Letters to the Editor
Rob Seaman
Published Letters: 33 Editor's Choice: 2
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Re: Clever, but...
[Read the article: Say it loud: I'm elite and proud!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Mikes Pace says:
It's the elite's excess cosumuption and ever eroding moral compass that piss off the Islamists so much.
That's right - elites like drivers of F-350 Super Duty SuperCabs with decals of a kid pissing on a Chevy logo. There's nobody the creators of algebra and preservers of civilization through the dark ages hate more than an academic.
If you need me, I'll be getting my hands dirty like a man.
Good government requires getting your hands dirty with little details like effective education, prudent investment in science and the arts, just health insurance, and wise diplomacy. Attempting to turn the country of differing opinions such as Jefferson's and Adams' into a single party banana republic where elites of no philosophic tradition are welcome doesn't seem like the work of a sane puppet master.
P.S. - I presume Monica Goodling had to hire a lawyer who wasn't blessed to attend RU-666 because all the other graduates are working in the administration, too...
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Same as it ever was.
[Read the article: Back to the future]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Futurology"? How quaint.
Science Fiction works of the 30's are more forward looking than any movie or TV show since Star Wars and Trek. I think what is missing from this discussion is a sense for the truly deep time and vast distances that an SF world view encompasses. Think "Against the Fall of Night", not Buck Rogers.
Our predictions serve more as a mirror of current times, than a vision of the future. Whatever "humanity" might be after a billion years, it won't match Clarke's vision of unending resurrected generations tended benevolently by a colossal mainframe. But if such a species could continue to be called human, I'm with Art - we'll continue to need jesters to upset our bioengineered applecarts.
As usual with such discussions (and perhaps with all Salon discussions), it is the unexamined premises through which the contributors reveal themselves. We won't (and don't) have cocktails to increase our IQ - because IQ doesn't exist. See Gould's "Mismeasure of Man".
Transportation remains alluring. Tomorrowland is all about vehicles: Monorail, Autopia, Skyway, People Mover, Rocket to the Moon. The reason that this was our grandparent's SF, and not ours, is simply that transportation is more and more moot. I'm writing this from home via my office VPN.
The next big thing? It doesn't take the IQ of David McCallum to predict biotechnology.
The fundamental question isn't the possibility of cloning or jetpacks - the question is what will we do with these possibilities?
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Zen and the science of deferred motorcycle maintenance
[Read the article: Manufacturing belief]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Maybe the neural wiring of the knee-jerk believers does differ from that of the skinnerian unbelievers. But most of us combine aspects of unsullied transcendence with uncommon logic.
What it comes down to is that there is now and always will be - world without end - one and only one "Science". There will also be plenty of pseudosciences to go around - another name for these are "lies, damn lies, and statistics".
There is now and always will be - as Wolpert says - many religions. These are not the same thing as lies, even though no more than one (and possibly fewer than one) can be true. Few could be characterized as pseudo-religions, though their premises may seem silly to outsiders (including to the devout of other spaghetti monsters).
But any religion that is likely to survive and prosper through the centuries must be fit for survival. It isn't enough to reduce people's blood pressure - after all, apparently any old set of quaint traditions and opaque beliefs can bring calm to our separate inner worlds. Rather, the one thing that these many religions must share if they are to persist is a reasonable accommodation with our common outer world.
Many church traditions are the equivalent of blowing out birthday candles - unlikely to bring harm, and thus unlikely ever to be seriously challenged. Others, however, we have already seen extinguished by social darwinism. Where is the inquisition today? Polygamy anyone? Latin masses? There's a reason that Shaker chairs are highly collectable.
Our religions may have different books, disjoint congregations, conflicting aspirations. But they are all embedded in one common cosmos. God isn't silent - she's all around us speaking the language of the birds, writing with lizard tracks, watching our every move with (separately evolved) vertebrate and invertebrate eyes, providing us with oxygen to breathe from the rain forest, sequestering carbon dioxide through plate techtonics.
Gaia, smaia - but technological toys won't save us either. She's not blinding us with science - we're doing that to ourselves.
We don't all need to share the same "why" - just a better common understanding of the what.