I know a fair number of liberals who reject Keith Olbermann for his blowhard tone (reminiscent of Limbaugh, Hannity, etc.) despite the fact that they might agree with his stance on the issues. But even if you find Olbermann objectionable (for whatever reason), you should hear what he has to say about California’s dreadful passage of Proposition 8.
Category Archives: Politics
The Internet President
As a “web guy,” I now have even more reason to like Barack Obama as a soon-to-be-president than I did already. His website was no small part of his extremely effective and well-organized campaign, and I am pleased to see that he plans to continue to use the Internet as a core component of his approach to governing once he takes office. To wit: Change.gov, the official site of the “Obama-Biden Transition Project.”
As I’ve been saying for the past couple weeks, in a to-the-point if less-than-genteel way, he’s got his shit together. And as they say in Australia, “good on him.” 2009 is going to be an interesting year.
Newsweek: Brains are back!
And not a moment too soon. A Newsweek article explores the return of intellect and reason to the White House after the shallow anti-intellectualism that has plagued our nation for (at least) eight years.
This may be the number-one reason I supported Obama as vigorously as I did. He is a thinker. He’s curious. He wants to know the truth, and he’s not afraid to question and challenge — or to be questioned and challenged himself. It’s about time!
And now… please… let’s put a few anti-intellectual ideas to bed:
1. Earth is not 6000 years old. We can be reasonably certain through carbon dating and other scientifically validated methods that it is approximately 4.5 billion years old.
2. Evolution is a fact. We can observe it — and we have — at the microscopic level (i.e. antibiotic-resistant bacteria) and in other species with short lifespans (like some insects), and it is a logically consistent explanation for the diversity of life we see on Earth today. Why can’t we witness it happening at the macro level, like in humans? See point number 1. The slice of Earth’s lifespan that your own represents is smaller than the division between Al Franken and Norm Coleman in this year’s Senate race. It’s the same reason we don’t see stalactites grow.
3. Global warming is caused by human activity. Sure, the overall temperature of the planet has fluctuated over the millennia, but the rate of increase in the last 150 years (coinciding with industrialization) is unprecedented.
4. Science is the quest for knowledge and understanding. It is a good thing that everyone should study. It does not preclude religious belief; the two are not mutually exclusive. You do not need to reject science to have faith, and you do not have to reject faith to believe in science. But faith, by definition, cannot be proven, and science can — in fact, that’s what makes it science, and it’s given us just about everything we have in the modern world.
Ahh… it feels good! Brains are back! Now, let’s stop arguing the validity of things we know to be true, and start doing something about them!
After a typo fix, the Coleman-Franken split is now just 236 votes
Yes, according to the Huffington Post, the vote totals between Norm Coleman and Al Franken are now separated by only 236 (although for some reason the StarTribune says 238), out of 2,860,224 votes cast. That’s a difference of 0.0083%. It’s not razor-thin, it’s atom-thin. I was going to draw a graph representing that slice of the pie, but if the “slice” were only one pixel wide, the chart would have a diameter of 53 inches. You’d need one of the largest commercially available plasma TVs just to look at it (and the top and bottom would still be cut off), and the “slice” would still be only about the thickness of your fingernail.
State law would require a recount even if the difference were as large as 14,301 votes, yet Coleman is still declaring himself the victor and calling on Franken to concede.
No way! I absolutely do not want a protracted 2000-style legal battle, but this is simply too close and it’s not even up to Franken whether or not the recount happens. Cool it, Norm!
In case you missed it, here’s the StarTribune front page from yesterday… the headline could be seen from space
It’s not as if, in this age, anyone was left by Wednesday morning not knowing who had won the election, so it was really just a pissing contest between the country’s newspapers to see who could use the largest point size. I think the Minneapolis StarTribune won.
