DeHavelle - Latest Comments

Re: Music of the Fears: Sympathy for the Climate

Noyb123 — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:46:15 -0000

Brilliant!!!!!!!!

Re: Evolution of a Political Story: Jules Manson

Noyb123 — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 03:43:11 -0000

Hi Keith, as far as Jules being from Mexico and of the "brown race", is this documented anywhere? I am going to write about this, as another crazy comment was just made by Mr. Manson and it is gleefully documented in the Daily Kos. I hope you don't mind, I am planning on linking to your site, as well.

Re: Evolution of a Political Story: Jules Manson

Keith DeHavelle — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:31:42 -0000

I'd written a long reply, but it seems to have gotten lost. Send an email to my first name at my last name dot com, and I will be happy to provide the fairest treatment I can. More information can only help.

We can converse by email or by telephone, at your convenience.

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle

Re: Evolution of a Political Story: Jules Manson

Keith DeHavelle — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 08:55:33 -0000

Thank you.

I agree on the lack of relevance. The implication people are trying to create is that if person X supports a candidate or cause Y for whatever reason, then any bad action of X can be blamed on Y. That is absurd, and one could use such logic to note the century of support for Democrat candidates by, say, the Communist Party USA. Or Usama bin Ladin's October 2004 campaign speech for John Kerry. Or all of the bad actions by people and groups who have participated in or announced their support for the Occupy movement.

If the group or candidate supports a particular action, then the "blame" can be justified. (That's hardly the case with the Tea Party and racism, as demonstrated by the efforts the media has gone to in order to manufacture or imply racism in the absence of evidence.)

People never are exact matches for candidates or groups anyway; sometimes you can feel a strong alignment, and sometimes it's simply the "least odious" of choices. Perhaps a number of people feel that way in the current Republican race, and the Democrats might regret not having a choice at this point.

I've commented in the past about perpetrators of bad acts who were on one political side or the other, but it was generally to correct the record. As often happens, and as happened here, the wrong leap of logic was based on an apparently manufactured connection to begin with.

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle

Re: Evolution of a Political Story: Jules Manson

Noyb123 — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 05:13:11 -0000

Thank you for this post. I have noticed that your efforts most assuredly contributed to several news outlets curiously removing the "tea party" from Mr. Manson's affiliations. If only all journalists would do their homework before jumping to conclusions. Even so, the supposed tea party connection should not be relevant and actually, considering that the president receives 30 death threats a day (according to the Telegraph), it is interesting how the press practically salivated over this particular story. The sad thing is that any good that Mr. Manson may have done will now be always overshadowed by his racist remarks.

Re: Evolution of a Political Story: Jules Manson

Jules Manson — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 12:29:32 -0000

I wish to add a few things to my comments. I have worked for as an editor and contributor for greenewave and supportatheism. I do not wish my ugly remarks to reflect on these two fine organizations or anyone who works for them. I have nothing but good things to say about them and everyone who works there. I have also worked for examiner -- another fine online news source whom I was very lucky to have once worked for. At the time of my membership with them they had no reason to believe I would have ever made such remarks.

Re: Evolution of a Political Story: Jules Manson

Jules Manson — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 06:19:31 -0000

A good part of the information you dug up is true but opinions are mostly false. If you want factual details all you had to do was ask.

Secondly, your reporting was rather slanted. There is always another perspective behind every story. That is what I often try to do whenever I write and hence why the majority of people find my views rather strange at times.

Thank you for linking a sample article at examiner. I believe it was a good example of some good original reporting on news events. Needless to say, I was fired from there.

If you would like a follow up interview I would be very happy to provide one but please promise to be fair and balanced this time. But I must first wait for the Secret Service to complete their investigation of me. I promise to be very honest as I have been with them. Can you please do the same as well? Thank you.

Re: Evolution of a Political Story: Jules Manson

Tm Perkins76 — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 06:16:52 -0000

By the way on his Facebook page as of early yesterday morning he claims to be considering a run as a Democrat in an upcoming State Senate race. This guy is a nut.

Re: Evolution of a Political Story: Jules Manson

Vjpmorrone — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 12:28:11 -0000

Im having an online discussion about this. Do you have any links to his website or to what you said about people going to tea part rallies and holdding up signs and being booted?

Re: Humor for the “ows” movement

Jim Fister — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 00:36:44 -0000

I still think your second joke is the funniest of the lot. I promise that I will find a way to reuse it.

Re: Raising Cain Again

DigitalNight — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 23:01:33 -0000

He sounds very confident, a trait that serves any executive well. I enjoyed the videos you linked. But I'm curious, his 9-9-9 plan includes a 9 percent VAT. Are you in favor of that? I fear that will hurt small businesses with additional paperwork, and cause a general price increase as companies ensure that they can offset any VAT costs. I might be open to VAT if it replaced all sales taxes, but since states are funded by sales taxes it seems like many of us would need to use hybrid systems.

Thanks though for some fun pointers. Who would you pick for a running mate?

P.S. Sorry about the delay responding, running my business is taking most of my time...

Re: The Powerful Future of America’s Past

DigitalNight — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 14:48:36 -0000

Oh, let me clarify, I'd like to look at your story. I also plan on reading Lucifer's Hammer, I just googled it and realise that I read an excerpt of it when I was a teenager. It's a shame I didn't read the whole thing.

Thanks!

Re: The Genomic Revolution

DigitalNight — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 10:22:09 -0000

A very interesting talk. I wonder if people will start consenting to having designer viruses inject missing chromosomes to cure themselves from cancer and other diseses. The results sound both exciting and potentially damaging.

I thought it was also telling that he noted that he hadn't been sequenced, and the implication he didn't want to be for life insurance reasons.

I have idiopathic scolliosis so I would love it if some of this research could spill into finding the root causes and at the least removing the idiopathic part.

Re: A trial balloon: No Congressional election in 2012

DigitalNight — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 10:14:46 -0000

I caught wind of governor Perdue's statement yesterday and was shaking my head, but my wife said it best: "So we already can't trust them to do the right thing, and she proposes we take the pressure off them for a few years?"

Seriously, part of me would like to have seeking public office be a mark against serving in public office.

As to the unemployment, as one who needs to hire a couple new employees, I don't really care if they come from a job or not (in fact, part of me wouldn't mind if they were feeling desperate) but I still need to find people who can do the jobs without a lot of training because I have too much demand on my time to spend six months training them up from the ground floor. I suspect many companies are in the same boat.

Re: The Powerful Future of America’s Past

DigitalNight — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 09:35:19 -0000

I'd love to read it and let you know what I think.

I've only read Niven and Pournelle's Mote in God's Eye and the Gripping Hand. I'll have to try out Lucifer's hammer when I get more time. At the momen just keeping my company moving forward is taking most of my time... But I suspect you can relate to that.

Re: The Powerful Future of America’s Past

Keith DeHavelle — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 01:24:03 -0000

One of the better "rebuild" stories is Lucifer's Hammer by Niven and Pournelle. Grim, in many places. I'm dabbling a bit in that area myself.

In one series I'm working on, I have a different version of the problem: The protagonists don't have anything like our technology — even King Arthur's Court was more advanced in many respects. I've tried to build a realistic society for them. I wonder if you'd be inclined to see how well I did?

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle

Re: The Powerful Future of America’s Past

DigitalNight — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 00:54:00 -0000

Ah yes, one of my favorite stories from when I was a teenager. I did dream of being able to do many of these things. When I had the history channel one of my favorite shows was "How it's made". I found it fascinating what they showed, and, what they didn't. It seems like the hardest part would be the bootstrapping. To build an boiler you need a lot of sheet metal, not too hard with large furnaces and rollers, but would probably cost years worth of wages to get a blacksmith to pound out that much sheet metal. Once the basic steam engine was built you might have more luck. Yes, pretty unbelievable. I do think I could rig up some devices in a stone age environment, but forget about any sort of micro electronics. But I bet with a decade or two you could reach the level of the mid 19th century...

But you're right that just getting the basics is difficult, even such "simple" things as wires would be difficult to achieve without machinery. Forget about synthetics....

It might be fun to write some SciFi of what it would take to rebuild after a complete collapse.

Re: A Spending SWAT Team

DigitalNight — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 01:13:07 -0000

It seems like there are large swaths of government that could be eliminated entirely (my short list includes dept education, dept of agriculture). It seems many of these could be eliminated just by the president having the backbone to do so. For others I would like to see a president charge each department head to reduce his department's costs by 20% each year during his stint in office without reducing service levels / efficiency. If the head fails they get fired, if they succeed they get a % raise for each % point in reduction over the initial 20%. It seems to me that corporate america goes through such exercies whenever the economy tanks or competition heats up. My one worry about creating a separte department is that it will seek to feed itself (Jerry Pournelle's Iron Law of Buracracy).

Still a idea well worth pondering!

Re: Chicken Little Intelligence

DigitalNight — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 10:44:54 -0000

I would love to read all of your stories, political or not. I remember you mentioning the one about octopuses on LJ a few years ago.

Re: Chicken Little Intelligence

Keith DeHavelle — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 10:39:18 -0000

Thank you. This is an early chapter in my very first attempt at fiction writing, from 2002. In fact, prior to this the only fiction I'd written was a little story to illustrate to a comic artist friend a problem with a printed collection of his work. I'd imagined one of his characters coming to me to ask for my help in explaining the problem.

I'd written 17 chapters of that story, Impacted Wisdom.This is Chapter 10 (with new first and last bit added; the original didn't involve aliens).

Looking back at it, it doesn't seem too bad. Or, alternatively, I haven't gotten much better in the subsequent years. But it's guilty of "head-hopping" from time to time; including some bit that the point-of-view character couldn't know, or shifting to a new POV suddenly.

Like you, I hope that they keep the ISS around; I was a (very small) part of a group that kept MIR going for longer than it was originally slated to be. But here, time and events have overtaken parts of the story.

The main character is a shuttle commander, and shuttles (a modified version) are still being launched in 2018. Oops. The story still has a good "skeleton," it seems to me, but that setup would change, and it would change a lot of things.

The story, perhaps surprisingly, is not strongly political. Most of it is merely an outline; chapter numbers and a one-sentence description. But there are about 50,000 words written; if you'd like, I can send it to you.

There are two other unpublished novels that are complete that I am seeking commentary on; one of them is set entirely underwater, and the protagonists are octopuses that, far in the future, have evolved a human-like intelligence. Their science and politics are crude, but this doesn't mean that they don't cause trouble when these two areas collide. My job was to make people deeply care about and identify with creatures that are literally cold and slimy and who "speak" by changing the color and texture of their skins.

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle

Re: Chicken Little Intelligence

BillBuhler — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 00:31:10 -0000

Very fun, I hope we keep the ISS for a long time yet, one of my goals is to speak with an astronought during a pass, so far my timing seems to be off.

Is there a way to get the rest of the story?

Thanks!

Re: Building a Bilderberger

Pascvaks — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 10:02:37 -0000

Ahhhhh... the search of the ever elusive Snipe continues. We walk around slowly at dusk among the trees and underbrush, a bag in hand and a flashlight in our pocket - "Here Snipe! Here Snipe!" When we grow a little older, someone tells us that a couple guys up on deck captured a Sea Bat. We also have a little problem with remedies of every sort, especially the ones on TV for $29.99 plus $6.98 shipping and handling that aren't approved by the FDA but have a website full of testimonials from people who swear it's the best thing since No-Doze was invented. Yhep! Honest, unbiased truth is really hard to come by. Wonder why? ;-)

Re: Evolution versus the Theory of Evolution

Pascvaks — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 21:23:56 -0000

It was not unusual to "reconstruct" this Rex with that Dino. We just didn't know and we were guessing. If people would just accept that there's a whole lotta' stuff we just don't know and we're running as fast as we can to answer all the questions, maybe they'd be a little more tolerant of each other. Nahaaaaa... never happen. Oh well, no harm in dreaming. Right?

Yeh, the spaceman thing is probably too weird for most. Maybe there really was a burning bush?

Life's a beach. If you spend two weeks trying to figure out how it got there, you're going to have a terrible vacation. First thing first, right? ;-)

Re: Evolution versus the Theory of Evolution

Keith DeHavelle — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 21:00:37 -0000

An interesting notion. If an alien had shown an early shepherd a movie of how the solar system and life were formed, there would have been no way to judge the immense times involved. It would have been a very strange dream, and could have been days as easily as billions of years.

I don't think that's how it went, but one could make a story out of it.

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle

Re: Evolution versus the Theory of Evolution

Pascvaks — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 12:37:34 -0000

PS: It's not that we know so much that's incredible, it's that we know so little and think we know so much that's so very, very incredible.