Justin Trudeau has been basking in the smug glory of a media coup all weekend, seemingly having “put a sarcastic reporter” in his place at a presser before the weekend who tried to “stump” the PM with a question ostensibly about ISIS but segued (or perhaps teed up?) what is being touted as a “brilliant” “lecture” on the basics of quantum computing to an adoring gaggle of media sycophants.
From the moment I heard about this it just seemed a tad artificial. I mentioned it on my facebook timeline and quickly found I was not the only one who was unconvinced. As my former college professor remarked:
he said it like it had been memorized. I would love to hear his take on quantum physics and parallel universes.
Said professor doesn’t teach quantum computing, but as a teacher he’s undoubtedly spent a lifetime sniffing out B.S. He is of course referring to the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics. Everybody knows that. But another colleague of mine, who is a heavyweight in the area of astrophysics computing did weigh in with the following:
Perhaps as a datapoint, and I do in fact work with quantum computer scientists, this was a horrible horrible explanation. But we’re all keeping quiet about that 🙂
The “sarcastic reporter” who is nameless is nearly every account of the exchange is Colin Perkel from The Canadian Press, (which coincidentally was created by an Act of Parliament in 1917). Today they function as a co-operative among major media players in Canada, among which the major backer is Toronto Star.
The media mythos around the incident is one of the clever, hirsute Justin Trudeau smacking down a sarcastic, belligerent hack journalist with his dreamy intellect. But was Perkel really that hostile or was he playing a role? A casual glance at Perkel’s journalism may not necessarily scream “fawning sycophant” but there is nothing there to lead one to believe him to be at all orthogonal to The Official Narrative, or the PM, certainly nothing like the open hostility and derision between the Press and PM Harper.
So what if it’s true?
Many of the comments in my original facebook thought around this were along the lines “so what?” Sentiments ranged from “he’s making science fun” and a lot of “At least he’s not Donald Trump”.
The fact remains if it is true, and this entire spectacle was political theatre, and by that I mean more about the press bandwagon selecting that as the big take-away item after the fact. It is another example of what I painstakingly described in my “System of the World: An Infographic”; that as a populous we live a life of soma-enhanced illusion, forever distracted from actual issues (recall the topic of the presser had drifted dangerously close to “ISIS”. He asked when our ISIL mission will resume, but with the RCAF still conducting sorties in Syria maybe he should have asked why it was still going, notwithstanding the post-election euphoric declaration to bring them home).
We are in the early stages of the Liberal’s promised “Keynesian Intervention”, which comes bundled with:
- Bank of Canada positioning to take us into negative interest rates
- Bank of Canada divesting out of hard reserve assets (gold) while other central banks worldwide, particularly China and Russia, are adding hard assets to their reserves.
- Doubling-down on the Conservative’s codifying of bank-depositor “bail-ins” into law. (Translation: it makes it legal for the government to seize our savings).
None of which will end well, and nobody cares as long as Justin’s showmanship are front and center in the mind of the peasants.
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