It seems there's nothing like natural beauty to bring out the best in high-definition technology. The BBC's Planet Earth: The Complete Series has been wowing high-definition audiences in the States where it's been pronounced as the biggest money-spinner to ever hit the HD-DVD and Blu-ray disc market.

Great! So maybe people really do want to know more about science ...

"This series was made for high definition," Sanders says. "Its success points to consumers wanting to see and hear high-definition content, and there isn't a huge amount of true content available from broadcast or cable or satellite."

Oh, I guess not. It's just about pretty pictures and high-tech bling.

BBC's Planet Earth is highest grossing HD disc in US

Although the number of students enrolled in science and engineering graduate programs in the United States has increased by 25 percent from 1994 to 2001, the number of U.S. citizens enrolled in these programs has declined by 10 percent during that period.

In the same week as the Time/People/Fortune group of magazines laid off their three science writers they paid $4.1 million for the pictures of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s baby.

Are American Scientists an Endangered Species?

Witness the bluntness of John Brockman.

This idea -- that science is something for kids -- still pervades much of our thinking, and characterizes the presentation of science in culture. Part of it is the notion that argues science is just a bunch of facts with no overarching coherence. Just as bad are the media ...

"Science is a state of mind. It is a way of viewing the world, of facing reality square on but taking nothing for granted." It would be hard to argue that this state of mind was advancing across the globe. We no longer make and mend, so we no longer know how anything works.

This persistent apathy in matters of science in America and Britain comes in part from a lack of interest in what the future might hold.

... The universe may be infinite, but John Brockman takes 15 per cent of it ... "Since when have the masses of people had any ideas anyway?" Brockman asks. "It is always a certain percentage of people who do the thinking for everybody else."

James Watson:

"I recently went to my staircase at Clare College, Cambridge and there were women there! There have been a lot of convincing studies recently about the loss of productivity in the Western male. It may be that entertainment culture now is so engaging that it keeps people satisfied. We didn't have that. Science was much more fun than listening to the radio. When you are 16 or 17 and in that inherently semi-lonely period when you are deciding whether to be an intellectual, many now don't bother."

Perhaps one day there will be a market for "scientific Viagra."

The new age of ignorance

Across the board, political decision making increasingly depends upon highly technical information. So science itself is being drawn into ever more political contexts in which it is covered by media, spun by advocates, and misused by politicians. This won't happen on every research subject, but it will surely happen on the high-profile, controversial ones. We've already seen the same pattern on climate change, embryonic stem cell research, reproductive health, evolution, and many other topics. And I suspect we will see it with future issues on the horizon like genetic engineering and nanotechnology ...

Scientists who try to communicate on these subjects often feel as if they're howling into a maelstrom ...

Endeavor to find out what the public thinks before trying to change its mind or sway its opinion. Try to learn which messages will resonate, and which ones will not.

Or, just contact the General Memetics Corporation.

Seed: Emotional Rescue

Some follow-up on the Dyson article, Our Biotech Future.

Dyson accidentally approaches the great dilemma of biotechnology, but does not address it directly, when he writes that, unlike biological evolution, “cultural evolution is not Darwinian. Cultures spread by horizontal transfer of ideas more than by genetic inheritance.”

He takes this to mean that cultural evolution is more efficient. But cultural evolution is far more precarious than biological evolution. Cultural advances are preserved and transmitted not by genes but by education: they require the self-conscious passing down of knowledge and ideas. The fear of undermining that task of transmission through the biotechnological alteration of humanity is what motivates the worries of the “bioconservatives,” (*) and what threatens to rob the biotech revolution of any limiting principle at all. (I sought, with mixed success, to lay out this theme at some length in this 2004 essay.)

The positive potential of biotech is clear and enormous—as Dyson points out in his characteristically brilliant way. But its unique risks are also enormous. We need to understand both to be able to foster biotechnology without harming ourselves or our culture. Dyson falls far short in clarifying those risks.

(*)

Forget Osama bin Laden and the so-called clash of civilizations. The defining political conflict of the 21st century will literally be the battle over life and death.

Why die?

Dyson, Right and Wrong

The title says it all, I suppose. Click through for the ones with babies in space.

This one says, "Uphold science, eliminate superstition".

There are lots more besides these.

Stefan Landsberger's Chinese Propaganda Poster Pages--Chinese Space Program

Cruising the pack-ice very slowly, we discovered this Polar Bear and her cubs in the afternoon of June 18th 2006, in the Hinlopen Strait on the east side of Spitsbergen. They had just caught a Bearded Seal and were feasting on it. We were very lucky to be able to watch this wonderful event for almost three quarters of an hour.

Polar Bears of Spitsbergen

Innovation begets risk, almost by definition. When something is truly new, only so much can be predicted about how it will play out. Proponents of a discovery often see and believe only in the benefits it will deliver. But when it comes to innovations in food and medicine, belief can be dangerous.

A Challenge to Gene Theory, a Tougher Look at Biotech

Richard Ogle has some ideas about ideas, though apparently he has never heard of memetics.

Since ancient times, people have believed that breakthrough ideas come from the brains of geniuses with awesome rational powers. In recent years, however, the paradigm has begun to shift toward the notion that the source of creativity lies “out there,” in the network of connections between people and ideas.

In this provocative book, Richard Ogle crystallizes the nature of this shift, and boldly outlines “a new science of ideas.” The key resides in what he calls “idea-spaces,” a set of nodes in a network of people (and their ideas) that cohere and take on a distinctive set of characteristics leading to the generation of breakthrough ideas. These spaces are governed by nine laws--illuminated in individual chapters with fascinating stories of dramatic breakthroughs in science, business, and art.

Smart World will change forever the way we think about creativity and innovation.

The introduction and part of the first chapter are available. After reading them, I can't say I'm planning to buy this book. The style strikes me as hokey. For example:

As will become evident, the successes of Dave Brubeck's "Time Out" and the iPod both exemplify the workings of network laws, demonstrating how the law of hotspots and the law of the fit get fitter lead to tipping points.

Ogle is clearly going after Gladwell's audience, but his vignettes, though considerably popularized, still seem a bit too academic. And many of his chapters are on well-trodden topics: relativity theory, DNA, cubism, printing with movable type, the personal computer, the Internet, the iPod. For each there is already a better book to read.

Smart World: Breakthrough Creativity And the New Science of Ideas

It's interesting to see people so worked up over this.

Jared Diamond, professor of evolutionary biology and Pulitzer Prize winner, says: "Those astronomers now preparing again to beam radio signals out to hoped-for extraterrestrials are naive, even dangerous."

I've always expressed disdain for SETI@home, but this is even more useless, though perhaps less wasteful:

Cosmic Connexion, a firm based near Cape Canaveral in Florida, invites you to e-mail your messages to them and they will then beam them, free, into space and "introduce you to extraterrestrials."

Today MySpace, tomorrow MyUniverse. Just imagine the time sink of approving all those friend requests ...

Is the search for aliens such a good idea?