Of Ends and Odds

"Maxwell Smart" died today. Or perhaps I should say, Don Adams. Or, to be perfectly accurate, Donald James Yarmy.

"Get Smart" was one of the few TV shows we were allowed to watch, as children. (others permitted were, "The Flintstones," and "Time Tunnel," to name two. Also, just about any National Geographic special)

I have vivid memories of one episode where someone caught a tarantula with a jar. The catch being, the jar was full of mayonaise at the time. That, and agent Smart's nasal voice talking into his shoe. Ah.....memories. Now most of the "happenin'" shows involve creepy supernatural themes or lame space adventures. Hardly anyone talks into a shoe phone, anymore.

And speaking of diversity, I'm sure we are all relieved to know that Barbara Streisand has taken valuable time out from promoting her latest CD, to call attention to the Global Warming emergency.

Wouldn't it be great if a little thoughtful investigation went into these calls for mass anxiety? Say, checking out the historical record, for example? Or, maybe even consulting and listening to people in a position to know a few facts about the situation?

But then, it's so awfully hard to get those research grants, if there isn't something incredibly scary approaching. Notra Trulock reports in an October 2002 Accuracy In Media article:

It's Not About the Science

The dirty secret is that global warming is driven more by the search for funding than the search for scientific truth. "Big science" was adrift in the early 1990s, like many other beneficiaries of the Cold War, and was desperate to sustain its federal funding. Global warming had all the key attributes of the next big cause. It could be used to frighten the politicians and the public, using threats of catastrophic consequences to extract billions of dollars for research to prevent it. The science was immature, and the door was wide open to all sorts of proposals and projects by scientists promising solutions. High-performance computers were the tools, and the projects promised to be long-term and career-sustaining. Getting funds was easy. As MIT Professor Lindzen has noted, "saving the planet" had a nice ring to it and seemed to portend big bucks at the end of the global warming rainbow.

Mankind's fault AND lucrative. A real winning combination. You can check out the entire AIM Report # 15, here.

*sigh*

I have no intention of turning this into a political rant/blog. But one just can't keep quiet, forever....

Tomorrow, back to the usual "world distracting" drivel you've come to expect :-)

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