Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Am I stoned?

Or can I hear more music?
It's much too hipstertacular for me, I know, but I do rather like the Mae Shi. Even if their songs seem to be imbued with the sort of peculiar christian cosmology that you can only get through the serious overuse of psychedelics.

I've just finished writing a 1,500-word rambling blog post which, after proofreading, I've decided will never see the light of day; at least, not in its current form. It's much too far into the realms of shop, and without the things I don't want to say, I think that it's rather toothless and stupid sounding.

I was inspired to write it by this article which got me all riled up and cranky. It's made me more determined than ever to check every statistic, no matter how many times I've heard it before (or how plausible it sounds to me) and to pick my words with great care when I have to summarize someone else's research. Mostly it's just made me paranoid about my own ignorance, and what grevious misrepresentations I may have perpetrated myself.

This article is very interesting, and is quite similar to the sort of things i've been doing myself recently. It's amazing how many 'accepted' facts and statistics disappear in a puff of bullshit-smelling smoke if you look at them closely enough, and follow them home.

-Ben

Pointless fact: I always spell the word 'definite' wrong. I know exactly how it is supposed to be spelled, but for some unfathomable reason my fingers always write 'definate'