IGM Obama, Oscars, Nano-radio

Inter-galactic Memo
To: All Personnel
Fr: W. Leavitt, raconteur
Re: Random Notes

President Obama was in Illinois the other day, speaking at a Caterpillar assembly plant. He was defending his stimulus (spendulus) package to the unionized employees. During the speech he poked a little good-natured fun at Illinois’ new Representative, 27 year old Aaron Schock. He mentioned Schock’s tender age (re: inexperience) and assured the assembly that the congressman would fall in line with his policies. Later, young Aaron told reporters that he had spoken to hundreds of the Caterpillar employees and not one of them asked him to support the stimulus package. So much for inexperience.

You may have noticed a certain lack of comment on the Academy Awards from me. An interesting phenomenon is occurring. Years ago I was glued to the tube on Oscar night. I made sure I had seen all the contenders for best picture, director and actor. Now I could not care any less. I have not seen any of the nominated movies. I don’t know what they were (even now) and with the exception of what I’ve heard on the radio, I don’t know or care who won what. Congrats to Slumdog though for taking the cake. Maybe I’ll watch it now. I find Hollywood becoming more and more irrelevant every day. Possibly because we are forced to hear every ill-conceived and uninformed word to come out of their privileged mouths, and watch their apparently valueless lives paraded in front of us. (Is that being judgmental?) Now, before everyone jumps down my throat for generalizing, let me just say that I know I’m generalizing. I’m sure there are many fine individuals in the movie industry. But what fun is it to point that out?

A team of crack researchers from Berkeley has done something interesting. They are able to make actual radios from a single nanotube of carbon. A real radio. One that receives, transmits, modulates frequency (changes channels) and can be heard on real speakers. All on a tube of carbon atoms that would fit nicely inside an average-sized human cell. With no moving parts, no additional parts (other than the electrodes at either end to provide power) and no magic. If you would like to hear a radio the size of a virus play “Layla” go to www.sciam.com/nanoradio and they’ll play it for you. Of course we’ll have to take their word that it isn’t an IPod Nano playing the tune . . . get it? Nano?

Most of you would be surprised—nay, shocked—to find out how many people are still waiting for the President to produce a valid birth certificate. Some people (not me) are wondering why he spent millions of dollars to have a bunch of attorneys NOT show a certificate. Let’s see . . . several million dollars, fifteen dollars . . . hmmmmm. I think I would have produced the certificate. And that thing on the internet is not a birth certificate. It’s a copy of a live birth form even I could have forged. Wouldn’t it be ironic of it turned out we had a foreigner leading the country? We would have to undo everything he did, said and signed. What a mess that would be, huh? It would be hard to tell the difference between then and now though. I’m just saying . . . .

More and more “experts” are coming out of the woodwork and questioning much of the new administration’s plans for healing the economy. Many of them are saying that doing nothing and letting the whole mess heal on its own would be faster and less damaging than what is being proposed. So if that happens, and the Obama camp takes credit for the fix, how will we know the difference? We already know the Democratic party caused the mortgage crisis (Dodd, Frank, Pelosi, et al) by insisting nothing was wrong and blocking repeated attempts by the GOP to stave off the current mess, then blamed it on the Bush administration which warned us and tried to get congress to do something, so it isn’t likely they will step up and admit it when their great plan doesn’t work.
More to come.