Well, I just got back from the David Suzuki talk at the NFU convention. Before going, I thought I'd be more annoyed with what he had to say. Some of the things he's gone on record for just make me shake my head. However, I was impressed tonight. He was bitingly critical of academics working for corporate contracts and media sound-bites about science (wow, he's ranting about the same things I've been ranting about for the last 2 months....) . Except for a couple minor issues (what do you mean no lateral gene transfer in nature?!), he wasn't making outrageous claims, or overstating his scientific knowledge. Mayhaps I've misjudged him.
Also regarding the convention: I remember why I love the NFU. About 150 of the most opinionated, loud-mouthed, eccentric farmers you have ever met, all together in one room, trying to decide policy. A mad-house, but an interesting one.
2 comments:
Ya, see, he has gone on record with some pretty wild statements... paticularly about economics. I don't usually have a problem with his science, it's just sometimes, from the speaches I've heard him give in the past, he has a tendancy to rabble-rouse. It can get kind of annoying.
But, as for the day for St. Darwin: his birthday is a good one, but since the Origin of Species Through Natural Selection was published on November 24th, lets celebrate it then. We need more November religious holidays.
Hey, I have no problem with radical scientists. I love Fred Hoyle, the man who maintains that earth was seeded by extraterrestrials. Hell, I'm a proponant of the 'Aquatic Ape' theory myself. Hell, Susuki's science isn't really that radical. It's his gross mistatements about other disicplines that gets me. Things like saying that in economics, just because an economist refers to watersheds and natural resources as 'externalities', that they don't consider them important, and won't take them into account. It's a horrible misunderstanding of the term externality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality), and it damages economics in the mind of the general public.
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