Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Laurie David Beggars the Imagination

Why Laurie David felt the need to take a swipe at Michael Crichton, I don't know and don't much care.

But her latest post on Huffington Post plays right into the Bush administration's anti-thought, anti-intellectual, anti-imagination, anti-science ideology.

David castigates the Senate not just for its choice of Crichton, but for wanting to listen to ANYONE in his profession (which, she should realize, is -- in the broadest sense, the same as hers): "Only a madman would think it's a good idea to have a guy paid to make stuff up testify on a serious scientific issue with national security implications."

Well, Laurie, as grateful as I am for your support of anti-Bush stuff (and my former employer, Air America, in particular), only a moron would think it's a bad idea to have a guy paid to IMAGINE testify on a serious scientific issue with national security implications.

If anything, this administration, this country and, yes, even the left, need to listen MORE to the imaginers among us. They're the ones on the forefront of the ethical and societal issues of technical advances that haven't even hit us yet. And if merely honoring science-based imagination isn't enough to change your mind, or Laurie David's, I'd like to rebut her thesis that the Senate shouldn't heed science fiction writers about serious scientific issues with national security implications by introducing her to the man responsible for the global communications network that allows her slander of imagination to traverse the globe:

Arthur C. Clarke.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, in this case, I'm more on Laurie's side. Listening to people's imaginings about what is possible is one thing, but in a hearing on global warming, to call as a witness someone who simply wrote a (fiction) book in which the environmental movement is a scam, when there are many serious scientists available, strikes me as amazingly anti-science.

Jonathan said...

You may be right about Crichton, and if David had restricted her comments to Crichton, I wouldn't have a thing to say about it. But she didn't. She assaulted the entire notion of listening to ANYONE whose field is science fiction.

Anonymous said...

Yes, she was too broad.

One more thing: You wrote "only a moron would think it's a bad idea to have a guy paid to IMAGINE testify on a serious scientific issue with national security implications."

As someone who thinks scientists are people "paid to imagine," I wouldn't say opposition to testimony of fiction writers implies opposition to imaginers' testimony.

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