Sunday, February 05, 2006
See? It Spins Around Us!
Again, I am a man of faith. I believe that there is a god up there who created this universe. Beyond that, all else is uncertain. Did he take an active hand in our creation after there were nice hunks of rock floating in space? Did he make the earth in less time than it took to film The Blair Witch Project? I have no fucking clue. And I don't pretend to; I do not have the resources to map the history of the universe. Luckily, there are men who can, men who have trained their whole lives to do this, men who use proven formulas and substantiated theories to graph something approaching a conclusion.
And wouldn't you know, Bush is shitting on them, too:
The Big Bang memo came from Mr. Deutsch, a 24-year-old presidential appointee in the press office at NASA headquarters whose résumé says he was an intern in the "war room" of the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. A 2003 journalism graduate of Texas A&M, he was also the public-affairs officer who sought more control over Dr. Hansen's public statements.
In October 2005, Mr. Deutsch sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations about Einstein for middle-school students. The message said the word "theory" needed to be added after every mention of the Big Bang.
The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator."
It continued: "This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most."
So, for summary: a 24-year-old whose prime qualifications for his position is that he helped out on a presidential campaign tells men who have advanced degrees, years of research, and the past hundred years of established science under their belts that we must bring "the other side" into a debate that shouldn't be based on a few pages from a book that has seen God-only-knows how many translations over the years. This is like the secretary of the people who fund the effort to rebuild the World Trade Center telling the leading architect that he might want to get some opinions from her five-year-old son Billy, who draws a pretty good picture of a house.
Whatever happened to cold, hard, reasonable, provable facts and solid, substantiated scientific theories? Next thing you know, we'll be told that the dinosaurs never went extinct and are vacationing on Jupiter.
And wouldn't you know, Bush is shitting on them, too:
The Big Bang memo came from Mr. Deutsch, a 24-year-old presidential appointee in the press office at NASA headquarters whose résumé says he was an intern in the "war room" of the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. A 2003 journalism graduate of Texas A&M, he was also the public-affairs officer who sought more control over Dr. Hansen's public statements.
In October 2005, Mr. Deutsch sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations about Einstein for middle-school students. The message said the word "theory" needed to be added after every mention of the Big Bang.
The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator."
It continued: "This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most."
So, for summary: a 24-year-old whose prime qualifications for his position is that he helped out on a presidential campaign tells men who have advanced degrees, years of research, and the past hundred years of established science under their belts that we must bring "the other side" into a debate that shouldn't be based on a few pages from a book that has seen God-only-knows how many translations over the years. This is like the secretary of the people who fund the effort to rebuild the World Trade Center telling the leading architect that he might want to get some opinions from her five-year-old son Billy, who draws a pretty good picture of a house.
Whatever happened to cold, hard, reasonable, provable facts and solid, substantiated scientific theories? Next thing you know, we'll be told that the dinosaurs never went extinct and are vacationing on Jupiter.
