George W. Bush, bookworm

zakur said:
Article


Interesting change of direction for Bush's PR team. He's no longer the ordinary, brush-clearing, guy-you-would-want-to-have-a-beer-with everyman. Now he's a history and philosophy loving egghead?

Instead of getting his iPod playlist, rugged ranch work photos, and stories of his mountain biking prowess, instead we are fed this mammoth list of literature he has allegedly consumed over the past 6 months. Call me skeptical.
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According the Schlessinger, JFK was an avid reader before and during his presidency. He apparently soaked a up great deal of wht he read and could synthesize diaparate strands of thought. (One wonders if he occasionally suffered from paralysis through over analysis, or if the pain killers played into that.)

GWB is starting a bit late, for my money. This reading binge is like putting on the batting helmet after the ump has the count at 2 & 1, and the first of the chin music has blown by.

DR
 
marksman said:
In effort to fit in, insert arbitrary, generic and yet clever rant about Bush's lack of education/intelligence/commitment to the democratic process/competence here.
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Most of these rants are more focused on Bush's lack of trustworthiness/reliability/integrity/credibility using his lack of education/intelligence/intellect/acumen as supporting evidence to question his reading 60 books this year in addition to clearing all of the brush in Crawford.

Seriously, do you think that he actually read these books? I can see him saying, "How many are you saying you read Karl? Put me down for ten more."

Daredelvis
 
We Americans have been graced by some major thinkers who went on to become presidents. They may not have even been the most "educated" (Dumbya being the attendee at both Yale and Harvard). Reading correspondences and diaries of Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Adams, Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Wilson, Teddy R., FDR, Clinton gives one a view into the thought processes and reflections of fine intellects.
I don't mean to say that these guys necessarily always made the right political, ethical or diplomatic decisions, but you saw the engines turning and the mind working.
Even Milhouse, a truly despicable person, had a brain.
We are cursed with the most ignorant president ever. Grant and Eisenhower were more well-read and thoughtful and they had real wars to fight. This idiot has gotten us into a deadly mess without exhibiting an iota of intellect.
 
Ran into my dad on the highway in Kennebunkport couple of weeks ago and we played some cards. I kill him at bridge.

Read Oedipus Rex after bidding four spades, two hearts, then three diamonds in the rubber. Ouch.

Good thing Mother wasn't there.
 
headscratcher4 said:
They should have asked him "what Act" did you like the most? Or "what impressed you about the story?"

Or, perhaps more on-point: "were they the original "Classic Comics" or a new, reprint?"
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or maybe even the abbreviated Cliff Notes. ;)

This is an obvious attempt at making our President appear as an intelligent and thoughtful man - you know, the same guy who couldn't finish My Pet Goat.
 
Bikewer said:
NPR's "Wait, wait, don't tell me!" show had a funny bit on this. After mentioning that Dubya had just "breezed" through Camus, one of the panelists said, "Why Camus?"

Roy Blunt Jr. said, "it's short".
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I thought it interesting that The Stranger was the Camus book in question - it's a story about an unrepentant man who shoots and kills an Arab. Was that a literary Freudian slip?
 
Mephisto said:
I thought it interesting that The Stranger was the Camus book in question - it's a story about an unrepentant man who shoots and kills an Arab. Was that a literary Freudian slip?
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And a French man at that. Now that's twisted.
 
Mephisto said:
This is an obvious attempt at making our President appear as an intelligent and thoughtful man - you know, the same guy who couldn't finish My Pet Goat.
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You mean How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Goat?

I do not recommend this book to the American people. The story of a small hollow-horned bearded ruminant mammal going funny in the head and ordering planes to attack Baghdad puzzled me. I felt unable to think clearly afterwards.

Wish you'd have gave me this question ahead of time so I could've planned for it.
 
Bill Maher joked...And I’m paraphrasing here...

The 'average reader' and I’m giving that to Bush, Would have to read over 2 hours a day to read 60 books in 6 months. Meaning that along with his 2 hours of working out a day, he also reads for 2 hours a day.


No wonder he was so late on responding to Katrina.


Of course everyone knows it's an outright lie.
 
Dustin said:
The 'average reader' and I’m giving that to Bush, Would have to read over 2 hours a day to read 60 books in 6 months.
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Sounds like I'm reading a book in six hours. Could be I'm reading 24 hours a day for fifteen days. Could be 12 hours a day for a month. Could be any of them. One of them is true, right? The White House would not lie about this.

Whatever the case, the theory that I am reading, specifically, x hours a day to read, specifically, x books in, specifically, x months is unprovable.

But, for argument's sake, consider the possibility that the theory that my reading x hours a day to read x books in x months is unprovable might be false. Because, uh, I should know when I read what and for how long.

The trouble is, I don't remember a single goddamned thing. Never have remembered a single goddam... uh, what are we talking about?

So the theory that I am reading x hours a day to read x books in x months is unprovable is true. Consequently, this theory is unprovable...

... see, I didn't have to read any old Principia Mathematica before going to the bathroom this morning.
 
Mephisto said:
I thought it interesting that The Stranger was the Camus book in question - it's a story about an unrepentant man who shoots and kills an Arab. Was that a literary Freudian slip?
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Yes. They did a funny bit about it on The Daily Show. "A book about a man who murders an Arab for no good reason and dies without remorse."

Steven
 
At least to me - the I read lots of books political stunt seems pretty silly and possibly counterproductive. I'm guessing that the White House was somehow trying to influence the "educated public" that thinks Bush is a dunce by proving that he really isn't and that Bush actually reads (constantly) lots of books with them there big words. However, I would think that most "educated" voters will realize that it's a big lie and actually end up even more annoyed at the White House.
 
zakur said:
This is what he's reading next.
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Here is 99 bottles of beer on the wall written in Malbolge, a computer programming language designed to be difficult, named after the eighth circle of hell in Dante's Inferno, and first generated by a beam search algorithm.

The author of this program, Hisashi Iizawa, has published a paper (available only in Japanese) called "Programming Method in Obfuscated Language Malbolge/me".

Translating this will give me something to do while Karl finishes The Anarchist's Guide to Civilian Warfare.
 
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