Saturday, January 19, 2019
Doug Roberts
RIP Doug Roberts LANL computer scientist, musician, bird lover, biker and loving husband - a kind, loving, wise friend whose search for truth on his blog had a constructive impact on LANL's history. You are valued and missed. https://www.mountainproject.com/forum/topic/116179730/doug-roberts
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
So long Doug, loved his blog, also liked the bird pics he would put up, mostly parrots but he had a few others kinds as well.
RIP Doug. You were a true, American patriot.
Doug kept it real on his blog. He cared, and it showed. No inane censorship, just a knowledgeable presence to keep things relatively normal.
January 21, 2019 at 5:56 PM
Doug did do some moderation of the blog to filter out the wacky get rich quick schemes, religion and crazy stuff like that, but he generally let everything else go even the personal insults. Of course he would counter the personal insults with some rather clever comments which had a tendency to make the those posters think twice. I think at the hight of his blog he had a very large audience of people from DOE, LANL, LLNL, Sandia and even the wider science community. His blog was even mentioned in the NYT. His blog was example of how the internet really expanded the ability of information transfer. I like to think that Doug was ahead of his time in terms of the new information age and the impact one person can have when they allow for the free flow of ideas. A testament to this is that even now we have the LLNL blog.
It is ironic that in recent times there are many forces which are now trying to limit the flow of information on the internet. One should not have the right to listen to right wing blogs, left wing blogs, political blogs and so on. Information is something that should only be for those who are worthy. In 2006 that was Nanos and higher ups. In any case has there ever been an example where censorship and suppression of ideas was a good thing? Why is it now that the self-rightest think it is good ideal. You hear stuff like Trump should be kicked off Twitter, Alex Jones should be banned from the internet, Ben Shapiro should not be allowed to speak on campus, Tucker Carlson should be kicked of TV, you should punch Nazies or anyone who I label as a Nazi. You should not be allowed to dislike certain movies or music because to do so would mean you have some hidden agenda of hate. Hate speech is not free speech and hate speech is whatever hurts my feelings. I am no conservative but I hate any kind of authoritarian trend that decides it knows best what I and others should be able to read, listen to, think about, discuss, and debate on .
Doug allowed anti Nanos people to post along with pro Nanos people to post and the audience and public could read it make up their own minds. I am sure it made lots of people very upset that such discussion and debate even be allowed but one has to ask why would they not want to have these discussions out in the open in the first place?
January 21, 2019 at 7:44 PM
Well said throughout, and bravo.
Post a Comment