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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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.
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