Deep Fried Logic: 2007

Once upon a time, two men ran for President of A Very Important Country...and, in a funny thing that had never happened before and has only happened twelve times since, they both won. But since two people can't both be President of A Very Important Country, something had to be done. What was done is actually a different story than the one we'll tell here today (it's actually more of a very scary campfire story, to be sure).

The focus of this story is not what was done, but of what the two men who ran for President of A Very Important Country did after what was done (in the very scary campfire story) was done.

One of the men, who you have all come to know as The Goracle, was disappointed, no doubt, especially considering what was done, but he didn't wallow in his disappointment or let it get him down. He knew that he could still be A Very Important Person of A Very Important Country, and more to the point, of A Very Important World (considering it was, at that point, the only world they had).

So, The Goracle went about the same business he intended to tend to even if what had been done hadn't been done (with the notable exeption of going to funerals of people whose name other people couldn't pronounce even before there was a funeral to go to as well as listening to a lot of nasty arguing between all the other people who were either for, or against, his particular style of business).

The other man, who you have all come to know as The Other He Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken, went about the same business that his father had once started but was unable to finish because The People of A Very Important Country saw there was a better person who could do a better job and politely asked The Other He Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken's father to sit this one out.

Unfortunately, The Other He Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken's father's business was not a particularly nice business (it focused on doing bad things to people who may or may not have been particularly bad, but why let a little thing like details slow us down at this point I say). But the son was certainly the man born to finish the father's unfinished business and he went right to work ununfinishing it. The son was even lucky enough to have a lot of his father's handymen around (who themselves were actually an unfinished part of the unfinished business we would all learn before the ununfinishing was acturally finished).

Meanwhile, The Goracle kept up with his business.

And The Other He Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken actually proved to be quite adept at being inept at ununfinishing business, or even at finishing those things not unfinished, even moreso than his father had ever dreamed of, however ineptly he may have adeptly dreamed in the first place.

Several years went by, with both men carrying on with (un)finishing their respective business(es), and as The Very Inevitable End of The Most Important Job of A Very Important Country was approaching for The Other He Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken, The People of A Very Important Country and the rest of A Very Important World took a long and hard look at the two men...

And they compared what they saw...

And they took another long and hard look at the two men...

And they, again, compared what they saw (for some, this required comparing new things they hadn't noticed the first time against old things they actually had noticed earlier, but, not having the new things to which they could compare the old, yet now, having both sets of things, could now adequately internally process all things seen)...

And they thought how about how differently the two men had gone about (un)finishing their respective business(es) and couldn't help but notice that their was a very big difference, not just between the two men as men, but between their respective handling of their respective business(es).

In fact, they were quite the opposite if the truth be spoken or even whispered.

Which is what some of us had been saying for a long time, anyway, for different reasons at different times, but, still, it wasn't as earthshattering as the (un)finishing of some people's respective business(es).

As you have all learned in micro-ssori monte-primary school, The People of A Very Important World decided what The People of A Very Important Country already had once decided (regardless of what was done having been done and remained decidedly unundone) and so they rewarded this man with a very noble prize for his business.

As for The Other He Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken, well, there is a reason his name must not be spoken, and why all small, greenish, not quite trees must be referred to as either Shrubs or (the more descriptive, but decidedly longer)Greenish, Not Quite Trees, but, there is also an even more important reason that his business, and his ununfinishing of it, must always be remembered and spoken of, so that we may all avoid unununfinishing it again, even if by mistake.

[with all apologies and acknowledgments to D.N.A.]

LONDON (AFP) - A right-wing American thinktank is offering 10,000 dollars (7,700 euros) to scientists and economists to dispute a climate change report set to be released by the UN's top scientific panel, media reported.

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which receives funding from oil giant ExxonMobil according to the Guardian, sent letters to scientists in the United States, Britain and elsewhere offering the payments in exchange for articles emphasising the shortcoming of the UN's report.

AEI also reportedly offered additional payments, and to reimburse travel expenses.

The report, due to be released Friday in Paris by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), is likely to give a bleak assessment of the damage to the future of the environment.

It is the culmination of four days of debate between more then 500 scientists at a closed-door meeting in Paris, who have been poring over the first review of the scientific evidence for global warming in six years.

AEI's letters characterize the IPCC report as "resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work" and request articles that "thoughtfully explore the limitations of climate model outputs," The Guardian said.

Kenneth Green, the AEI visiting scholar who sent the letters, confirmed to The Guardian that the thinktank had approached scientists and analysts to pen essays that would be compiled into an independent review of the IPCC's report.

"Right now, the whole debate is polarized," Green was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

"One group says that anyone with any doubts whatsoever are deniers and the other group is saying that anyone who wants to take action is alarmist. We don't think that approach has a lot of utility for intelligent policy."