It’s an occupational hazard of architecture that students will burst from school into the profession filled with vim to stamp their own creative visions on the physical world only to find themselves 10 years later in a cubicle specifying screw sizes for doorjambs. And if someone does invite them to propose an imaginative design, the client’s objections to aesthetics, to costs, to pragmatism, can lead the architect to water it down until the essence is gone. Discouraging. About 47 percent of architects are unhappy in their profession, some of that due to this kind of letdown. But imagine ... Read More
An Anti-Science Mania Takes Over GOP
March 21, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
You’ve got to go back to the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 for a precedent to the anti-science mania that is currently sweeping the GOP. Then, the issue was teaching Darwin’s work on evolution in the schools. Today, the issue is global warming. Then, as now, large numbers of politicians tapped into the stratum of popular culture that simply rejects science as the basis for public or personal decisions. The chief prosecutor of high school teacher John Scopes, William Jennings Bryan, gloated that literal interpretation of the Bible trumped scientific knowledge. This resonated with large masses ... Read More
