Why Intellectuals Have Become Largely Redundant
A better question? Perhaps this piece found at Greenie Watch is not asking the RIGHT question ............
WHY SCIENTISTS HAVE SQUANDERED PUBLIC TRUST
I have commented before about the political problems of the scientific community, which are typically being turned around against Republicans. In a post last month I recalled the 2004 remark by Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin in the New York Review of Books that “Most scientists are, at a minimum, liberals,” and the caution of MIT’s Kerry Emanuel about the dangers of “group think” and the “shocking lack of political diversity among American academics.” He concluded that “Until this profound and well-documented intellectual homogeneity changes, scientists will be suspected of constituting a leftist think tank.”
Well, this week the National Academy of Sciences had a chance to do something about this, and . . . completely blew it. A two-day symposium on science and public policy featured a panel of presidential science advisers, but the panel included only advisers to Democratic presidents, including Obama’s science adviser, the egregious John (sterilize the public) Holdren. The others were two advisers for Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter’s science adviser, the 87-year-old Frank Press.
Conspicuously missing from the panel was President Reagan’s science adviser Jay Keyworth, who is a spry 72. (He turns out to be the only living GOP science adviser.) When asked why Keyworth wasn’t invited, NAS president Ralph Cicerone said, “We didn’t want to go back that far.”
So let’s see: having Jimmy Carter’s 87-year-old science adviser apparently isn’t “going back that far,” but having Reagan’s still active 72-year old science adviser would be? And please tell me again why we shouldn’t regard scientific elites with suspicion?
Maybe the NAS should put together a panel to explore the strange bubble around the scientific establishment that distorts its outlook on the world. I used to respect Cicerone, in part for staring down the enviros when they tried to prevent an NAS panel on geoengineering. But no more. These people deserve every calumny thrown their way.
Link to Source at Powerline
Why? or How ? or When Exactly?
The world is full of revisionists in all walks of life. People who simply cannot stand to see things for what they are or how they came to be.
This corruption of the intellectual world is is just a symptom of a society grown fat on its own stupid success. It says a lot about our modern culture that we could have made life so easy for so many that we now cannot afford to suffer the presence of what are essentially useless people.
Yes ... I say useless ... because what purpose does scholarship and intellectual pursuit have if not to investigate our reality and to chronicle our history with accuracy and clarity? Perhaps once in a while to arrive at some new understanding or perhaps come up with an original (and valid) idea?
Been a while since we've had either result from our so called intellectual leaders.
I wonder what would happen if our educational institutions were to be given over to the rigours of the free market? Sink ... or Swim.... deliver results that matter or starve. I am reminded of at least ONE of the great minds of the renaissance, Leonard da Vinci .... who like many of his peers actually had to work to earn his keep. It seems to me that this did not keep him from exercising his creative mind and producing both ideas and physical constructions that we value to this day ... some 500 years later thank you. Perhaps Einstein would be worth considering? Did our 20th century guru of understanding the nature of our universe have his food and shelter provided for the simple act of exercising his brain? Hardly.
In comparison to our overindulged and under scrutinized elites of today?
Now don't get me started on the stundents!
OMMAG
WHY SCIENTISTS HAVE SQUANDERED PUBLIC TRUST
I have commented before about the political problems of the scientific community, which are typically being turned around against Republicans. In a post last month I recalled the 2004 remark by Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin in the New York Review of Books that “Most scientists are, at a minimum, liberals,” and the caution of MIT’s Kerry Emanuel about the dangers of “group think” and the “shocking lack of political diversity among American academics.” He concluded that “Until this profound and well-documented intellectual homogeneity changes, scientists will be suspected of constituting a leftist think tank.”
Well, this week the National Academy of Sciences had a chance to do something about this, and . . . completely blew it. A two-day symposium on science and public policy featured a panel of presidential science advisers, but the panel included only advisers to Democratic presidents, including Obama’s science adviser, the egregious John (sterilize the public) Holdren. The others were two advisers for Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter’s science adviser, the 87-year-old Frank Press.
Conspicuously missing from the panel was President Reagan’s science adviser Jay Keyworth, who is a spry 72. (He turns out to be the only living GOP science adviser.) When asked why Keyworth wasn’t invited, NAS president Ralph Cicerone said, “We didn’t want to go back that far.”
So let’s see: having Jimmy Carter’s 87-year-old science adviser apparently isn’t “going back that far,” but having Reagan’s still active 72-year old science adviser would be? And please tell me again why we shouldn’t regard scientific elites with suspicion?
Maybe the NAS should put together a panel to explore the strange bubble around the scientific establishment that distorts its outlook on the world. I used to respect Cicerone, in part for staring down the enviros when they tried to prevent an NAS panel on geoengineering. But no more. These people deserve every calumny thrown their way.
Link to Source at Powerline
Why? or How ? or When Exactly?
The world is full of revisionists in all walks of life. People who simply cannot stand to see things for what they are or how they came to be.
This corruption of the intellectual world is is just a symptom of a society grown fat on its own stupid success. It says a lot about our modern culture that we could have made life so easy for so many that we now cannot afford to suffer the presence of what are essentially useless people.
Yes ... I say useless ... because what purpose does scholarship and intellectual pursuit have if not to investigate our reality and to chronicle our history with accuracy and clarity? Perhaps once in a while to arrive at some new understanding or perhaps come up with an original (and valid) idea?
Been a while since we've had either result from our so called intellectual leaders.
I wonder what would happen if our educational institutions were to be given over to the rigours of the free market? Sink ... or Swim.... deliver results that matter or starve. I am reminded of at least ONE of the great minds of the renaissance, Leonard da Vinci .... who like many of his peers actually had to work to earn his keep. It seems to me that this did not keep him from exercising his creative mind and producing both ideas and physical constructions that we value to this day ... some 500 years later thank you. Perhaps Einstein would be worth considering? Did our 20th century guru of understanding the nature of our universe have his food and shelter provided for the simple act of exercising his brain? Hardly.
In comparison to our overindulged and under scrutinized elites of today?
Now don't get me started on the stundents!
OMMAG
posted by OMMAG at 8:38 p.m.
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