Author of LGBTQIA+ speculative fiction and poetry in English and Esperanto. Teacher of scientific writing. Lover of natural history. SFWA Secretary. (he/him)
I finally paid for the pro version of Independent Analytics that provides traffic analysis for my website. The free version really provides enough. But I like the system well enough that I wanted to provide support for them to encourage further development. I purchased a permanent license.
My author website is (mostly) the first site I’ve tried to build in WordPress. (Although I did set up a Comic Press site for Doctor Emery’s Nightmares back in the day.) In my previous career, I set up hand-coded websites in HTML and was an expert with Drupal which I used to set up websites for a bunch of organizations. But, when I wanted to build an author site, I decided that WordPress was probably the best fit for what I was trying to do. (In large part because my hosting service, Dreamhost, did the install and does the maintenance for the system. It’s not like I can’t do that for myself, but it means I spend less time worrying about tracking and applying security patches.)
After I set up my website, I was interested in getting usage statistics, but WordPress doesn’t really provide any natively. I looked around a bit and settled on the Independent Analytics plugin as the best fit for my needs. It is attractively designed, provides almost all of the basic functionality that you might want, and has some gentle teasers for advanced functionality you can unlock by purchasing the “pro” version.
The main thing you can do with the pro version, is run “campaigns” that let you collect data to compare and test different approaches. It also provides a very pretty overview dashboard with the basic statistics. It’s probably overkill for what I’m trying to do. But, as I say, the free version is really plenty to provide the basic functionality anyone would want.
I love fountain pens. I don’t actually write by hand much. But when I sell books at conventions, its expected I sign books, so I always make a point of having a nice fountain pen that is appropriately inked before I go.
Several years ago, when I needed to get a new fountain pen, I had gotten a beautiful Jinhao pen with a porcelain barrel showing an image of delicate plum blossoms. I’d really liked that pen. When I needed a new one a few years later, I looked again, but couldn’t find the same pen. I found a similar pen, however, (pictured above) which was absurdly cheap, so I bought two:
When the pens arrived (after about a month, shipped surface via container ship) they were perfectly satisfactory. But I noticed that they had some Chinese script that, interestingly, wasn’t shown in the promotional image. It made me wonder… What does it say? Is it the name of some bank? Does it say “Death to America”? I kept meaning to get it translated but not getting around to it. This morning I finally found time.
I took the picture above and fed it into Google Translate. I usually leave Google Translate set to translate between Japanese and English and it does provide a translation in Japanese, but what it said seemed rather cryptic:
Mai Muroto Ikatoide
Plum Blossom Palace Jiku Kanta
I set it to Detect Language and let it try again. Then I set it to Chinese (Traditional) to confirm that they were the same:
The sword dance in the room is sharpened by the deer.
Plum Blossom Palace is cold and beautiful.
The first seems like some kind of proverb or saying, but one that the English Internet seems unfamiliar with. Plum Blossom Palace similarly doesn’t seem to return any obvious hits.
So now I know, anyway, for whatever good that does. I still like the pens and it makes people happy to have me use a pretty pen to sign their books.
Representing disability is important in fiction. Many years ago, I saw someone who said that, rather than calling some people “disabled,” we should call everyone else “temporarily abled.” Because if you don’t have a disability now, you will. If you live long enough, almost everyone will go through some period of their life with a disability: a broken foot, gout, a bout of depression, etc. After I was hospitalized, I discovered that I have a disability: a chronic lung condition that limits my life in significant ways.
Today, my wife and I attended a flag raising for Disability Pride Month. The Town Council of Amherst wrote a proclamation and raised a flag to recognize and celebrate people with disabilities. And to commemorate the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which has been transformative for ensuring access for disabled people. It was an opportunity for to me to reflect on the writing I’ve done representing disabled characters. I have several stories that represent characters with disabilities, both physical and mental. But one character stands out.
One of my favorite characters in the Revin’s Heart series is the Professor. Revin’s first meets him when he sees a glider fly from the mountain top of the island where the pirates have their base and land on the beach.
[The glider] skidded to a stop, and then flipped over. Revin, with his sharp eyes, could see someone strapped into the device with a harness.
Revin sprinted down the switchbacks of the trail to the sea. A few of the most athletic pirates got ahead of him by running straight down, bypassing the switchbacks. But five or six of them arrived at more or less the same time to see the man — for they could see now it was a man — with wild white hair and a gray beard scramble out of the harness. But Revin could see something was terribly wrong. The front half of him was crawling out of the harness, but he was leaving his legs behind.
“Aaaa! What’s happened to your legs?” Revin asked in shock.
“Those aren’t my legs,” the man growled. “Those are just for balance.”
“But you don’t have any legs! What happened to your legs?” Revin persisted.
“Airshark got ’em,” the man replied, gravely. “Have you ever seen an airshark? Terrible creatures.”
Revin was dubious. He started to open his mouth, then realized that all of the pirates were standing in a circle, watching his facial expressions, and trying not to laugh. He turned bright, bright red and they exploded with laughter, rolling on the ground. Gently hazing the new cabin boy was a popular pastime among the pirates. And now the strenuous efforts of the pirates to get there ahead of him were explained.
The backstory of how the Professor came to not have legs is never described in the books. Revin discovers soon, however, that the Professor brilliantly supervises the team of pirates that maintains the airship and keeps it airworthy. He uses hand-braces to move around and is clearly a genius inventor, scientist, and engineer. He’s blunt, plain-spoken, and gruff, but you soon learn that he really cares about Revin and the other pirates.
Grip […] sent Revin to the Professor to request he construct a practice sword with similar properties to the real sword. He looked at the sword, then looked at Revin fiercely from under his bushy eyebrows.
“You’re going to get yourself killed if you play with these things,” he grumbled.
“I want to be able to protect my friends,” Revin said.
“Worry about yourself first,” the Professor said. “You can’t help anyone if you’re dead.”
“Please?” Revin said, sweetly.
“Ugh. It’s your funeral,” the Professor said. “We’ll have something for you by tomorrow.”
It isn’t until much later that Revin learns that there’s larger backstory to the Professor than he realizes. They travel together on a secret mission when Revin discovers that the Professor is actually a famous member of the Royal Academy. Everyone in academic circles knows the Professor.
[Revin] stood conferring with the Professor about what to do for the night when someone said, “Professor Grexin? Is that you?”
“Eh?” the Professor said, turning toward the newcomer, a middle‑aged academic wearing University garb.
“It is you!” the man continued excitedly. “You probably don’t remember me: Niles Ender. I saw your talk five years ago on hydrogen generation using algae and we spoke for a bit at the reception that followed. What are you doing back here?”
“I’m just visiting my nephew,” the Professor said, clapping Revin on the back.
“Wow! You must be so proud to have a famous uncle like Professor Grexin!
When they’re attacked by highway men, Revin learns that there is more to the Professor than meets the eye.
Revin and the Professor got ready to sleep. They were about to get into the bedrolls when Art [their coachman] appeared around the corner of the wagon accompanied by two other men. With their swords drawn, they charged toward Revin and the Professor.
Revin drew his sword and put himself en garde. Considering the Professor no threat, Art and the two men bypassed him to attack Revin. Revin began to panic, wondering how he could possibly defend himself against all three of them. Suddenly, the two other men staggered and, with their eyes rolling up in their heads, collapsed. Art looked surprised and distracted at the sudden loss of his allies. Revin lunged forward and caught him in the throat. Art fell over clutching at his neck and expired with blood spurting through his fingers.
Revin stared wild‑eyed at the Professor, who stood with his arm braces raised.
“What just happened?” Revin gasped.
“I keep each of my arm braces loaded with a poisoned dart,” he said. “They must have figured me for no threat. But they were wrong.”
When they arrive at the Hermitage (a research institute), the Professor is again recognized as the famous scholar he is and they are invited to attend a formal dinner, Revin learns yet something new about this enigmatic character. When a toast is proposed that celebrates using science for war, the Professor pours out his glass on the floor and hand-walks out of the room.
With the toast out of the way, Revin was concerned that his lack of knowledge about polite dining would make him stand out. But he needn’t have worried. The scientists couldn’t care less about etiquette and appeared to use forks and spoons randomly — or not at all — which allowed Revin to relax and enjoy the meal. Watching the servants, though, he began to awaken to how easy it was to become complacent about your station in life. And to become complicit in sustaining inequalities. His respect for the Professor went up, to be willing to be true to himself and publicly demonstrate his commitment to his principles. And he began to see how the Professor and Will, a captain of pirates, had found common ground.
The Professor is one of my favorite characters in Revin’s Heart. He continues to show up in the (as yet) unpublished sequels to Revin’s Heart. In Ecorozire, Revin visits the Hermitage, where the Professor has retired after the pirates disbanded.
“How is your second retirement going?” Revin asked.
“Oh, it’s wonderful!” the Professor said. “I just come in, sit around, and argue with people all day.”
“Not getting bored, then?” Will pressed.
“Oh, no. No boredom here!”
“Well, then,” Revin said. “I guess you wouldn’t want to go investigate these mysterious coins with eternite in them.” Revin pulled out the necklace shook it at him
This year, I decided to try to attend the Business Meetings of the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) to learn more about the organization. I’ve served in numerous other governance roles, so my perspectives here are largely trying to make sense of these new experiences in those contexts. Here are some preliminary observations.
One caveat about my comments. These are simply my personal observations and should be taken with a grain of salt. If anyone has corrections or suggestions, I would welcome comments to help me learn more.
Worldcon, the World Science Fiction Convention (which I’m attending this year) is governed by the World Science Fiction Society. WSFS is basically an entirely volunteer organization that is constituted of the local group that is organizing to put on the Convention each year.
The business meetings use the Lumi virtual meeting platform. Another organization I belong to (the MTA) has used the same platform for their annual meeting. This platform works pretty well. It uses Zoom at the backend, but runs in a browser window, so it is a bit clunky. In practice, however, it works pretty well to provide access to the documents, let you see who is speaking, and offer a seamless voting interface.
Outside of Lumi, they also set up a Discord server for chat while the meetings are going on, with separate channels for on-topic and off-topic discussion. And the obligate channel for pictures of pets, of course.
There are five meetings scheduled: A preliminary meeting, three business meetings, and an in-person site-selection meeting to be held during Worldcon. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the preliminary meeting. But I did attend the first Business Meeting and it was rather like being thrown into the deep end.
The first business meeting was conducted entirely in executive session. The public agenda was “Report from the Investigation Committee on the 2023 Hugo Awards.” Since the meeting was held in executive session, I can’t discuss the content of the proceedings. But that’s not my goal in this post.
The Presiding Officer is supported by three additional roles. A Parliamentarian advises on points of order, a Timekeeper keeps track of time used for debate for and against motions, and an assistant Presiding Officer manages the on-screen presentation. This allows the Presiding Officer to focus on running the meeting without having to refer to external documents or deal with the technology. As someone who’s served as Presiding Officer for many years (of the UMass Amherst Faculty Senate) it looked like the system worked pretty well.
The meetings are highly structured using Robert’s Rules, with very strict time limits established for debate for each of the topics. When the Presiding Officer presented a motion with the proposed time limits, they asked the body if they could be accepted without objection. With more than a hundred attendees, basically nothing could accepted without objection. The net result was that we then had to have a formulaic vote on each of the time limits. They all passed handily, of course. So objecting (as is typical) just wasted 10 or 15 minutes of time in the meeting. That’s the goal of Robert’s Rules: to allow the meeting to move forward expeditiously while giving people who object the opportunity to make their objection known, even if that objection is not shared by the majority.
One of my goals in attending the meetings is to get a sense of the key players. Some of the people I’ve heard of before. But many are new to me. You can pretty quickly get a sense for who are the people that respect the process and try to make the best of use time. And those who are there to try to derail the proceedings and gum up the works. It’s the same in every organization.
One of the most peculiar aspects of WSFS is that the organization only “exists” during Worldcon. Each year, people buy a membership in WSFS (as part of attending Worldcon or separately) and there are business meetings in the weeks leading up to the convention. The membership gives you the right to attend the business meetings, to vote in Hugo Awards, and to vote for the following years’ site selections. But there is no leadership or on-going meetings during the rest of the year. Several times (both in the meeting and on the Internet generally) I’ve seen people use this as an excuse for why problems can’t be addressed or solved.
There are typically thousands of attendees at Worldcon (~8,000 in Glasgow in 2024) and even more people who purchase memberships to be able to vote (a total of 10,000 memberships). But there are only about 150 people attending the business meetings. It’s time consuming to learn enough about any organization to understand how it works and participate meaningfully.
I currently have no plans to try to get more involved in the governance of WSFS. I’m already serving as Secretary of SFWA and that’s plenty of service, thank you very much. But I’m always interested to see other models and there are enough connections between SFWA and WSFS that learning more about the organization and the key players seems useful.
For several years, I’ve considered attending LOSCON in Los Angeles. This year, I’m going to go!
A few years ago, I was accepted as a participant, but due to my health circumstances at the time, I declined. I was still recovering from being hospitalized and was only attending conventions where masks were required. Now, almost no conventions still require masks. (Readercon, next weekend, is a welcome exception!) And I have recovered from my hospitalization. Well… As much as I am going to recover. So I’ve decided to apply to LOSCON again.
I’m particularly interested in attending this year because next year’s Worldcon is also going to be in Los Angeles. Many of the relevant people will undoubtedly be at Worldcon this year too (which I’m also attending). But it will be a chance to meet the LA folks specifically.
They asked for proposals for panels, so I drafted one that I haven’t seen at conventions before.
Poetry and Songs in Speculative Fiction
One of the enduring traits of Tolkien was his use of poetry, rhyme, and song as essential characteristics of his world building and the lore of the world he created. This panel will explore innovative uses of the lyrical arts to enhance speculative fiction and some of the challenges of adding this dimension to your works.
I hope the panel is accepted. Many of my own stories have had examples of music and/or poetry (e.g. Better Angels: Tour de Force, Something Else to Do in Modern Magic, and others). I think it would be fun to put a panel together to get authors to talk about the topic.
LOSCON takes place over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. I’m looking forward to going!
The final(ish) Schedule for Worldcon has come out and I am on the program! My experience with Worldcons seems to be either feast or famine. I had eight appearances as a participant in Chicago, for my first Worldcon, and then was totally declined as a participant for Glasgow. This year, I’m excited to moderate one panel, appear in six more, and I also have a reading. Here is my schedule in chronological order.
A Familiar Problem. Becoming a powerful demon’s familiar might just be the best thing ever. But what’s the catch? Rory Soletsa is supposed to find his magical familiar, but he doesn’t want something trite, like a cat; or stupid, like a bird; or ugly, like a toad. Amazed when he is captured and becomes the familiar to a powerful demon who presents as a voluptuous, beautiful woman, Rory discovers how much more powerful his magic is with her. And he’s ecstatic when the demon tells him she will train him in advanced offensive and defensive magic. But just what is she training him for?
Note: This session has been rescheduled from Sunday.
Let’s face it, we conduct science in an inherently for-profit environment, which leads to all sorts of biases. How do we work around these built-in barriers to create truly independent science? Without breaking too many laws, of course.
From chapbooks to zines, poetry has a rich history of self-publishing. Whether your goal is merely to get your poems into more hands or to craft an online presence as a poet, this workshop will help you learn how to market, sell, and self-publish your poetry. From blogging to Instagram to Amazon, we’ll dive into the important details of crafting a bestselling poetry collection. Learn how to format poetry, how to find the best distribution sites for poetry books, and how to market a collection from advertising to book reviews.
Nothing in fantasy or sci fi is original (no, don’t rage-quit); it is all amalgamations of things we have seen or heard of. So would we recognize life that is truly alien?
Just because we’re at the top of the food chain doesn’t mean that humans are done evolving. Can we predict what is in the future for our bodies? Which creators’ visions are realistic?
Human’s best friend, best creation, and best companion: What was the evolutionary path of the household dog? Was humanity the worst thing to happen to wolves?
A makerspace is shared workshop or group of workshops where people can use the tools and facilities to work on their own projects. Some are membership-based, and some are in public libraries. Assume that any major city will have at least one. Our panelists will discuss their involvement with makerspaces, what they recommend, and how the user can get the best experience from a makerspace.
When I attended my first WorldCon, I created some Airship Pirate ribbons to promote the serialization of Revin’s Heart. It was (from my perspective) a wildly successful promotional campaign. It was a huge amount of fun, gave me an ice breaker to discuss my book as people walked by the table in the dealer room, and was surprisingly (to me) gratifying to see dozens of strangers all over the convention wearing my ribbon. Since then, I’ve thinking about what I could do to meet or surpass the standard I set then. I think I may have done it with a new ribbon to promote the Better Angels.
The Better Angels are non-human biological androids. That means that they have no human DNA — they are the product of clean-room biological engineering. They are molecularly assembled to spec, fully grown (well, as pre-teen girls), and have a personality module that has programming to govern their behavior. So, although they look like pre-teen girls, they are not human. They were not born. They don’t grow or develop. And they are programmed with a stack of modules that provide all of the functionality for their behavior, from basic autonomic physiology to language and higher-order behavior. In the case of the Angels, they can be singing-and-dancing pop idols or ruthless, cold-blooded covert-military soldiers (Or more! Read the stories to see what else they can do!)
This time, I’ve created a ribbon people can wear with a space to write in their percentage of “human DNA.” You might ask, “How do you know your own percentage of human DNA?” What a great question! To answer that question, I’ve created an app (well, just a webpage, actually) that analyses your DNA and tells you what percentage is “human.” The Better Angels, of course, have zero percent “human DNA”, but how much do you have? Luckily, the app can tell you!
The 任せて Human DNA Analysis app is simple to operate. You scan a QR code to open the app on your mobile device and tap the fingerprint icon on the screen. The app runs, emits several progress messages, and finally reports your percentage of “human DNA”. Sometimes the first time it runs, it may give you anomalous results. But if you run it a second time (or more), it gives you “more accurate,” precise, and consistent results.
Note the disclaimer at the bottom of the page, however: “Accuracy of 任せて DNA Analysis ±100%”
Also note that, yes, of course I could link the app here. But you’re going to have to come visit me in the dealer room to get the QR code. (smiley-face)
I used to write little web apps like this all the time. For most of my career, I was the Director of the Biology Computer Resource Center at UMass Amherst. I created dozens little web apps for teaching or infrastructure for the Biology Department. But I haven’t done anything like that for a few years. I had to solve a variety of minor technical problems to make it work, and I was tickled to find that I haven’t completely lost my touch.
I invested a fair amount of time investigating what to use as a plausible value of percent human DNA. The simplest answer would have been 99% or something like that. But that wouldn’t have given me a context to talk about the structure of the human genome, which is delightfully weird and complex.
Most people know there are these things called “genes.” And a lot of people know that genes contain the “code” for proteins. When Francis Crick and others “cracked the genetic code” there was great optimism that we would quickly be able to read the “blueprints of life.” But genomic structure turned out to be way, way, way more complicated.
It turns out that only a tiny part (1%-2%) of the DNA in your genome contains coding sequences to make proteins. There are lots of other sequences in there, many of which are still only poorly understood. Each coding sequence is paired with regulatory sequences that control when it is transcribed. There are also bits that code for RNAs that aren’t translated into proteins (transfer RNAs, etc). As much as 8% of your genome includes human endogenous retroviral sequences. Retroviruses (like HIV, varicella-zoster (aka chicken pox), and herpes) have been sticking their DNA into eukaryotic genomes for billions of years. Then there are structural and repetitive sequences, that include things like centromeres, telomeres, and microsatelites, that may comprise as much as 50% of your genome.
Humans are primates and mammals and tetrapods and vertebrates and eukaryotes. The amount of “uniquely human” DNA is actually vanishingly small. Almost all of our genes are literally identical with bonobos (our closest primate relatives) and are functionally identical with all mammals and tetrapods and eukaryotes. Some proteins (like ubiquitin and cytochrome C) have been honed by billions of years of evolution and are virtually identical across all living organisms.
In the end, I met with a couple of professional biologists to ask them what percentage I should report as “human DNA” with the goal of being able to tell a fun story about genomic structure. They were pretty amused by the idea, once they got past the science fictional elements (One said, “What! They don’t go through development!?”), and we agreed to pick something something around 60%.
The ribbons are currently scheduled to be delivered in time that I should have them for Readercon! And I will bring plenty to Worldcon. (Well, a goodly number, anyway. These things don’t grow on trees, after all.) I’m excited, because I suspect they’ll be a hit and, when people see others wearing them, they’ll want to stop by the table to get one of their own. And, who knows, maybe even pick up a book!
So if you’re coming to Readercon or Worldcon, come find me at the Water Dragon Publishing table and get your DNA analyzed.
I sold books at the Amherst Artisan’s Market today. A little blond girl, with her mother and younger sister, stopped by my vendor table and was very taken with the cover illustration on Better Angels: Tour de Force. I did my regular pitch:
I call this “fluffy military space opera”. It’s about a group of non-human biological androids that look like pre-teen girls and act as a magical-girl singing-and-dancing troupe, but they can change up their programming and become a covert military force.
“That sounds fantastic!” the girl said.
“I should tell your mother,” I said, “that although this book doesn’t have adult themes, it does have some violence. The contrast between the Angels being cute little girls and ruthless killers, when they turn on their soldier programming, is what the Japanese call ‘gap-moe’ and is what I was going for as an author.”
“Oh, violence is just fine,” the girl said. “I read that all the time.”
“But do you have ten dollars?” her mother said.
The little girl’s younger sister piped up and said, “She has a HUNDRED DOLLARS.”
“No, she doesn’t,” her mother said.
“But, Mom!” the little girl protested, as her mother dragged her away.
June was super busy, with the Nebula Conference and the two Pride bookselling events. July looks to be quieter. There are a bunch of events I could have attended, but I’m currently only scheduled to go to Readercon. Look for me in the dealer room where I will, again, be running the tables for Water Dragon and Small Publishing in a Big Universe.
If you’re an author planning to attend Readercon and you don’t have a place to sell books, there is probably still time to request a spot at the Small Publishing in a Big Universe table. It costs very little and gives you a place to tell people to buy your books. Plus you can stand behind the table yourself to meet with readers and sign copies. It doesn’t work so well for authors who are not in attendance but, if you’re there in person, you can really make a lot of sales that way.
I was so busy in June, I didn’t get much writing done at all. Some people can snatch moments here and there to write. For me that can work alright for the little story fragments that I write for #wss366, but it doesn’t work for making progress on my serious writing projects. I did, finally, get back to writing in the past week and wrote the final, climactic scene of one of the storylines in The Ground Never Lies. I had been putting it off for months. Now I only have one or two world-building scenes left to write and then I can try to merge the two storylines. After that, I hope to pass it off to my trusty beta readers to see if the whole thing hangs together. It will need a lot of revising, but July should be perfect for that.
In August, I will be attending Worldcon in Seattle. The schedule has not been finalized, but my draft schedule looks great. I’m currently scheduled for seven panels (serving as moderator on one) and a reading. The reading is from my forthcoming book A Familiar Problem which has been delayed since January. I’m really hopeful it will be out in time for Worldcon. (Of course, I also really hoped it would be out for Boskone and Watch City and the Nebula Conference and Readercon, but… Well… Sigh…)
I finally bought our plane tickets. The most convenient airport for us is Bradley, in between Hartford and Springfield. It’s nice because it’s a somewhat smaller airport and only half the distance to Boston. But Boston tends to have more direct flights. When I fly to Europe, I’ve usually flown out of Boston. I did a search and found that there were no non-stop flights to Seattle from Bradley. There were two from Boston. When I checked, however, they were operated by Alaska Airlines and the cost was nearly twice as much as having one stop. So, we’re flying out of Bradley.
After Worldcon, I will be busy with family and then getting ready for the fall. The fall… Sigh… I have to teach the writing class two more times (in Fall and Spring) and then I will finally be able to retire and be done with working. Then I can dedicate myself to writing full time. I’m really glad I did the phased retirement, but I’m looking forward to wrapping it up.
I was interested to read this interview with Peter Thiel because, although I’ve heard a lot about him and his stupid ideas, I’ve never actually seen what he has to stay for himself. It turns out that he’s an idiot — at least about science.
He’s basically the kind of person who, when the TV isn’t working right, believes in percussive maintenance — that is, to whack it a few times and see if that makes it work better. He basically supported bringing in Trump to whack the United States a few times and see if it starts to work better. His thinking is that, if it starts working better then great. And if it doesn’t, you just throw it out and buy a new one. I mean, it doesn’t really matter to HIM if a bunch of people that depend on government services die or whatever. But, rather than pushing this analogy any further, let’s look what he actually said.
His basic critique is that our society — science in particular — has become stagnant or, minimally, is offering only diminishing returns:
There are intellectual questions: How many breakthroughs are we having? How do we quantify these things? What are the returns of going into research?
There certainly are diminishing returns to going into science or going into academia generally. Maybe this is why so much of it feels like a sociopathic, Malthusian kind of an institution, because you have to throw more and more and more at something to get the same returns. And at some point, people give up and the thing collapses.
There are a couple of inter-related problems with his assertion. The first is that current science is just a lot more complicated than people in previous generations expected. If you read people around the time of Crick and Watson, everyone thought that, since we’d “cracked the code” of DNA, we would simply be able to read the “blueprint of life”. As we know now, it was not nearly so simple, with introns and exons and non-coding sequences and RNA processing and endogenous viral elements and epigenetic effects and many, many other complicating factors that people had no idea of in those earlier times. And complicated science leads to the second problem: it’s a lot more expensive and we’ve defunded the government and education.
If you note when all of these breakthroughs were happening, it was during a time when the United States was taxing the highest incomes at 90% and investing a lot of that money in growing higher education. That money was gradually choked off and before Trump researchers were spending most of their time applying for funding. Rather than, you know, actually doing research. That’s why things weren’t going any faster than they were. And now that there’s NO FUNDING, there’s no chance of doing the research at all.
Furthermore, the slow, patient work of science has made astonishing breakthroughs which he seems to completely neglect. We have made astonishing breakthroughs on cancer. Cancer used to be a death sentence. Now, there are a lot of cancers that we can simply cure. And the rate of progress has been accelerating — at least until we let Peter Thiel and his moron surrogates defund the NIH.
It’s impossible to quantify how many people are doing to die because of what Trump has done. Even worse, it’s probably going to take generations to recover — if science in the United States ever does. Labs that lose funding probably won’t ever recover. A lot of the people that were doing the work will move to other countries or other lines of work. A lot of people that were going to go into science now never will. We’ve lost momentum we will probably never regain.
