Americans don’t know their scientists.

This article from Boston.com raises a critical point. Most Americans know the Harry Potter stories. They know many professional athletes, movies stars and musicians. But they know very little about the people who do science or how science is done. For instance, "Only 52 percent of Americans in their survey knew why stem cells differ from other kinds of cells; just 46 percent knew that atoms are larger than electrons." What is the cure?

Americans should be far more engaged with scientists and what they’re doing. They should know the names of leading researchers (most Americans do not) and the nation’s top scientific agencies (again, most Americans do not). To the extent possible they should know scientists personally, both so they can get a sense of the nature of scientific reasoning and so they feel they are being heard, not just lectured to. Perhaps this way, when it comes to the toughest and most politicized questions, they will better recognize that scientists will not rally around a firm conclusion unless it really is precisely that.

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Reward for Iranian protesters: torture and rape

From the London Times, reports of the torture and beatings of many protesters:

Ardeshir — not his real name — is one of scores, perhaps hundreds, of detainees who have been raped and tortured by their jailers in the past three months in what appears to be a systematic attempt to break their will. Mehdi Karoubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi, the defeated presidential candidates, accused a regime, which claims to champion Islamic values, of raping opposition supporters.
Times continue to be tough for those seeking reform, as reported by Dr. Fatemeh Keshavarz of Windows on Iran. The battles include cyber-battles, as reported by Dr. Keshavarz, who provided this information in a mass emailing to which I subscribe:

All signs point to the fact that difficult - and decisive - days may be ahead in Iran. But the good news first. For years, Iranians who are ranked as number four bloggers in the world, have been prevented from visiting the sites that the Iranian government has considered containing information contrary to its interests and filtered. Those who devised creative ways to break the filter and get into such sites, are usually in danger of being found and subjected to jail and other punishments. What is most amazing is that the Iranian government considers the existence of undesirable websites as "foreign interference" in its internal affairs.

But there is also some good news of a new work-around to avoid detection and capture (and, often, torture):

Well, this state of affairs may have been ended once and for all. Using Google, an Iranian by the name Mehdi Saharkhiz has come up with an internet tool which he has called the "Green Machine." The Green Machine! Good News for the Greens in Iran

Here is the site that gives you instruction for downloading the Green Machine. According to Mr. Mousavi's facebook, after you download the Green Machine, you can visit any website - filtered or otherwise - without being detected.

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Great Britain admits the obvious: Alan Turing was treated appallingly

Gordon Brown stepped up and plainly said what should have been said long ago. Alan Turing was a hero, yet he was treated terribly by the British government. Here's an excerpt from The Guardian:

Gordon Brown issued an unequivocal apology last night on behalf of the government to Alan Turing, the second world war codebreaker who took his own life 55 years ago after being sentenced to chemical castration for being gay. Describing Turing's treatment as "horrifying" and "utterly unfair", Brown said the country owed the brilliant mathematician a huge debt. He was proud, he said, to offer an official apology. "We're sorry, you deserved so much better," Brown writes in a statement posted on the No 10 website.

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