Getting Science Under Control

After the election of 2008, we fans of the rational and provable had high hopes that government may give as much credence to the scientific process and conclusions as to the disproved aspects of philosophies promulgated by churches and industry shills. We watched with waning hope as a series of attempts to honor that ideal got watered down. But at least it was an improvement. But the 2010 election quickly reveals a backlash. Those whose cherished misunderstandings had been disrespected for the last couple of years now will have their day. As Phil Plait says, Energy and science in America are in big, big trouble. He begins,

"With the elections last week, the Republicans took over the House once again. The list of things this means is long and troubling, but the most troubling to me come in the forms of two Texas far-right Republicans: Congressmen Ralph Hall and Joe Barton."

He goes on to explain why. It comes down to them being proven representatives for Young Earth and fossil fuel interests, doing whatever they can to scuttle actual science by any means necessary. Especially where the science contradicts their pet ideas. Barton has published articles supporting climate change denialism. His main contributors are the extraction industries. Hall has used parliamentary tricks to attempt to scuttle funding for basic research. The Democrats offered to compromised by cutting funding, and he refused in hopes that the whole bill would fail. It passed. Then Hall publicly called Democrats on the carpet for using tricks to fatten the bill by the amount that they offered to cut. The Proxmire spirit lives on.

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David Attenborough meets Richard Dawkins

This is a delightful and engaging conversation between these two extraordinary thinkers (audio only). Natural selection is the focus, but there is a lot more, including scientific revolutions and fractal animals. Here's an excerpt from the 18-minute conversation:

Can you remember the moment you decided to become a scientist? RD: I only became fired up in my second year of a science degree. Unlike you, I was never a boy naturalist, to my regret. It was more the intellectual, philosophical questions that interested me. DA: I am a naturalist rather than a scientist. Simply looking at a flower or a frog has always seemed to me to be just about the most interesting thing there is. Others say human beings are pretty interesting, which they are, but as a child you're not interested in Auntie Flo's psychology; you're interested in how a dragonfly larva turns into a dragonfly. RD: Yes, it's carrying inside it two entirely separate blueprints, two different programmes. DA: I couldn't believe it! I remember asking an adult, "What goes on inside a cocoon?" and he said, "The caterpillar is totally broken down into a kind of soup. And then it starts again." And I remember saying, "That can't be right." As a procedure, you can't imagine how it evolved.
If you stay around until the end of the discussion, you'll get to hear Attenborough imitating Ernst Mayr.

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Awesome Saturn

Today I found a 2006 unread issue of National Geographic in my pile of things-to-read, and I was floored by the incredible photos of Saturn taken in 2004 by the Cassini spacecraft. Don't forget the look at the entire gallery, including the photo of Saturn's icy moon Dione, profiled with Saturn's rings on edge (they are only 150 feet thick). Amazing photos! Galileo discovered Saturn's rings in 1610, but one is tempted to imagine what Galileo would have said had he seen these photos. Saturn, as big as 700 Earths, and orbited by at least 56 moons. One of those moons, Titan, was visited by "Huygens, a probe launched from Cassini. If that is not enough excitement for you, consider a second article in the same issue, this one called "Earth in the Beginning." It was a harsh environment, but we are survivors. Check out the gallery here, too, as well as the animations. Admittedly, these are reconstructions, but such a context it all brings home. . .

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