Undoubtedly one of the oldest and most celebrated events in the year, the winter solstice has had great importance throughout history, in just about every culture. From Japan’s celebration of Amateratsu’s return to the Incan Empire’s Inti Raymi festival, from Scotland’s Hogmany to the pre-Zoroastrian festival Shabe Chelle, the renewal of light and warmth (not to mention the agricultural scheduling and astronomical importance) has held a place of honor in our cultures.

So light a fire, spend time with friends, sing a song or two, hoist a favorite beverage, and welcome the sun back for another year.

The library is being torn down to make room for a new luxury hotel, and in order to keep within the bylaws that established the library, which state that the building at that location is required to be a library, they’re going to pigeonhole a small library into the basement.

The tragedy here is what this says about people’s priorities. That a library, a place of learning and education, built so that the citizens of our country can have a place to learn and read and educate themselves on whatever topic interests them, for them to benefit from the accumulated knowledge of humanity, should be so casually brushed aside; only hanging onto a thread of life because of a small law that prevents it from being completely destroyed, as no doubt the people building the hotel would have preferred.

It is a sad state of affairs. One more brick in the anti-intelligence wall that American society is steadily building. Intelligence, education, and knowledge are no longer considered things to strive for, and ignorance and stupidity are held up as virtues. Anyone who speaks for intelligence is labeled as ‘elitist’ and scorned.

Well, I’ll admit it. I am elitist. When I need my car fixed, I want an expert mechanic. When I need a doctor, I want one who has spent years studying medicine. And when I’m interested in the way things work, I want to talk to scientists and engineers. I don’t want someone who proudly proclaims their total ignorance and inability to understand math to be my accountant.

Intelligence is a good thing. Learning is a good thing. Education is a good thing. They are all needed for our civilization to endure. And taking away the resources people need to learn is another step on the road to barbarism.

I love the old-world style of these systems, like something out of H.G. Wells or Jules Verne.

For those who have not heard, Sarah Palin was speaking about re-prioritizing government spending, and how money could be spent on helping autistic children, rather that ‘pet projects’. Here is the important phrase: “You’ve heard about some of these pet projects they really don’t make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.”

While mocking fruit fly research, Gov. Palin might have found it useful to know that research on fruit flies has made<a href=”http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070905123832.htm”>valuable</a> <a href=”http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070905123832.htm”>discoveries</a> in the possible causes of autism in humans, and are involved in <a href=”http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070905123832.htm”>ongoing research</a> in autism as well as </a href=”http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070905123832.htm”>other areas</a>.

Now, odds are, since she mentioned Paris, that she was referring to the ongoing research into the olive fruit fly, due to the infestation of California olive crops. The research is valuable, even if there is a viable debate on if it should be federally or state funded. It certainly is not a worthless boondoggle that exists just to siphon money off to a politician’s supporters.

Some other areas of fruit fly research include:

• University of Oxford: Studies giving insight on aging
• Studies being done on Alzheimers
• Studies being done on how insulin works
• Studies done on drugs to show generational affects. A fruit fly can show the affects on 3 generations in a month, & give drug approval faster for those needing the drugs.
• Studies on neural disease
• Studies on cell cycle regulation (helpful with understanding cancer cell growth)
• Studies on the affect of genes by cancer drugs

All of these were found in a few seconds of searching Google. Even the most minimal research would have turned up this information. I know, expecting research for a political speech is having extraordinarily high hopes.

This event isn’t a solitary beacon of ignorance, however. There is not only a rising tide of anti-intellegence within society, there is a corresponding wave of being proud of being ignorant. It goes beyond the ‘Science is for nerds’ attitude in school and the sterotypical ‘Math is hard!’ complaints and becomes a bragging point, where the inability to do math or the absence of any understanding of science or technology is a point of pride, something to be paraded about and displayed as a badge of honor.

When did it become preferable to be ignorant? What happened to the ‘clever Yank’ archetype that promoted intellegence and study, the belief that knowledge was power?  Sure, there is an overwhelming amount of information in today’s world, and no one person can be expected to be an expert in all of it. But a bsic understanding of the basic scientific underpinnings, the essential scientific methods used to research and develop this knowledge, that should be well within the reach of anyone. And the reasoning and critical thinking skills imparted by this knowledge would be of immesurable value to its possessor. The ability to use ones reason to determine the best course to take, the most likely events, the most reliable information, this is something that is used every day of our lives.

So why deliberately hinder yourself with ignorance?

But these familiar estimates of size and distance do not prepare us for the sheer breadth and depth of scale that await us when we look up from our immediate environment and peer into the universe. As Douglas Adams said so eloquently, ‘Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.’

As an example, think about this. The Earth is covered with mountains and valleys, so the natural assumption would be to consider the Earth as being wrinkled, bumpy.  But proportionally, the Earth is actually smoother than a billiard ball. In order to exceed the tolerances defined for billiard balls, Mt Everest would have be over 3 times its current height, and the Marianas Trench would have to be over twice as deep as its current depth. One doesn’t normally think of the Earth as smooth, but on that scale it is.

Or take our solar system. At between one and two light years in radius (depending on what you are using as a definition of the outer limits), it seems large. The sun is only 8 light minutes from Earth, so imagine the vast distance that two light years encompasses. And yet the Milky Way is over a hundred thousand light years across, containing at least 200 billion stars, perhaps as many as 400 billion. That’s over 30-60 stars for every human being on the planet. And the Milky Way is just one of billions of galaxies that we can detect in the observable universe, and not even the largest of them.

The sheer size and vastness of the universe is overwhelming, but in a good way. The universe is a wonderous and awe-inspiring place, and while trying to get a sense of scale may be an uphill climb, it is one well worth making.

This got me thinking of the assumptions inherent in such a statement, and the fallacies that can and often do appear in such discussions.

The first and most obvious potential fallacy is right in the statement itself. Two sides. Either-or. Known as the False Dichotomy fallacy, is assumes that there are only two possible sides or positions on the topic. It would be like saying that a politician can only be a Republican or a Democrat, or that a credit card has either a zero balance or is completely maxed out. Clearly, there are additional possibilities for both of those situations. But in so many cases, people tend to assume the ‘two sides’ presentation as a given.

As an example, lets take climate change. I’ve heard various people say several times that either humanity’s pollution and industrial output is the major or even sole driving force behind the current change in global climate, or that humanity’s activities have negligible impact on the global climate. In either case, no mention is made of other possibilities, such as the fact that humanity’s addition to the world’s CO2 levels might be combining with other, non-human, factors to bring about a change in climate, or that perhaps the globe was heading in the current direction already, but our additions have accelerated the process.

Frankly, the all or nothing choices seem to both be clearly flawed, chosen more for their emotional impact or to fit in with preconceived conclusions than from any attempt to discover the actual state of events. This tends to manifest itself as very black and white thinking, fostering a ‘with us or against us’ point of view. In the above example, both the propositions that mankind is solely responsible for the changing climate, and that mankind has no affect on the climate whatsoever, are both clearly untenable. Therefore, both ‘sides’ (and I use the term advisedly) can use the false dichotomy to bolster their own position. “Man clearly can’t be solely responsible for the planet’s weather, so we’re not having any effect.” or “Obviously we have to have some effect on our environment, therefore climate change has to be caused by our activities.”

The obvious answer to both statements is, of course, that the truth is probably much more complex.

This brings me to my next thought. A common fallacy is to assume that all sides of an argument are equally true or must be given equal weight. Given two possibilities, A and B, one cannot assume that the chance that A is the correct possibility is the same as the chance that B is the correct possibility. The evidence supporting each option must be considered and weighed, and the probability of each option assessed. Arguments with more and better evidence are given more credibility and more weight, while arguments with less or flawed evidence are diminished and given less consideration. Arguments with no evidence at all should not be considered as valid until such time as they acquire some.

Let’s say that two proposals are made:

• That the Earth is round (well, an oblate spheroid), orbits the sun, and floats in space.
• The Earth is flat, is stationary while the sun orbits it, and rests upon the backs of giant turtles.

Given the mountain of evidence for the first proposal, and the paucity of evidence for the second, it would be madness to consider them equally likely. Yet every day, people make this fundamental mistake, in all walks of life. Evolution/Creationism, Medicine/Homeopathy, 4.5 billion year old Earth/6000 year old Earth, Astronomy/Astrology.

An essential part of rational thought is to weigh the evidence and to recognize that not all ideas are created equal. They thrive or die depending on how well they match up with the evidence.

Currently, fusion power plants are likely to be feasible in our lifetime. Maybe near the end of it, but with luck maybe sooner. Considering the benefits of fusion as a power source, including decreased environmental impact, greater energy production for a given amount of fuel, and abundance of said fuel. The lithium contained in the Earth’s oceans is sufficient for 60 million years at 1995 world power use. Even if power use triples, that’s 20 million years. Sextuples, 10 million. If we use the D-D fuel cycle, 150 billion years.

Fusion’s byproducts vary, depending on which fusion process is used. The easiest process, the D-T fuel cycle, is also the one that produces the most radioactive material. Not from the fuel itself, mind you, but from the bombardment of the reactor materials by escaping neutrons. However, unlike the byproducts from fission reactions, the half-life of the fusion radioisotopes is much shorter and as a result cools off to safe levels far faster. The waste from fission reactions tends to remain radioactive for thousands of years. The reactor core from a fusion reactor (the most dangerous byproduct of fusion) would be dangerous for 50 years, mildly radioactive for 100. And that’s using a core made of standard materials. Due to fusion’s differing materials requirements, fusion cores could be designed using alternative materials chosen for their low activation properties, properties that cause the material to resist becoming radioactive. Vanadium is one. Carbon Fiber is another.

And let’s talk nuclear accidents. Is a fission reactor, the core remains hot via beta decay for hours or days after shutdown, meaning that a meltdown or wildcatting can still occur. A fusion reactor, however, requires precise conditions of temperature, magnetic field density,and pressure. Shut down the plant (and thus, for example, the magnetic bottle) and fusion can no longer occur. It just stops. Fuel use comes into play as well. A fission reactor typically has fuel for months, if not years, within the core. Fusion reactors tend to only have a few grams of fuel available at one time. And the normal byproduct, tritium? It has a 12-year half-life (which is one reason it is so hard to find in nature), and the amount being generated/used at any one time would be less than a kilogram, even after adding in the lithium needed for deuterium/tritium conversion. If it were to be released by an accident (it is in gaseous form), it would disperse to safe levels before it passed the plant’s security fence.

Yet Greenpeace spokesperson Bridget Woodman said: “Nuclear fusion has all the problems of nuclear power, including producing nuclear waste and the risks of a nuclear accident.”

Well, maybe in the same way that setting off a firecracker has all the problems of setting off a hand grenade. Maybe Greenpeace should actually do some research for a change.