On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 2:42 PM, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson < [email protected]> wrote:
> You may suddenly discover the fact > that you have performed your librarian duties so well that you've > actually put yourself out of a job! > Nothing would please me more. It would be like winning a war and going home. > What to do next? One possibility would be to publish, of course! > Publish your memoirs on the battle to help restore CF... Your memoirs > would have to include some of the stupidest quotes attributed to > famous skeptics, statements they were known to have said pertaining to > their opinion on Cold Fusion. > One of the depressing collection of comments was in response to the 60 Minutes show, especially the people who said that cold fusion has already been given a chance and does not deserve any more funding: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/17/60minutes/main4952167.shtml I do have hundreds of comments but they are so depressing I think I will leave it to posterity to sort them out. One good thing about computers and the modern era is that people write things down, and the text is preserved in my computer and elsewhere. In the past, people would say things and then deny they said them, and written records were lost. In U.S. presidential history, it is said that the LBJ administration preserved the least amount of original-source information because LBJ conducted most of his business on the telephone, and he did not allow a telephone voice recorder. Before LBJ most presidents wrote many memos. Nowadays presidents and staff use e-mail as much (or more) than voice telephones. That trend is widespread in society. President Jefferson ran the whole administration and government by writing out messages in longhand. He was a text-oriented guy. He used a parallelogram pen recorder to keep a copy of everything he wrote. Despite ubiquitous electronic media, some politicians still get away saying contradictory things without losing support. I hesitate to introduce politics but Newt Gingrich has been having a knock-down, drag-out fight with himself over the last few weeks regarding Libya. - Jed
