Thursday, July 2nd, 2009...12:49 pm
Maybe These Guys Know More Than We Think…
A couple of you have written to me about the situation with the clock at the state senate on Tuesday night. These concerns boiled down to: “What gives these nitwits the right to say when it is midnight?”
See, that demonstrates a basic lack of knowledge about modern views of cosmology and physics. And if there is anything that our state legislature understands, it is modern science.
In the house on Tuesday night, bills were coming so fast and furious that Steve Farley complained that there was no chance to examine the bills to see if there were any potential problems. But he fails to understand that they were trying to take advantage of time dilation, the effect that as one approaches the speed of light, time passes slower. The house got their business done one time, but their action allowed the senate to take advantage of this property of relativity to dispense with recognizing the passage of time all together.
Or, we could look at the properties of black holes. If something were to pass the event horizon of a black hole, an outside observer would believe that time is no longer passing for that thing.
A black hole, by the way, is an object so dense that light cannot escape from it. I’m not sure why I’d ever think of it as a metaphor for our legislature.
5 Comments
July 2nd, 2009 at 3:23 pm
So I guess the creationists are on to something after all. It sure couldn’t be “intelligent design.” Ho ho ho!
July 2nd, 2009 at 3:29 pm
An interesting and applicable theory. However, I don’t feel that our Republican legislatures can grasp that concept. My example comes from the Farley Report quoting Sylvia Allen (R- Snowflake) that was reported to have said “The earth’s been here 6,000 years.”
The quote is truncated and taken out of context, but does it really need any of that?
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:39 pm
“A black hole, by the way, is an object so dense that light cannot escape from it. I’m not sure why I’d ever think of it as a metaphor for our legislature.”
Awesome. Made my weekend.
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:19 pm
You crack me up!
July 3rd, 2009 at 10:10 pm
You are a true nerd. You have quite deftly combined politics and science. I am amused and in awe. Bravo.