This morning in the Globe and Mail Weekend Focus section (the Globe and Mail is the more responsable of Canada’s two national newspapers) and article that was slightly scary to me and my mom. It was called No Faith in Science and it talked about all the different ways that the Bush administration is supposedly censoring scientific research to fit their moral, religious, or political agendas. Now being in Canada, we get exposed to a number of anti-american views, especially in the deeper sections of the newspaper: for example, an article in a issue a few weeks ago bore the contentious title: “Who Do you mistrust more, Al jazira or Fox News” Yet if this is true, which I really hope it isn’t, it is very frightening to be a citizen to a country where politics can get in the way of Science and research that could someday save many lives. To advance as a civilization we need to teach people to have open minds, not hide the truth and replace it with some fairy tale version of reality.
In other, less opinionated news, Pierre and I went swimming lanes in a very crowded pool. There were five of us in one lane at one time, and although the rest of us had agreed to a system of cycles, one old guy on the edge kept sticking to the rope on both ways. Which meant that we would have people going two opposite ways in the same half lane, and I didn’t have my goggles to see when to avoid the people headed straight at me. I felt a bit like frogger, the fearless amphibian, avoiding the truck-swimmers on my way to the other side.