’Science!’
“It is disgraceful but true. Scientists today serve as loyal subalterns in the army of government power. The narrative of the disinterested scientist is a myth. Scientists get their money from government, and in return, they dance to the music of big government. That is science’s Big Problem. …
“It all started in 1806, when the Prussians invented the research university as part of their plan to strengthen the state and defeat the French. … Of course, governments reward their supporters. Physicists helped government get a nice big bomb, and government gives physicists great big particle accelerators to play with as a reward. Biologists work for government doing the science for environmental impact statements; climate scientists work for government to support the politics of climate change. If you wonder why college professors all vote Democratic, just follow the money.
“Curiously, in the year the Germans got all this going and opened the University of Berlin, someone figured out that there was going to be a problem. Goethe published the first part of Faust in 1806. At least Goethe’s scientist hero in 1806 understood that his search for the essence of life was a pact with the Devil. Our modern scientists don’t possess that level of self-consciousness. They don’t believe in the Devil, so they don’t have a problem.”
- Christopher Chantrill, writing on “Science’s Big Problem,” on March 2 at the American Thinker
Dole-slinging time
“The firing today of Spider-Man’s alter ego, Peter Parker, will put him in the unemployment line, but he shouldn’t expect to get unemployment benefits. That’s because his misconduct - doctoring a picture to clear his wrongly accused boss of some illegal activity - likely makes him ineligible for unemployment benefits. I say unlikely because each state has its own laws, although Nolo.com points out that in general employees are entitled to such compensation if they quit or are laid off.
“Spider-Man has nothing to lose by applying for benefits after being fired. His former employer might not challenge it and one caseworker could read the ’misconduct’ rule differently. Misconduct - and I’d bet that a photographer doctoring a photo on the job would be viewed as such by the New York Department of Labor - can lead to firing and no unemployment benefits. According to Nolo, ’The trick lies in figuring out which reasons to fire are serious enough to qualify as misconduct and justify denying benefits.’ …
“Spider-Man might be able to claim at a hearing that he committed a good faith error in judgment, which wouldn’t be misconduct and thus allow him to collect unemployment, but any decent newspaper photographer knows it’s unethical to doctor a photo.”
- Aaron Crowe, writing on “Spider-Man gets fired, but shouldn’t expect unemployment benefits,” on March 3 at Wallet Pop
’The Belushi’
“By now the observation that Saturday Night Live has made the full switcheroo from anti-establishment bomb-thrower to establishment chin-tickler is nearly as old (and unfunny!) as the show itself. But this week’s ’Funny or Die’ Internet sensation, in which multiple generations of Not Ready for Prime Time presidential impersonators all gather around a conscience-plagued Fred Armistead-as-Barack Obama to give him a pep talk about (I’m not making this up) creating a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, is probably the perfect piece of audio-visual evidence. …
“Oh, you could quibble about the laughable notion that there are ’almost no regulations’ on banks and credit card companies, or that George W. Bush was one of the two villains who ’stripped out all the regulations’ (in fact, Bush hired 91,000 new regulators and jacked up spending on financial regulation by 29 percent) …
“But for me the Belushi in the room here is how a show that was once almost thrillingly anti-authoritarian … where every president was not just impersonated but brutally (and/or absurdly) undermined in a way previously unimaginable on television, where every Saturday for a while there was a national exercise in ’I can’t believe they’re getting away with that,’ has now devolved into begging the president to accumulate more power. All in cooperation with the Teamsters, the Greenlining Institute, ACORN, and more.”
- Matt Welch, writing on “Michael O’Donoghue Is Plunging Steel Needles Into His Eyes From the Grave,” on March 4 at Reason
• THE WASHINGTON TIMES can be reached at 125932@example.com.
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