In Waterloo, Ontario, a seventeen year old boy wins a science competition by finding a way to compost plastic bags in a matter of months (rather than decades). Catch that, folks? Seventeen years old.
Meanwhile, here in America, the findings of twenty years of evolutionary research are cavalierly dismissed by that intellectual vanguard (not), Conservapedia. Without Andy Schlafly bothering to read the precis, mind you. I think that we can officially consider the phrase "conservative values" an oxymoron, thank you very much.
I truly marvel at the H1-B "shortage". For the life of me, I cannot understand why someone who could make it through college--intellectually and financially--in another country would want to come to America to be a white-collar coolie in a nation of xenophobic, anti-intellectual nutbags. As long as politicians on both sides of the aisle--I'm glaring at you, Senator Obama--give these flat-earthers the time of day, they'll immolate still more resources than we can afford in their auto-da-fes.
But, bringing the discussion back around to the clever Mr. Burd, it's good to see the brighter minds turned to working with the resources we've already ripped from this planet, rather than continuing to exploit them as if their supply were limitless. Now, if only someone could find a way to convert human stupidity into electricity, we'd be set... You could plug a fleet of electric cars into Conservapedia every night. Then, at least, these morons would stop being a drain on society.
Update, 07.03.2008, 16:14 GMT:
From CNet's U.N. report: Clean energy booming globally:
Public investment in wind topped $11 billion globally last year, but none of that came from the United States, the report said. [emphasis added]Considering how the Plains States are leaking --sometimes hemorrhaging--people as rural communities go under, there's no excuse for not replacing the ag. farms with wind farms. And that without the NIMBY namby-pambiness that so often accompanies their installation. (e.g., the landscape can bristle with cellphone towers and billboards, but for crissakes, spare us the wind towers!)
Keeping things in perspective, there's no lack of stupidity or cupidity everywhere you go. But the example that's being set by our soi-dissant leaders, in both the public and private sectors, is considerably less than edifying. Civilizations can decay in any number of ways, not all of them calamitously. There's a difference between a compost pile and a cesspool, and the stench of the latter is becoming more palpable each year.
