You know what?

[mmcirvin]

Until I read this old comment thread, I never connected the urban legend about LNG tanks exploding like nuclear bombs with Petr Beckmann.

I now perceive the whole of bogosity as a single equation! AND IT'S SO SIMPLE!!

Comments

[jvandenberg.livejournal.com]

BOGOSITY = MORE BOGOSITY
MORE > 1

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

PENTHOUSE ran an article by Peter Van Der Linde about the Nightmarish Potential of LNG to destroy entire cities. I wonder if PVDL knew Beckmann?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

At first I assumed you'd just made a typo in the name of a.f.u old hat Peter van der Linden, which gave me a lot of cognitive dissonance.

(At least people complaining about the terrorist threat of LNG tanks usually seem to be talking about bombing the tanks. I actually have no idea what that would do. But the form in which I heard this legend claimed that a suicidal terrorist could effectively nuke the South Shore by shooting at the big Boston Gas (now Keyspan) tanks from a distance with a high-powered rifle, and I found this somewhat suspect.)

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I should have added "in 1978" to my comment.

A while back on rasfw, it occured to me to wonder why there had been no LNG explosions, given that LNG tankers exist and as far as I know hire the same range of captains as oil tankers. Mishaps _should_ happen. It turns out the flame speed in LNG is relatively low and the air mixture has to be in a fairly narrow range to get an explosion.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Someone who wanted to put in more work than I do could have a lot of fun determining which cranks influenced SF the most and which editors and writers were to blame. Beckmann, of course, was published by Jim Baen at Ace. The Clams had their connection via Astounding for a while (Astounding was the Typhoid Mary of a lot of crank ideas, though). Tommy Gold got spread by Larry Niven.

[ckd]

tanks (now tank).

Also, you should really posit a crazed anticommunist shooting at the conjectured silhouette of Ho Chi Minh to get the full effect.

[jwgh]

Man, now you've got me searching for stuff about James P. Hogan again. Stuff like this: http://fascistoar.blogspot.com/2006/02/short-rebuttal-to-hogans-malevolently.html

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Not entirely certain that blog uses "fascist" in a nuanced way.

[jwgh]

Yeah, a little poking around seems to indicate that it really doesn't.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

At the risk of sounding terribly prejudiced, I have a fairly low tolerance for invocations of Marx in my litcrit.

[jwgh]

This is more or less why I linked to the article I linked to instead of, say, http://fascistoar.blogspot.com/2006/02/dipping-non-economic-oar-in-james.html .

[jwgh]

Mainly I had forgotten that the first sentence of Kicking the Sacred Cow was 'Science really doesn't exist,' which is pretty spiffy.

[eb-oesch.livejournal.com]

An analysis of American science fiction highlighting how often right-wing polemics - diatribes, really - mar novels in the genre. For some reason, fascism has to stick its oar in every novel, as if it bought a permanent ad spot at the top of the hour.

I am relieved that there are men who are trying to tame the scourge of politicized science fiction, just as a previous generation had McCarthy to help keep politics out of Hollywood.

I don't understand why everybody but me seems to have political leanings and accents. Why do science fiction writers always inject politics into discussions of future or alternative societies? Marx already told us how society will end up anyhow.

My favorite political diatribe was "The Lucky Strike". There's nothing like an alternate-reality story with a point of view. If I wrote a short story where Justice O'Connor votes in favor of the Florida recount, and Gore becomes President, and then 9/11 doesn't happen, and a year later, Sharon signs a peace treaty with Arafat, and then bin Laden starts to preach nonviolence, could I get nominated for a Hugo too?