Extra! Extra! Keep Readin' All About It?

On October 1, 2012, four newspapers owned by Advance Publications, “The Birmingham News”, the Mobile “Press-Register”, “The Huntsville Times” and the New Orleans major newspaper, “The Times-Picayune”, all moved to a three-day publication schedule. This move, along with similar cutbacks and reductions in other newspapers nationwide (usually caused by a serious drop in advertising revenue) led many to predict the imminent demise of the daily newspaper.

That prediction seems to have been somewhat premature, though it’s true many are still struggling. The respected “Washington Post” was recently sold, and the venerable “Boston Globe” has encountered problems. So have many more of the larger newspapers. But some have successfully adjusted to decreased revenue by cutting staff, reducing other expenses, and upping subscription prices. And many smaller papers have hung in there, and survived.

Our local newspaper, “Florida TODAY”, recently did a thorough revamp, including changing the B section to a reduced version, usually six or eight pages, of “USA TODAY”. Parent company Gannett did the same with 34 more local papers they own. Counting the mini-versions along with the much larger stand-alone, “USA TODAY” now claims a daily circulation of nearly 3.3 million, the largest of any US newspaper. And hopefully, adding the “USA TODAY” segment at no extra charge will help these smaller papers “live long and prosper”.

The A section of “Florida TODAY” changed to emphasize local news, including business activities, social affairs, and the comics. Sports still has its own section, and includes national and international coverage along with local news. The “USA TODAY” section provides national and world news, including financial and entertainment segments.

“Florida TODAY” began life as just “TODAY”, before Gannett President Allan Neuharth , who started this new paper as the local publisher and rode its success to the top spot in Gannett, decided to also create the first general interest national newspaper.  He and his team modeled  “USA TODAY” on  “TODAY”, and then added “Florida” to the local title for greater differentiation.  

The fact that my local paper seems back on equilibrium is encouraging. “Florida TODAY” isn't a large paper, serving primarily our county of over half a million, with substantial sales in the smaller county south of us. It now costs close to a dollar a day for the print version, home delivered. A digital version, read on your Kindle, other tablet or smart phone, costs much less.

In an era in which anyone can go on-line and claim to be dispensing 'news', I think the old standards of verification from several sources, and/or confirmation by direct contact, have taken a severe hit. We need the discipline and rigor of professional reporters if the ‘news’ is to have any real value. We can get personal opinion (as opposed to a reporting of reasonably well established facts) from the innumerable commentators on television.

Otherwise we're riding the Shockwave, while Standing On Zanzibar. And the Winter Of Our Discontent grows colder.

Photo credit:  Patrice Green

Congress Stems Science

Kenneth R. Miller has written a thoughtful examination of science in America today, and its waning appeal to both the aspiring student and the general public. (I’m not a scientist but a writer, primarily of science fiction. But I have always believed that one of the secondary but important purposes of science fiction is to serve as a handmaiden to real science.) 

The root causes of this decline appear to have gained the attention of the Obama administration. Recognizing that our future as a great nation is at stake, the federal government has begun a new emphasis on the importance of science (broad scale) in public education.

The above ties in with the observations of some of our more thoughtful pundits that the 'best and brightest' of today's college students too often see careers in finance as the path toward a happy life. Far too many seem clueless in understanding that enjoying the work you do each day is far more important (and less prone to producing ulcers) than doing work you dislike, the purpose of which is to amass more money than you actually need. This is a disturbing trend in a country that, in the last century, led the world in science and technology. 

In another article Sam Stein points out the deleterious effects of the Fed budget sequestration on scientific research. This is a fairly thorough examination of one of the less obvious ways our dysfunctional Congress is hurting our country, and the world. Our leadership in scientific research is slowly but surely eroding. 

And a corollary -- A quite good source of foreign exchange will also fade away. Our local (fairly small) hi-tech college, The Florida Institute of Technology, recently reported that one-third of their full-time students are from other countries. I suspect much larger and better known science-oriented schools, such as MIT, Cal Tech, Stanford, etc., also have large foreign student populations. (Luckily for us, some unknown but apparently sizable percentage elect to become citizens and put their expensively acquired skills to work here.) When their parents/sponsors decide to send them elsewhere (a trend that seems to have already started, but is still in its infancy), the US will lose a significant source of foreign exchange income.

I worked for 13 years in the NASA Education Office at the Kennedy Space Center, retiring as Deputy Chief. Our two major functions were to help professional teachers better understand science and technology (with an emphasis on the space program) and encourage students to undertake careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and
mathematics); again with an emphasis on the space program. I have no statistics on how many of the students we worked with followed through and became scientists, engineers or mathematicians. I hope it was very many.

A devotion to science and technology is one of the major reasons our country has gotten to where it is today. But if our best young minds choose careers in finance, we won’t be there tomorrow. And that worries me. The idea that gaining large sums of money is the key to personal happiness has become endemic in our society.  That concept needs some serious re-thinking. A life devoted to performing useful and productive work, work that you enjoy, is much more likely to provide that elusive quality called ‘happiness’. And the “pursuit of happiness” was one of the founding principles on which our country was created.

Seeing Through Heaven

I saw in a recent NASA budget announcement that apparently Congress will continue funding the James Webb space telescope, the planned successor to the Hubble. And NASA recently published a beautiful Hubble photo titled “Ten-Thousand Galaxies”. The two announcements reminded me that I wrote the first document on the planned checkout of the Hubble, at the then-intended launch site, Cape Canaveral. (It was actually launched on the Space Shuttle (April 12, 1990) because its final weight exceeded the capacity of the planned unmanned vehicle, the Titan II. That first, early document proved mostly a waste of time and effort for myself and the NASA spacecraft checkout engineer who ordered it and worked with me on it.)

And seeing the photo showing ten-thousand galaxies brought to mind a marvelous 1920s story that beautifully illustrates why I’m an atheist, and why Christian fundamentalists are so sadly, unbelievably mistaken in their faith. But we’ll get to that.

About the time of the last Apollo Mission (Apollo-Soyuz, launched July 15, 1975) I returned to NASA Unmanned Launch Operations on Cape Canaveral. I had worked there through 1966-67, but returned to KSC HQ to work on the Apollo Program. In the long interregnum between that last manned Apollo flight and the first Shuttle launch (April 12, 1981, and remarkable because this was the first time a new and untried vehicle carried a live crew), I spent four years back at my old job as Project Writer for the Atlas/Centaur program. I also did numerous outside jobs, such as science papers for NASA and contractor executives and that Hubble document.

I played no further direct part in the launch of the Hubble, but supported it in indirect ways after I returned to KSC HQ in 1978, as a contractor tech writer in the general support group for the Space Shuttle. I did a presentation on the Hubble at a science fiction convention in Atlanta. I suffered embarrassment, as did everyone else associated with the project, when the main mirror proved to have a flaw, and rejoiced with astronomy fans everywhere when NASA was able to correct the problem with an ingenious fix (STS-61, December 1993). And Hubble went on to become, without much doubt, the most productive single telescope in human history. (Though, hopefully, the Webb will exceed it.)

Those were my major contributions to the Hubble. So back to the photo of ten-thousand galaxies. In 1927 Wilbur D. Steele, a very fine writer now perhaps unjustly forgotten, wrote a story about a young minister who got his first look through a large telescope. Hubble, and others, had recently proven that what had been considered nebulae, gas clouds, or smears on the lens were in fact separate, entire galaxies, incredibly far away and unbelievably numerous (billions and billions, as Carl Sagan would say). The young minister saw, with his own eyes, the true size and scope of the known universe. He had until then accepted the basic Christian tenets that God was omniscient and omnipotent, the ruler of all things. What he saw made him lost his faith. No conceivable being could watch all the sparrows fall in a vastness of that magnitude.

This being 1927, and Steele wanting to see his story published (and draw a nice check), in the end the young missionary regained his faith. In our more cynical time, we are much less inclined to accept the clearly unbelievable. I became an atheist at fourteen, without having read the story. But faith is a form of willing blindness, and those who place faith above reason will not care one whit what the facts prove. And to them I can only say, Go With God.

Photo credit: NASA

World's Richest People Meet, Muse On How To Spread The Wealth

This unusual story caught my attention this week because it seems so at variance from the regular disparaging reports on the rich. Here we find hope. The slow but obvious and steady trend in the USA, moving from a democratic system of governance to an oligarchy of the rich, can be stopped. The erosion of the historically great driving force in the USA, its middle class, can be reversed.

The present socioeconomic system in the USA draws upon both socialism and capitalism. I like to think it utilizes some of the best aspects of both, while avoiding the worst. This carefully balanced system brought citizens of the USA a huge increase in living standards in the decades after WW II, making life – and, it should be noted, longer lives for most – better for everyone. But now that growth has stagnated. Over the last thirty or forty years, as has been frequently pointed out, the balance of power has shifted toward capitalism. And many (though by no means all) of the very rich are using their increasing percentage of the national wealth to corrupt the processes of democratic governance. Left to continue present practices, in the end they will rule the country, and votes and elections will mean very little.

I haven’t read Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, but the numerous reviews and criticisms (and his first short defense) indicate it lays out the best and most convincing case yet that most of the vastly increased national wealth of the past several decades has flowed directly to the very rich. Piketty’s book should be the final nail in the Reagan-era belief in “trickle-down economics”.

One of the more interesting aspects of this conference is that its founder makes no bones of the fact she believes making the needed changes will serve the interests of the very rich, as well as everyone else. She recognizes that unfettered capitalism will eventually lead to an unsustainable system, and the final result could be revolt, revolution, and quite possibly anarchy and chaos. The fact you are very rich means nothing if you are standing on a stool with a rope around your neck. ‘Spreading the wealth’, letting the middle class and poor in on the immense benefits provided by science and modern technology, will stabilize existing governmental and social systems.

Enlightened self-interest, as seen here (and of course acted upon), can bring the USA economic system back into balance. More long-term planning by USA businesses, with much less emphasis on the quarterly report and short-term profits, can return us to something approaching the tremendous growth of the post WW II years.

I hope the avaricious billionaires who are steadily asserting their control over this country will read the article, and take a hint.

Photo credit:  Patrice Green