Trying to Remember High School Physics
RNC Chairman Mike Duncan is campaigning for a second term and promising to make the GOP “an accelerator of change.” I might be confused about this, but it seems to me that this would be a huge error for the conservative movement. After all, at the moment the direction of change is to the left. If the Republicans become accelerators of change, then leftward change will happen more swiftly.
But perhaps this is the plan. After all, throughout the year there have been these battles over economic stimulus, with the White House and congressional conservatives making the first stimulus smaller and less effective than it should have been, and completely foiling efforts at a second stimulus. Perversely, by worsening economic conditions the incumbent party therefore greatly boosted the electoral fortunes of their opponents. And conservative malgovernment has now created a global economic crisis of such severe proportions that the “sensible center” has shifted dramatically to the left in terms of willingness to see large-scale deficit-financed public investments. I’ve been assuming that all this was just a side effect of conservatives making policy errors because their movement is corrupt and intellectually bankrupt, but maybe it’s a deliberate plan to accelerate change.
37 Responses to “Trying to Remember High School Physics”
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December 17th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Acceleration is any change in velocity, and thus includes a change in direction as well as magnitude.
December 17th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Well, the change here involves the “subject” since Republicans can’t really point out much if anything positive about free-market piety.
The risk here is that they’ll simply amplify their own contrarianism. But that’s what religions do in times of severe stress. Escaping this world for a purer afterlife is the siren song of cultists, millenialists, and ideologues whose own ideology has betrayed them.
December 17th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
When talking physics, one should keep in mind that acceleration can have any sign, or more accurately, any unit vector. Increasing, decreasing or turning (whatever that may be) change would all be acceleration.
However, I don’t think this is what he had in mind.
December 17th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Sounds like in practice he’ll be a “close reader of polls” and an “avid co-opter of buzzwords”, at least until he get back to being an “unscrupulous peddler of snake oil”.
December 17th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Since acceleration is just a vector of the change in velocity, which is a vector of change in position, we’re talking the change of a change of a change. That’s into fourth-order differential equation territory that I’m pretty sure is more than Duncan can handle.
December 17th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
An accelerator of change? If change is ‘velocity’, then an accelerator of change is d^3/dt^3(r) . Which, fittingly, is called the “jerk,” regardless of sign.
December 17th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
What Glenn said.
If you’re running around in circles, even if your speed (a scalar quantity) is constant, your velocity (a vector quantity) is changing, since you’re changing direction. If your velocity is changing, you’re accelerating.
Another way of thinking about this is recognizing that, in physics, deceleration is still acceleration. If you jump up in the air, the lay perspective would say that you’re ‘decelerating’ on your way up, but ‘accelerating’ on your way down. From a physics perspective, though, your acceleration is the same (9.81 m/s^2, pointing towards the ground) the whole time you’re in the air.
So, strictly speaking, by slowing down the current leftward change in America, the GOP can qualify as “an accelerator of change.”
I’m sure that’s what Duncan had in mind when he said that, too.
December 17th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Why does Duncan and the GOP refuse to produce a vector diagram of their acceleration plans?
December 17th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Maybe somebody should accelerate my cock into…
December 17th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
TJ,
I think change would be more accurately described as displacement, the acceleration of which is .. acceleration.
But your explanation is definitely funnier, and please don’t let my physics-based quibbling stop you from calling the GOP jerks anyway.
December 17th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Conservative malgovernment in the US caused a worldwide financial crisis? Intellectually bankrupt is too good a description for you. My god, you’re a fucking moron.
December 17th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Maybe Duncan wants to get this whole “change” thing over with quickly so they can get back to doing nothing at all productive again.
December 17th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Conservative malgovernment in the US caused a worldwide financial crisis?
Thomas
Please, tell us what did cause the crisis. Don’t hold back, and if there’s not enough space here, give us a link or two.
I know you can back up those “intellectually bankrupt” and “fucking moron” epithets, so don’t wait.
December 17th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
“Conservative malgovernment in the US caused a worldwide financial crisis.”
Kind of simplified, but, yeah, that’s the essence of it.
December 17th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Please, tell us what did cause the crisis.
It was an “unavoidable event” that all the good and altruistic and really really smart smart smart people of Wall Street did their best to prevent! Fap fap! They couldn’t help it that it was in the best interest of the free market for them to game the system! Fap fap fap!
December 17th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
The bursting of a bubble wasn’t an act of conservative malgovernment. The inflating of a bubble wasn’t caused by malgovernment, conservative or otherwise. Mispricing of risk wasn’t caused by government. The idea that markets are perfect is a conservative mistake; the idea that markets would work perfectly if only we had the right bureaucrats is Matt’s mistake.
There’s only one conservative government in power in the world, and if it has the ability to cause a worldwide financial crisis, perhaps the alternatives aren’t nearly so robust as Matt suggests. I mean, what kind of malgovernment are the liberals in Europe running, if they can’t avoid the mess?
Matt is right that lots of morons favor large scale deficit financed public investments now. But that of course isn’t an argument in favor of those things, and as it happens Matt favors those things crisis or no. Again, intellectually bankrupt is too kind.
December 17th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Nice try at, uh, “balance”, but as the GOP would say, let’s call a spade a spade and label them straight up fuck ups.
December 17th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
In physics the only difference between acceleration and deceleration is a minus sign. The minus sign can be removed if you switch your axis around. Doing this requires you to be consistant. If Duncan has his axis backward from Yglesias which wouldn’t be surprising given their different political orientations then his comment means acclearated change in the conservative direction. This is equivelent to decelerating change in the progressive direction.
December 18th, 2008 at 12:22 am
Change, and acceleration both have different less precise meanings outside of physics. As I doubt 5% of senators could demonstrate enough knowledge of physics to talk about it, he must be using the colloquial definitions of the words. So what he is saying is the conservatives should make change happen faster. This is of course the antithesis of the definition of conservative, which means to resist change.
Muddled thinking any way you look at it. But thats what we have come to expect from the repubs….
December 18th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Now, one would think that conservatism calls for slow change. But then, the GOP never has gotten conservatism and Conservatism straight…
December 20th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
I think it’s safe to represent change as a vector in n dimensions, n > 1, where the various dimensions represent different types of policy (Iraq policy, bailout policy, health care policy, etc.). The acceleration vector is therefore a vector in n dimensions as well, which means that strictly speaking the idea of “increasing” it is incoherent. If “increasing” is really shorthand for an increase in magnitude, there’s no problem with doing that while changing the direction as well. So it’s completely consistent with the GOP agenda for it to stand for an increase in the magnitude of the acceleration vector.
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