I’m not sure I necessarily buy into the 5GW frameworks yet. Trying to nail 4GW Jell-O to the wall is hard enough. 5GW is like nailing said Jell-O while it’s still liquid.
Smitten Eagle, commenting on Zenpundit.
(I heartily concur.)
Quotations
WWPZD?
Again, from the usual source: with reference to this … TBN is a sewer, Crouch is a parasite, and Stein is upholding the finest tradition of Hollywood celebrities, and I mean that in the worst possible way.
Lots of other people, I hope, will be quoting Jacob Bronowski today, from the “Knowledge or Certainty” episode of The Ascent of Man:
It’s said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That’s false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.
Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken.”
I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard, I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died here, to stand here as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.
I’m not finished. I know PZ Myers. I’ve corresponded with him, spoken with him, and been a guest in his house. Nor was I there under false pretenses; he knows exactly what I am. I can think of few contrasts sharper than that between the way atheist liberal blue-state biology professor PZ Myers treated evangelical libertarian red-state corporate slug Jay Manifold and the way PZ is getting treated by these cretins.
It’s about time somebody started a “Christian Fans of PZ Myers” club, complete with WWPZD bracelets.
Did I mention that TBN is a sewer?
Quote of the Day
Seems [person 1] does not take sides. [Person 2] makes discussions seem a matter of taking sides.
(From a Usenet discussion.)
Quotes of the Day
We have all read it, but it really needs to be rolled around in the mouth a few times, to appreciate it, and what it tells us about our self-anointed political messiah:
You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them… And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Did the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy somehow brainwash our messiah-in-waiting and place these words on his lips? Be sure to alienate as many voters as possible all within the span of one sentence, Senator.
Mark Steyn‘s pithy summing-up:
…this guy seems weirdly disconnected from everything except neo-segregationist Afrocentric grievance politics and upscale white liberal condescension. Not much of a coalition.
The problem with Sen. Obama is he is raising so much damn money he is probably going to win.
UPDATE: No one has commented on this last link, about the fundraising. Patrick Ruffini has been following this issue, and he has me worried.
Quote of the Day
When it comes to things like NAFTA, there seem to be only two possibilities. Either Obama’s anti-NAFTA talk is a ruse to fool the rubes, or his coterie of distinguished economic experts is a ruse to fool a different batch of rubes.
(I usually don’t quote Reynolds, because I assume that almost everyone who reads this blog reads Instapundit, but this line was too good not to quote.)
UPDATE (2/29/2008): One of the reasons this quote hit home for me is that I watched Larry Kudlow interview Austan Goolsbee, one of Obama’s “distinguished economic experts,” a couple of times. On both occasions Goolsbee came across as a partisan hack, trying to square the circle of Obama’s socialist and populist economic policies by pointing out marginal pro-business positions Obama had taken — e.g., Obama favored accelerated depreciation or whatever. But on the big issue of marginal income-tax rates Obama favors raising tax rates by, at first, repealing Bush’s tax cuts. He also favors raising or eliminating the income cap on the Social Security payroll tax. Why would a competent economist such as Goolsbee favor such anti-growth policies? The obvious answer is that Goolsbee is a partisan. He may also be interested in a government position if Obama wins. Caveat voter in any case.