HE HAS SLIPPED THE SURLY BONDS OF REASON. More and more, the blogosphere strikes me as a high-tech care facility for nuts and retards. In today's Grand Rounds I consider the case of James Pinkerton, who turns from playing Culture War to playing Spaceman. He posits a "space-ark" to save some human specimens (presumably including James Pinkerton and a ratio of ten females to each male) from the inevitable destruction of the earth.

Space exploration is of course Nerdvana for rightwing poindexters, perhaps because they are aware that the environmental policies they are successfully promoting are dangerous to planetary life (of course this assumes that they are evil instead of stupid, which is in no way a settled issue). Pinkerton manages in this article to cite "global warming" as a credible threat to the planet -- though one month ago, when Al Gore was making that same point, Pinkerton was laughing it off. That's how serious he is about getting a seat on that rocket ship -- he's even willing to alter his usual line of bullshit for a ticket.

Bonus fun -- Pinkerton blames our abandonment of the space race on dirty hippies:

It's no coincidence that back in the 60s, as support for the space program was falling, the desire to get high was, well, rising. That is, as technological forms of tripping faded away, trips of the pharmaceutical kind took off. And in the wake of psychedelic drugs came the efflorescence of New Age religion and, yes, one must also say, the explosion of the Internet. To put it another way, stargazing gave way to acid-dropping, and then to navel-gazing, and then to web-surfing. What a long strange trip it's been, indeed.

To recover America from its drug/God/web addiction, Pinkerton volunteers to be shot into space. I say any excuse is a good excuse. He can leave tomorrow, and take his nutty buddies (including the Transhumanist robot laywer) with him.