This profile of Freeman Dyson is must reading for all those who admire creative — and courageous — thinking. It’s even more important reading for those who tend to toward group-think.
Beyond Dyson’s scientific genius, John Tierney admires his “humanism and optimism.”
What should be first on a new President Obama’s agenda? Merely an
emergency rescue of human civilization
That’s all.
You can already see what’s going to happen. They’re going to put up some solar panels in the Arizona desert and some windmills in North Dakota. Then, after the Sun changes cycles and we get global cooling in about 10 years — as many scientists predict — Al’s going to crow like the rooster, thinking he saved the world.
Ross Douthat informs us that author Michael Crichton died on election day.
Crichton took science seriously. That’s not to say he did serious science, or that his novels were scrupulously realistic. But he made science fun to popular audiences and passed along an imaginative curiosity in the possibilities and perils of nature.
A number of years ago, before it was de rigueur, he also warned that our public officials, courts, and media were not scientifically literate. And that this was increasingly dangerous in our complex and knowledge-accelerated world. His books were often too alarmist for my taste, but he made up for that foible in the last few years. With State of Fear and a series of public lectures and testimony, he bravely took on the global warming alarmist crowd. And I think he was right.
RIP.
Maximum Entropy