The National Academies of Science is one of the most prestigious scientific organizations in the world. As their About the NAS page states:
The National Academies perform an unparalleled public service by bringing together committees of experts in all areas of scientific and technological endeavor. These experts serve pro bono to address critical national issues and give advice to the federal government and the public.
I was contacted by the NAS asking if I would post about a survey they are hosting about the public’s concerns over science. This survey will literally take you about one minute to take, and will help guide them in creating educational materials.
I’m a little concerned over the topics they created; many are very general and will need significant honing once they’re narrowed down by the survey. Perhaps they’ll host another when this one is completed. Anyway, please take a moment to fill it out; the deadline is January 16.
December 21st, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Done. I’m a little surprised to find “energy” in the top spot as of when I finished.
December 21st, 2008 at 11:24 pm
I too was a little surprised as well. I added in a lot of space oriented comments.
December 21st, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Only 5 choices? Most, if not all, of these need attention and I’m interested it every one!
A topic I would like to see studied concerns the cause and prevention of wars, especially pointless ones. Would that fall under group psychology or just disease prevention?
December 21st, 2008 at 11:44 pm
Done here too. I suggested Astrophysics to them. It would be cool to have that tote bag, though.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:07 am
FWW, four of the five choices I made were the top four in the survey.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:42 am
Ditto, Phil, but I can’t believe that only 1% chose “Future of Aviation”!
December 22nd, 2008 at 4:48 am
Mark T:
Causes of wars? That’s actually pretty easy,,,RESOURCES(people are resources too, mind warpage with propaganda is one way of acquiring them).
ON Preventing wars,,,Sorry,,,I got nothing,,,
GAry 7
December 22nd, 2008 at 5:24 am
Done thanks.
Seems to me like this survey would be fairly open to mainpulation & abuse – not that I’d do that.
Not sure if it was meant to be open to all or just Amercians but filled it out & went in the tote bag draw too anyway!
So far (11 pm Adelaide, South Oz time) energy on 11 % is narrowly ahead of climate change 10 % and space exploration 9%.
I suggested the additional topics of “science versus religion (ie the creationist humbug)” and “astronomical & geological hazards (meteorites, supernovae, tsunamis, gamma-ray bursters, etc ..)”
So Bad Astronomer, if they come back to you wanting to adopt ‘Death from the Skies’ as a new textbook you’ll know who to thank!
December 22nd, 2008 at 5:28 am
Starting or causing wars : three words for you folks
POLITICS
RELIGION
TERRITORY.
The big 3 IMHON.
—–
In My Humble Opinion Naturally
December 22nd, 2008 at 5:35 am
RELIGION – well one religion in particular springs to mind.
Here’s a hint – its not Christianity (though that’s had its moments) nor Judiasm (uh, with the possible exception of Israel & that also has to do with well this one too – can’t think of any) & certainly not Buddhism.
Here’s another hint – its a war and a cause that led a certain someone with the word ‘bin ‘ in his name to fly aircraft into buildings …
December 22nd, 2008 at 5:39 am
Oh heck why be subtle. It may not be politically correct but Islam is to blame for a hell of a lot at present.
It is even less PC to say this but, stuff it, they’ve attacked our symbolic and economic and political heartland so I say its time we attacked theirs in return.
I suggest we plant a neutron bomb or H-bomb in the centre of Mecca and tell bin Laden & co to cut their shi’ite (that’s their word not swear word btw!) or lose it. I’m sick of notgetting this guy who attacke dus nearly a decade ago & is still laughing it off in his Afghni cave or pakistani home ..
Sorry decidedly unfunny I know & I can’t believe I’m the only one whose thought this … Yeah some Muslims are innocent . A lot also aren’t and danced in the streets when the Twin Towers fell.
Stuff’em. Bomb ‘em, teach ‘em!
Sorry all off thread but man I do think that needed sayin’
December 22nd, 2008 at 6:04 am
Joker ranted :
“It may not be politically correct but Islam is to blame for a hell of a lot at present.”
Really? talk about an oversimplification!
Try substititing the words ‘Western colonialism’ or ‘Neo-imperialism’ & you may be getting closer to the mark.
“It is even less PC to say this but, stuff it, they’ve attacked our symbolic and economic and political heartland so I say its time we attacked theirs in return.”
Eye for aneye? Where does that come from again -that’s right Old Testament Judiasim / Xnity. The fundamentalists anmd neo-cons do love that little pearl of wisdom (sark)
“I suggest we plant a neutron bomb or H-bomb in the centre of Mecca and tell bin Laden & co to cut their shi’ite (that’s their word not swear word btw!) or lose it. ”
Okay first off, Bin laden & thejihadis are actually from the Sunni branch of Islam NOT the shi’ites – the Kharijite variety if you want the facts. You _may_ want to get little details like this right before you cast ethnic slurs by making fun of foreign names y’know! Else people just might think you’re some kind of Islamophobic loon. :-/
Especially when you go on to reccomend genoicidal slaughter and launching an act of war & mass murder by using a nuclear WMD on one of the most sacred places on the planet fro about 1/4 or so of its population!
Did you happen to know or care about the population of Mecca – Or that tMecca is in our ally & main oil source – Saudi Arabia? Can youfind that place on a map Joker? here’s a hint its that big peninusla bit between Afric and Asia. All sandy y’know. “Lawrence of Arabia” territory if movie references help. May pay you to watch that film too – you may learn something.
Yes Israel does have a lot to do with it. The Palestineans have been tretaed appallingly -and their little holocaust and persecution is ongoing unlike the now all too powerful Jewish Israeli lobby. Try taking your land away and treating you like a second class citizen, try bombing your familyand see how you feel! Maybe like fighting back, no? That’s the Palestinaens situation – the West gave their country away to an alien Europena people (the Ashkenazi East european Jews) when it had no right to do so & the Palestineans are understandably fighting to get it back with what little wepaons they have.
Oh & that’s not being “politically correct” just * factually accurate. *
Yeah this is getting wa-aay off topic but nasty, hateful, clue-less rubbish like Joker’s shouldn’t go uncorrected.
Lets resume nornmal programming now shall we?
.
December 22nd, 2008 at 6:19 am
Argh! If it isn’t typos its italics – or both!
When is this editing capability coming here again? Not soon enough!
—————- TAKE II : ————————————-
Joker : “I suggest we plant a neutron bomb or H-bomb in the centre of Mecca and tell bin Laden & co to cut their shi’ite (that’s their word not swear word btw!) or lose it. ”
SR (me) : Okay first off, Bin Laden & the Jihadis are actually coming from the Sunni branch of Islam NOT the shi’ites – the Kharijite variety to be precise if you want the facts.
You _may_ want to get little details like this right before you cast ethnic slurs by making fun of foreign names y’know! Or else, Joker, people just might think you’re some kind of Islamophobic loon. Which really isn’t a laughing matter. :-/
Especially when you go on to recommend genoicidal slaughter and launching an act of war & mass murder by using a nuclear WMD on one of the most sacred places on the planet for about 1/4 or so of its population! Think that’ll solve anything? Can you possibly really?
It won’t. It’ll only cause an even worse reaction than invading Iraq has – and we’ve all seen how well that little excercise in brutal intimidation and “shock & awe” has turned out.
Israel has been using similar brute force and govt-sponsored govt run, US-funded *terrorism* – & yes, that’s what it _is_ – no different just because its a theocratic military nation carrying out the terrorism with F-18’s and whatnot rather than suicide bombers carrying out counter-attacks using their own bodies.
Did you happen to know or care about the population of Mecca – Or that Mecca is in our ally & main oil source – Saudi Arabia? Can you find that place on a map Joker?
Here’s a hint its that big peninusla bit between Afric and Asia. All sandy y’know. “Lawrence of Arabia” territory if movie references help. May pay you to watch that film too – you may learn something.
Yes Israel does have a hell of a lot to do with it. The Palestineans have been treated appallingly -and their little holocaust and persecution is ongoing unlike the now all too powerful Jewish Israeli lobby. (Who should feel thoroughly ashamed of exploiting their dead – & many other non-Jewish victims of the Shoah / nazi Holocaust to create more suffering and ethnic-reliogo-tribalist violence.)
Try taking your land away and treating you like a second class citizen, try bombing your family and then see how you feel! Maybe like fighting back, no? That’s the Palestinaens situation – the West gave their country away to an alien European people – the Ashkenazi East european Jews – when it had NO right at all to do so & the Palestineans are understandably fighting to get it back with what little wepaons they have.
Oh & that’s not being “politically correct” just * factually accurate. *
Yeah this is getting wa-aay off topic but nasty, hateful, clue-less rubbish like Joker’s shouldn’t go uncorrected.
——
Neither should flippi’n’ typos & italics errors, it really annoys me. Sigh.
Lets resume nornmal programming now & get back on topic shall we?
December 22nd, 2008 at 6:42 am
Okay StevoR but without endorsing Joker’s H-bombing Mecca solution (while understanding his (?) emotions) one question for you :
Did YOU know anyone who died on September 11th 2001?
Well, understand this, a lot of people do.
(I suspect Joker for one may be among them.)
If they don’t like Muslims and what they stand for ..
(Yeah, yeah, yadda, yadda, not all Muslims are terrorists – just too blinkin’ many of them!)
.. Then perhaps that’s understandable given where some of us are coming from?
Get it?
I doubt you do.
In fact I really hope you never fully do.
But I also hope you start thinking about people like us & stop preaching the virtues of these evil (yes, evil) homicide – “suicide” bombers & their despicable string-pulling imams, mullahs and terrorist leaders like the Palestinian ones.
Know too that they would almost certainly kill you as easily as they’d kill me just because of who we are. Just because we’re not them.
Tolerance is well and good – respecting other cultures and beliefs ditto.
But only up to a certain point.
When their culture, their beleifs, say its okay to behead you as a hostage or fly aircraft into the workplace of innocent people; when their belief is that_our_beliefs merit murdering us without compassion – that’s just wrong.
No excuses for that. No ifs buts, two wrongs / ones’ terrorist is anothers “freedom fighter” or suchlike rubbish.
We can – & do – tolerate and respect quite a bit.
But nobody should expect or ask us to tolerate those who want to kill us just for being us.
And nobody should forget the 3,000 innocent Amercians – and many foreigners incl.even some moderate Muslims – who were murdered on 9-11 by Islamic extremists.
Or that those people left other people, family, friends & loved ones, behind.
December 22nd, 2008 at 7:06 am
I also wish I had had more than 5 choices, but I suppose they have to set it up so that you are forced to make choices. Otherwise it becomes a shopping basket of wishes with little serious thought behind it.
I wonder if the high position space exploration holds has anything to do with traffic from this site?
December 22nd, 2008 at 7:09 am
Future of Aviation was also one of my choices. I tend to be rather interested in that field as an aviator I guess.
StevoR, well said. While Joker IS a joke, at least he qualified his slam on islam with the “at present”.
Of course if we take history at its entirety, his joke falls apart. I know my views are universally unfavourable in regards to religion though, so I freely admit my bias. 
December 22nd, 2008 at 7:18 am
Joker:
OK, now you’ve gone and done it.
Wars are ALWAYS about resources. Politics, religion etc are just excuses. We went into Iraq because they had 12 trillion dollars of (proven)oil in the ground(at $35/barrel). All that talk about WMDs was just the excuse.
Ossama against America? More politics disguising a desire for territory(on BibLadans part). Ossama just wanted to drive a wedge between the SAudi Arabs and the USA so he could make a power grab and take over Saudi Arabia(with all those RESOURCES). Where did he learn the art of guerrilla warfare? From the USA supporting Afghanistan against the Soviet invasion and funneling arms and advisors thru Pakistan. Yeah, we taught him all he knows.
Simplistic answers are always BS. There are no simple solutions other than to treat people as people.
GAry 7
December 22nd, 2008 at 7:56 am
How do you spell O F F T R A C K? Joker has derailed the thread it sems…
Anyway, I also had 4 of 5 in the top, and had Future of Aviation as my odd man out. Go figger!
Good suggestions, StevoR!
- science versus religion
- astronomical & geological hazards
Now I return you to your previously scheduled discussions about Joker’s post.
December 22nd, 2008 at 8:02 am
My first choice, as always was SPACE, THE FINAL FRONTIER, woo hah!
Energy as a close second,,,
GAry 7
December 22nd, 2008 at 8:32 am
When I saw the title, I thought you were going to be advocating for some sort of NAS bailout.
I picked:
Stem Cells
Space Exploration
Energy
Bioengineering
Education
Where’s the checkbox for nanotech?
Or “Artificial development of superpowers”
@SteveoR: You forgot “RESOURCES” (as oppose to simple territory grabs), and I personally consider “RELIGION” and “POLITICS” to be pretty much the same thing.
by using a nuclear WMD on one of the most sacred places
You are correct. Mecca could just as easily be destroyed with completely conventional explosives.
Merry Christmas everyone!
December 22nd, 2008 at 8:52 am
Well, asking you to post about this will certainly get them a lot of responses. Of course, those responses are likely to be biased towards people (a) more interested in science than the average citizen, and (b) interested in space exploration and education due to the specific nature of this blog.
December 22nd, 2008 at 8:55 am
You know, I selected my 5 but was yearning to select about a half dozen others as well. Much to my chagrin, I had to leave Bioengineering, Water Resources and Emerging Infectious Diseases off. Bleh…
At least I got to (hopefully) help the NAs better direct their resources.
December 22nd, 2008 at 8:56 am
^ I was going to add resources as well — plenty of wars have been fought for everything from seaport access to natural resources like oil and gold.
It is interesting how highly space exploration ranks, especially in the light from the flames of rumors of the new administration gutting NASA.
Should Obama do that, he will have an incredibly hard time getting re-elected, because in so doing he will bring a lot of suffering to the eastern coast of the I-4 corridor in Florida. Ask any political strategist and they will tell you that the I-4 corridor in Florida is where the state’s 17 electoral votes are won and lost because the northern half of Florida is reliably Republican, the southern half reliably Democrat and the state decided by the central portion of the state — incidentally where Kennedy Space Center is. By putting the Space Coast into a tailspin when the country is already in deep recession, he will not only make it harder on himself, I would suspect that it will be harder for Democrats to get senators elected as well.
December 22nd, 2008 at 9:04 am
I agree in that I would like to see a larger scope of topics or more specifically a more defined focus.
Thank you for sharing Phil, I shall spread the link around
I wish they could have added, “how much has the media influenced your choices?”
December 22nd, 2008 at 9:21 am
Phil, thanks for the post. I’ll blog it too… passing the word to literally tens of people.
But, hey, I do what I can.
December 22nd, 2008 at 9:44 am
I am curious how much of the respondents have come via Bad Astronomy…
December 22nd, 2008 at 10:08 am
Sigh. I really wish “ocean health” was a lot bigger than that. Just because we don’t live in the ocean doesn’t mean that they aren’t very important…. and they’re in danger.
December 22nd, 2008 at 10:25 am
Hopefully it’s not too bad, if a foreigner tries to help – as I did
Btw: Four choices of mine were still the top four, and my fifth was on Nr6… I know what you like most
December 22nd, 2008 at 1:02 pm
@Gary Ansorge:
Always-always, or just sometimes-always?
Norman, correlate!
December 23rd, 2008 at 5:43 am
ONE % for crime and justice?! Wow. That was one of my 5. The other 4 were all top 5.
Also – 2% for future of aviation? What’s wrong with these people?
December 23rd, 2008 at 11:57 pm
My five were in the top six (I put biodiversity ahead of stem cell research). My suggestion was overpopulation, the root cause of so many ills, and one of the hardest to combat in an ethical way.
December 24th, 2008 at 12:33 am
911 Memoriam Said on Dec 22nd, 2008 at 6:42 am :
“Okay StevoR but without endorsing Joker’s H-bombing Mecca solution (while understanding his (?) emotions) one question for you :
Did YOU know anyone who died on September 11th 2001?
Well, understand this, a lot of people do. …”
My condolences for what their worth.
Beleive it or not I do sympatheise – I had friends in New York when the 9-11 attacks occurred & although they were okay, yes I can understand the pain and grief felt by its victims and their families, freinds and loved ones. Not as much as thsoe directlyaffected sure but I still acknowledge and sympatheise with their suffering.
However, can I just ask you a question in turn :
Do you know any Palestineans or Lebanese or other victims of the US or Israeli attacks on the many Arab nations that have been hit by invadingand occupying forces?
Surely can’t you see that they too are as human, as full of emotion and as deserving of the right to ’self-defence” and fighting back as us Westerners?
From *their* point of view it is *our* leaders and our military forces who are the “evil ones” .. I say this not out of any desire to hurt or offend but just because we do need to understand their humanity & their side of things too.
Larian LeQuella Said December 22nd, 2008 at 7:09 am :
“StevoR, well said. While Joker IS a joke, at least he qualified his slam on islam with the “at present”. Of course if we take history at its entirety, his joke falls apart. I know my views are universally unfavourable in regards to religion though, so I freely admit my bias.”
Thanks. Me too.
Religion – certainly organised religion does seem to cause a lot of the wars and bigotry and suffering around the globe. It has I think alot to answer for.
@ QuietDesperation :
“@SteveoR: You forgot “RESOURCES” (as oppose to simple territory grabs), and I personally consider “RELIGION” and “POLITICS” to be pretty much the same thing.
“by using a nuclear WMD on one of the most sacred places”
You are correct. Mecca could just as easily be destroyed with completely conventional explosives.”
*I* never advocated the annhiliation of Mecca and its thousands or millions of inhabitants – that was Joker. Any such action would cause awave of bloodshed of staggering proportions and lead to utter disaster for Humanity. I hope you aren’t seriously advocating that either!
I covered RESOURCES under territory – meaning much the same thing!
Territory comes with Resources .. But I spose you could say territory is a resource too! 
As for religion & politics being the same I’d have to disagree there. There aresubtle differnces between them thatmake political and religious conflicts different.
Religon is about worhsipping a god or gods for which the followers will kill and die for irrationally and with a fantatical blind zeal.
Politics is a bit more pragamatic, a bit more open to reason and to consequences. Political leadesr can be easily changed or manipulated out of doing things -or out of power. Bush & the neo-cons were responsible for the political campaign to invade Iraq. They’ve been voted out. Christianity was responsible for the Crusades – its still around.
A political solution for the plight of the post-Shoah (nazi holocaust) Ashkenazi jews was to resettle back in Germany or EasternEurope or Uganda but for *religious* reasons they choose to take over Palestine – a land extremely hostile and foreign to them which placed them in more danger of future (present now) extermination than the many alternatives – it was areligiously motivated decision leading to a conflict that would have been avoided if the Ashkenazi jews had simply returned to their old homes as would have been the best ( & IMHON most ethical*) option. Thsi has led to the major Israeli-Palestinean & Israeli-Muslim world conflict that in turn has taken us into the so-called “War-of-Terror’ today.
Politics is influenced by religion and religion is exploited by polticians but these are I’d say separate things.
@ Richard Drumm The Astronomy Bum Thanks!
——-
* In many ways Isreal’s creation was a victory for Hitler – the Jews were out of Germany as Hitlerahd wished and the Israelis have adopted a nazi-like mindset towards “the other”. Without Hitler, Israel would NOT have come into existence – and the fascists would recognise and approve of much of the Israeli conduct towards the Palestineans and Israel’s neighbours. Israel also is far, far more vulnerable to destruction in the SouthWest Asian-Islamic world region than if it had been created at the heart of Germany instead – and having the Germans and East Europeans responsible for the Shoah lose their land as a result of their actiosn seems vastly fairer and more reasonable than taking away the land of the Palestineans -who after all did nothing to merit their loss to slave Western consciences!