Gordon

I would hardly equate "sad commentary" to "liking it".

There are two apparent problems here:

1. that scientists are unable to convince the public when problems 
occur. I saw this first hand with ozone depletion and this is not helped 
by pseudo-scientific nay-saying, most often perpetrated by scientists 
whose discipline is far removed from the subject in question.

2. that the public are more readily convinced by laymen with the gift of 
the gab, such as politicians and actors, who choose a bandwagon to jump 
on, little matter that it is travelling north or south.

This boils down to a communications gap.

As for your comments on belligerence, I'm afraid I cannot agree with 
you. I have lived through the second worst war (I count WW1 as the 
worst) in history and I have seen the death, the wanton destruction, the 
rape, the pillage, the torture, the hunger, the waste, all funded by the 
public. As a conscript, having seen active service, I never wish to see 
anything related to conflict again and that includes the manufacture of 
arms, which are an essential part of conflict.

Obviously, I'm now entering the field of politics for which I'm not 
qualified to speak, except as an EU citizen with a personal opinion 
(even though politicians consider themselves, de facto, qualified to 
speak about my science). Most of today's conflicts, except possibly some 
in Africa and in the Caucasus, have been sparked by interference in the 
sovereign rights of states by the USA and that has been the cause of the 
rise of Al Qaida.

I live in a country still divided by conflict which was directly backed 
by Henry Kissinger and his troupe to appease the US's Turkish ally. Even 
today, new mass graves are being uncovered where ethnic cleansing took 
place. And the only reason the US hasn't interfered in Zimbabwe is 
because there is no oil there.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the US people or the USA; I 
have enjoyed my many visits to the USA. What I dislike is the policy of 
imperially acting as the self-imposed world's gendarme and thereby 
causing strife that almost inevitably backfires on the country, as has 
happened so many times and is happening today in Iraq and elsewhere. One 
of your great presidents is reputed to have said, "You may fool all the 
people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the 
time; but you can’t fool all of the people all the time." It is a pity 
that the respective Administrations did not take this to heart, sending 
the flower of your youth to be killed in Viet Nam and in Iraq. In both 
cases, the people have seen the folly of war against paper tigers. Not 
to mention that if the money ploughed into these conflicts had been 
spent on social issues, the US economy would have been booming, instead 
of which, the dollar is hovering around an all-time low against other 
currencies, the national and personal debts are at their highest ever 
and your balance of payments is strongly negative - and your country's 
reputation outside the USA is as low as the economy.

Brian

Joe Fjelstad wrote:
> _http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/aug07/5413_ 
> (http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/aug07/5413)    
> 
> 
> 
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