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DOOMIFICATION

An approach for converting text to
doomfile format:

  Reformat with tight right margin.

  Split paragraphs into smaller units
  (one rectpara per sentence, i.e. idea?)

  Chop unnecesary words.                      It's amazing how hard
                                              it can be to read text
  Turn parenthetic comments into              stripped of the apparently
  side bars.                                  "unnecesary" words.

  Reorganize "train" of thought into                The doomification
  "tree" of thought.                                process has interesting
                                                    biases: short Hemingway
                                                    style sentences are
Plan on obsolescence:                               favored.  Fewer words
try not to work on things                           are usually best, but
that can't be finished                              large words are awkward:
before they're irrelevant.                          they make it harder to
                                                    format into rectangles.
For example: some worry about                       E.g.: above, "Hemingway
the human gene pool being                           style" was originally
contaminated by poor traits                         "hemingwayesque".
that civilization protects,
such as poor eyesight.  This                            Even better though,
is dumb, because in a few                               would be to drop
decades the genes of the                                the Hemingway ref.
children will be under direct                           It's not even
control of the parents... and                           obscure enough to
*that* may cause some                                   be pretentious.
problems worth worrying
about.
                                                Speaking of pretentiousness,
                               NANOTECH         this is another
                                                problem with
       Eric Drexler was initally                doomification:
       very interested in large                 "excess" words
       scale space technology such              are often there
       as photosails, but after                 to soften statements,
       thinking about the potential             to provide a sense of
       for "nanotechnology", he                 modesty.  "In my opinion";
       decided it was far more                  "I think that"; "But then
       likely a nanotech revolution             I could be wrong"...
       would happen first, long                 many phrases can be choped
       before the industrial                    without changing the idea
       revolution in space.                     being stated, and yet this can
                                                make the statement sound
                                                much more egocentric.



Which is better: write about
the entirety of an author's
work under one subject heading
(e.g. the author's name), or
split up the writing, filing
each piece under some more specific
subject?  Answer: The Latter.

((Example: Maybe the stuff under the
Delany heading would work better split up
according to subject, with subheadings about
different works by Delany, like Babel-17, say.))



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