Burn!

Well, there you go, Einstein was wrong. Taranto has repealed E=mc2. Clever fellow.

Of course Taranto’s intentionally literal reading of Kerry’s metaphor is the mark of a supercilious jerk. The point is that he’s also wrong.

Look, your chem teacher will tell you that when you burn stuff you don’t literally “create” energy, you “release” energy. You might say you “produce” energy in the sense that you make it available to do work. But you don’t “create” energy out of the stuff you’ve burnt.

Historically, it was believed that the amount of energy in the universe is constant. This Law of the Conservation of Energy was discovered in 1842 and was otherwise known as the First Law of Thermodynamics.

But Einstein discovered that mass could be converted to energy. That is what the equation E=mc2 means: if mass is converted into energy, the amount of energy created is equal to the amount of mass times the square of the speed of light. The square of the speed of light is a very big number, therefore a very small amount of mass can be converted into a really really big amount of energy. When nature does it, it’s called the sun. When we do it, it’s called an A-bomb. The atomic processes at work literally create energy out of matter.

So besides being a supercilious jerk, Taranto is an idiot. Is anyone surprised?

What is it with conservatives and thermodynamics?

Why, isn’t Einstein’s Relativity one of the most dangerous books of the 19th and 20th centuries? I’m sure it’s up there with Darwin and Nietzsche.

Doubtless as we speak Taranto is doing the science behind this glorious insight from The Exalted One:

I like the idea of using corn and soybeans to help produce energy. I mean, after all, it would be neat, someday, Governor, if somebody walked in and said, we’re growing more crop, and therefore, we’re less dependent on foreign sources of energy. (Applause.)

jr, it is you that is the one who is the idiot. The first law of thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only altered in form. One of those forms, post-Einstein, is recognized as mass, but that doesn’t change the law, or its applicability to Kerry’s fatuous observation.

Those beams in your eye sure help you see others’ motes.

comments

Fat can be burnt to create energy
Posted by Eli Rabett · June 1st, 2005 at 10:50 pm

“Physically” speaking, you can’t create energy. In your example you are releasing stored energy in the fat.

Einstein was an atheist. And a peace activist. So sure, they’d ban him if they could.

Don’t be silly. The point is to make money and get ahead, not tell the truth and do the right thing. Will you never learn?

I agree with Raj: why read these jerks?

At some point, it becomes pointless to even read thes publications on the web, because they are so stupid.

Dude, don’t mess around with Taranto’s printed opinions. He’s an entry-pundit. You click on his stuff once or twice, and you find yourself checking every half-hour for more bliss-inducing stupidity. Soon, Taranto’s just not wacky enough. You move on to the harder material, like Luskin and Golberg. People notice your eyes are frequently glazed over at work. And, then, one dawn finds you rousing yourself from a catatonic state, fully-clothed and unshaven, drool-slimed keyboard in your lap, and the text displayed on the monitor in front of you spelling out the byline “Peggy Noonan.” You’re rock bottom, baby.

Man, Taranto missed a big one too. Americans didn’t vote for an ‘idea’ in 1996! They voted for a slate of electors! What a moron Kerry is!

Much like th way Al Gore created the internet, John Kerry will now be blamed for creating the theory of relativity.

FYI, see my page about the Al Gore and Internet story. The smear was invented by a notorious right-wing (Libertarian) “journalist”, in gleeful later collaboration with Republicans.

Are you people that humorless or just that stupid? Have you ever read Taranto’s column? The comment is a joke you idiots. A poor one, but a joke just the same. Jeez, you are too literal for your own liberal good.

Either the AP misquoted, or Kerry reached and found the wrong word, but I’m sure Kerry’s original intent was to say, “We created a synergy.”

Oh, please. This is stupid. It’s obvious that Kerry was speaking metaphorically, not about a literal physical phenomenon. To make the statement that, because of one “unscientific” comment, the entire party loses credibility is ridiculous. Taranto is a hack and that’s what we should be focusing on here.

I see, Ginger Yellow, that was a rhetorical question. The holy trinity of thermodynamics as proof that science is wrong is truly proof that irony is not only not dead, but is in actuality living comfortably in a dacha on the Sea of Azov attended by slavegirls and a zitherade, calmly puffing on an hookah whilst contemplating which architectural triumph of an amuse-bouche of melon and fruit de mer to eat next, all while wearing a pointy hat that makes him look like a Doge.

Kerry’s grasp of nuance borders the sublime to the point of metaphysical.

Kerry’s created energy deals with tons of yellowcake from Niger, in tribute to AWOL Bush and Pork Chop Cheney’s and even wifey Condi’s tacit observations about an energy crisis with WMD implications.

So of course with egg on face, staggered by the intoxicant kool-aid of Bushco. we tread into ground for the deadly field of satire. Like the minefields of ww1 littering that land’s countryside, the dangerous French concept of satire sets off when anyone steps over it.

So it is with nuance we tread though minefield, walking on eggshell to avoid traps set there by Bush to keep the election safe from terraists. With food on our families, and certain that you child are learning, we move forward with loyalty oaths signed.

Because freedumb’s hard W.ork!

AWOL, plus Pork Chop(pig bi-product), and cooked up in Wifey er, Condi’s kitchen with her Exxon cookbook, we cook the books to new levels of irony(also French symapthetique). In these books the mystery of the universe is solved. Evolution ‘s observed phenomenon of bred characteristics that racehorses embody is sent to glue like an Arab’s pet, Smarty Jones. All bets are on, and the ownership society wins!

The proportions and numbers of Bush’s fuzzy math and Condi’s cooking add up- cover it all with generous portions of lies and serve it to starving contituencies. But when truth is the nourishment necessary to sustain Liberty, and we’re fed a diet of lies, what are the long term effects?

Well we’ll deal with those consequences when they come. Frist has IT sharing for medicare that lacks paper trails, has resulted in death or the wrong prescriptions, and can set the table for the new Enron tactic in the field of subsidized medicine. It may explain why Medicare’s overhaul has quadrupled its cost in the short term alone, much of its upgrade cash went directly to Frist’s IT project.The same way Bush’s fuzzy math lost 8.8 billion for Iraq at the time Yukos oil lease auction bid was the same amount. The same way that a tax cut did nothing for the economy and left unfunded mandates for soldiers, students, the elderly. We’re crossing that bridge now, Frist filibuster or not.

If the numbers are always bad, where’s the accountability? Well it’s America’s account, and it’s Enron’s ability to steal it. Arthur Andersen is back in business, and their account work for Frist’s close buddy Baptist Health care systems that was represented by the same(Andersen) all come together into a good ol’ down home recipe.

Onto the next sucker, er customer. Bush makes used car dealers look like Saints. Never minde this distraction there are other scandals to see- Tom DeLay and NASA’a missing trillions, illegal oil & gas funding and the Cobell v.Norton 5th district fallout of Enron friendly Judge Owen, and his being found guilty of laundering money that borders the lobby trip he took with wifey and daughter to Europe for Slobidan Milosevic’s representative Mr.Abramhoff. Wash the dirt off with champagne, the recipe tastes better than it sounds if you are on the recieving end.

But I digress. You go to campaign with the deficit you have, not the deficit Bush wants. Wait , with the Enron you have not the Enron you want. Wait with the world you have to dominate, not the world that want to dominate.

Like Richard Halliburton’s plunge to the Well of Death, this post has gone to new dangerous lows.
Some of us just don’t know when to stop and will move forward with no regard, let the ambition get to us and forget regard of the facts.

It’s all about creating your own energy. Original thought would be a contradiction in a strict definition. So flush the notion of sacrosanct down the tubes into the septic asthetic of a priori. Platonic poo is the meat that makes fertilizer for sewing the seeds of freedom with worldwide war, winning hearts and minds a torture victim at a time.

Defninitely Kerry’s BrahMA bullshite should bring more more attention to the downward spiral of scientific method.

Science was best saved for Ben Franklin. What the fuck did that stupid diplomat know anyways? Words of wisdom write checks their arse can’t cash, and smarts (like money for the Colonies) doesn’t grow on trees. Thankfully there was enough on loan from France to see us through at that crucial time.

Where will we get loans and smarts from today? Loans from China, smarts from FOX network! See the evolution of society is the one thing we can count on- progress at bargain price. Of course the toilets flow backwards in aussie land, and Murdoch has used revers smarts on Americans with the uncanny accuracy of an authopsy.

Crooked, nice thread. The author you note, this applies to him. Republicans are an anomoly to fact. They deal with the new improved law of Worm-o-dynamics. You have to be in the dirt to have control of the power.

I’d rather debate the literal meaning of the words ‘mission’ and ‘accomplished’ as uddered by Prznit mush mouth on May 1, 2003.

I read this shortly after reading this parody of creationist arguments against evolution. Someone please tell me Taranto is also doing a parody of ignorant anti-science idiots!

irony is not only not dead…

Snerk! Grand Moff Texan, you just made it into my quote file…

Fat can be burnt to create energy

So can shit. Perhaps simple periodic squeezes of James Taranto’s head can wean us from foreign oil.

(Written with everyone’s comments regarding the law of conservation of energy acknowledged. It’s humor.)

Another fucking jerk who thinks he’s being funny by trying to compare two things when it’s a non-sequitur at best. Also a chickenshit because he has no comments option available for feedback, therefore he’s just blaring his opinions out to anyone who will listen, just like some wingnut fundie on a soapbox preaching that the earth is going to end because we listen to rock-and-roll. Anyone who’s afraid to put up comments, Powerline, Michelle Maglaland, and this jack-off need to be ignored, they’re obviously terrified of being lambasted for the idiots they are.

I thought Taranto’s joke was pretty funny, but probably over the head of anyone who didn’t at least take chemistry and physics in high school. Yes, James is pretty snarky, and I see how that might bother you if you take your Democrats verrry seriously. Indeed, it must drive some of you crazy the way Taranto describes Kerry every time he’s mentioned as “The haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam for 120 days and promised [123] days ago to release his military records.” Of course, Taranto updates the number of elapsed days as appropriate.

When the right gets a president who can pronounce nuclear they can be pedantic and not a day before.