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From: medin@ucbvax.ARPA (Milo Medin)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: Experts:Are they all Milos?
Message-ID: <3767@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 11-Dec-84 21:34:15 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.3767
Posted: Tue Dec 11 21:34:15 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 13-Dec-84 14:33:21 EST
References: <1133@drusd.UUCP> <2082@randvax.UUCP>
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Lines: 46

> -- To the bug that will probably inherit the Earth:  *morituri te salutant* --
> 
> Milo,
>      I have at length been persuaded by your argument.  Not by its substance, 
> but by the fact that a human being was able to utter it.
>      A race capable of this sort of atavistic thinking, discussing, 
> dispassionately, "countervalues" and "megatonnage," when what is being balanced
> against ephemeral political considerations is the fate of all God's creation on
> this planet, is maladaptive -- and not merely maladaptive, but profoundly, 
> immitigably evil.  It can, in fact, do no better than to yield its small patch
> of the universe to the next random sequence of nucleotides to infuse the void 
> with intelligence, and hope only that that intelligence comports also an 
> element of decency -- the humanity that we who trifle to contemplate Armageddon
> so utterly and completely lack.
>     So, yes, let's each get a shovel -- dig the hole miles deep -- and when we
> emerge from the north-to-south, coast-to-coast nuclear firestorm that Milo  
> imagines we'll somehow survive, into the foul, contaminant, irremediably 
> radioactive nuclear winter of a dying planet -- lethally raped by its unique 
> sentient inhabitants -- we'll have perhaps the consolation that all the members
> of our own species who happen to have been born on another continent, and with
> whose leaders we once *disagreed politically*, are also dead.  In the cold, the
> dark, the lifeless, infertile emptiness, without food, witout potable water, 
> consumed from within by radiation sickness and inanition, we should have hours
> or days to meditate on this comforting reflection.  And to watch the human 
> race...go out.
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> ..akgua!uf-csv!mark     Mark Fishman
> CSNET: mark@ufl         Dept. of Computer and Information Sciences
>                         University of Florida, Gainesville FL 32611
> 
> The opinions herein expressed are irrelevant, inflammatory and possibly 
> fattening.  They do not represent those of the University of Florida or of any 
> 
> known biological organism or mythical construct.


Good grief...  This is what some people call rationality.  This reminds
me of an instance where Teller was giving a talk at UC and someone
asked him a question in the same vain...  He just stood there,
looked a bit puzzled, and sighed.

					Milo