Sunday, March 06, 2005

Stark raving mad

From James Shreeve's article Beyond the Brain in the most recent issue of the National Geographic magazine (p. 28):

[...] hypergraphia, a manic disorder characterized by an irrepressible urge to write [...] The hypergraphic patient's compulsion to write all the time is not, alas, accompanied by any increase in talent. The diatribes of the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski, (or the verbal pablum of some Internet blogs) are typical output.

Pablum was a new word to me, and the phrase verbal pablum sounds very nice. If you think of some of the blogs out there, you almost cannot help agreeing with him. Or go to www.crank.net and visit some of the sites listed there as illucid. One thing I dislike a bit about the above quote is that it reeks a little of the practice, popular among all sorts of unsavoury regimes, of discrediting one's opponents by declaring them mad. Still, it's a neat quote, and the article as a whole is also quite nice.

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