Notices by aprilfollies (aprilfollies@mastodon.online)

So of course I wanted to be a scientist when I grew up. I found out early that I didn’t have the stomach for biology, but I became fascinated by the stars. I grew up in the age of Carl Sagan and many others, who wanted the knowledge and practice of science to be made accessible to everyone, a democratization of disciplines. Through heavy reading, I also gained respect for many, many other fields of study, and the place of research and academia in the modern world.

How strange this is. I was born in the year that the first humans - who were, not incidentally, citizens of the U.S., landed on the moon. My parents had jobs in academia and research, which had received great boosts during the Space Race. I was brought up in the tradition that science, while a two-edged tool, was a strong route to develop society if used well. One parent’s work was in health science research - a minor role, but part of what I saw as the great human enterprise of progress.

The writing was already on the wall, had I the eyes to see; but I was blinded by idealistic views of my childhood. Meanwhile, Carl Sagan was writing the “Demon-Haunted World” - you know the quotes. My cousin was working on health effects of passive smoking, and ran up against the tobacco corporations & their scientists/deniers-for-hire. The Space Program was cut back and back in order to kill more people in Vietnam & elsewhere… & people were starting to forget vaccine-preventable diseases.

And it was a bloody hard and stressful road. I had to fight to get math textbooks in elementary school. In high school I had to put in extra hours to get my brain to cope with calculus. At the same time I was involved in my first internship, I started developing stomach pains. Oh, and also I got to drop in on a talk by a Dr. James Hanson, on some troubling temperature data from satellites.

At the time, it seemed that academia and science were highly respected professions. After all, it took years of study to get anywhere, and jobs often “paid in prestige” more than $$. But it was considered so important that unbiased, non-corporate studies and sciences be done that they were supported in academia by institutions like tenure, and elsewhere by the government-funded research institutes. (I oversimplify; character limits.) It seemed a no-brainer (heh) to pursue the noble calling.

So I was still on a mission to educate, to further the goal of democratizing knowledge, study, science for everyone. Meanwhile, the far right had identified universities as dangerous to their projects and profits. The myth of the professors as ideological brainwashers was being spread around. Funding for universities was increasingly shifting from public funds to private grants - and student tuition & debt. Tenure protections were weakened. Increased micromanagement, time spent on paperwork.

After years of short-term research jobs, moving all around the US, I interviewed for my dream job - teaching, outreach, research... at a teaching-oriented university, which I really wanted. By then it had become very clear that an anti-science, anti-academic movement was in full swing. Corporate funded science applications, but the knowledge underlying it didn’t make immediate profit. People who had been failed by for-profit medicine were turning elsewhere. I thought: education can fix this.

By grad school, the professors were starting to warn us. Academic jobs were becoming much more competitive, as far more scientists were trained than could be hired. The work of science institutes was farmed out to contractors, and their budgets gradually dwindled also. But I had discovered in myself a love of teaching as well as research; on fire with ‘science evangelism’, I meant to persist and succeed. After all, once I reached the apex of tenure, I could pursue the dream to heart’s content.

While I was working on a college degree, and summers for a NASA contractor, I began to clue in. The contractor was more concerned by delivering products on deadline than working well - though the coders themselves took it with utmost seriousness. The Merchants of Doubt expanded from secondhand smoke denial to climate change denial. I was arguing with young-earth creationists in between classes. And funding for universities was in decline.

It remains to be seen if these drastic changes will be allowed to stand. Pushback is ongoing - but not much from those with power. Some students can’t afford food. How will they survive if public student loans disappear? What jobs will be available for them, when education and science agencies are cut, and private industry is much more interested in technology than the understanding of principles that make it work? They outsource job training to universities and then cut universities…

I expected agency budgets to be cut. I didn’t expect “70% reductions in force”, “overheads limited to 15%,” the whole Department of Education under threat of dissolution. We’re flung headlong back to times when most couldn’t afford college, where women, AAPoC, AAPI, were actively discouraged. I always knew my university could be closed and I could be made redundant. I didn’t expect the whole discipline - the whole framework of science and education - to be sent staggering to its knees.

But this was all a slow decline. Recessions caused cuts, we did more with less (until a colleague joked we were doing nearly everything with nearly nothing). It was still worth it to me as students became professionals, scientists, teachers. Maybe we couldn’t stop the decline, but we could counter, could slow it, though the environment was increasingly hostile. And then this month it stopped being slow and became very fast indeed.

I know this is not the greatest human cost of this executive bulldozer of an administration. Undercutting the constitution and such democracy as we had left is more urgent. Protecting trans, LGB, minorities, immigrants and other enemies of the week is more important. Safeguarding basic necessities like housing and healthcare are more immediate.

But let me have a (long-winded) moment to mourn for a dream I had long ago, where I thought we, all of us, could reach toward the stars.

#NASA may have to take things off the web. But I don’t.

@bmacDonald94 I haven’t read all by her, but I own that one, and have borrowed others from the library. I haven’t read the one you’re quoting, though, and now I very much want to! 👏🏼

@bmacDonald94 Barbara Tuchman is a genius history communicator (and I presume an excellent historian). Her book “A Distant Mirror: the Calamitous Fourteenth Century” had some fascinating insights into recurring historical themes.

My Dad made it our family’s New Year’s Eve tradition to recite the poem “Good Riddance, But Now What?”by Ogden Nash. This year, I read it to him - and wanted to share it with you:

Come children, gather round my knee, 
Something is about to be.

Tonight’s December thirty-first. 
Something is about to burst.

The clock is crouching, dark and small, 
Like a time bomb in the hall.

Hark! It’s midnight, children dear. 
Duck! Here comes another year.

For no particular reason, I just wanted to share a memory: this orbital burn from @planet4589 .

#Introduction #Astrodon I’m an astronomer at a regional university with an outreach program. When I have time for research, it’s archaeology of dead stars (supernovae). My nom de plume is to make clear my opinions are not associated with my institutions. I like #wildlife and animals, #history , #SocialJustice , geekery like #DnD, #Poetry (a dabbler), humor (punster), and interests too numerous to list. I’m part of the 🐦➡️ #MastodonMigration, but trying to be respectful of the community.

@tchambers This post contains a link to useful PBS coverage: https://mastodon.social/@violetblue/113206012854642693