The Open Road Still Softly Calls.

In The Way That Scepticism Is Sometimes Applied To Issues Of Public Concern, There Is A Tendency To Belittle, To Condescend, To Ignore The Fact That, Deluded Or Not, Supporters Of Superstition And Pseudoscience Are Human Beings With Real Feelings, Who, Like The Sceptics, Are Trying To Figure Out How The World Works And What Our Role In It Might Be. Their Motives Are In Many Cases Consonant With Science. If Their Culture Has Not Given Them All The Tools They Need To Pursue This Great Quest, Let Us Temper Our Criticism With Kindness. None Of Us Comes Fully Equipped.

Nature Does Not Always Conform To Our Predispositions And Preferences, To What We Deem Comfortable And Easy To Understand.

Quickly Capping 363 Oil Well Fires In A War Zone Is Impossible. The Fires Would Burn Out Of Control Until They Put Themselves Out... The Resulting Soot Might Well Stretch Over All Of South Asia... It Could Be Carried Around The World... [and] The Consequences Could Be Dire. Beneath Such A Pall Sunlight Would Be Dimmed, Temperatures Lowered And Droughts More Frequent. Spring And Summer Frosts May Be Expected... This Endangerment Of The Food Supplies... Appears To Be Likely Enough That It Should Affect The War Plans.

We Humans Look Rather Different From A Tree. Without A Doubt We Perceive The World Differently Than A Tree Does. But Down Deep, At The Molecular Heart Of Life, The Trees And We Are Essentially Identical.

When Kepler Found His Long-cherished Belief Did Not Agree With The Most Precise Observation, He Accepted The Uncomfortable Fact. He Preferred The Hard Truth To His Dearest Illusions, That Is The Heart Of Science.