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A new survey confirms that the lay public trusts science and scientists, but that scientists and the public have different views on specific issues. Unfortunately, the survey tells us how people feel, but not why, which we have to understand if we’re going to try and narrow the perception gap between what the public believes and what the bulk of the scientific evidence indicates, a gap that cause all kinds of harm.
On February 8, 1915, at Clune’s Auditorium in Los Angeles, California, D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation premiered. The fledgling art form of film would never be the same, especially in America, which even half a century after the end of the Civil War struggled to come to terms with race. Now, a century after Birth of a Nation’s premier, America still struggles not only with race, but also with how race plays out on the silver screen. For good and ill, Birth of a Nation marks the beginning of the first 100 years of the American Cinema—epically beautiful, yet often racially ugly.
It’s only a matter of time before another star has a close encounter with our Solar System. How long do we have? “From an incandescent mass we have originated, and […]