6 responses to “Cool Hand Karl is back”

1. 

   sfw

   Mar 17, 2023 7:16 AM

   Where does one find these FB and Substack accounts? Thanks

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2. 

   MatrixTransform

   Mar 17, 2023 7:25 AM

   shameless, Rafe

   those books will corrupt the minds of the naive and impressionable

   this is waaaay worserer that Tranny Story-time

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3. 

   Tom

   Mar 17, 2023 9:20 AM

   Times will be tough for irrationalists, essentialists, Marxists , justificationists, and people who think science starts with observations and end with consensus.

   Exactly right, Rafe. They’re irrationalists — the trash of the global middle class that has insinuated itself into every national government on earth, real leaders having abandoned the field.

   A couple of decades ago, it was thought in Australia all you had to do to get better leaders was to pay them more, so state and federal parliamentary salaries were basically doubled.

   It succeeded only in further degrading our leadership, encouraging moral gutlessness and expanding the monetary value of the sinecures available to the parasites of the politics business.

   The degradation of our leadership has been further encouraged by the explosion in social media, most of it still controlled by anti-social coding nerds who loathe the human race and its aspirations, like freedom.

   The social media monopolies have simply made it easier for us to lie to and hoodwink each other. Our political leadership has never had so many deception tools available.

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4. 

   Bruce

   Mar 17, 2023 10:26 AM

   Not being fully integrated by the Matrix, I have none of the “devices” to read electronic books.

   Around here, “tree-ware” rools. For starters, the batteries don’t go flat just at an”interesting bit”. Some of my books date back to the mid 19th century, and are perfectly functional. Try that with a “Kindle” file in a hundred and seventy years.

   No doubt, some of the usual suspects will take that Ray Bradbury novel as a holy quest handbook, not as a warning.

   The BIGGEST hazard to a lot of books, especially paperbacks printed since WW2, is the paper itself. To meet a rapidly-rising demand for books, especially paperbacks, post WW2, most publishers went to “acid-bleached” paper, in preference to the long-established “Oxygen-bleached” stuff. This latter material was actually bleached using Hydrogen Peroxide, which left no residue after the pulp was rinsed.

   “Acid” bleached paper uses essentially an industrial grade Hypochlorous acid; MUCH CHEAPER, BUT, unless REALLY thoroughly neutralized and then rinsed in PURE water, (“expensive”), some of that acid stays in the fibres and starts to break them down from Day One.

   THAT is why all those paperback SF novels, dodgy “bodice-rippers”, etc. and historical books, like “The Washing of the Spears”, are going brown and “dusty”. They are “self-erasing”. Great for the “re-print” operators, but, if the reprints are on the same crappy paper, it just kicks the can expensively down the rod for another sixty or so years.

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5. 

   Rafe Champion

   Mar 17, 2023 12:28 PM

   Sorry sfw. I was ahead of myself with the Facebook page and the substack, you could say they are on his list of things to do when he works out how to communicate to a wide audience when so few people read books and other serious matter.
   Young people are a specially important target and he is determined find some young people with leadership qualities to do the business for their peer group. There is no way he can communicate directly to people who get everything from social media.
   Still, his ideas are as important as ever and whatever can be done to spread them around will be explored, especially short videos and on-line courses.

   Bruce, thanks for your thoughts on the durability of books, that is an interesting topic and a matter of concern to a diminishing number of people as less people accumulate libraries of books. Those of us who do so are faced with the conundrum – who wants them, the answer appears to be nobody:) Just try to cull your library and get your friends to take the surplus off your hands!

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6. 

   Bar Beach Swimmer

   Mar 17, 2023 9:54 PM

   Rafe, I’m not on fb (or anything else) but the substack I’d be happy to read.