Chronicide Online

It didn’t happen during the primaries, so I’m not confident it’ll happen during the general election either, but I signed up the other day as a supporter of Science Debate 2008.

Their mission is simple:

We have noticed that science and technology lie at the center of a very large number of the policy issues facing our nation and the world - issues that profoundly affect our national and economic security as science and technology continue to transform our lives.

…

We believe a debate on these issues would be the ideal opportunity for America and the candidates to explore our national priorities on the issues, and it is hard to imagine any candidate not wishing to be involved in such an occasion.

This is a debate that I, as a science lover, would really like to see happen, so I hope they can get it going for the next few months.

If you think this is an area that requires special attention, too, why not sign up as a supporter, too. Once you’ve signed up, you’re even invited to submit questions for the (so far hypothetical) debate, so it’s even a chance to indirectly ask a question of the presidential candidates. How cool is that?

I don’t know a lot about rap artist and all-around creative guy RZA, but what I do know of him (or, rather, his work) I like. One thing to add to the things I like about him that I just learned today is he wants to be a scientist:

But what Wu-Tang Clan mastermind, established solo artist, actor, soundtrack composer and author RZA really wants to do is become a one-man U.S. government think tank. … “I was talking to my wife about this recently. I was like, ‘Yo, don’t you think [the government] should just hire me and put me in a research lab for ten years so I can just research something?’”

Pretty cool, right? Except that, he then goes to show that maybe he doesn’t quite know how science works:

But he seems to be pretty serious about the concept. “All these f—ing ideas I got in the scientific world, they just not being heard because I’m a musician. That’s kind of weird.”

One of the beautiful things about science is that anyone can do it: you don’t have to be a Government-Certified Scientist™ to get your ideas out, you just have to do the science. If your theories are sound, and if your science holds, it will be heard. (Okay, it’s not quite that easy, since you’d have to get your ideas before some sort of review board to get published, but there are even ways around that. I mean, if the ID crowd can get their “science” out there…)

The thing is, in its way, it can’t be that different than the music scene that RZA is a part of. It’s not like, in the flipside, there’s some researcher sitting in his lab saying, “All these great songs I got in me, and they’re just not being heard because I’m a scientist.” If the scientist really has great songs, and he goes out and makes them and gets people to listen to them, they’ll be heard.

As hard as that is, it’s really that easy.