« Illusions of Spring | Main | Only 7:30? »

in the Practice, full of Errour and Imposture; And in the Theory, full of unsound Imaginations...

My classmate Josh, in the midst of a serious discussion on the President's changes to his bioethics council, laments:

The president is free to do whatever he wants with his bioethics council. He can stack it with witch doctors and alchemists and propose a 10 billion dollar plan to turn lead into gold. He is the president, and thats the prize you get for winning the election.

I think Josh has hit on something great, here, though. Knock the budget back by a factor of ten, and what he's got isn't so much an enormous boondoggle but an episode of Mad, Mad House. And while I'm generally not in favor of government intervention in entertainment, I might be willing to bend the rules here:
  • $10 million is less than Sci-Fi probably paid making yet one more reality show.
  • The show could run on C-SPAN (let's face it, are witch doctors and alchemists less sensible than most of what you'd see there? and is anyone watching?), widening its demographic greatly.
  • The new show would thus free up time on Sci-Fi for them to bring back Farscape.
  • Alchemists included kabbalists, Christian thinkers like St. Aquinus, Arab scholars from antiquity, and some of the best thinkers in the sinophone world. Witch doctors (to the extent that the term is used for shaman) have even wider range. (And those are just the ones I know of.) Can you say, 'multicultural!'
  • The Presidential Alchemy Panel would do a lot more towards teaching our kids Latin and mathematics than Mad, Mad House.
  • Democrat's have often complained that Bush has the devil's own luck--let's put it to use! Who knows, against all expectations of anyone at all, it just might work. It's as good a solution as anything else Bush has done to eliminate the deficit thus far.

Update: How do you guys write so fast? Another reader points out that listening to Paul Krugman rant about 'budget alchemy' when he means it literally would be another plus.

Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)

NOTICE TO SPAMMERS, COMMENT ROBOTS, TRACKBACK SPAMMERS AND OTHER NON-HUMAN VISITORS: No comment or trackback left via a robot is ever welcome at Three Years of Hell. Your interference imposes significant costs upon me and my legitimate users. The owner, user or affiliate who advertises using non-human visitors and leaves a comment or trackback on this site therefore agrees to the following: (a) they will pay fifty cents (US$0.50) to Anthony Rickey (hereinafter, the "Host") for every spam trackback or comment processed through any blogs hosted on threeyearsofhell.com, morgrave.com or housevirgo.com, irrespective of whether that comment or trackback is actually posted on the publicly-accessible site, such fees to cover Host's costs of hosting and bandwidth, time in tending to your comment or trackback and costs of enforcement; (b) if such comment or trackback is published on the publicly-accessible site, an additional fee of one dollar (US$1.00) per day per URL included in the comment or trackback for every day the comment or trackback remains publicly available, such fee to represent the value of publicity and search-engine placement advantages.

Giving The Devil His Due

And like that... he is gone (8)
Bateleur wrote: I tip my hat to you - not only for ... [more]

Law Firm Technology (5)
Len Cleavelin wrote: I find it extremely difficult to be... [more]

Post Exam Rant (9)
Tony the Pony wrote: Humbug. Allowing computers already... [more]

Symbols, Shame, and A Number of Reasons that Billy Idol is Wrong (11)
Adam wrote: Well, here's a spin on the theory o... [more]

I've Always Wanted to Say This: What Do You Want? (14)
gcr wrote: a nice cozy victorian in west phill... [more]

Choose Stylesheet

What I'm Reading

cover
D.C. Noir

My city. But darker.
cover
A Clockwork Orange

About time I read this...


Shopping

Projects I've Been Involved With

A Round-the-World Travel Blog: Devil May Care (A new round-the-world travel blog, co-written with my wife)
Parents for Inclusive Education (From my Clinic)

Syndicated from other sites

The Columbia Continuum
Other Blogs by CLS students