Maybe. I don’t see anything in that article that’s totally convincing. It’s interesting, though.
I’d be more convinced if he adopted "E plebnista" as a motto instead of "Yes We Can". But if he ends a speech with "So say we all!" then I think we’re done.
If you went to BadAstronomy.com and found yourself here, never fear: the BA Blog has moved to its new home at Discover Blogs. The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking and all that) is still online, too.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
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 | Bad Astronomy was chosen as one of Time.com's Best Blogs of 2009. | |
 | Open Lab 2008 is a collection of the best blog posts of the year, all in one place. Are you a science junkie? Yeah, you want it. |
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"Reading this book is like getting punched in the face by Carl Sagan. Frightening, but oddly exhilarating."
-- Daniel H. Wilson, author of How to Survive a Robot Uprising
DISCOVERmagazine.com: Latest Articles on Space DISCOVER Blogs: The Loom
November 7th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Let’s see,,,he graduated Magna Cum Laude from one of the most prestigious colleges in the world, used the internet to enormous advantage, has a beautiful, intelligent wife and charming children, even “believes” in the proposition of physical evidence as a prerequisite to making decisions and has, I think, stated evolution is the way of things,,,
Yeah, he’s a geek!
Gary 7
November 7th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
[…] are slightly more lax for this special section), go to the blog and comment. That said, there is: BA Blog: Obama
November 7th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
@Gary Ansorge
Ah, but does he have a copy of Death from the Skies! yet?
November 7th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Presumably you people have already mailed him a truckload. Especially after the original disparaging remarks about NASA’s budget.
“So say we all!”?
November 7th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
My DFTS *finally* came this week. Amazon.ca is a bit slower than its US counterpart. Or was it that the book was in such high demand, they took longer to ship it to the Northland. Phil, you really need to look into that for the next one!
November 7th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Sili said: “‘So say we all!’?”
Its from Battlestar Galactica… its basically how people show agreement to political or religious statements.
November 7th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Sili…
Battlestar Galactica
http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/So_say_we_all
November 7th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
I’d take, “”So say we all!”, over, “By your command!”
November 7th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss
“Emanuel Was Director Of Freddie Mac During Scandal”
“President-elect Barack Obama’s newly appointed chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, served on the board of directors of the federal mortgage firm Freddie Mac at a time when scandal was brewing at the troubled agency and the board failed to spot “red flags,” according to government reports reviewed by ABC”
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=6201900&page=1
November 7th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
If you read the “behind the scenes” articles in Newsweek’s online addition, Obama made a joke about Michelle’s belt, something to the effect of “lithium crystals” and “beam me up”…I’d say he’s definitely a geek!
Yay!
November 7th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
He’s also read all seven Harry Potter books, according to the Infomercial.
November 7th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
the question remains, what kind of geek is he? Seems like what I like to call the SFC geek. Or the Pop Geek, that is most of his geek references can be easily found in popculture. Now even if this was more or less a sham or push for votes, he certainly won the geek vote anyway. As far as his CTO appointment, if he made a joke about Hal or how he’d roll 3d8 to decide who’d get the post, I’d probably wet myself laughing and vow to reelect him even before he’s inaugurated for his first term. Or follow him into glorious battle, KAPLA!
November 7th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
I second most of what Gary 7 said, although the “beautiful intelligent wife and charming kids” thing doesn’t necessarily follow. (Having said that, I’ll also say that having a beautiful intelligent spouse and great kids is a Very Good Thing for anyone. =grin= I just hope the paparazzi leave them alone and let them have a life.)
OK, he’s not a math/science/computer geek, but graduating Magna from Harvard, serving as president of the Harvard Law Review, and 12 years teaching constitutional law at the U. of Chicago certainly qualify him as a law geek.
November 7th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
From today’s press conference:
See transcript.
November 7th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
If he was a real geek he would have known that it’s “dilithium crystals”. It’s ok, though, I voted for him anyway.
November 7th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Nah, he plays basketball.
(I know geeks like us play basketball - it’s just I didn’t myself but because I was growing like a weed in school I was inundated with “Do you play basketball?? Do you play basketball???”)
November 7th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
He still claims religious belief. Either he’s a liar or just another idiot.
November 7th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
@bob:
People with religious belief don’t necessarily bother me, it’s people with religious belief that try to ram it down my throat and take their holy books literally. Obama is certainly not a fundamentalist by any stretch
November 7th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
But is Obama’s favorite book Battlefield Earth?
Romney 2012! Heh.
At least he didn’t cite Battlefield Earth as his favorite movie.
November 7th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Another blog I read recently included an “Adama ‘08″ icon.
I couldn’t vote for Adama, though. When Caprica fell he wanted to subvert the rule of law and stage a military coup.
I have much more faith in Obama.
November 7th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
What does it say about me that most of my quotes come from Mike Brady in the Brady Bunch movies?
“Alone, we can only carry buckets, but together we can drain rivers”
November 8th, 2008 at 12:04 am
Can he do a Rubick’s Cube in under 2 minutes? That used to be my record.
Here’s his spectacular speech the night of the election - text and video:
http://www.enewspf.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5015&Itemid=1&ed=108
Showed it to my classes today (McCain’s speech is there too. He did a nice job.)
This is all still sinking in for me.
November 8th, 2008 at 1:09 am
@ stopgap
Please, just let the liberals have some time to bask in the glow. After 8 years of having ignorant, selfish, short-sighted bigots defecating on them, calling them unpatriotic queer-lovers and worse, they deserve some celebration.
Leave it till later for them to discover whether or not Obama really is “same as the old boss”. Maybe he’ll only be as “liberal” as Clinton, which would be a bummer, but at least that’s still a 10,000x improvement over King Shrub the Lesser. We’re all reality-based folks here, and once the euphoria has worn off, we’ll all start judging Obama on his merits and on the evidence.
So, if you’re a staunch liberal or a liberterian: Suck it up. Your country is way too conservative to elect either a real liberal or a libertarian. Until massive social change occurs, you’ll have to settle for the lesser of evils. (But have hope, it may come sooner than you think.)
But if you’re really a concern-troll, sour-grapes conservative come here to rain on the liberal’s parade, then you can take your ignorant, selfish, short-sighted, bigotted ass outta here and go back to LGF. Or get yourself a shotgun and barricade the doors before the Evil Liberals arrive to take all your money and give it to lesbian gay single-parent families, and then infect you with “teh gay”.
So say “I”. “You all” might not be so bad-tempered and quick to take offense at imaginary slights as me.
November 8th, 2008 at 1:12 am
Argh! Curses! “lesbian gay”? “Tuna fish”? I gotta proof-read better before I hit “post”.
November 8th, 2008 at 1:53 am
He did say he loves Star Trek. Maybe at the end of every cabinet meeting he could say “make it so”.
November 8th, 2008 at 4:15 am
Actually, if he uses “So say we all”, Obama could also be a “Manowar” fan (it’s a lyric in one of their songs). Manowar is one of those heavy metal bands that you’d swear was a parody, but is actually 100 percent serious. They make Spinal Tap look legit. Their songs are usually about :
A) “True Metal” (and that other bands are “false metal”)
B) How loud they play (louder than hell!!)
C) Thor, Odin, or other Norse Gods
D) Swords and axes, war, and so on
E) Some combination of A through D.
Actually, if anyone was a Manowar fan, it was probably Bush.
November 8th, 2008 at 4:40 am
You have to be pretty old (like me) to remember Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign and the slogan “Au/H2O” that young Goldwaterites used as a kind of facetious code to identify each other.
I thought it was a little silly even at the time (the word “geeky” had not been invented yet) but it does serve to illustrate the changes in what passes for conservative thinking. I wonder how many of today’s rank and file conservatives would get it all? How many would entertain some kind of vague but heartfelt suspicion that it was tainted by “evil-utionism” or some other form of godless secularism?
John McCain is a graduate of the Naval Academy and therefore has to have more than a passing knowledge of astronomy. Yet he chose to make a planetarium projector the target of a distorted attack , not once but several times and on a national stage. This is not an accident.
November 8th, 2008 at 8:37 am
He may just be a geek. Apparently he cracked a joke about nancy reagan’s belief in astrology in his first post election press conference.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/07/obama.seance/index.html
November 8th, 2008 at 10:12 am
He’s also read all seven Harry Potter books, according to the Infomercial.
Ah, he is a satanist then? Ok, cool.
November 8th, 2008 at 11:54 am
He also called Nancy Reagan and apologized, which, the reports say, she accepted.
November 8th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Further evidence! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vws9fTtQgz4
November 8th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
I don’t think these things make him a geek. They just make him a guy who knows his butt from a hole in the ground. We’re not used to seeing that kind of thing in office. It is very refreshing.
And yes, he is a Christian, but that doesn’t mean he’s unreasonable. He seems pretty woo-free. He believes in the importance of the sciences, does not support teaching Creationism as an alternative to evolution, he knows that the internet is not a series of tubes (nor a big truck), and he once gave a speech where he mentions that using Biblical law in modern America would be a bad idea. At any rate, I think he’ll make decisions based on reality.
November 8th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
I don’t know anything about him and he’s not telling the American public a thing, except through internet blogging campaigns. I don’t think he’s that bright especially after his first press conference. I think he’s dangerous to America off the scale. Much, much more than Bush or McCain ever could have been. I think he’s purposely got everybody tied in knots. I think the tactics used for him to win are not being publicly investigated due to racial sensitivities. If they’re going to threaten to violently burn down American cities then they’re not worth being President, or American citizens. Especially if they corrupt an American election. He shouldn’t be inviting himself into The White House and The Oval Office, let alone America and American politics.
November 8th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
I’d have to say he’s a geek:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?id=3653401
Definitely worth a read if you haven’t seen it.
/es
November 8th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
I just listened to “Wait, wait, don’t tell me” from about 2 months ago in which Leonard Nemoy said Obama gave him the Vulcan greeting sign at a rally earlier this year.
November 8th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
I’d give a pretty penny to see a pic or video of that moment.
November 8th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
I don’t think any geek would pick a friend of Jack Valenti for VP, or a VP that writes:
“It is the sense of Congress that providers of electronic communications services and manufacturers of electronic communications service equipment shall ensure that communications systems permit the government to obtain the plain text contents of voice, data, and other communications when appropriately authorized by law.”
into bill titled “Comprehensive Counter-Terrorism Act”
November 9th, 2008 at 7:48 am
Maybe he’ll get us going on the Metric system. Please.
November 9th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
if he ends a speech with “so say we all!” my head will probably explode.
November 9th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
I’ll give the guy a year or so, since he’s inherited such a mess, with the exception of foreign policy. And with Rahm Emannual, why do i have the feeling we’re going to be in the middle east wasting money and lives for a long time to come. I just hope all you Obama voters judge him with the same eye you judged Bush.
We need a moderate libertarian as president.