A good weekend for science in the Sunday New York Times, with a nice magazine article about dark matter and dark energy, and also a piece about the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI), inexplicably located in the Book Review section (the article, that is, not the aliens).
It's probably possible to draw some sort of parallel between the two-- after all, the notion of dark matter was viewed as bordeline kookery for decades before gaining wide acceptance, and SETI is still widely viewed as a little bit off. I'm a little discombobulated from yesterday's long trip, though, so I'll leave that to those with clearer heads, and return to watching college basketball and grading homework assignments.
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Terra has been scummed with humanity since the ice melted 130,000 years ago. Who became technological? The New World ignored wheels and alphabets. Oceania went nowhere. Eastern Asia missed optical glass. Denied telescopes and microscopes they embraced philosophy not science. India was/is mired in gods. Islam willfully descended into that hole prior to the Inquisition. The Church of Rome enforced unchanging Hell on Earth, the "Dark Ages."
Rome had concrete. Rome died by 500 AD. Concrete reappeared in the 1700s. Omit the Protestant Revolution plus capitalism and Earth is electromagnetically silent. Progress arises from material and financial surpluses, leisure, knowlege, personal adventuresome spirit, retained gain... and freedom.
Cultures of Homeland Severity, the Nanny State, and God triumphant are willful abandonments of risk and gain. A fella with a garage lathe was a neighborhood hero in the 1950s. Ditto an electronics whiz, a backyard chemist, a guy growing stuff in Petri dishes... kids would flock to watch, learn, and participate. Any and all would be under arrest for environmental and terrorist heresy in 2007.
The heavens are silent because big brains mired in wealth, power, and corruption legislate only safe paths. Broad ends of funnels cannot be successfully bunged. Safety is inevitably lethal.