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AIP Probes Bush, Kerry On Science Issues
martensitic writes "Physics Today (the 50-year-old monthly publication of the American Institute of Physics) continues their election-year tradition with this special report, posing nine questions 'in an effort to get the candidates to specifically address questions of interest to the science community'. The 'sometimes direct and sometimes vague' written responses 'show fundamental differences on several key issues.'"
It is also safe to say that after reading this article, an average voter would have lost interest in the first few sentences, wiped the drool from the corner of their mouth, and gone back to finding porn site passwords.
Of course I can only speak for myself...
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
Frankly, I hate to see the biased, left-wing liberal media make such a huge issue out of George W. Bush's support for the Geocentric Universe Hypothesis.
Kerry:
Seems like the most important difference is in their interpretations of reality itself.
Please let me know who I contact at the GOP to get an astro-turfing contract like yours.
;->
I can always use extra money.
Neither of them seems to think it is all that important to actually answer the fucking question being asked.
From Time
Most important issues: When asked what they consider are the most important issues, 25% of registered voters cited the economy as the top issue, followed by 24% who cited the war on terrorism as the top issue. The situation in Iraq was rated the top issue by 17% of registered voters, moral values issues such as gay marriage and abortion were the top issue for 16% of respondents, and health care was the most important issue for 11% of respondents.
so thats *at least* 93% of people who consider every thing from homsexual marrage to Iraq, to the economy more important than science spending. I dont think the parents post was out of the mainstream though you may disagree with it... Oh wait I see this was just a great chance to dismiss someone...
Yes, that is what I am saying. Neither does the average GOP voters. IF they did the campaigns for higher office would have to cover them in more detail than a 20 second sound bite can.
Both political parties depend on people making decisions based on how they feel, not on what they know and can prove true.
A number of scientific societies were trying to get the candidates to do webcast q&a's.
http://www.hitechtownhall.org/
Has anyone heard whether the campaigns answered the invitations?
you forgot poland.
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
We're nerds (ahem, I'm just a geek...) - we're not the average voters. These are the issues we care about, and on which we make our decisions. Everyone has some special interest that makes them "not the average voter". We are unusual, though, in that we can understand the difference between average, median and lowest common denominator voters.
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make install -not war
Unlike other constituents, our questions have factual answers. I'd like to see _Physics Today_ factcheck those answers for their readers (us). Their standard deviations from the truth would be as instructive as their answers.
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make install -not war
Bush: We have not identified any need for developing new nuclear weapons.
Kerry: [A] KerryEdwards administration will stop this administration's program to develop a new class of nuclear weapons.
Uh, what?
Rob (I seem to remember reading something about plans for bunker-busting nukes, but I'll let someone else do the research)
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story /0,6903,1096298,00.html/
The United States is embarking on a multimillion-dollar expansion of its nuclear arsenal, prompting fears it may lead the world into a new arms race.
The Bush administration is pushing ahead with the development of a new generation of weapons, dubbed 'mini-nukes', that use nuclear warheads to penetrate underground bunkers.
Last week, it gave a quiet yet final go-ahead to a controversial research project into the bunker-buster. The move effectively ends a 10-year ban on research into 'low-yield' nuclear weapons. Critics fear it may lead other countries to push ahead with developing such weapons. It also comes at a highly sensitive time diplomatically, with the US lobbying countries such as Iran and North Korea to abandon their nuclear plans.
'The United States is spurring a new global arms race with our own development of a new generation of nuclear weapons,' said Democrat Ellen Tauscher, who led an unsuccessful bid in Congress to have the programme scrapped.
http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-57/iss-10/p28.html /
Kerry answers by noting that most of the R&D money is going for weapons systems and defense spending related to the war in Iraq, not basic science programs. Marburger and other administration officials point to several R&D initiatives, including new nanotechnology centers, the Moon/Mars space initiative, and the program to develop hydrogen fuel technology.
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Money for weapons is most certainly not money for science.
Somewhat off topic...
During the debate (a few hours ago) Cheney incorrectly referred people to factcheck.com instead of factcheck.org.
It looks like the guy who registered "factcheck.com" was watching the debate. Check out where it redirects! BWAHAHAHAHA
* The Earth is less than 6,000 years old.
* Dinosaur bones and the trillions of other fossils showing various evolving species throughout history were put there by God to challenge our faith that evolution is a Satanic principle.
* Gay people don't exist, plus they don't deserve any rights in this Flag-loving nation of ours, unless of course they're lesbians who are willing to let me watch.
* Global warming is helping to speed up the end times so we can get Jesus to come back sooner.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Spending on science actually underpins national security, the economy, health care and the environment. And I guess that soft sciences like psychology and sociology have an impact on social security (as well as national security, if you take criminology into account.) So you are right in stating the attitude of dumb-cluck voters, but wrong in that you don't understand how the world works. I don't know enough about the overall pattern of US R&D to be able to say which possible administration would do the best job, but I do know that an administration that does not understand the fundamental importance of science is not in America's - or the world's - long term interest. And if you are aged less than 70, you should be very interested in the long term.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
I am a physicist. Talking with the professors and faculty at the University I attended, I picked up these critical opinions.
1. Nuclear power is the way to go. It is cheap, affordable, and the waste really isn't that bad. Besides, we are developing ways to handle the waste properly. Managed properly (meaning, freeing the scientists to continue R&D) will mean we won't need coal plants and gas plants and electrical cars may become a reality.
Bush scored spot on. "I am going to begin building a new nuclear facility in 2 years, using new knowledge and technology. We are going to store the waste safely, while researching ways to handle the waste."
Kerry scored poorly. "I am going to make new rules and regulations." That's the last thing scientists want - more red tape.
2. The environment. Physicists don't drink the kool-aid on global warming. If you can prove that global warming is happening, then that is one thing. Trying to prove it is a bad thing is something else. The whole Krakatoa argument Reagan gave is irrefutable.
Bush was spot on. "We're looking at alternative energy sources, but we're being reasonable. We are funding real research to determine what effects global warming has and how to prepare or prevent it."
Kerry was way off, suggesting action without thought. He parroted the Kool-aid line.
3. Energy. If there's one thing Physicists love to talk about it is energy. No one understands what energy is better than physicists. Energy is the end-all idol they worship, if they worship any idol at all. How do we exploit the energy out there? How do we get more and more of it delivered to the masses? If it were up to physicists, we would be doubling our energy production every ten years. There are so many useful things you can do if only you had enough energy! Even time travel is possible with enough energy!
Bush laid it out. "I want to expand research, and explore bringing new sources of energy to market."
Kerry was dull and boring. "We need to abandon oil, we need to mandate new energy."
If there's one class of people that understand the intelligence of the masses, it is the physicists. They know that human ingenuity trumps all, that no problem is impossible to solve. They want less government, not more. They want the money, and they want it pretty much unfettered by restrictions or guidelines. Bush is willing to shovel the money they need into their labs. Kerry just wants to put up red tape.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
I'm not sure if I agree with thei time travel thing but this is right on.
Don't forget these environmental policies of Dubyah's: * "We need to thin. We need to make our forests healthy by using some common sense ... We need to understand, if you let kindling build up and there's a lightning strike, you're going to get yourself a big fire. 22 Aug 2002
* "We need to thin our forests" 11 Aug 2003
If you were a real physicist, you'd know that was wrong. Here's an electron - tell me exactly where it is, where it's going, and how fast.
Physicists don't drink the kool-aid on global warming. If you can prove that global warming is happening, then that is one thing. Trying to prove it is a bad thing is something else.
... so we're going to keep studying it (while continuing to dump CO2) and if it turns out that it was bad... then we'll stop it". This is insane. It's a very dangerous, very stupid experiment we're playing with by burning huge amounts of fossil fuels.
Um. Huh? Physicists are smart enough to know that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and that the Earth has a limited capacity to absorb it. Long term temperature trends show pretty clearly that the Earth is warming up. Much of it may be due to orbital eccentricity drift, but the problem is that CO2 levels are spiking dramatically (due to human activity) as well. This hasn't happened in any period of Earth's history that we can study.
Physicists would also be smart enough to know that the question isn't whether or not global warming is happening (it clearly is - the top five warmest years on record have happened since 1997, and if you look at the average global temperature, it's clearly going up) but whether or not human activity is causing it. And the problem with this is that we don't know enough about Earth to say it. We don't have a "control Earth". We know that humans are dumping huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere - far more than natural causes. We don't know what that will do. Any physicist worth his or her salt would know that this is, to quote a paleoclimatologist from Ohio State, "is a dangerous, uncontrolled experiment."
Bush is saying "well... we don't know what dumping huge amounts of CO2 is going to do
If there's one thing Physicists love to talk about it is energy. No one understands what energy is better than physicists. Energy is the end-all idol they worship, if they worship any idol at all. How do we exploit the energy out there? How do we get more and more of it delivered to the masses? If it were up to physicists, we would be doubling our energy production every ten years. There are so many useful things you can do if only you had enough energy! Even time travel is possible with enough energy!
What in the heck are you talking about?? Physicists would also know that any energy you produce has to go somewhere. And unless we start moving off this planet (which is one thing where Bush is correct - if he wasn't saying it just to be politically correct, as is evidenced by the fact that he didn't back it up in NASA's budget) that energy is going to be dumped somewhere on Earth. I could probably do a back of the envelope calculation figuring out how long it would take to incinerate Earth if our energy production doubled every ten years, but it's not worth the effort. Given that it's exponential growth, though, that number would be well less than probably 100-200 years.
And I really, really challenge you to find a real physicist who honestly believes that time travel is possible with enough energy.
Bush is willing to shovel the money they need into their labs.
News to all of the physicists I know. Well, those that aren't working on weapons programs.
I am accelerating towards a brick wall but I'm not sure if the wall was constructed by humans, or whether I will be able to slow down enough to avoid it at all, so instead of cautiously deccelerating I'll just put my foot down and keep accelerating because lack of information justifies arbitrary action.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I have to admit, the original parent isn't being a complete lunatic on this one - genuine physicists have come up with papers on this - see "Closed timelike curves produced by pairs of moving cosmic strings: Exact solutions" J.R. Gott, III, Physics Review Letters, v.66, p.1126 (1991).
I don't know if he's since accepted the complaints that he's wrong (see S. Deser, R. Jackiw, and G. 't Hooft, PRL, v.66, p.267 (1992))
Ahem. The second ref should be S. Deser, R. Jackiw, and G. 't Hooft, PRL, v.68, p.267 (1992).
I have to admit, the original parent isn't being a complete lunatic on this one ... except, for this, you have to accept that cosmic strings can exist, and that general relativity is valid in that regime.
There are plenty of theoretical possibilities for time travel within GR, but none of them are really tractable.
One of the big problems is the fact that people have basically ended up playing with odd metrics in GR, coming up with bizarre geometries, and then finding out that the matter requirements to generate such a metric are very weird, and usually involve weird matter (like "negative energy density" matter). In your case, it's slightly different - the author started with weird matter (cosmic strings) and said "hey, weird stuff can come from that."
The problem is that I can't imagine real physicists believing that said "weird matter" is actually real at this point. Many of them might *hope* that it's real (hey, it'd be fun) but if you look at it objectively, the odds are definitely against it.
Don't get me wrong, time travel would be nice (well - actually, faster than light travel would be nice, and time travel is automatically faster than light travel) but there are no 'clear cut' "this must be possible" cases in physics yet. Any physicist who's being honest to himself would have to say that it's not likely.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,62339,00. html?tw=wn_story_related
Scientists: Bush Distorts Science
The Bush administration has distorted scientific fact leading to policy decisions on the environment, health, biomedical research and nuclear weaponry, a group of about 60 scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, said in a statement on Wednesday.
The Union of Concerned Scientists, an independent organization, also issued a 37-page report, "Scientific Integrity in Policymaking," detailing the accusations. The statement and the report both accuse the Bush administration of distorting and suppressing findings that contradict administration policies, stacking panels with like-minded and underqualified scientists with ties to industry, and eliminating some advisory committees altogether.
The scientists listed various policy issues as being unfairly influenced by the administration, including those concerning climate change, mercury emissions, reproductive health, lead poisoning in children, workplace safety and nuclear weapons. New regulations and laws are necessary to fix the situation, the statement says.
"We found a serious pattern of undermining science by the Bush administration, and it crosses disciplines, whether it's global climate change or reproductive health or mercury in the food chain or forestry -- the list goes on and on," said Kevin Knobloch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
(etc)
BTW, what on earth was up with your selective quotation? For example, for the Bush vs. Kerry on nuclear power, why did you pick out the word "regulation" for Kerry instead of, say, "A Kerry?Edwards administration will proceed based on peer?reviewed science."
"She was out of her depth in a shallow pool." -- Peggy Noonan on Sarah Palin
Well duh, wasn't that the whole point of the end of the cold war? Nuclear disarment?
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
You sure don't sound like a physicist.
3. Energy. If there's one thing Physicists love to talk about it is energy. No one understands what energy is better than physicists. Energy is the end-all idol they worship, if they worship any idol at all. How do we exploit the energy out there? How do we get more and more of it delivered to the masses?
Do you even know any physicists? If scientists (physicists, etc..) worship anything it's truth and knowledge. The only time we talk about delivering anything to the masses is in funding proposals. Funding to fuel the search for knowledge.
Physicists don't drink the kool-aid on global warming.
That's not how any scientists that I know talk about anything. "Drink the kool-aid?" Not much of a scientific argument, is it?
Bush is willing to shovel the money they need into their labs.
The national labs have had declining (several % per year) budgets through this and several previous administrations.
They know that human ingenuity trumps all, that no problem is impossible to solve.
Huh? No. What are you talking about? Have you been drinking Kool-aid again?
Note how jgardn starts out by saying, "I am a physicist," but soon lapses and refers to physicists as "they" for most of the rest of his rant.
It is funny that, since your detractors can not effectively argue your points, they resort to an ad hominem attack.
Haha, you're a fucking idiot, seriously. How that got modded up is beyond me. That problem is not impossible to solve. You can solve it. We just don't have technologies in place to solve it. The only way to sense anything is by interacting with it. The smallest sense we have is by "listenting" to electrons. We just need to "listen" with something smaller. If everything is impossible, why the fuck would anyone be trying. Oh, it's impossible to separate an atom. An atom is indivisible. That is the definition of atom, indivisible. So it is only impossible relative to time meaning it is not absolutey impossible which you imply. Use your fucking head for something called rational thought. Man, this is why the world is as it is. A man can't be a man without being strickly set to a role. And furthermore, it is a fallacy to say he's one or the other.
You're an ego-centric grad student who needs to get off his high horse. You say so yourself, "but more importantly [...] that the best way to live is by being kind to each other." If you aren't informed enough by theories of time and space, don't say they don't exist. That is irresponsible. You cannot have read every view possible on the subject. Ask for clarification. God damn I hate people who are so damn hypocritical. They say, I'm religous, or everyone should be kind to each other, but then go ahead and pull this kind of shit when no one's looking it. I personally don't ascribe to that ideal of niceness or courtesy as I can clearly see people like yourself do exist, and there ain't much I can do to rectify that.
If you aren't informed enough by theories of time and space, don't say they don't exist.
Trust me, I know quite a bit about general relativity. I know that GR doesn't forbid closed timelike loops - but I also know that any solution involving closed timelike loops also must involve matter of exotic type, or objects where GR may break down (like black holes, etc.).
But it's naive to say that time travel might be possible with enough energy. Time travel, if it exists, will require significantly more than just energy.
And besides, like I said in a different post: jeez, who cares about time travel? Time travel implies the existence of faster-than-light travel (because... time travel *is* faster than light travel). I'd much rather faster-than-light travel exists - but right now, any physicist who knows enough about the situation would have a very healthy amount of skepticism. And if they don't, they're the ones who are on a high horse, not me.
Guys like this are trying to systematically hijack the Slashdot mod system. See here.
Looks like the system still works, though...
Some of these questions are political, such as positions on nuclear weapons development.
From a pure science standpoint, it's a no brainer. Research that could lead to new nuclear weapons could also result in new methods to make new artificial elements.
Only when you involve politics does it get complicated.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
to think the candidates have nothing better to do then write multipage answers to every little group that poses some questions.
Would anyone intelligent enough to walk and chew gum at the same time actually think that the candidates themselves even saw the questions ?
to send to Iraq to die.