Now this is not so good...
...when there is fear of teaching a theory. A few months back I posted about how if schools wanted to teach alternatives to evolution (in that case, 'intelligent design'), that should be fine. I got some guff for it, and I understand completely why. God forbid that our most time-honored and dependable theories be subjected to (gulp!) alternatives.
This, however is a different matter. When teachers fear to teach something because of their current administration or school board, then we have a problem. We're one step from book-burning. Some people want to put disclaimers on the theory of evolution. Probably because no one explained to them that the word 'theory 'doesn't mean 'just some idea' in all contexts.
How much of this did science bring on itself? The other day I was listening to global warming scientist / advocate speaking in an interview, and the journalist asked him about the movie "The Day After Tomorrow". Personally, I loved that movie. I had its problems, sure, but the science, while fictitious, was stretching the truth very thin, not merely making stuff up. So what does the scientist do? He tears it apart as complete nonsense, with claims like, "that could never happen", "that's impossible", and any other number of out-of-hand remarks about the movie's ideas. Sounding, for all the world, like our current president on Global Warming. "A fairy tale" is what they call global warming, and yet here's this guy, asking the world to believe that small particles in the upper atmosphere will melt the polar ice caps, by trapping heat. To say nothing of the now-emerging theory (there's that word again) of 'global dimming', which may counteract the former.
Don't get me wrong, I completely agree with the ideas behind global warming, and in 50 years, I expect to be an old man, visiting my old neighborhood in Brooklyn, via gondola. Figure Lower Manhattan will look more like Amsterdam, which, since New York City was originally called New Amsterdam, will make perfect sense, 350 years after the fact.
This, however is a different matter. When teachers fear to teach something because of their current administration or school board, then we have a problem. We're one step from book-burning. Some people want to put disclaimers on the theory of evolution. Probably because no one explained to them that the word 'theory 'doesn't mean 'just some idea' in all contexts.
How much of this did science bring on itself? The other day I was listening to global warming scientist / advocate speaking in an interview, and the journalist asked him about the movie "The Day After Tomorrow". Personally, I loved that movie. I had its problems, sure, but the science, while fictitious, was stretching the truth very thin, not merely making stuff up. So what does the scientist do? He tears it apart as complete nonsense, with claims like, "that could never happen", "that's impossible", and any other number of out-of-hand remarks about the movie's ideas. Sounding, for all the world, like our current president on Global Warming. "A fairy tale" is what they call global warming, and yet here's this guy, asking the world to believe that small particles in the upper atmosphere will melt the polar ice caps, by trapping heat. To say nothing of the now-emerging theory (there's that word again) of 'global dimming', which may counteract the former.
Don't get me wrong, I completely agree with the ideas behind global warming, and in 50 years, I expect to be an old man, visiting my old neighborhood in Brooklyn, via gondola. Figure Lower Manhattan will look more like Amsterdam, which, since New York City was originally called New Amsterdam, will make perfect sense, 350 years after the fact.
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