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| Image Source: The Daily Show, skit |
I can say I've met a Nobel Laureate in Professor Weinberg, and potential ones in my life (one of his students in particular, he and his wife personal friends). I can state I haven't been disappointed in them as people, warm, approachable and knowledgeable about physics and life. I lament I am too young to not have lived when Einstein was alive.
Open carry became law in the state of Texas this month on January 1st; August 1st for the campuses. Some businesses have the ability to mitigate them as likely, their customers don't want to think about weapons next to their groceries or lattes...
Dr. Weinberg - in the brief time I met him at the NSBP/NSHP conference in Austin - probably doesn't do "too much fuss" well. He likely endures it, but would rather not.
There is not one scintilla of evidence that a "good guy with a gun" thwarts a bad guy. There's more data that flying lead tends to have an exponential multiplier effect, and that sometimes tragically with trained law enforcement personnel...and citizens.
So, this is a very bold stance, but an important one: what do we value as a culture? Is it knowledge, as in the competitive knowledge needed for 21st Century employment in a global economy, or macho John Wayne/G.I. Joe fantasies of shootouts with cap pistols/paint balls, and a cartoon (no death) reset?
Everyone in this country has the right to every single amendment of the Constitution. We tend to overlook this:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. I'd think part of that happiness is coming home in the same shape you left in.
A professor: any level, anywhere - Nobel Laureate, Tenured, Assistant, Associate, Teacher K-12 - has to teach with a certain impunity to tell the student sometimes hard things, such as you didn't master the material. That's usually known as drop before the last date, or accept the less-than-"C" grades. No one wants to feel held hostage in their classrooms. Hormones and hurt feelings: what could POSSIBLY go wrong?
Hopefully, a flagship university values having a Nobel Prize winner as part of their science research faculty. If not, I'm sure any other campus will welcome him with open arms and demands met, or as he has alluded, he might retire. Other scientists, engineers and other fields might follow the example of his exodus. It could possibly be a great loss to the university, to science; the epitome of a Pyrrhic Victory.
Entropy - the tendency of systems to go from order to chaos/disorder - is how we came to measure something called time and its changes; it claims us all eventually.
It just needn't be as sudden as our current national asylum.
Texas Tribune:
Nobel Laureate Professor: I'm Banning Guns in My UT Classroom, Matthew Watkins
Nobel Laureate Becomes Reluctant Anti-Gun Leader, Madlin Mekelburg
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