Celebrity advice

[Tim Churches]

On Fri, 2003-08-29 at 19:50, Cliff Wells wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-08-27 at 15:07, Arthur wrote:
> 
> > We all knew this kind of discussion would lead to no good.  Even to my own
> > eventual involvment. But the rule I had set to myself, would be to comment
> > only upon Lulu's comment, and only if that comment was something other than
> > to the effect that one's politics might be irrelevent here, and that the
> > advice to a new programmer to eschew Raymond because of his was .. bad
> > advice.
> 
> I'd have to agree with Art on this.  ESR's thoughts on guns have little
> to do with programming, and unless he likes to use "nra" or "bullet" as
> metavariables, his politics would best be omitted from the discussion. 
> Had Hitler (note end of thread) rather than Einstein written
> _Relativity_ would we expect physicists to ignore it because of his
> politics?  I certainly hope not.

The original question was what programming/comp sci literature would one
suggest a junior high school student (early teens) read? I opined that
ESR was not a good suggestion in such circumstances because he
intertwines his (initially engaging) essays on computerdom with a much
broader and arguably whacky right-wing libertarianism which promotes gun
ownership and use. As Lulu says, bang, bang!

If Einstein had written _Mein Kampf_, then, no, I would not send a 12-14
yr old who is interested in physics off to the library to read
Einstein's work...

> The fact that I think Charlton Heston is a buffoon shouldn't be the
> reason I think his movies suck.

Surely you make an exception for _Omega Man_ - especially that scene at
the end when he is hung on the cross (in a fountain), dying, but his
serum saves the world...

-- 

Tim C

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