Tue Jan 20 1998 12:00:
Oh boy, I'm back from Bakersfield. First
up, fresh from the grill, enjoy a rant. The
subject: Microsoft. Papa Joe
says he's going to link to it. Bring the wife and family, bring the
whole... kids, yippee. That's a Bob Dylan reference, by the way. He
was a folk singer.
Talkin' End of the World Blues
In other opinionated news, I got some old books of Christian prophecy at the Goodwill in Bakersfield. They are "The Late Great Planet Earth" by Hal Lindsey, who appears to be a fundie, and "This Apocalyptic Age" by Robert Bergen, who appears to be Catholic. Both published in 1970, both convinced that the Bible is speaking of their time, both bearing certain ever-so-slight resemblances to books of Christian prophecy published today, 28 years later. I'm going to present my analysis of what went wrong. I also got a 45 of Lindsey's "The 1980's: Countdown to Armageddon". He's like a dog with an old sock, that guy. I also also got a more recent book, "Silicon Snake Oil" by Cliff "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Egg" Stoll, which, being about the Internet and published three years ago, I can analyze in much the same light, although a lot of what he says is still a big problem and at least he doesn't put on his pompous hat and march around singing showtunes, so to speak, like the authors of certain other books I got at the Goodwill. But my biggest thrift-shop prizes were several old computer manuals: Atari Basic, Fortran for Business People, and a manual for Visicalc, the first spreadsheet program ever. Now if I only had my homework done.
