In article ,
Kay wrote:

"Predictions of a scorching summer today prompted the Government to send
out a warning on how to cope in a heatwave.
The Met Office has issued an alert that temperatures in July and August
could match the 101F recorded in Kent in 2003.
Now the Department of Health says it will distribute leaflets telling
people how to keep cool and protect themselves from the sun."

Well, I hope that they will include some more science than their usual
crap. In particular, some advice based in the increasing evidence that
"sunscreen" creams are at least as likely to be part of the problem as
part of the solution.

Yeah, but look at it this way - the pessimist is at worst proved right, but
in the normal run of things can only ever be pleasantly surprised!

I have noticed that the pessimists of my acquaintance are generally
miserable whereas the optimists seem to lead much happier lives.

The thing that makes me (as a pessimist) so despondent is seeing
serious, avoidable problems coming, trying and failing to get the
idiot optimists to allow the avoiding action, and then having them
smugly say "well, it couldn't have been foreseen." Showing them
evidence that (a) I foresaw it, (b) I showed the predictions AND THE
SOLUTIONS to them, and (c) everything happened according exactly
as I predicted, gets the response "well, it's all your fault then,
for not succeeding in persuading us."

And, yes, my career has suffered very badly because I was proved
right. It would have been OK if I had been proved wrong, because
who gives a damn about an incompetent doomster, but a Cassandra or
Jeremiah needs persecution.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.