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Unabomber or Gore?

I spotted this online quiz on a Tim Blair thread. Normally, such quizzes tend to be inordinately tedious, but this one raised a chuckle. It features a series of quotes taken from both Al Gore’s book Earth In The Balance and The Unabomber’s Manifesto. Get marks by correctly attributing each quote to either Unabomber or Gore. I scored precisely 50%. Heh.

As an antidote to environmental luddites, used copies of Bjorn Lomborg’s fantastic book The Skeptical Environmentalist are going for a song over at Amazon. When I bought this book a few years ago, it cost me more than fifty (Australian) dollars. If you have not yet read this fascinating expose of the Green movement, what are you waiting for? Whip that credit card out now!

27 comments to Unabomber or Gore?

  • Pete

    Thank you.
    I have been looking for something a bit less silly than Michael Crichton’s “State Of Fear” and this looks like the one. Book is on its way.

  • rosignol

    I was attributing what I thought were the more reasonable quotes to Gore, and the more extreme to the Unabomber…

    …and when all was said and done, my score was 33%.

  • Wow.

    I scored 17%. I had tried to associate any sort of revolutionary wacko-greenness to Unabomber and any sort of reasonable historical reference to Gore.

    Looks like that isn’t the case….

  • hihi

    hi your site good…

  • I scored 58%. I was looking largely at language usage; going on thye supposition that Gore would write ina simpler, more accessible fashion (i.e., he had an editor)

  • Simon Jester

    I scored 58%. I completed it on the basis that any quote that threatened to send me to sleep came from Gore.

    Turned out that a lot of the Unabombers’ quotes were bloviating inanities, too.

  • Simon Jester

    …Unabombers quotes… – sorry.

  • 42% here. I spent the morning sending this link to my liberal friends. Too much fun.

  • 40% here, genuinely trying to guess which one was written by the wacked out nut job, and which from the Unabomber.

  • Chris,

    What you said.

    Snigger.

  • Karl.Rove

    If you want something to send you to sleep, try the

    State of the Union address.

  • Patrick

    50% exact. Geez Gore speaks a load of poo, doesn’t he? Maybe someone should send him Mr Lomborg’s book – not my copy though, I like it!

  • A round 50% for me too. In truth I think the Unabomber is quite a bit brighter than Al Gore, if being a murdering nutcase doesn’t disqualify him from the comparison. I think that might be what fooled us.

  • Kim du Toit

    Most people are more intelligent than Al Gore, who is a thundering oaf and bully.

    Not to mention an enviro-fascist.

  • Kim du Toit

    25%.

    At least the online quiz didn’t prove I was a libertarian, which is what most of these things seem to set out to do.

  • Aurora

    58% here…just tried to use some common sense…doesn’t seem to apply here.

  • J

    Yay!! Another victory for sophistry and point scoring over rational discourse. I love the internet.

    Yes, highly intelligent, cool but twisted eco-terrorist shares language style and opinions with boring politician. Despite this stunning revelation, I’d still way rather invite the Unabomber to my tea party. In other breaking news, Hitler’s opinions on meat-free diet found to be startling similar to opinions of modern vegetarianism advocates! Are these evil veggies plotting to kill us all? It just could be…

    Say what you like about Bush, but at least there’s no chance of anyone repeating the excercise with his quotes….

  • To the humourless J:

    Recently, I was sent a bunch of Dan Quayle quotes that had been spuriously re-attributed to Bush.

    Does that count?

  • Brian

    Mr. Waterton, might I suggest revised wording for this particular blog entry:

    “Remember that when the FBI searched Unabomber Ted Kaczinski’s shack (after his brother turned him in), they found only a handful of personal items and just a single, well-read book.

    What was the one title that the Unabomber felt was so important it was his only reading material? Earth in the Balance, by Al Gore.” (Sorry, I wasn’t able to properly underline the book’s title.)

    Hopefully, the aforementioned will give needed perspective to the online quiz under discussion here.

  • Tuscan Tony

    25% here. Perhaps someone should send the test to Al Gore – my guess is he’d assume they were all his own work, and thus score 50%…..

  • Julian Taylor

    At least the online quiz didn’t prove I was a libertarian, which is what most of these things seem to set out to do.

    So wtf are you doing posting on a Libertarian blog then?
    And what exactly is an ‘enviro-fascist’? Someone who helps save the environment by making sure that all the bodies of his opponents are carefully disposed of? Also how would that quiz actually prove that you are a Libertarian, as opposed to the view you convey of being an idiotarian?

  • Brian – the Unabomber is a brilliant man. I find it hard to believe his thinking was shaped by one book alone. I also cannot find any reference to your assertion that Earth In The Balance was the only book found in Kaczyn ski’s cabin at the time of his capture – and knowing what I know about the man – your claim sounds as spurious as those George Bush quotes I mentioned above.

    Point is that the Unabomber’s demands and analyses are so similar to a number of “moderate” environmentalists – however, their M.O.s are different. This in itself is instructive.

  • Hitler was not a vegetarian. I wish people would stop perpetrating this myth.

  • A thundering 17% here, too. I really did think I could pick out the ramblings of a deranged mind from those of a solid upstanding domestic terror perp.

  • 8%. I guess I assumed Al was the more sensible one.

  • SPURWING PLOVER

    hen the unibombers shack was searched by the FBI one of the things they confiscated was AL GORES eco-malarkey book EARTH IN THE BALANCE one must wonder if he is also watching A INCONVENT TRUTH during his free time

  • SPURWING PLOVER

    The facts are that the UNIBOMBER wasa big time eco-freak who lived in a tiny shack without running water or electricity and got about mostly on a bicycle and read AL GORES eco-babble book EARTH IN THE BALANCE and subcribed to LIVE WILD OR DIE produced by the radical eco-freak group EARTH FIRST and lets not gorget one of his victims was GILBERT MURRY a timber executive