Save Astro World

Via Ravyn Schmidt on Google+ comes this cute video about a man hoping to make a date to see a woman:

This week, women in Saudi Arabia were given the right to vote and to run for municipal office.

First off, this is fantastic news. Saudi Arabia is one of the more repressive countries for women, so to see them taking this major step is, well, wonderful! King Abdullah has been making small steps towards reform for years. While I want to see women have full rights everywhere on Earth, I understand the political need to take it slowly in Saudi Arabia. It’s a very conservative religious country, and the backlash if things move too quickly could be extraordinary.

There’s much left to do, of course. Women still have a long way to go there; they are not allowed to drive or to leave the country unaccompanied, for example. But this is the right way to move. I just hope that vector stays pointed true.

I also want to relate my own thinking when I first read this news. My initial thought was snark; Welcome to the 20th century was literally the first thing I thought. My second thought was what I wrote above about this being fantastic news.

My third thought was the most interesting to me. It was contrition: in the United States, a country where we pride ourselves on being modern and forward-thinking (usually), women didn’t get the vote until 1920 — nationally, at least; at the local and state level those rights were slowly being granted for years.

So 90 years ago, women here in the US didn’t have the right to vote, and we weren’t (officially) a religious kingdom. Just to put how big a deal this Saudi Arabia news is into perspective.

We still have lots of progress to make here in the States, too. But it’s nice to know that even in places like Saudi Arabia, progress can be made.

However, just to be clear, keep in mind just how far we have to go: in Pakistan, a girl is making news because her family refuses to have her killed, as is customary, because she was raped. Honor killings, as these are called, are still quite common.

So. I’ll just leave you with this.

Related posts:

- International Women’s Day
- 100 years of International Women’s Day
- Women as planetary science role models
- Space girl

Via Universe Today (and Fraser Cain’s Google+ stream) I saw this astonishing video of the aurora borealis as seen from Finnish Lapland.

[Make sure you set it to HD and make it full screen.]

Wow! That’s amazing. Did you catch the Andromeda Galaxy making an appearance at 1:25 in, at the middle left of the screen? Maybe you missed it because of THE GINORMOUSLY BRIGHT AND GORGEOUS AURORAE.

Maybe.

As a travel ad, this works pretty well (it was made by Flatlight Films, a Finnish company). Living in Boulder, I’m used to the cold, but we always seem to just miss being far enough north to see the light show. And we still have a couple of years before we even reach the peak of solar activity, so there’ll be plenty of chances to catch more.

[P.S. If you're on G+, follow Fraser. He's good people.]

Related posts:

- Southern lights greet ISS and Atlantis
- Wyoming skies
- Another jaw-dropping time lapse video: Tempest
- Time lapse: Journey Through Canyons
- Down under Milky Way time lapse
- Alps lapse

[Note: I'm anticipating some, um, interesting comments to this post. So, before you leave one, please read this post on my political thinking, and this one on political posts in general.]

I write quite a bit about how rabidly antiscience the political right in the US has become. From the attacks on science by the Bush Administration (and Newt Gingrich before that) to the political litmus test of needing to denounce evolution and global warming if you’re a candidate, the Republican party has planted its flag firmly in the ground of nonsense. At the bottom of this article is a section called Related Posts that has links to just a handful of the copious examples of this outrageous behavior.

They have also become masters at spinning this, going on the attack against science they don’t like and using the media to sow doubt. One of the most aggravating of these tactics is the one of false equivalency. For example, in a post I might lambaste yet another Republican candidate saying creationism should be taught in schools, and someone in the comments will say, “Well, people on the left are antiscience as well!”

This is a common claim, but at best it’s a gross mischaracterization of what’s going on, and in reality it’s beside the point. Sure, some people on the left have issues (mostly anti-corporate or alt-med stuff like being against GMO, vaccines, and so on), but those are not the main planks of the left. And those issues are a drop in the bucket compared to what’s going on in the right. To say you think evolution might be true is political suicide if you’re a Republican candidate right now. It’s that simple, and that bad. I think that, like on the left, the majority of voters on the right are not antiscience, but if you look to the leaders in Congress, in State legislatures, and at the Presidential candidates, that’s all you see.

And that’s why you need to read an article by my friend Chris Mooney, “Unequivocal: Today’s Right is Overwhelmingly More Anti-Science Than Today’s Left”. He lays out just how big this problem is, why the right has gone this way, and why they have solidarity among their candidates.

The chief reason the political right is anti-science is because it contains the Christian Right (and Tea Party, which is kind of the same thing). There is no force in American politics generating anywhere near so much unreality, in science or in other spheres, as this one. It is not just evolution, or the age of the Earth… When it comes to science, it is also anything having anything to do with abortion, reproductive health, and sexuality. Moreover, we are talking here about the willful advancement of dangerous falsehoods, and the clinging to them in the face of all evidence and refutation—because this is about unwavering certainty, and ultimately, about faith.

This is one of the most important political articles I’ve read in quite some time. Chris lays out the political reality of antireality in a stark way. The article is frustrating and infuriating, because it shows just how the right’s leaders have lost their grip on reality, and is a grim reminder of just how important the elections next year are.

To be clear: I am not saying that anyone who calls themself a Republican is antiscience. I am saying the leaders of the party and their mouthpieces are, and Chris does a good job of showing that this is now the mainstream thrust of the party. If you are a conservative person who is pro-science, it is up to you to talk to your leaders about this issue. The GOP used to be pro-science, but was hijacked by the antiscience fringe many years ago. I can talk about this all I want and try to raise awareness, but your voices must be heard. Speak up.

Related posts:

- Republican candidates, global warming, evolution, and reality
- The increasingly antiscience Republican candidates
- Michele Bachmann needs to check her ID
- Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA): on climate change, makes wrong even wronger
- Next up for Congress: repeal the law of gravity
- Antiscience party
- Another climate scientist responds to Rep. Joe Barton’s false claims
- Vaccines on the left, vaccines on the right