There are two things which have deeply terrified me in recent science news. The first, as you may have heard, is that a bumper crop of some 32 "new" planets was discovered by a team of European researchers armed with a spectrograph called HARPS, or High Accuracy Radial velocity Planetary Searcher. The second is that Israeli scientists have made a robot small enough to crawl through human veins.


The offending nanobots.

Why do these things strike horror in my usually demure heart? Because I see the approaching future as an exercise in coming to terms with both the macrocosm and the microcosm. We have spent most of our time as a technological race making, and interfacing with, approximately people-sized objects: other people, tools, cars, industrial machines, personal computers. This world of people-sized functionality and people-sized ideas has always been a delusion of our people-centric worldview and a necessary effect of our people-sized needs. However, as we approach a future with sharper spikes in technological change, and as our science makes increasingly audacious discoveries about this cavernous universe of ours, we'll see our working intellectual environment revert to its more natural scale. That is, the scale of physics and of the Universe, of the forces which drive electrons in their dervish spin and the forces which dictate the universe's acceleration, of the machinations of molecules and the movements of galaxies — of the incomprehensibly small (5 million human genomes could happily dance on the head of a pin, after all) to the incomprehensibly huge, which together represent the overwhelming bulk of the physical reality we're daily immersed in.

On one side of the spectrum, the knobbed, buttoned, handled, and human-scale tools we're accustomed to will, as nanotechnology evolves, dwindle out of reach into a smallness that borders on abstraction. And, on the other side, we'll see our closely-held Laws of Nature, once designed to explain pedestrian aspects of everyday physical existence (things falling down), bloom into complex, distinctly non-personal systems of knowledge which will begin to encompass an entire universe of things we are incapable relating to — dark matter, energy, gravity waves, unifying "Theories of Everything." We're going to experience a dramatic shock of perspective, like someone casually peering into a hole only to realize, with an awful wrenching of the gut and a quick jump backwards, that it's thousands of feet deep.

Maybe it's my sturdy sci-fi diet, but this is the way I've come to understand the future. Undoubtedly, this is why infinitesimal vein-crawling robots and distant new life-bearing planets terrify me with equal existential vigor. Why is it that the very large and the very small both strike such visceral feeling in the feeble human Id? Is it because we're anthropocentric, tending to understand things in convenient multiples of ourselves: distance in feet, or time in terms of lifespans and generations (even the humble second handily spans the length of a heartbeat)? When I try to visualize a great height, I often think of how many of me standing on each others' shoulders it might encompass; we often simplify distances by imagining how many people holding hands (or how many hot dogs lain end to end) it would take to broach them.

Perhaps. As Natalie Angier more eloquently puts it in her excellent science-for-curious-adults primer The Canon, "we have evolved to view life on a human scale, to concern ourselves almost exclusively with the rhythm of hours, days, seasons, years, and with objects we can readily see, touch, and count on, because those are what we have to work with, those are the ambient utensils with which we must build our lives."


Artist's rendering of the potentially offending new planets.

At the same time, tiny things fascinate us, from grains of rice daubed with tiny penmanship to the whirling stew of molecules that make the world. And extremely large things awe and humble us, often in life-changing ways. Swimming in the ocean and feeling its tenebrous depths below, gazing at the vast night sky, momentarily getting a sense of the thingness of a thing we hold: it's these momentary glimpses of realization into the small and huge that help us to delineate the teetering edges of our personal reality, our oscillating context, which is in that ballpark between a microbe and a solar system. Ultimately, though, unless we're microbiologists or cosmologists, we're not yet accustomed to dealing with the macro and micro in either an intimate, nor a long-term way.

And this time, as the nanorobots and new planets march towards our quotidian life, pregnant with possibility, well...as the movie posters warn us, it's personal. Those Israeli nanobots, made of silicone and metal, will be biocompatible, meaning they could live inside our bodies indefinitely — essentially becoming part of us. Sayeth the scientist at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, "we hope the robot will be able to travel through a blood vessel, the digestive tract or the lungs, delivering targeted medicines to specific locations, clearing blockages, performing biopsies, or placed inside a shunt to drain body fluids from clogged areas."

Bodily fluids — about as personal as it gets. To these tiny medical stewards, we will be a huge environment, a self-contained world with its own set of physical parameters, forces, and mysteries; for its host, the nano-robot is a speck of perspective in the blood, ready at any moment to evoke the boundless, microscopic world we normally utterly ignore. And at the other side of this scale, a brood of new, Jupiter-sized planets serves to remind us of an equally absurd, mind-blowing truth — that our world, our bodies, and even the nano-robots living inside them are all equally small in the larger scale of the universe.

One of Buckminster Fuller's most interesting conceits was his dislike of specialization, which he likened to a kind of intellectual prison, restraining "bright" people from truly understanding the complex, and general, systems of which they were a part. After all, he argued, what causes extinction in the animal kingdom? Overspecialization. Of course, it's logical, and it's s problem we see over and over again in human history, from the Industrial Revolution displacing specialized factory workers to the often daunting gap of comprehension between the social and "hard" sciences. As soon as we become specialists in a single subject, we tend to lose interest in, or the capacity to cope with, other subjects, and in the greater whole. Tunnel vision, if you will.

As it turns out, this particular Bucky ramble has considerable scientific credibility now that the fields of complexity theory and biological evolution are coming head-to-head. Microbiologist Carl Woese, talking to Wired, put it this way: "Twentieth-century biology was structured according to a linear, Newtonian worldview. Linear thinking is not the kind of thinking that's needed to study evolution. It doesn't help you understand the nature of systems. " In other words, evolution — the success and development of species — is not just a linear process, driven by specific biologically advantageous genetic traits, but a complex process, one ruled by yet-to-be-quantified rules of complexity and emergence. With emergence phenomena, evolution occurs not only in individuals, but in systems and groups; if we consider an ant or bee colony as a kind of "superorganism" that develops independently from its members, then the individual characteristics of a bee are only one part of a complex, evolutionary entity — the hive. And, as it turns out, increased levels of complexity do not slow or hinder the evolutionary process.

In suit, biologists now find it makes scientific sense to examine human beings as emergent systems — "superorganisms" of millions of molecules, much like bees in a hive. From there, It's not much of a conceptual leap to apply that thinking to human groups; i.e. we are all involved with one another, on an evolutionary level, just as all our cells work together to cobble together the thing we call "life." After all, we are one of the few species to evolve social systems.

In any case, Buckminster Fuller's points about humans having "innate comprehensivity" and the human race being a giant system living on "Spaceship Earth" suddenly seem woozily prescient. Carl Woese again: "Man is the one who's undergoing this incredible evolution now...the social processes by which man is evolving are creating a whole new level of organization."

It begs the question: what are these social processes "by which man is evolving?" Dare we assume that Woese is referring, in part, to the Internet? It's certainly tempting to compare the web's self-navigating push-button organization with these "superorganisms" of the current biological discourse. If the social system in a colony of leafcutter ants can compel them to build magnificent chambered nests underground despite the fact that their individual ant brains don't amount to much, what can our social systems do for us? Despite the oil-slick of drivel floating atop the quotidian Internet, look at what we have at our fingertips: instant self-publishing, the capacity to push information quickly to people across the globe, tools for mass organization, immediate answers to questions it would have taken our parents weeks to research. Our own version of the leafcutter's underground castles doesn't seem so far off.

Buckminster Fuller might have agreed.

"The computer as a superspecialist can persevere, day and night, day after day, in picking out the pink from the blue at superhumanly sustainable speeds. The computer can also operate in degrees of cold or heat at which man would perish. Man is going to be displaced altogether as a specialist by the computer. Man himself is being forced to reestablish, employ, and enjoy his innate 'comprehensivity.' Coping with the totality of Spaceship Earth and universe is ahead for all of us. Evolution is apparently intent that man fulfill a much greater destiny than that of being a simple muscle and reflex machine — a slave automaton — automation displaces the automaton."

The saving grace of our species, the "evolutionary antibody to the extinction of humanity through specialization," in Fuller's view, was the computer: a machine (or machines) designed solely to follow specialized, technical pursuits to their logical ends. As soon as we no longer have to concern ourselves with the specific aspects of our fields of study, and we can outsource the menial tasks which tie up our minds, he argued, we can become generalists again. This may not be a matter of choice: as specialists, we're nothing compared to computers. It's essentially an evolutionary decision. Of course, talking about evolutionary emergence and widespread computer use in the same breath smacks a little of the technological singularity, but that's a subject for another post.



Singularity aside, when we hand over the keys to the computers, we're ostensibly left with the capacity to pursue real, comprehensive, systems-understanding intelligence. Which is our real strong suit — the intellectual style of a curious child before being socialized. And, if current complexity science is correct, it may be to humanity's evolutionary advantage to stay this way: curious, general, and collaborative.

The great (now late) Arthur C. Clarke had a longstanding relationship with Playboy magazine: they published the first excerpts of 2010: Odyssey Two, as well as a plethora of his short works, musings, and technical papers. It wasn't until 1986 that the magazine ran a full-length "Playboy Interview" with Clarke, then living in Sri Lanka in a compound next-door to the country's prime minister. Perhaps because of the nature of the magazine, Clarke was at his most liberal, going to far as to openly admit — perhaps for the first time in the press — his "relaxed, sympathetic" attitude about bisexualism.



I recently picked up the July 1986 Playboy at an estate sale. Reading the interview knocked me on the floor a handful of times, so I've transcribed some of the many many segments of it here.

ON EXTRATERRESTRIAL CONTACT:
CLARKE: I would like to live until we've made contact with some extraterrestrials — at least know if they're there. I've had fantasies about that a lot — a spaceship comes down and the first guy off the ship says, "Take me to Arthur C. Clarke."
PLAYBOY: Meaning that they've read your books, so they're saying the proverbial "Take me to your leader" line.
CLARKE: Yeah. But then again, of course, he might say, "Take me to Isaac Asimov" — that's the nightmare, isn't it?

ON MYSTICISM:
PLAYBOY: You write about the mind's transcending, leaving behind, its material organic base, as you put it. Why do you regard the departure for the physical realm — leaving planet Earth — as desirable?
CLARKE: I guess that it's just hard to imagine another direction in which to go. I hope I'm making sense. I guess it's just pure laziness on my part — I should think of a new evolutionary outcome. But I'm very much against any form of irrationality and mysticism. I guess I'm a mystic who's against mysticism.
PLAYBOY: What does that mean?
CLARKE: I'm so very sorry you asked that question.
PLAYBOY: Why?
CLARKE: It's tough to explain. This universe is so incredible, and we constantly find new things out; but what we know may be such a small part of reality, if, indeed, reality is finite — it may be infinite. But one must always allow for the totally unexpected. So, in a way, talking about things that could be called mystical — well, I guess, I do try to allow for the idea that, as the famous scientist J.B.S. Haldane once said, "The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, it's queerer than we can suppose." I've changed the word queer to strange, because, of course, the word queer has taken on a different context. And that calls to mind what I call Clarke's Third Law, which is "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" — by which I mean things we take for granted now, such as transistor radios, that would be totally baffling, totally magical to even a man like Thomas Edison. I mean, if he saw a pocket computer, Edison would go totally crazy. He'd spend his whole life trying to figure out, "How does this work?"

ON THE MOON LANDING:
PLAYBOY: Let's go to the moon.
CLARKE: Fine with me.
PLAYBOY: You made a bet with the chairman of the Interplanetary Society, of which you were a member in the thirties, about when the first landing on the moon would occur.
CLARKE: Yes, I wasn't very clever. I never really thought a moon landing would occur in my lifetime. But, you know, even the space enthusiasts of my youth didn't believe it would be in this century. When I wrote my book Prelude to Space in 1948, I put the landing 30 years in the future, in 1978. I remember thinking when I wrote it, "This is hopelessly optimistic."
PLAYBOY: As it turned out, during the moon landing in 1969, you were a commentator for U.S. television, along with your friend Walter Cronkite. You cried then, didn't you?
CLARKE: When you go to a launch, it is an emotional experience. Television doesn't give you any idea of it, really. Walter wiped away a tear or two, as well — as did Eric Sevareid. The last time I'd cried was when my grandmother died, 20 years before.
PLAYBOY: The crew of Apollo Eight circled the moon on Christmas eve, 1968 — the first men ever to see the dark side of the moon. Didn't the commander of the mission later tell you they'd been tempted to radio back to earth that they'd discovered a large black monolith, as in 2001?
CLARKE: Alas, discretion prevailed.
PLAYBOY: How do you think 2001, which you began envisioning with director Stanley Kubrick in 1964, inspired actual space exploration?
CLARKE: Although most people thought space travel was inevitable by then — President Kennedy had called for a moon landing before the end of the Sixties — I think the movie did stir people's imaginations about the future. I'm especially proud of how well the film stands up — even the moons-of-Jupiter stuff. The only thing we were wrong about scientifically — everybody was wrong, because the information was incomplete — was the surface of the moon as we depicted it in the film.
PLAYBOY: What do you mean?
CLARKE: We never dreamed it would be so smoothed.

The Large Hadron Collider is finally turning on.



A quick step backwards: the LHC is particle accelerator, the largest of its kind, underwritten by all the wild money in science, a ringed tunnel some 27 kilometers long, deep underground, crossing the French-Swiss border at four points. It's been over twenty years in the making and has garnered the support of 10,000 scientists in 85 countries behind its unimaginable modus operandi: to recreate the environment of our universe as it was less than a millionth of a second after the Big Bang, and hence to reveal, among other things, the fundamental nature of matter. By all accounts a significant accomplishment: that something as massive and as diplomatically enlightened as this machine could be made in such a fiercely nationalistic era, that the technology even exists, and that the sheer logistical nightmare of its operations could be overcome. And, while the imminent revelations of the LHC will undoubtedly chew up much of my scientific ruminations in the next few years, it's just these, the logistical operations, that I'm currently interested in.

This is because (unbeknownst to many) the LHC project has a second, more pragmatic, tentacle. It's called the Grid.


Server farm at CERN.

What is the Grid?

Some experts are calling it a "parallel internet." Although this is, in many ways, a reasonable moniker, the Grid is primarily the solution to one of the LHC's most important problems, which is the outrageous density of data it will begin to emit the second it goes live. Like, 15 Petabytes (15 million Gigabytes) of data annually, the analysis of which will ultimately require some 100,000 CPUs of processing power (NUMBERS!), which thousands of scientists around the world need to access and analyze in order to make a lick of sense of it. Rather than be stored on site at the CERN in Switzerland (the site of the LHC), this data needs to be distributed globally, parsed, narrowed down, and parceled out to the 7,000 physicists who need it.

How will it work?

Hence the Grid: a system of dedicated 10 gigabit per second fiber-optic cables connecting the Large Hadron Collider's crazy monumental magnetic detectors directly to the CERN computing center (or centre, if you will), then outwards throughout the world in a three-tiered system. The raw data is tossed into tape storage at CERN, then transmitted on these same fiber-optic cables to 11 "Tier One" research facilities, who are responsible for reprocessing the raw data and redistributing it.

Next down the line are the 150 "Tier Two" centers, mostly universities, which are located all around the world. The data arrives here via standard Internet protocols (i.e. using the regular ol' Internet, albeit in the guise of general purpose research networks, such as the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Sciences Network), and is then disseminated to all the physicists for their invaluably real-live human analysis.

Here is a useful schematic for understanding how the Grid works, if you want to get more technical, i.e. see diagrams.

In any case, we're talking about 55,000 servers already installed, with another 145,000 on the way in the next two years. Remember when everyone was freaking out about the Googleplex? That's nothing. This fiber-optic network is 10,000 times faster than the fastest existing broadband. My friend Scott Thrift, who told me about the Grid, was like, "get ready for holographic video!" It's huge. I could throw around confusing approximations like, "it would take 25 days to transfer the nearly 400,000 movies on IMDB," but suffice to say it's a massive upgrade from the kinds of Internet speeds we're used to.

It seems strangely appropriate, strangely telling, that the CERN would implement this system. After all, the research facility was fundamental in implementing the Internet protocols that would bring about this first wave, that would enable me to sit here at my kitchen table and interface blindly with a nebulous and globally-distributed network of information, an absurdity in itself. I see it as inevitable that the Grid, or a system like it, is going to mold our communications, our media, our daily lives, in ways we can't possibly imagine or predict.

In his writings, the computer scientist — and fabulist, although aren't they all, the good ones — Vernor Vinge, no uncertain proponent of the ever-developing Technological Singularity theory, noted that "every time our ability to access information and to communicate it to others is improved, in some sense we have achieved an increase over natural intelligence." What he meant was that the end of the human era (which he argued would occur "[not before ] 2005 or after 2030") would come with a whimper, not a bang — "even the largest avalanches are triggered by small things," he added.

I don't imagine that the Grid will go all Skynet on us, but if the history of the Internet tells us anything, it's that we can't predict, nor can we place enough expectations, on the exponential nature of its evolution. Besides, Vinge wasn't spooking us when he wrote, in his 1993 essay The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post−Human Era (link = pdf document), that "even the egalitarian view of an Internet that wakes up along with all mankind can be viewed as a nightmare." It is a nightmare, not least because it is strangely probable, but also because the Grid is so inextricably linked to the Large Hadron Collider, this fountainhead of certain scientific revolution, the two projects so potent with possibility, sinister and otherwise. Fellow science fiction heads will recognize this kind of setup from so many novels. The audacity of man is unbreakable.

And what if all the LHC reveals to us is that matter is only information broken down into infinitesimally small parts? We would already have begun to recreate it, a new universe slowly subsuming the last, only to awaken, unsolicited, in order to ask its own, similar questions about its place in the universe. It makes me feel crazy to think how profoundly the future refuses to remain at bay.

A prediction: even while the Large Hadron collider offers a final, unquestionable answer about the fundamental nature of the Universe, it's the Grid that will change the world, slipping in like a legislative footnote and blooming, guileless, the final nail in the coffin of the twentieth century.



*Reposted from Universe.

This post is about Clinton and Obama's science policies.

As a blogger, I usually willfully delineate a giant chasm of non-communication between myself and political issues, preferring to dabble in the absolute: time, space, theoretical technological infrastructures, and, recently, aliens. I wrote one very reticent entry in 2005 on my blog, Universe, about chimeric research, prefacing it with the pronouncement that "this blog will rarely concern iself with Pressing Science Ethics Issues," a statement that has proven in the intervening years to be true.

However, I can't deny that my love of the sciences has blossomed under the steely wing of one of the most anti-science political administrations (and social climates, to boot) of the modern era. If it's not the suppression and censorship of reports on subjects like climate change and pollution, it's the stacking of scientific advisory panels, the stem-cell debacle, ridiculously under-qualified NASA appointees, the insanely dubious removal of scientific information from government Web sites, or the misguided millions pouring into Prez Bush's "New Vision" for space exploration. Remember when the Bush administration removed the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet" from NASA's mission statement? Really?

It is with a profound sense of purpose, then, that I bring you this information about the respective science policies of the two Democratic candidates for president of the United States of America. Most of this information comes from statements made by the candidates' surrogates at a science policy debate in Boston last week, as well as from the candidates' official websites and press releases.



Basic Research
Obama: Plans to double federal spending for basic research over five years, supports making the Research and Development tax credit permanent, and plans to strengthen funding for biomedical research, as well as better improve the efficiency of that research by improving coordination both within government and across government/private/non-profit partnerships. Supports stem-cell research despite the alternatives, stating that "embryonic stem cells remain unmatched in their potential."

Clinton: Clinton plans to "end the war on science" by doubling the budget, within ten years, of the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the basic and applied research at the Department of Defense and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Plans to rescind the ban on ethical embryonic stem cell research and to straight-up ban political appointees from unduly interfering with scientific conclusions and publications. Lastly, plans to require that federal research agencies set aside at least 8% of their research budgets for discretionary funding of high-risk research, and plans to increase investment in the non-health applications of biotechnology in order to fuel 21st century industry ("the future").

CLIMATE CHANGE
Obama: Plans to reduce Carbon Emissions 80 Percent by 2050 with a market-based cap-and-trade system requiring that pollution credits be auctioned off. Plans to build incentives that reward forest owners, farmers, and ranchers when they plant trees, restore grasslands, or undertake farming practices that capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Plans to invest $150 billion over 10 years to advance the next generation of biofuels and fuel infrastructure, accelerate the commercialization of plug-in hybrids, promote development of commercial-scale renewable energy, invest in low-emissions coal plants, and begin the transition to a new digital electricity grid (as opposed to the slow electromechanical switches and relays used today). Also plans to establish a 25 percent federal Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) to require that 25 percent of electricity consumed in the U.S. is derived from clean, sustainable energy sources, like solar, wind and geothermal by 2025.

More information about Obama's energy plans here.

Clinton: Clinton's plan would ostensibly reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050 to avoid the worst effects of global warming, and cut foreign oil imports by two-thirds from 2030 projected levels, more than 10 million barrels per day. Major components of this plan: increased fuel efficiency standards, helping automakers retool their production facilities through $20 billion in "Green Vehicle Bonds," a new cap-and-trade program that auctions 100 percent of permits, and a $50 billion Strategic Energy Fund, paid for in part by oil companies, to fund investments in alternative energy. Plans to revive and expand the national assessment on climate change, expanding the assessment to include not only the anticipated impacts of climate change, but also how U.S. regions and economic sectors can respond to climate change through mitigation and adaptation.

Also: plans to require that all federal buildings designed after January 20, 2009 will be zero emissions buildings. Cute!

More information about Clinton's energy plans here.

SCIENCE EDUCATION
Obama: Wants to increase the number of foreign students in U.S. graduate school and “give them a path to citizenship,” as well as improve minority scholarships. Plans to provide additional resources for public schools to adopt proven science, technology, engineering and math programs.

Clinton: Clinton plans to triple the number of National Science Foundation fellowships and increase the size of each award. Plans to create new fellowships at the National Science Foundation to allow math and science professionals to become teachers in high-need schools. Supports initiatives to bring more women and minorities into the math, science, and engineering professions.

THE INTERNET AND TECHNOLOGY
Obama: Believes in an open Internet! Strongly supports the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet. Supports the basic principle that network providers should not be allowed to charge fees to privilege the content or applications of some web sites and Internet applications over others. Furthermore, encourages diversity in the ownership of broadcast media, and plans to create "Public Media 2.0.," the next generation of public media that will birth the "Sesame Street of the Digital Age."

Wants to implement sensible safeguards that protect privacy online, and supports restrictions on how private information may be used, as well as technology safeguards to verify how the information has actually been used.

Plans to "bring government into the 21st century:" wants to implement wikis, social networking tools and other transparent communications technologies in daily governmental operations, plants to modernize internal, cross-agency, and public communication and information sharing to improve government decision-making. Lastly, plans to appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century.

Much more information about Obama's technology plans here.



Obama at Google, talking about improbable lives and net neutrality.

Clinton: The Clinton camp seems to have only one major stance when it comes to the Internet, which is a plan for the federal government provide tax incentives to encourage broadband deployment in underserved areas, and, correlatively, a plan to financially support state and local broadband initiatives. Clinton was quoted on Meet The Press as saying "I want to have as much information about the way our government operates on the Internet so the people who pay for it, the taxpayers of America, can see that. I want to be sure that, you know, we actually have, like, agency blogs." Also, her website is not as cool as Obama's.

SPACE EXPLORATION
Obama: Obama hasn't released any information about his official plan in regards to space exploration, although there's some buzz that it will happen this month. In the interim, nerds are aflutter over an alleged leaked space plan, which you can read here. The leaked plan, if there's any truth to it, is very awesome, and includes some smart (and realistic) initiatives, such as support of unmanned missions, a vow to keep weapons out of space (yay), and some space-based climate change surveying. The leaked plan, however, does support the new Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) and the Ares I Launch Vehicle, which is a disappointment to me because I can't stand to think of any Bush space policies lingering around after his dismissal.

Clinton: The Clinton camp has made several statements about space exploration and aeronautics. Clinton plans to pursue a "21st century Space Exploration Program," by implementing a balanced strategy of robust human spaceflight, expanded robotic spaceflight, and enhanced space science activities. Furthermore, Clinton plans to develop a comprehensive space-based Earth Sciences agenda, including full funding for NASA’s Earth Sciences program and a space-based Climate Change Initiative. Most surprising of all, in my opinion, is her call of reversing funding cuts to NASA’s and FAA’s aeronautics R&D budget.



Clinton on space exploration, briefly.

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More Information:
Obama Campaign Science Fact Sheet
Breakdown of all the candidates' science and technology stances (From Popular Mechanics)
Clinton's Innovation Agenda

To aid in the gestation of a new project, I've been watching a whole lot of Carl Sagan programs.

Namely, the 13-part epic of Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which remains, to me, the most comprehensive survey of the Universe and our place within it ever presented to the lay public. Sagan's devastating empathy, his respect of the viewer's intelligence, as well as his often outrageously optimistic sense of human community, have never been replicated in television. He shifts deftly from dallies in human history to well-diagrammed explanations of evolution, stressing the clarity and self-evidence of science and framing its longstanding opposition — organized religion, unenlightened government policy, etc — as natural and understandable human foibles that we must overcome together.

Modern science programs are usually hosted either by flashy, serious-voiced British actors or anonymous narrators; Sagan, however, takes it all on himself. He never conceals the fact that he's a total nerd, a courduroy-jacketed cosmologist from Brooklyn who gets stoked about watching live Voyager feeds from the JPL labs in Pasadena. Rather, he embraces it, presents himself as a helpful authority, someone genuinely invested in the well-being of the human race, happily taking on the enormous responsibility of educating us.

For an example of the moral themes put forth by Sagan (as well as his close collaborators, Ann Druyan and Steven Soter), witness this, an excerpt from his 1994 book, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. I found this while errantly clicking on Google Video (incidentally, Google Moon?!), and came pretty close to losing it.