From a science fiction book

“The top news story was the mayor had been convicted of something. As long as Roberta could remember, mayors of North Orange were being convicted of something. And being reelected afterwards. One of them had actually run his campaign from his jail cell. And won. Why wasn’t there a law like they had for child molesters, where a politician would have to have his prior convictions advertised if he wanted to run for office?” – Michael Flynn, Firestar.

Flynn on why society has less respect for science:

“Partly, this is due to scientific hubris by which (mostly) fanboys of science set Science-with-a-capital-S as the colonial power of the intellectual world, invading other domains of human thought and disparaging philosophy, humanism, religion, and other endeavors. Partly, it is due to feminism, environmentalism, and government funding. Modern Science differed from Medieval Science in an important respect. The natural philosophers of old were in it to comprehend and appreciate the beauty of nature; modern science was redefined by Bacon, Descartes, and others to be subordinated to the production of useful products “to increase Man’s dominion over the universe.” They meant Man in a very masculine sense, and the exploitation of nature as completely open-ended. Hence, the feminist and environmentalist critiques in the Postmodern Age were not without some merit. Thirdly, as Eisenhower warned in his Farewell Address, the government-science funding complex meant that eventually science would be subordinated to political goals. All these strands contributed to undermining regard for science in the Late Modern Ages. When the American Chemical Society funded an exhibit on the contributions of science to modern life, they were astonished when the Smithsonian came up with an exhibit that presented American science as a series of moral debacles and environmental catastrophes: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Silent Spring, Love Canal, Three Mile Island, and the explosion of the space shuttle.”

http://michaelaventrella.wordpress.com/2011/12/24/interview-with-hugo-nominated-author-michael-flynn/

And now for something completely different.

While searching “North Orange New Jersey,” I learned: (a) there is no North Orange, but Orange and the three other directions are; (b) Orange has some really ugly-a$$ houses; and, (c) if you go to http://stoopidhousewives.com/2010/11/16/melissa-gorgas-video-vanishes/ and scroll down to the picture, you will see four women whose IQ total might bump 100. Just for entertainment, don’t you know. Or, why society has less respect for television. Vaster than a vast wasteland. Twenty-four-hour news means everyone is politically educated, and TV in general means “reality shows” are.