Wednesday, September 24, 2008

...how WCL sees the world.

On Global Warming: "We have much bigger issues to worry about. The uproar over this issue is shockingly similar to the shrieking of the millenialists a few years back. Also, take a look at the weather patterns for the week after September 11, 2001 and get back to me. Then we can talk seriously about this issue."

On the End Days: "It doesn't take a whole lot to permanently damage human civilization. Don't get me wrong, humans will survive no matter what, but all it takes are one or two cataclysmic events to really wreak havoc. Maybe the food supply gets disrupted and famine breaks out. Perhaps the US's energy or technological infrastructure get disrupted for a few weeks. Whatever. If one of these disasters is sustained over a few weeks, then it will bring us to our knees. It will send us back to a pre-industrialized state. And once we're pre-industrial again, we can't retrace our footsteps of modern progress. We can't climb out of that hole. We can't recreate the technologies to pump the oil we need. We can't create renewable energy resources without the help of non-renewables at this point. And so we'll be stuck in a sort of pre-historic state forever. If you think about it, it's an elegant answer to Fermi's paradox. This will be a problem long before global warming begins taking its toll."

On the Newseum charging a $20 entrance fee: "They have some real fucking nerve."

On the Palin VP pick: "It's a fundamentally unserious choice. It's a farce. I sometimes think that McCain is keeping his charade of a campaign going just so that on the day before the election, he can give a press conference where he'll say, 'I ran this campaign as a total joke to test the American people, and they have failed that test.'"

On sushi: "Complete and utter yuppie bullshit."

On why same sex marriage is fundamentally dissimilar from plural marriage: "It may seem odd to us, but you must remember that until very recently, marriage was never about love. The Victorians are responsible for that [travesty]. Instead, marriage served as a means for passing along property, inheritance, social status. That remains fundamentally unchanged if you provide a legal avenue for same-sex marriage. Not so for plural marriage. And on a practical level, do you suggest that we could reform the legal system and tax code to accommodate multiple wives or husbands? It would be impossible."

On his 3D pictures of Mars' surface: "They are remarkable. I sometimes can't sleep because I'm so excited just thinking about them. That and the Hadron collider keep me awake at night."

 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

WCL loses me with the non-segue from same-sex marriage to "multiple wives and husbands." How does one relate to the other? The idea that this is a slippery slope is a canard, perpetuated by conservatives with a simplistic visceral repulsion to the idea of gay marriage. can someone please explain how the two concepts are in any way related, other than both NOT being good ol' missionary style man-on-woman marriage?