first explanation, Asimov
described the next problem, simply followed by
a dismissive "Emerson!" Which is to say: he was
acknowledging these glitches.

[peterw...@hotmail.com]

A brief search suggests that this is from Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay
_Self Reliance_. The paragraph containing the quotation is:

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little
statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great
soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with

the shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and

to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though

it contradict everything you said to-day.—"Ah, so you shall be sure to

be misunderstood."—Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood?
Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther,
and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise
spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood."

The essay is available from Project Gutenberg, paragraphs 79 through
116 in this 1907 collection edited by Edwin Turpin:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16643/16643-h/16643-h.htm#SELF-RELIANCE

Peter Wezeman
anti-social Darwinist

[William Hyde]

On Saturday, December 3, 2022 at 5:43:00 PM UTC-5, Thomas Koenig wrote:

Asimov used this when he and his co-authors were doing final proofs of their biochemistry
textbook. At first he quoted the whole sentence, then just wrote "Emerson" in the margins.

William Hyde

[Quadibloc]

On Sunday, December 4, 2022 at 1:30:50 PM UTC-7, peterw...@hotmail.com wrote:

> A brief search suggests that this is from Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay
> _Self Reliance_. The paragraph containing the quotation is:

> "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little
> statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great
> soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with
> the shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and
> to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though
> it contradict everything you said to-day.—"Ah, so you shall be sure to
> be misunderstood."—Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood?
> Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther,
> and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise
> spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood."

In general, I think consistency is a very good thing. But this illustrates
one situation that definitely is more important than consistency.

Circumstances may change. When one advocates, at one time, the
actions necessary for that time, one will note the circumstances which
make those actions appropriate.

At another time, different circumstances may make the opposite action
appropriate - and at the first time, one will not have taken the time to
specify, in detail, all the possible circumstances under which the other
action is to be preferred instead.

So one might at least _appear_ inconsistent when one reacts appropriately
to the different circumstances of different times.

John Savard

[Robert Woodward]

In article <1633263a-6896-41f6...@googlegroups.com>,

"peterw...@hotmail.com" <peterw...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> On Saturday, December 3, 2022 at 4:43:00 PM UTC-6, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> > Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> schrieb:
> > > (Hal Heydt)
> > > Can't speak to world building inconsistencies, but when Poul
> > > Anderson was asked about continuity errors, he would give a very
> > > expressive shrug and say, "The name's Anderson, not God."
> > Didn't Asimov quote something along the lines of "A foolish
> > consistency is the hobgoblin of a little mind" or something like
> > that in one of his story introductions?
>
> A brief search suggests that this is from Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay
> _Self Reliance_. The paragraph containing the quotation is:
>
> "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little
> statesmen and philosophers and divines.

Speaking as a computer programmer, I hold that not only is consistency
not foolish, consistency is mandatory.

--
"We have advanced to new and surprising levels of bafflement."
Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan describes progress in _Komarr_.

—-----------------------------------------------------
Robert Woodward robe...@drizzle.com

[Quadibloc]

On Sunday, December 4, 2022 at 6:48:57 PM UTC-7, Quadibloc wrote:

> So one might at least _appear_ inconsistent when one reacts appropriately
> to the different circumstances of different times.

Thus, as I had only heard "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of
little minds" _out of context_ previously, I had disagreed, and, indeed,
dismissed it. But hearing it _in context_ for the first time, now I agree
with Ralph Waldo Emerson was saying.

John Savard

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <tmaenk$fs8$1...@reader2.panix.com>,

(Hal Heydt)
As I recall, early on COVID hit minority communities harder than
caucasion communities. The association of minorities voting
largely Democratic would have give the perception you mention.

Later, the spread of antivaxx and "magical" (Ivermectin,
anyone?) cures ore preventatives has, so far as I know, been more
prevalent in conservative areas, thus leading to the current
death rates being higher for heavier Republican areas.

As for Trump himself...recall that when he stated at a rally that
he'd been vaccinated, he was booed by the crowd.

[Titus G]

On 5/12/22 18:50, Robert Woodward wrote:
> In article <1633263a-6896-41f6...@googlegroups.com>,
> "peterw...@hotmail.com" <peterw...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Saturday, December 3, 2022 at 4:43:00 PM UTC-6, Thomas Koenig wrote:
>>> Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> schrieb:
>>>> (Hal Heydt)
>>>> Can't speak to world building in