I think that one of the great tragedies of American political life is the almost complete lack of scientific/technical literacy on the part of our elected policy makers. With a re-election rate in the House of 98% (and I’ve heard that the turnover in the Senate slower than the UK House of Lords, where you only leave in a pine box!), it’s perhaps not terribly surprising that both bodies are dominated by people (OK, let’s be honest: Old White Men) for whom e-mail is still a recent novelty and blogging is a mystery, and whose vision of a national scientific initiative dates back to the space program and the cold war.
As a truly depressing example of how incredibly out of touch our legislators can be is found in this piece, which includes a transcript of some truly incoherent comments from that genius Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska). I particularly love this gem:
I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?
Luckily, I don’t think that anyone’s ever tried to send me an entire Internet, since I don’t think the U’s mail servers would cope very well. Unfortunately no small excerpt really captures how entirely out of whack Stevens is, so I recommend at least skimming the full transcript.
Now I certainly wouldn’t argue that we should fill the halls of our legislature with 20-something pastey white boys, but if those houses are to be representative of our populace, we certainly need to do better than we are now. Any suggestions on questions we should be asking our candidates this fall?
Tip of the cap to Ellery for the pointer.
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