A new physics-oriented blog carnival, Philosophia Naturalis, has just appeared at Science and Reason. Here's some background explanation. Looks like a great selection of articles. To celebrate the birth of this new project, I'll mention this quote from Al Franken, who is contemplating a Senate run in 2008:
There's all kinds of things that need to be done. Respecting science again. I would like to do a law where no political appointee can change the language of a scientific report without getting the scientists who made the report to sign off on the language change. That's a law I'd propose on the first day, I think.
Franken brought this up unprompted during an interview with Lindsay Beyerstein. It shows an admirably pro-natural-philosophy viewpoint. In contrast, we have George W. Bush, who sees his foreign policy as part of a new religious rebirth:
"A lot of people in America see this as a confrontation between good and evil, including me," Bush said during a 1 1/2 -hour Oval Office conversation on cultural changes and a battle with terrorists that he sees lasting decades. "There was a stark change between the culture of the '50s and the '60s -- boom -- and I think there's change happening here," he added. "It seems to me that there's a Third Awakening." The First Great Awakening refers to a wave of Christian fervor in the American colonies from about 1730 to 1760, while the Second Great Awakening is generally believed to have occurred from 1800 to 1830.
Sadly, the one who views his actions through the lens of a titanic supernatural struggle is the President of the United States, while the one who faces up to the real world is a comedian. Draw your own conclusions about the decline of Western civilization.
