Saturday 19 November 2016

inherit the wind or john henry was a steel-driving man

Though polls placing the United States between Latvia and Turkey when it came to tolerance for the concept of evolution and natural selection—simple scientific curiosity with or without decrying that it’s only a theory, were sampled well before the farce of democracy that was the US election, I am sure that the vice-president elect inserting his sanctimonious nose into the halls of academia and reaffirming his beliefs (unbidden by the scientific community) only goes to reinforce the incuriousness of his constituency, secure in having their foundations unrattled.
This does not bode well for the state of American education, nor for those institutions that drive progress, no matter how support might be spun to curry favour with certain parts of the industry. One’s rose-tinted convictions have little to do with mastery of the extant, rentier economy—that of branding, trademarks and profits gleaned off the friction of moving assets around, and these models are easily given over to machines that would indubitably conspire to out-perform humans. I wonder how it feels to encourage and reach out to those with the world view that is in danger of becoming redundant. I’m wagering that when manufacturing returns to America, it won’t be with the attendant jobs as expected but rather with more automation. Artificial intelligence will surely be innovative as well in ways we cannot imagine or possibly understand (and robots are not surrogates for gods and angels) but I do not think we could factor in at all unless scientifically literate.  Not only might business-driven science be more reckless with trying the untested, public health and environmental degradation globally will pass the tipping point and become unsalvageable as we’ve known it. It’s going to be a long, painful regime, with the swapping of titles, ร  la russe to skirt or trounce term limits. Even though entering his fifth term Trump will be in his nineties, he be as spry as ever, having regenerated and taken a donor body.