I saw this op-ed piece in the Tribune this morn. Touches a little on the way this thread has turned:

Our science fictions, fears
By Joel Stein
March 3, 2009

Nobody likes science. You can tell by the fact that they teach it in school. There aren't any high school courses in pizza.

I don't like science either. I mean, it sounds good when you're a kid with the fingerprint kits and the baking-powder volcanoes, but by 10th grade, you realize it's just math with special effects.

But for some reason, only conservatives get blamed for hating science. Which is weird, because conservatives are, by definition, the ones who are supposed to hate strange new things. They hate foreigners, video games, rap and—from what I could gather from Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's speech last week—talking to adults.

People on the far right don't believe in evolution, global warming or stem-cell research. Most of their opposition is rooted in the fact that these ideas challenge the Bible, which is the oldest book they know. I'm guessing Greek conservatives are OK with killing your dad and making love to your mom.

But since I moved to Los Angeles, I've discovered that liberals hate science just as much as conservatives, and they talk about it a lot more. They'll reject any study that contradicts their Mother-Nature-is-perfect myth, which is oddly similar to the conservatives' thesis: Both sides think the past was purer than the technologically corrupted present. Except the liberal vision of the idealized past is a pre-insecticide, pastoral paradise where loving animals ran free and people had shameless sex. So, basically the same as the conservatives' version, plus untainted apples and some gay stuff.

Liberals have an irrational fear of inoculation and genetically engineered food, no matter how conclusive the science is on these topics. They believe that the body needs to be detoxified with foot pads, colonics, mud wraps and maple-syrup-and-cayenne-pepper fasts. They take echinacea and Emergen-C, heal themselves with crystals and magnets, and believe that energy flows through different "centers" of their bodies. They practice, I swear, a form of healing massage called reiki in which the masseuse usually doesn't even touch you. I believe my wife and I have a reiki marriage.

They suspect modern medicine is part of a corporate conspiracy, while dangerous recreational drugs are OK because they come from stuff that grows in the ground, man. These are people who will feel virtuous about drinking Kool-Aid as long as the bottle has the words "vitamin water" on it.

I've been in rooms where a normal discussion of organic versus local food suddenly turned into an engineering analysis of how the Twin Towers could no way have fallen just because two giant jets hit them. That's the part of the conversation when I suggest we run an experiment in which we see what happens when two giant jets hit the two idiots talking.

Facts are weak things when they face personal philosophies. It's scary to let go of your assumptions of how the world works, to be left with only a set of incomplete, seemingly unconnected data points. It is far easier to ignore or dispute a study from Princeton's physics department than to readjust your core beliefs about where the universe came from. Especially when the Princeton study is impossible to read and Genesis tells two awesome, different stories.

And science is vulnerable to being disputed, because, as Nietzsche posited in "Human, All Too Human," we've mistakenly elevated it to another form of salvation, so it's just a watered-down religion: "Modern science has as its goal: as little pain as possible, as long life as possible—thus a kind of eternal bliss." An eternal bliss that is full of hanging out in a lab and never meeting girls, so really more eternal than bliss.

Maybe the best we can do is join in a bipartisan agreement to engage only in the harmless type of science-hating everyone can love: UFOs, psychics and underwater kingdoms that appear on Google maps.



Los Angeles Times



Joel Stein is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times.


Of course, I don't mean to suggest this would describe anyone here.

Fo-

Quote:I'd say the consumer would need to start exerting more influence through voluntary choice. If we want cleaner air...buy cars with better emission controls....ostracize industrial polluters by supporting those that are acting responsibly.

Exacta mundo....

You are not going to get the majority to pay more for something (cleaner) if they can get it cheaper (polluter). In BG I know people can buy electricity through wind turbines but they pay a surcharge on the bill. Something like 20% of the people choose this option. We have to make the polluters energy cost more. IMHO

(03-03-2009 12:08 PM)Machiavelli Wrote:  Fo-

Quote:I'd say the consumer would need to start exerting more influence through voluntary choice. If we want cleaner air...buy cars with better emission controls....ostracize industrial polluters by supporting those that are acting responsibly.

Exacta mundo....

You are not going to get the majority to pay more for something (cleaner) if they can get it cheaper (polluter). In BG I know people can buy electricity through wind turbines but they pay a surcharge on the bill. Something like 20% of the people choose this option. We have to make the polluters energy cost more. IMHO

I'm not for making polluters pay surcharges on principle because that involves using the force of government.(I oppose all use of force to effect change) I'm for withdrawing my business from those that pollute and supporting with my business those that act responsibly. Of course...there are many situations in our current paradigm that don't allow that choice, like energy. I can't choose to "only" buy my energy from the clean supplier in our current paradigm.

As you point out though..It's now possible for new energy companies to enter the marketplace and compete with alternative sources. As the technology improves and cost factors near equilibrium with traditional energy sources, maybe we will see a change over in the industry voluntarily to cleaner options. I would like to see that occur. It would validate my point that the marketplace is fully capable of exerting positive change without using the force of government.

(03-03-2009 11:16 AM)Fanatical Wrote:  I saw this op-ed piece in the Tribune this morn. Touches a little on the way this thread has turned:

Our science fictions, fears
By Joel Stein
March 3, 2009

Nobody likes science. You can tell by the fact that they teach it in school. There aren't any high school courses in pizza.

Of course, I don't mean to suggest this would describe anyone here.

That was a funny column, and right on the money, except for the disparaging caricatures of my position.

I'm not going to comment directly on the thread because I think (nearly) everyone posting in it is a hypocrite on this issue, but this deserves clarification for the newbie:

(03-03-2009 12:29 AM)Wildebeest Wrote:  

(03-03-2009 12:16 AM)Rebel Wrote:  Care to show me where Torch ever stated anything about not believing in Dinosaurs?

You leftists really have a retarded understanding of Christian conservatives.

Who said I was a leftist? Anyone who doesn't parrot Rush is now a leftist? That's news to me.

It's a tautology that if Rebel makes the effiort to quote your post, you're a leftist.