First to Carl if you put the : and the ( or ) or a D together it forms a smilling or frowning faceor an open mouth face. In your post it looks as if you had put a colon and a D for DSC, therefore an open mouth face :D.
As to E1skeptic, where is that stake and pile of wood when you need it. When I said I would listen to God or my bible over Cecil you wanted to burn me at the stake, now if you choose Asimov, you get the same. Heritic
Jeffery
Well, I will say that at least Cecil probably could get on a plane sometime…
Asimov never left NYC for a long portion of his life.
One of his characters I remember recurring in his robot short stories was a genius expert at space travel who never travelled in space.
Her response when asked about this: “Does a history expert need to travel through time?”
RE: Carl Sagan, W. Wagner writes:
I believe this was in reference to Sagan’s book The Demon Haunted World. Which of his facts were wrong in this book?
StrTrkr777: IIRC, I stopped David B. from burning you! I recommended just a “little torture”, remember? It was ARG who I wanted to burn. (still do…).
And now that we agree on something, you want to burn me, and call me “heritic” (sic)?
tsk, tsk.
Saludos.
DSC wrote:
W. Wagner may have been referring to other works of his, what with The Demon-Haunted World being in a different sentence and all.
For my money, The Demon-Haunted World is perhaps Sagan’s finest work. His fact-checking in that particular book was done more carefully than in his others. I personally didn’t care for the emotional (rather than evidence-based) slant he gave to his bleeding-heart alarmist environmentalism in Pale Blue Dot and Billions and Billions.
I’m not flying fast, just orbiting low.
Question and comment time.
Regarding the blue vs. red Mars thing mentioned earlier (assuming this actually happened), I’ll say this:
Maybe this should be in another thread titled “Was Carl Sagan a good scientist?” or something like that. Asimov said Sagan was one of the two smarter than he was. Take it for what it’s worth.
I’ve been asked to defend my statement that Carl Sagan was somewhat sloppy in his facts in The Demon-Haunted World. It’ll take me a couple of days to organize my notes, but as soon as I do I’ll start a new thread on Sagan and The Demon-Haunted World.
Asimov may have said that Sagan was one of the two smartest people he knew, but that doesn’t mean it was an unbiased assessment of his intelligence. He might have been influenced by the fact that Sagan’s political and philosophical beliefs were so close to his (and he might have been influenced by his friendship with Sagan). If I were to choose an American writer who I think, based on his wide reading and cogent argumentation, is the smartest person whose books I’ve read, it would be Garry Wills.
E1, I am soooo sorry, thank you for stopping David from burning me and only suggesting torture.
I just had to give a little back to you.
Jeffery
Are we talking about who knows the most, or who is the better source of information? Cecil definitely is very good at researching information, but how much of his columns is stuff he knows and how much is stuff he just looked up?
Perhaps this belongs in a separate thread, but how do you think Marylin compares to Cecil? (or does she at all?)
-Ryan
" ‘Ideas on Earth were badges of friendship or enmity. Their content did not matter.’ " -Kurt Vonnegut, * Breakfast of Champions *
Marilyn is not fit to lick Cecil’s shoes clean. If she raised her IQ infinitely should could not match Cecil. If you want a picture, Marilyn’s knowledge would be an atom of a speck of sand and Cecil’s would be the known universe.
She should not even be compared to the master.
There is no comparison.
Jeffery
Could someone help me out here? I read on some Asimov site that he met a well-known SF writer (Ray Bradbury?) in a taxi, and they agreed that Asimov would always refer to Bradbury as the best SF writer in the world, if Bradbury would always refer to Asimov as the best science writer in the world. But I’m not positive it was Bradbury… Did anyone else read this?
Wordsmith: One of the elite few who knows that George Herbert Walker Bush was a Huge Berserk Rebel Warthog.
I heard the deal was betweem Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.
Satan said: One of his characters I remember recurring in his robot short stories was a genius expert at space travel who never travelled in space.
Her response when asked about this: “Does a history expert need to travel through time?”
Actually, it wasn’t a character from his robot stories. The character was Wendell Urth, who appeared in several stories compiled in “Asimov’s Mysteries”.
DSC says “I’ve read (and have) at least 85 of his non-fiction books, and I’ve found them to be excellent.”
Name a few.
I think I read maybe 3.
I got the idea that he could read 2 books and write a book that was way better than either one on the same topic. Any topic
But I never got the idea he was a practical man. So suppose our car breaks down in the desert, I’d rather have Cecil in the car than Isaac.
Wow, talk about apples and artichokes! The intelligence criteria for the Doc & Unca Cecil may be different, but they’ve gotta be a push when it comes to humility!
–Alan Q
glee writes:
> I heard the deal was betweem Asimov and
> Arthur C. Clarke.
Yes, the deal was between Asimov and Clarke, not Asimov and Bradbury. Asimov tells the story several times in his books. Clarke also tells the same story. The story wouldn’t make any sense if it were Bradbury, since he hasn’t written any science books.
sunbear writes:
> But I never got the idea he was a
> practical man. So suppose our car breaks
> down in the desert, I’d rather have Cecil
> in the car than Isaac.
Asimov admitted as much. He tells the story of how once his car broke down at night on a weekend, and he had difficulty finding a towing service open. As it happens, he had broken down not too far from where his brother Stanley lived, so he called him. Stanley drove over to where Asimov’s car was and tried to help him call towing services. Finally, Stanley said, “You know, Isaac, if you’re so brilliant, why don’t you have AAA?” Asimov said, “Oh, I do have AAA.” With nothing more said but with a strange look at his brother, Stanley took Asimov’s AAA card and immediately got him a tow truck.
There’s no such thing as a universal genius. Everybody has their strengths and their weaknesses. (You can read my review of Good Will Hunting and see how ridiculous I find the idea of a universal genius in that film. Go to http://www.dcfilmsociety.org, click on Reviews, and then click on Good Will Hunting.)
This is why I think that hero worship is ridiculous. Everyone has their weaknesses, even Cecil Adams. He may be able to produce a one-page answer to general knowledge questions within a week (and, what’s more, a funny answer) better than anyone else, but undoubtedly he’s weak in other areas.
StrTrkr said:
But it’s not just a matter of IQ. I was reading a book, Origins of Genius which pointed out that it takes more than a high IQ to make a “genius.” The author said you need to do something with that IQ. He specifically pointed to Marilyn as having the highest recorded IQ and then noted what she does with it – she writes a weekly newspaper column which answers puzzle questions.
But take a look at Cecil. He solves the problems that nobody else dares to tackle! He is globally recognized as a genius, and will be throughout history.
While it is true that there is no such thing as a universal genius, it always impresses me just how wide some of the great genius’s intellects ranged. From Leonardo D’Vinci, to Voltaire, to Feynman, Oppenheimer , and of course Cecil. Indeed sometimes I think that is one of the true measures of genius, the ability to ponder and consider abstracts that are widely disparagate.
>>Being Chaotic Evil means never having to say your sorry…unless the other guy is bigger than you.<<
—The dragon observes