Barack Obama, the Turing-Lovecraft Theorem and Horcruxes

One nice thing about a blog is that you can see how people arrived at your blog. Many hits come from Google searches. Some of those Google searches are phrased explicitly as questions while in other cases what the individual is searching for is obvious. This blog entry will examine some of the more common search strings and questions which blog entries here do not already answer.

Search string: "Is Barack Obama a clone?" Number of searches: At least 15 counting all variations.

People searching for this question or some variation thereof normally find my entry on Barack Obama's position on cloning. So is Barack Obama a clone? No. Of course not. That's even stupider than thinking that Obama's parents deliberately faked a birth certificate so he could run for President 40 years later. That's even stupider than thinking that 9/11 was an inside job. That's even dumber than thinking that scientists invented evolution to undermine belief in God. Cloning is a really difficult technology. We've had trouble until recently even cloning mammals. The idea we could clone people 40 years ago is absurd. And there's no coherent aim to cloning Obama.

On second thought, maybe it isn't so unreasonable. It would explain a great deal such as why he's been so uncooperative about giving a long-form birth certificate for the birthers to examine. And it explains why he is so charismatic. Someone tell Orly Taitz! Obama wasn't born in Hawaii or Kenya or anywhere else! Maybe he was never born but cloned in a vat by the Illuminati! Sadly, this hypothesis contradicts the preexisting conspiracy theory that Obama is a reptilian infiltrator. Maybe he is a cloned reptilian hybrid?

Search strings: "Turing-Lovecraft Theorem" and "proof of Turing-Lovecraft theorem" and others. Number of searches: Around 10.

According to Charlie Stross's "The Atrocity Archives," (discussed in this blog entry) Alan Turing did not commit suicide but rather was killed by the British government because he discovered a very dangerous theorem. This theorem that disproves the Church-Turing thesis and if thought about the wrong way could summon Lovecraftian horrors. This theorem's exact statement and proof are not included in the book. The book is fiction. As in, not real. As in, no such theorem exists. Just as H.P. Lovecraft wrote fiction. As in, not real. As in, his monstrosities came from his imagination, not from horrific realms beyond the understanding of mortals.

Or maybe that's just what they want you to think. Don't you find it interesting that not only has Barack Obama never denied being a reptilian clone but he's also never denied that the Turing-Lovecraft theorem is real?

Search string: "How do I make a Horcrux in real life." Number of searches: Too many to count. I get this search or some variation almost every single day. The total number of searches is easily in the hundreds.

This search and very similar search turn people to the blog entry arguing that it is acceptable under halacha (Orthodox Jewish law) to make a Horcrux if one had the ability to do so. Fortunately, horcruxes are not real. They are fictional. They are from the Harry Potter books. The Harry Potter books are fictional. Again, fictional means not real. You cannot split your soul into pieces using a magic wand. Sorry. But no.

Again. This may just be what Barack Obama wants you to think. That way, if the public does ever find out about his reptilian clone heritage and tries to kill him, they won't realize that he'll be unstoppable unless his Horcrux is destroyed. What would his Horcrux be? Remember, that if he is a reptilian clone, he obviously enjoys laughing at us while he and his reptilian compatriots slowly take over the world. So he might leave clues about his intentions. Isn't it a bit suspicious that Harry Potter, who turns out to be an accidental Horcrux for Voldemort, sees the shape of an acorn in his tea leaves in "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" and yet Obama was elected with the help of an organization called... ACORN?! All the pieces are coming together!

Sadly, there were two common hits from Google that don't seem to fit this. Indeed, they seem to be questions from people who don't have a problem distinguishing fact from fiction. I'll try to put together serious blog entries about those topics when I have time.

And apologies to Glenn Beck.

Glenn Beck, International Law, and Hypocrisy

The last time I discussed Glenn Beck on this blog, we discussed Beck's general ignorance and contempt regarding basic legal history. Most astounding of Beck's claims was the claim that the notion that laws change over time was an idea that arose in the 1920s as a response to "Darwinian evolution."

After remarks like that one might think that Beck isn't a bad person but just incredibly ignorant. However, Ed Brayton has drawn attention to Beck's latest interaction with international law demonstrates his true hypocrisy.

Beck frequently use the "I'm just asking questions" gambit to insinuate hurtful and borderline libelous claims. In response, One enterprising individual started a satirical website "Did Glenn Beck Rape and Murder a Young Girl in 1990?"Frankly, this seems to me to be over the line of reasonable civil discourse (even if it is amusing).

How has Beck responded to this website? Beck has petitioned World Intellectual Property Organization to remove control of the domain from the satirist. Beck's argument is that the domain creates confusion with his brand name and therefore is a violation of international conventions on trademarks. That claim is so profoundly stupid that I'm not going to bother addressing it.

The lawyers for the website responded by explaining in detail what was wrong with Beck's claim and noting that his appeal to WIPO seemed to be an attempted run-around of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. What makes Beck's behavior noteworthy is that, as one of the commentators to Brayton's blog observed, Beck has a history not just of complaining about transnationalism but of any intervention of international law into U.S. affairs. Indeed, Beck wrote in a March 30, 2009 column:

"Once we sign our rights over to international law, the Constitution is officially dead. When you say things like, 'We are not going to put the Constitution behind international law,' you say that in the international court, if you say that on the floor of the United Nations, you are a freak show."

In the same column Beck also wrote this gem:

"Let me tell you something. When you can't win with the people, you bump it up to the courts. When you can't win with the courts, you bump it up to the international level."

I'll let those comments speak for themselves.

Glenn Beck on Harold Koh: Idiocy of the First Degree

Harold Koh is a respected legal theorist. He served as an Assistant Secretary of State under Bill Clinton and was Dean of the Yale Law School. Recently, he has been nominated by President Obama to serve as State Department Legal Adviser, the highest legal position in the State Department. Certain elements of the right have decided that Koh is unacceptable. There are various ludicrous claims circulating, including that he wants to implement Sharia. Glenn Beck had this to say:









There’s so much wrong with this statement that I don’t know where to begin. Beck apparently thinks that the notion that law change over time dates to “the 1920s” in response to “Darwinian evolution.” I can’t tell if this is some sort of garbled critique of judicial activism since Beck doesn’t seem to object only to changes brought by a judiciary but all changes, even those coming from the legislature.

In any event, Beck, here is a quick history lesson: Most legal systems rely on systems of precedent and as, the precedents change, the controlling law changes. This isn’t new at all. One sees this in the Talmud. The basic system of Common Law used in Great Britain and the United States dates back to the Middle Ages, hundreds of years before Darwin. As much as the religious right likes to blame everything on evolution, this has nothing to do with that.

I’m also puzzled by Beck’s statement at another level: Even if we grant him his bizarrely counterfactual claim about the nature of law, does that mean he would rather we have all laws stay as they were in the 1920s? Should we keep anti-miscegenation laws? Should we have no regulations to govern new technologies such as the internet and airplanes?

Jay Sekulow does not come across very well in this segment either. He gives a more measured, somewhat rational critique of Koh. However when Beck asks Sekulow whether Beck is correct, Sekulow says “yes” and then gives his measured statement. I’d have a lot more respect for Sekulow if he had said “no” and then made the same statement.

Beck’s ignorance is made all the more glaring by the fact that he then calls for the firing of people at the New York Times for not, in his opinion, having sufficient understanding of what “transnationalism” means. The arrogance here is so stunning that I’m forced to conclude that this is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect in action.

I’ve interacted with Koh in the past and he’s clearly a very bright guy; I know personally Dean Koh and his family. He was a trustee of the high school I attended. My twin brother Aaron has been his student at the Yale Law School and is now his research assistant. Thus, it annoys me that this idiot Beck would be given a show on a major news channel to spout such garbage. There is a bright side to this: any sane person can look at what Beck and his allies are saying about Koh. If this is the worst they can come up with, then it makes it all the more clear that Koh is the right man for the job.