Gavin- Obama has def. said he wants to double basic science R&D over 10 yrs, and after watching this Youtube clip i feel more assured that he means that, but i doubt we’ll see the NASA budget doubling next year or something..!

thx both for the comments,
M

A couple of things give me pause, though:

- For all the praise dumped on Steve Chu, i am wary, and i’ve wanted to say this for a while somewhere — i know him a bit (almost TA’d QM for him once) and know his demeanor is a bit chilly. ok, no biggie, for politics, as long as he’s competent and non-idelogically driven, right? but do remember he’s a condensed matter physicist, and he’s about to be in charge of the DOE, which is where all HEP and increasingly more astrophysics funding is coming out of (e.g. DES). how sympathetic is he to these? remember that we (in the HEP+astro community) have been suffering mightily the last few years under flat-flat (or worse) budgets.

And no particle physicist (esp. the senior ones who are in every dept and went through that grim time) can forget how some of our ‘comrades’ in condensed matter not only didn’t come to our aid during the fights over the SSC in the early 90′s, but some *actively lobbied against it*. they may, or may not, have been the proverbial straw that broke that camel — but it left deep divisions that will take a lot to heal, not just time (perhaps something like the Obama/Clinton battles). (and, of course, we would *know* the things the LHC should be finding out the next few years, if the SSC had been completed and running years ago).

I don’t know Steve’s positions on this (he’s had to already deal some with it being the head of LBL, with its big HEP + astro subgroups), but i did feel like putting this out there because i haven’t read anyone else say it, yet, in all the giddy euphoria.

I just want to ‘keep one foot out’, because i’m not a part of the govt, i’m a citizen scientist and i need to call it as i see it, not support anyone just because it all looks good initially with Nobels in the mix, or mellifluous words are involved or whatever.

- Now science is just one thing that matters (the most to us scientists, of course), andtThat last comment applies even more to some of Obama’s other recent choices and picks — several have bugged me, and the Warren thing i feel mixed about, not quite sure yet — but the Ken Salazar appointment for Sect’y of the Interior is just plain miserable, as far as i can thus far tell. Raul Grijalva was way *way* better, but appears to have been lobbied hard against by mineral, oil, gas etc. interests — and for those of us who are enviros too, this one mattered a *lot*, and it does lead us to question how bought out already to e.g. extractive industries the Obama Admin is.

I’m not giving up all ‘faith and hope’ right now — of course, there are many good picks, and at minimum, we will finally have a *REAL* govt, now, vs. basically the sham one we’ve had for 8 crummy years. but too many of us have been told to ‘trust’ in someone’s judgement too many times by someone who turns out to be a sellout or worse to do it again.

We will watch, and see what happens the first few months of the Obama Admin in all spheres, before coming to any firm conclusions.

Just some thoughts and feelings i’ve been having…

-M

Certainly got me to read the article, but it was misleading.

The title you’ve chosen suggests the opposite of what you intend. Perhaps a better title would be, “The Culmination of Hope.”

Or, “Political Manipulation of Science takes a Holiday.”

Obama from the the point of view of natural science has made a set of appointments. The combination of medieval superstition and and perverted science representing certain big business interest will hopefully have lost its influence in the White House.

However those appointees from the dismal science come from a past just as locked into the voodoo ideology of neoliberalism which as Stiglitz (2000 winner of the Nobel economics prize) pointed out is just political ideology. The Obama appointments in the foreign policy area leave little sign of improvement there either.

Obama may yet be a great President an introduce a New Deal for the 21st Century., if he’s economic advisers drop their past prejudices but then again he might not.

On the foreign policy field the empire may change it’s spots around but it still remains a spotted beast. An Afghanistan surge that will result in more unwarranted casualties on all sides. Unconditional support for Israel’s breaches of international law and more hostility against Russia.

The verdict is out let us see what he achieves.

There are such things as bad scientists you know.

“Religion has prevailed! Science has become religion!” — Halton C. Arp, astrophysicist, 2000

“Science…has adopted the methods of religion.” — Halton C. Arp, astrophysicist, 2000

Not all scientists of course but you get the point.

“The mathematicians have become the priests of the modern world.” — Bill Gaede, physicist, 2008

Isn’t is amazing? Having a president who can articulate…anything?