Sixteen Volts

Now that for the past few days WaitingForBlogger.com has once again been showing us the real value of free beer, we can soothe our nerves by taking a look at Dilbert blog, which I see contains several excellent posts in its front page alone.

First, the post "Is God Hiding or Not?" continues on the theme of that one wacky Christian who jumped in the lion cage shouting that God will protect him, and notes that

I know someone is going to read this and point out that the Bible predicts the creation of the nation of Israel. By that standard, I have a cookbook in the kitchen that has predicted a lot of my meals. So you’ll have to do better than that.

The post "Common Knowledge" laments the fact that American college students don't know much about history:

That test reminded me of a question I like to ask young people: “How many people died in WWII, including all soldiers and civilians of all countries.”

One college student told me she thought the number might be as high as 1,000. (Yes, I meant to type ONE THOUSAND.) Some guess 50,000. A few have guessed that it might be a million people, possibly two or three million.

Almost no one guesses 50 million, which is about right, give or take several million.

The post "Talking to God" wonders what is really going on when Christians talk to God:

I assume that the Devil would try to trick you by throwing in a few “be kind to your neighbor” messages to gain your trust before telling you to load the bazooka. All he’d need to do is say it’s one of those Abraham-sacrificing-his-son situations and most true believers would open fire on the orphanage to prove their love. If I were the Devil (assume for now that I am not), I’d certainly be doing God impressions. I can’t imagine it ever getting old.

“HELLO BOB. THIS IS GOD. TAKE OFF YOUR CLOTHES AND RUN THROUGH THE MALL TO PROVE YOUR LOVE FOR ME. GO.”

Last, the post "Pragmatic Party" sketches a system of government that governs based on opinion polls and direct democracy.

You need one Big Idea when you run for President. I would explain that our current system of government was conceived prior to the Internet, electronic mass media, and sophisticated polling methods. 200 years ago the only practical form of government involved voting for a small group of individuals that would pretend to represent you. Now we have better tools and we should use them. I would thus infer that my opponents are hole-pooping cavemen desperately clinging to the past. Again, that’s called framing the debate. I’d get lots of TV time because the media would consider me a loose cannon. They like that.

The Pragmatic Party platform would always mirror the majority opinion of the country. When the majority opinion changed, so too would my platform. I would be immune from accusations of flip-flopping because change would be built into the platform. I would say that electing a candidate that is unwilling to change is the same as electing a lamp post. During the first debate I would turn to my opponent and say, “Senator, explain to the people how you are different from a lamp post.” That’s the only sound bite the media would play all the next day.

Posted by Ilkka Kokkarinen on Friday, June 09, 2006 at 9:20 AM