Framing the Energy Issue

Do you remember Dubya's "Clear Skies Initiative"? It was an plan to relax air pollution standards. His "Healthy Forests Initiative" was a timber industry clear-cutting plan. I recently saw an ad for EnergyTomorrow.org. As near as I can tell, it follows Sarah Palin's policy of "Drill, drill, drill!". Apparently, long term energy security depends on using up our petroleum reserves as quickly as possible. And moreover to direct its use as fuel, rather than conserving it for producing plastics and fertilizer. I suppose that they mean "tomorrow" in the sense of as soon as possible. But the ad and the site is framed to look "green". As if.

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Mismarketing Example

I was starting in on a relaxing coffee break with a friend, when I noticed something amiss with my beverage. My latte was fine. The problem was the mug. It was advertising a popular soft drink. A product not associated with a mug. A product generally served cold. I wonder what the marketing genius was on when he thought of this odd juxtaposition. Or am I now doing exactly what was intended; shilling a product by dissing its presentation?

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Non-news Travels Fast

I was reading about a couple of meteors (bolides) spotted in the last couple of days. One point made by BadAstronomy is that misinformation spread much faster than fact. We discuss this sort of issue regularly, using terms like "counterknowledge" and "agnotology". In this case, last week's news about two satellites colliding gently about halfway out to geostationary orbit got muddled in with these meteor reports. Note: Gently in astronomical terms means a collision as if only one ton of TNT had been detonated in them. There may be pieces large enough to see if they eventually drift low enough to burn up at night. But not like the fireballs seen in the last couple of days. The entire satellites were not fast or large enough to glow like the recent events. But Twitter was apparently abuzz with discussion of the (non-happened) satellite re-entry. BA clearly explains why this is silly. But the rumor is still propagating. Unfortunately, several news outlets initially reported it as fact. It's like the virus warnings (hoaxes) that well-meaning acquaintances send me about once a month. Most of their dire "this is real!" warnings were documented at Snopes between 3 and 10 years ago! I usually politely respond with the link to the particular case at Snopes, and suggest they add Snopes to their Bookmarks/Favorites.

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Darwin Day: Threat or Promise?

February 12th, 2009 is the 200th birthday of Chas. Darwin. Yes, one of our famous politicians shares that exact birthday, but Abe the rail splitting lawyer is not the point of this post. So what does Darwin Day mean? To most of the world, he was a man who found the missing link between the observation of evolution (that was accepted as reality before he was born) and a workable theory explaining it. He changed the understanding of how it happens from "What the (expletive)?" to "Well, duh!". But this is America. We have to be different. We have to be independent. Less than half of Americans seem to share the world consensus on the value of Darwin's contribution. A survey conducted by Science Magazine (313:765-766) showed only Turkey having a lower public rate of understanding of the theory of evolution than the United States. Of course, the survey didn't have access to even more starkly theocratic nations. Here's the summary of what people think of the theory of common descent:

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"To restore science to its rightful place"

It's not that I'm infatuated with the words of Potus44, but Barack Obama's inaugural address (that I've already addressed) hit quite a few notable notes. One of which was the promise to "restore science to its rightful place". He also said,

"Promoting science isn't just about providing Resources-it's about protecting free and open inquiry... It's about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it's inconvenient - especially when it's inconvenient.

That's a breath of fresh air, indeed. But the real question and challenge will be: What exactly is this Rightful Place? The previous administration acted as though they believed that science belongs after political expedience and the Bible, not necessarily in that order. They fired or censored anyone whose carefully calculated conclusions disagreed with their prejudged opinions. It will be a long time cleaning up the resulting mess. Mike the Mad Biologist posted: To Restore Science to Its Rightful Place, We Need to Redefine Elitism. In brief, science is not easy to follow once you reach the discoveries of The Enlightenment and beyond. It takes a certain amount of education and dedication to know good science from pseudoscience. And this is anathema to American principle of Democratic Populism, the idea that all men are not only "created equal", but are in fact equal.

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