DC Trawler

Time Magazine: Trump’s Eclipse Retweet Is Scientifically Inaccurate

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Here’s how I see 2017 America, to paraphrase Office Space: Every single day is dumber than the day before it. That means every day you read this blog, it’s on the dumbest day in the history of our country.

Don’t believe me? Then keep in mind that earlier today, President Trump retweeted this:

And a few hours later, Jeffrey Kluger at Time magazine published almost 700 words about it. Here’s a taste:

Trump’s Anti-Obama Eclipse Meme Doesn’t Make Scientific Sense

Eclipses happen because every now and then, in predictable but still primally unsettling cycles, a warm, bright, life-giving object is obscured by a dark, dead, insensible rock. The rock is tiny—400 times smaller than the big, bright thing. But it’s also 400 times closer, so it appears much bigger than it is—its size and importance a mere illusion of proximity.

This surely isn’t where President Trump wanted to go, but hey, once you invite science to the dinner party, you don’t get to ask it to leave just because you don’t like the jokes it’s telling.

Yeah, actually you can. Because they’re jokes.

Should the President of the United States be tweeting all the time? I don’t think he should. Are our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters turning more and more people against them every day because of their insane urge to obsessively nitpick every single little thing the guy says and does? I think they are. I really don’t like Trump, and somehow they’re making me hate them even more.

Look, I know we’re all desperate for clickbait. But 700 words on the scientific inaccuracies in a dumb Trump retweet? In Time magazine? It’s one thing if it’s coming from a disreputable wingnut blogger like me. But this is Time we’re talking about. Have these people lost all self-respect? Or just most of it?

(Hat tip: Randy)