(We’re right. You’re stupid.)
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Last week, I was thumbing through an old copy of Scientific American from late 2016, because I have a penetrating, inquisitive, thirsty mind, and because I had an hour to kill before the next episode of Dancing with America’s Most Wanted Midget Mud-Wrestlers of Bel Air.
And now, having read it, I’ll have to admit I have increased respect for the science community – the SA staff made it nearly nine whole pages before slamming (then candidate) Trump.
For fringe-teetering liberals, that’s some serious restraint.
The issue’s inside front cover was given to ads for yet another series of new books about dinosaurs, despite the fact that even Steven Spielberg is tired of that topic. One of the featured dino-books was subtitled “How They Lived and Evolved,” suggesting that the Jurassic giants finally matured, gave up gluten and cigarettes, and embraced global warming for the hard science that it is.
Page one presented the main table of contents – that month’s headlining stories – featuring teasers to articles about truth, cultural differences between killer whales, and how to grow human organs in pigs. There was also an article about drug addiction, maybe taking the position that meth killed off the dinosaurs.
Flipping to the next page, another table of contents, this one listing the “regulars” — SA’s recurring articles each month. The list features such crowd-pleasing columns as Letters (that’s you), Science Agenda (the aforementioned, wholly scientific anti-Trump mouth-frothing), Advances (basically, a climate change canticle), and Skeptic (more wholly scientific…um…facts…about President Trump, who as we all know is like a creature from Dante’s ninth circle, but with worse hair).
Page three offers a full-page ad, hawking software that will finally, finally allow average, every-day people to model the numerical simulation of physics-based systems. Look out, Lego.
Filling page four is the magazine’s regular “From the Editor” commentary, this month’s edition oddly entitled “Theory and Truth” while simultaneously showing a photo of a unicorn’s horn, and I am not good enough to make this stuff up.
On to page five, and yet another ad already, which proves conclusively that Scientific American is owned by Cosmopolitan. This full-pager is pushing a 60-DVD set of “enthralling” lectures guaranteed to make physics accessible to everyone, even people who suffer from a severely limited grasp of reality, or members of Congress, which is redundant.
Oh…and for all you alert Home Shopping Network addicts out there, please note that, for a limited time, the lecture series has been marked down from $624.95 to $149.95! That’s right! – now you too can complement your rich education in “Dukes of Hazzard” trivia with pepperings from physics – including topics like Newtonian mechanics, oscillations, references to Donald Trump in the Apocrypha, and quantum theory. (One of those, I made up.)
The next two pages are dedicated to letters from readers, plus what is known is known in the magazine industry as the “masthead,” an ancient Sumerian term meaning “list of people in here who are ridiculously overpaid.”
One of the letters was from Ted, a concerned reader in Florida who is worried…seriously…that Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescopes might experience a problem syncing their desired relative positions during the implementation of a Starshade, which is either new NASA technology, or a sci-fi movie starring Kurt Russell.
I would really like to see the itemized deductions on Ted’s tax return.
Fortunately, Ted will be able to get some sleep, since someone on the SA staff replied to his concerns, assuring Ted that … stay with me here … assuring him that deep-space formation flying should not be a problem, as milliarcsecond shifts in position have already been accounted for, given existing Hubble Telescope lateral bearings, laser beacon shift adjustments, and the relative temporal quantum distance between a NASA thermos and a Cocoa Beach cop’s doughnut. (One of those, I made up.)
Next: Page Eight. SA’s regular “opinion & analysis” feature, Science Agenda. And the headline for this month’s wholly scientific opinion & analysis?
Donald Trump’s Campaign for Science Illiteracy
That’s right! Ole’ cloven-hooved Donald’s secret, sinister agenda, exposed! Whew. To paraphrase an old baked goods jingle:
Everybody doesn’t like something
But nobody wants to like Donald T
And the science writers’ sources for this analysis? Their weeks of research? The facts-only journalists’ entire, irrefutable, data-driven body of evidence?
Eighteen of Trump’s tweets.
Well, allegedly. “We have not fact-checked them,” the editors muttered sullenly, which is hard to do in print.
The remaining 72 pages in that month’s issue were actually about – to employ a highly technical term – science stuff. The science writers wrote about science, as the staff’s caffeine slowly wore off – in fact, they made it to page 51 before anybody remembered to insult the President.
But, eventually, they remembered. Of course they remembered. They’re scientists.