I had dinner last night with the larger portion of my graduate class, which was lots and lots of fun. Mostly they all hang in the same circle and bump into each other on a semi-annual basis, but for me it was the first time I had gotten together with the group in 3 or 4 years. Lots of fun.
There's more history among us than many sibling have, so it's sometimes a little awkward and, of course, not everyone showed up (This one is still a little miffed at that one), but overall it was a great time.
One especially interesting thing: apparently the ID debate is coming to the Smithsonian in the next year. A group of GOP congressmen are threatening to substantively cut funding to it (and by extension the SAO) unless the Smithsonian "get on board" with ID. Travis would, no doubt, say this was a Good Thing since science (or anything else) shouldn't be funded with public money. As I've said before, I think this is a narrow, short-sighted and ultimately self-defeating view (countries that don’t' fund science get beat to the Moon by countries that do). OTOH, If this is really going to happen, it might be a chance to draw a bright line on the battlefield and show ID and the GOP as being anti-science. In a world where Koreans are cloning dogs, the Chinese are heading to the Moon, and India has more programmers, maybe it isn't such a great idea to start insisting that our R&D incorporate mythological elements. I could see this as another PBS-type debate with the strong, historical reputation of the Smithsonian coming into play against the more hysterical anto-science arguments.
We'll see I suppose.
1 comment:
Likely. I think it's a battle they can win though. It might have longer term, bad consequences for the right though if the Chinese make it to the moon and left stick them with an anti-science bias.
Political Market Forces seem to work at least as well as the economic ones, so an answer will be forth coming.
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