Science Idols

Ahem. This just in. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists recently awarded Michael Crichton a journalism award. For his novel State Of Fear.

I… I’m… zzt...

Speechless.


The Union of Concerned Scientists is running its Science Idols cartoon contest. I was vacillating between numbers 3 and 7 but now I’m sommer going to vote for number 10, dammit.

http://ucsaction.org/campaign/vote_now_for_science_idol/?qp_source=wacucs%5fhomearspotlig

So Not Cool

There is a certain elitist discriminatory practice whose purpose it is to put an extra razor-wire frill above the electric fence on top of the eight-metre-high two-metre-thick concrete-encased lead wall that separates the have-maths from the have-not-maths.

“Oh, don’t be silly, it’s not that difficult,” the number-abled will simper, “Look, I’ll show you…”
And it always ends in tears, for the differently-abled one. The genius will be smirking and puffed up and superior. But again, as I’ve said before, somebody has to make the sandwiches. I really think people ought to be nicer to the ones who make the sandwiches.

Read more about this scourge in an article by Tom Eaton, here: http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=279760&area=/insight/insight__columnists

I am, as you know, his Number One Fan.

Pale Green Mainstream

I was wondering about civilization, and about climate change, and thinking as always about how interesting the next century’s going to be. I looked up ‘Civilisation’ in the dictionary, just to be sure that I knew what it meant, and came across ‘Poop’ (it happens all the time. Dictionary-induced ADD).

So I asked some adolescents what ‘Poop’ meant. They were enthusiastic about it, in the way that only adolescents and Leon Schuster can be about all things fecal. If you want to talk to adolescents about the back bit of a ship and you want them to pay attention and concentrate, then don’t call it a Poop.

Same with climate change. Don’t call it global warming in public unless you want some armchair expert pounding out letters to the editor about how much snow there’s been in Antarctica lately and that last time he checked that didn’t mean warm.

There’s glitch in the ECM (effective communication matrix) with regard to the telling of the climate and emissions story. It does need to be told like a story, and with pictures too, because that’s what ordinary people all over the world respond to. They don’t relate and certainly can’t respond constructively to papers by A. Climatologist et al. Actually, there are some marginally more-informed people who don’t respond terribly constructively to them either, as a quick look around the comments section of climate-related articles in MIT’s Technology Review will tell you.

For a good few decades now, climate scientists have been trying to say what they need to say but can’t say in words that most citizens (even ones who read Popular Mechanics rather than People) can relate to. The beleaguered scientists wave graphs around and talk about ‘albedo’ and ‘hockey sticks" and ‘ITCZ’ and people either pity them, or think they’re crazy and should get out more, or that it must be a conspiracy by eco-terrorists against Our Way of Life. The Greens, you know. I pay my taxes, I don’t hurt anyone, I put a Ronnie Bag on my pavement at least once a year, leave me alone.
There are poets and artists and other assorted activists who do understand the scientists to some degree but they almost always end up dementedly joining Greenpeace and are thus further lost to the world of reason, which does not help the cause. (By the way, Germaine, your comment in public about the crocodile guy getting his just desserts definitely doesn’t help the cause, even if it is true)

It’s Joe Soap who could, if he chose to, contribute to a huge whack of mitigation. Instead of to a huge whack of catastrophe. He won’t choose to, though. He has to be made to, and bullying isn’t allowed so manipulation is necessary.

Someone has cottoned onto this and is looking at how best to deploy the manipulation. It’s the British Institute for Public Policy Research (described by RealClimate.org as “a UK based left-leaning think tank”), and they’re using a company called Linguistic Landscapes, which has some nice window dressing but who are basically about PR and marketing. While there’s something about this affair between Marketing and Climate that makes me want to scream, it might be fairly good work. Depending whose side you’re on. Pale Green might become mainstream because you can depend on marketing to sell stuff or die trying, and that’s what they’ll be selling with this. They’re using language like “…we need to work in a shrewd and contemporary way, using subtle techniques of engagement… treat climate change communications in the same way as brand communications… Approach positive climate behaviors in the same way as marketers approach buying and consuming”. I’m biting my tongue.

The astonishing ongoing success of the Eden Project in Cornwall had mostly to do with horticultural determination in the beginning, but I bet marketing helped with getting the vital millions of visitors in. All those visitors leave with a smile that didn’t necessarily come from consuming stuff, and that’s cool. They also leave knowing what "waste neutral" means, and that’s very valuable in ways that money can’t buy.

I have this fantasy in which the mega consumers of Bedfordview get sentenced to a month’s tourism in Cornwall instead of Dubai and come back to happily convert their previously pastoral but now hideous suburb into an undulating valley of bubble domes and vegetable gardens, with little padstals along Kloof road. It’s nice, that dream. Sunbeds swopped for gaily fluttering umbrellas, gyms turned into concert venues, peace love and flowers man. Can you dig it?

A belated account, in three parts, for Dio.

Part I

In which an expedition is undertaken...

During my July expedition to Hermanus, I pondered over how few whales were frolicking in that comely bay. I began discreet enquiries as to the whereabouts of the great beasts. A local fisherman suggested that perhaps it might be a little early in the season and that I ought to consider myself lucky to have seen any at all. However, his toothless smile, twinkly eyes and candid manner did not fool me! My sharp instincts in these matters led me to consider the possibility of a scandalous conspiracy. Just then, my good father received a telephonic communication from my godfather in Amanzimtoti. With keen interest I learned from my father that my godfather and his wife were sitting on their lawn watching whales. In Amanzimtoti. We have always suspected my godfather and his wife of nefarious activities, and now here was proof.

“By gum, Daddy!” I exclaimed excitedly, “They have whales in Amanzimtoti and we don’t have any here in Hermanus!”

“Indeed, indeed,” mused my good father bemusedly, “Most curious indeed. Daughter, we must exert ourselves tirelessly in pursuit of a solution to this perplexing puzzle! We have always suspected your godfather and his wife of nefarious activities, and now here is proof!”

“Yes!!!” I enthused with enthusiasm.


Part II

In which the intrepid sleuths tirelessly pursue their instincts...

And so it was that we spent the week relentlessly wandering the charming cliff-paths and the beaches and the rockpools, with great courage fighting off bloodthirsty Tourists, Sabre-Toothed Dassies and deranged Whale Criers, stopping only too briefly for replenishment at various pubs, restaurants and coffee shops, and it was most exertional. We found no further clues. We even made two sub-expeditions to Kalk Bay, hoping to glean information from intellectuals with old grey-muzzled dogs in antique bookshoppes or arty types in quaint alleys, or indeed from the waiter at the Brass Bell, but alas.

News of our mission had spread, and those in the know had detected our stealthy footsteps on patina’d pavements, and had obviously gone to sit in their wretched little hillside houses to peer out from behind their genuine sash windows, smugly. I also tried, in vain, to obtain the autographs of Ann Donald and Finnuala Dowling, neither of whom was anywhere to be seen. I suspected that this was because they were in on the conspiracy. I noted their reticence, and marked them down on my trusty Suspicious Persons list.

In due course I returned home to Johannesburg, no closer to solving the mysterious mystery of the whales that we did not see in Hermanus but that my godfather and his wife did see in Amanzimtoti. Just then, I received a missive from Secret Agent S. It treated on a conference by SAUFOR (South Africa's Unidentified Flying Objects Resource) on the shameful covering-up of extraterrestrial technologies by Authorities and suchlike. Also mentioned was the Relatively Very Recent Incident in Port Shepstone, in which a spaceship was observed crashing into the sea by a great many eye witlesses. Authorities have to date found no trace of that spaceship and have expressed doubt as to its status as a spaceship at all, preferring instead to placate citizens with fairytales about weather phenomena etc, etc. But as we know, Authorities are always lying.

So I joined the dots, crossed my eyes, and came to a startling conclusion that I will now reveal to you!


Part III

In which a conclusion is reached, a revelation made, and a follow up expedition is followed up...

I will now reveal that:

My godfather and his wife were working for the aliens, in cahoots with Authorities, and had arranged for most of the whales to be in the Durban area whilst everybody who usually knows where to look for whales was looking for them in the Hermanus area, so that the heinous aliens might thus abduct our whales, undetected, from those Natalian waters! HA! We had always suspected my godfather and his wife of nefarious activities!

“Oh, Daddy!” I emoted, emotionally, “We cannot let the aliens escape with our whales, no, never! They can take our lives but they’ll never take our whales!”

“I concur most vigorously, Daughter!” My good father concurred, vigorously. “I will at once invite the traitorous pair to HQ here in Hermanus under a pretext, and lock them in my shed until your Mother returns from Cornwall!”
With this, he invited the traitorous pair to his house for the weekend under a pretext, where, as promised, he lured them into his garden shed, and where they presently remain.

I am happy to report that during my most recent expedition, from which I am now returned as you might surmise, we had some evidence that our brave plan has indeed foiled the terrible plot to abduct our Whales! Yes! There are more whales in that good bay right now than there are geeks at a gaming convention!

:-)