Is the world destroyed yet?

Noting the recent news about the success of the Large Haldron Collider, The Editors remind us of Greg Easterbrook's hysteria about this mega-science project:

Are we really sure it is history's greatest idea to be re-creating the conditions that existed when the universe exploded?

Luckily, there is now a website we can check anytime if we want to find out whether the Large Hadron Collider has destroyed the world yet.

Great line of the day

The Jurist points out that the Wall government is doing just a little too much wishful thinking:

Apparently the Wall government's hack-and-slash budget is based on the modest assumption that Saskatchewan will be home to "more than 20 per cent of the world supply of natural resources". No word yet what proportion of that estimate consists of projected exports of magic beans and unicorn meat.

Emphasis mine.

Word of the day

#bustyhookers.
Love it!

Death of the strip mall? We can only dream

Calculated Risk is concerned that the vacancy rate in US strip malls is almost 11 per cent.
Well, I know its not good for the economy, but wouldn't it be great if strip malls actually did bite the dust?
Taken as a group, they are the ugliest part of any city -- boring cindercrete shoeboxes, plastered with garish plastic signage, with cheap plate glass windows, fronted by barren asphalt parking lots, not a tree or a flower in sight.
Bulldoze them all and build some place that people want to go.

Have they no shame?

Is anyone offended by holding a gun rally on the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing? Or do they think it is OK to wreck federal buildings now that Obama is president?

Ball season

In tribute to last night's game

It's all in how you look at it

LifeSite News says everyone should find a new perspective on the priest sexual abuse story -- after all, sexual abuse by teachers in the school system "is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests."
Well, that's OK then.

Because it's Easter

Enjoy the Chicago Gay Men's Chorus version of The Hallelujah Chorus

Great post of the day

Lance Mannion takes one of the most misogynistic David Brooks columns ever written (and that's saying a lot) as the jumping off point for a profound narration on finding happiness in life:

Life is a gamble. There are no such things as destiny and fate. Whatever the purpose of the life is, if there is a purpose, it is not the happiness of individual human beings. No matter what path you choose in life you are choosing pain and suffering. There is more along that path, wherever it’s leading, that will cause you unhappiness than will give you a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment. There are paths that are less dangerous, that are smoother, that include fewer mountains to climb and fewer to fall off, and that will carry you past prettier scenery, but how are you to know you to know which path that is? Even if you could know, how are you to know that you will enjoy traveling along it? It might bore the life out of you. Falling off mountains may be what you need to make you happy.

Another Obama freakout is on the way

Here we go again -- some American progressives are freaking out over Obama's announcement about off-shore drilling.
Now, maybe I'm biased here -- I live in one of the few places in North America which was NOT devastated by the recession and it was Saskatchewan's resource development and related economic activity that was a key factor in maintaining employment here over the last two years.
And I grew up on a farm, where we made our living exploiting the land, so to speak.
So I have just never understood why an economic development activity like drilling for oil gets so identified with a right-wing political ideology, while other types of economic development like farming or building a shopping centre or opening up a factory usually doesn't have to carry such political freight.
Just because the Republican useful idiot Sarah Palin led those vacuous "drill, baby, drill" chants last year, Obama's agreement with oil development becomes some kind of profound betrayal of deeply held Democratic values and principles?
Get a grip, folks -- it's just an oil well.
No President, Democrat or Republican, should be expected to write off an economic development opportunity which would not only support American corporations, workers and communities, but would also have the side benefit of promoting American energy independence. If he did, just because the 'other side' is for it, then this would be a classic example of ideology trumping common sense.

Shorter

Shorter John Cole

I have a problem with you people!

Great line of the day

The Jurist summarizes the dynamic about the Sask Party's Finance minister Gantefoer sticking its toe into the HST water and then rapidly pulling back:

. . . there's good news in the fact that the Sask Party wants to let big business do the actual work in selling the HST. After all, the Wall government tried the same strategy when it came to nuclear power, and was forced to back down once it realized that it's people rather than dollars who ultimately get their say at the polls.

Emphasis mine.
I heard Brad Wall talk about the Harmonized Sales Tax once on John Gormley Live -- or, rather, I heard John Gormley wax enthusiastic about how great it would be if the Sask Party would think about introducing the HST and Wall saying flatly, over and over, nope, the Sask Party isn't interested, won't discuss it, no no no. Wall knows -as Gantefoer has now discovered -- that even the merest hint of an inclination to even think about the HST would immediately blow up into a big bad news story for the Sask Party.

Obama and politics

Jonathan Bernstein analyzes Obama's recent speeches and draws some conclusions:

What Obama is saying here is that politics, rightly understood, is the very core of what makes this nation a nation. Not individualism, not religiosity, and certainly not ethnicity or the land itself, but politics. . . . We, in the United States, do not accept history, or live through history -- we have the capacity, Obama (and Biden) say, to make history, through collective action, whether it is in the Revolution, the Constitution, the Civil War, the civil rights revolution, or now, in tackling the challenges that face us in the 21st century. America, therefore, is self-created, and continues to be self-creating, by political action.

Two years ago, I felt that the difference between the three democratic frontrunners could be summed up like this: John Edwards wanted to reform the economy, Hillary Clinton wanted to reform society, and Barak Obama wanted to reform politics. I am still not sure whether people who voted for Obama necessarily understood or supported what he wanted to do -- I'm not sure if changing US politics is actually possible, either -- but Obama took his election as a mandate and I believe he is doing it. He sincerely believes that Americans can do anything they want to do -- "Yes, we can" is the essence of his being. In the end, if he CAN reform American politics, then society and the economy will follow.
The Teabaggers who are so opposed to him call him names like fascist and communist because they don't know WHAT to call him, but in some visceral way they recognize what many progressives so far have not -- that Obama actually is aiming to change the way politics is being practiced in America, creating a significant, non-partisan, forward-looking change in how American democracy functions. This is terribly threatening to some on both the right and the left, who are too comfortable with the existing system.

Just because you have a PhD doesn't mean you're not a jerk

I am opposed to the war in Afghanistan but it is mean-spirited and self-aggrandizing to express that opinion on the backs of orphaned children.

Explaining the priests

Andrew Sullivan writes a perceptive piece about the Catholic church pedophilia scandals and the perception within the priesthood that sexually abusing children was a a sin not a crime.

imagine you are a young gay Catholic teen coming into his sexuality and utterly convinced that it's vile and evil. . .
If this is the 1950s and 1960s, it's into the Church you go. You think it will cure you. In fact, it only makes you sicker . . .
They have never had a sexual or intimate relationship with any other human being. Sex for them is an abstraction, a sin, not an interaction with an equal. . .
They barely see these children as young and vulnerable human beings, incapable of true consent. Because they have never had a real sexual relationship, have never had to deal with the core issue of human equality and dignity in sex, they don't see the children as victims. Like the tortured gay man, Michael Jackson, they see them as friends. . .
In this self-protective environment, these priests do not even see the children as fellow humans. They remain like those solitary abstract images in their heads. So they cannot fully grasp the enormity of the crime they are committing and see it merely as another part of the vortex of their sexual sin.

Sullivan thinks the Pope is going to have to resign.