{"id":197,"date":"2009-04-29T21:16:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-29T21:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2009\/04\/29\/197\/"},"modified":"2011-04-03T14:12:00","modified_gmt":"2011-04-03T19:12:00","slug":"197","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=197","title":{"rendered":"Three Twittery Thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tonight I just have three quick thoughts to offer. First off, kudos to President Obama for his commitment to increase government funding for scientific research<\/a>, made in an address this past Monday to the National Academy of Sciences. President Obama is increasing the government’s role and the government’s cost quite radically, and the only way for such spending levels to be sustained without triggering a taxpayer revolt is to grow the economy. Scientific research is a good long-term investment to support such growth, something that pays for itself many times over. So, good move, Mr. Obama. I also like his proposal on developing a fast train network; that can also help meet the goal of stimulating economic growth while cutting down on energy use and carbon emissions. <\/p>\n

Second, regarding Senator Arlen Specter’s conversions to the Democrats: that certainly was NOT a profile in political courage. Specter is pretty much just a rat<\/a> jumping off a sinking ship. I’d have much more respect for the man if he had stayed in the Republican Party and had taken his lumps (i.e., getting beat in the upcoming GOP primary in Pennsylvania), and at the same time devoting himself towards moving the Republicans back towards a more centrist position. He would have done the nation more good that way.<\/p>\n

The Republicans seem mostly interested in pursuing the niche agendas being put forth by the party’s conservative rump. That cost them dearly in the last election, and may cost them even more dearly over the next 4 or 8 years. Eventually, the moderates will win out and the GOP will start singing a different tune, a tune that admits the importance of most Democratic priorities (e.g. health care, global warming, energy independence, education, poverty) but proposes “lighter government” solutions. If Spector had the bravery and foresight to have affiliated himself with the younger Republicans who are beginning to question the failed Reagan \/ Bush paradigms, if he committed himself to providing mentorship and support for a new generation, I would have taken my hat off to him. But no, that just wasn’t Arlen Specter. As to the Democrats: when you bring a dog with fleas into your house, you know what happens. <\/p>\n

Finally, just a note about Twitter, currently the rage on the Internet. I don’t pay much attention to it, but I do agree with other commentators that it reflects many of the worst things about the net and about modern life in general. I.e., extremely short attention spans and thinking horizons. Maureen Dowd of the NY Times recently took time off from her on-going love letters to Barack (and hate letters to his critics), to interview Biz Stone<\/a>, the founder of Twitter. It’s a great article, where Ms. Dowd artfully and humorously shows just how wonderful it is not to be restricted to bleeps of under 140 characters. And today, I heard on the radio that around 60% of people who register with Twitter quit within one month<\/a>. But hey, that’s what happens when you cultivate your customer base among people who don’t have much patience. What you planteth, you eventually soweth. <\/p>\n

As to swine flu — let’s just hope that it turns out to be not so bad after all, at least for a relatively well-off population having the benefit of good public health measures and modern health care. Of course, the fact that increasing numbers of Americans don’t have affordable access to modern health care is not a positive factor. Let’s hope that a relevant benefit of universal health care — i.e. the ability to better control an unfolding epidemic and avoid what Mexico is already going thru with swine flu — will NOT be grimly illuminated because of this disease.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tonight I just have three quick thoughts to offer. First off, kudos to President Obama for his commitment to increase government funding for scientific research, made in an address this past Monday to the National Academy of Sciences. President Obama is increasing the government’s role and the government’s cost quite radically, and the only way […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=197"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2022,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions\/2022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}