Monday, December 22, 2025

Close To Home

 One of the most intelligent men I ever knew worked for The National Bureau of Standards in Boulder, Colorado. He is the guy who taught my mother to use computers when she decided decades ago to start her own bookkeeping business.  Not long after that he took me on as a pupil, and brought me kicking and screaming into the twentieth century. What you are currently reading is in large part due to his tutelage since prior to learning how to use Wordstar, all of my creative writing was done with a Bic pen and a spiral notebook. Eventually I would sit down in front of an electric typewriter and transcribe my scribbles and hand them to whatever professor hoped to measure my progress. Eventually I mastered a small set of skills and was sent on my way. As those skills grew and expanded, I eventually found my way into the computer lab at Horace Mann Elementary. 

Doug Mann was one of thousands of big brains that found their way to Boulder back in the sixties and seventies. The Bureau of Standards, a vast new IBM plant, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research were big draws for those who liked to think for a living. As a result, my hometown has regularly placed at or near the top of America's Smartest Cities

IBM has fallen on hard times, having missed the boat on personal computing. The Bureau of Standards continues to think really hard about a great many things under its new moniker, The National Institute of Standards and Technology. If you really want to know what time it is, check with them. 

And what of the NCAR? Well, the convicted felon and orange reminder of how far wrong the democratic process can go has decided to dismantle it. Apparently he feels that there is far too much thinking going on about Atmospheric Research in Boulder. His minion Russ "Thoughtless" Vought insists NCAR is “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.” 

You may be wondering how the Office of Management and Budget comes so quickly to his awareness of climate alarmism. 

I know I am. 

I also know that if Doug Mann were around, he would have truly enjoyed picking apart the current regime's "plan" to eliminate Atmospheric Research. They say they want to keep the supercomputing portion of the operation, no doubt to generate more clever memes depicting the Orange Worst in more flattering and masculine poses. The rest? We can just ignore that. 

In the end, it does not take a genius to tell how wrong this all is. But it sure would be nice. 

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