According to a series of experiments by physicists at UCSB even something as big as 200 micrometers will still be subject to quantum effects when cooled to nearly -459°F, a temperature otherwise known as absolute zero, and zapped with packets of energy on a quantum level. Sure, a hyper-sensitive resonator 200 µm across doesn’t sound like much but until this experiment, virtually all of the objects which exhibit quantum mechanical effects measured just angstroms across, making UCSB’s resonator billions of times bigger than the largest molecule to exhibit the phenomena in question. The difference between this brand new quantum system that contains roughly a trillion atoms and a 60 atom buckyball, which was hypothesized to be the limit of quantum effects on the larger world, is similar to one between something the size of a human and an object the size of an average city. And the results of the experiment also seem to imply that getting quantum mechanical effects to show up in macroscopic objects is just a matter of getting the objects into a quantum state.

While this could’ve been an interesting look into the blurry line between the quantum world and the world that we know on a macro scale, it was actually a proof of concept test for a potential storage system in a quantum computer. Being able to manipulate mechanical systems on a scale that’s not too far off from what we see in today’s computers and reading the oscillations to determine the states of the qubits would make a functional quantum computing machine that much more feasible. And while you could conceivably make something the size of a mobile phone as powerful as some of today’s top of the line consumer desktops, cooling it to within just a few decimal points of absolute zero would be pretty difficult and finding a place where such a machine could use the natural marrow-solidifying temperatures of space without several tons of machinery attached to it would require a trip to either the most remote areas of the Moon (which would still be roughly 62°F higher than you’d need) or the Boomerang Nebula, the coldest known region space space located about 5,000 light years away, where you would be at least flirting with the required temps.

Since we already know how to reach impressively close to absolute zero right here on Earth, it would make sense to aim for developing quantum computers that won’t replace current technology but instead, aim for the kind of efficiency modern processing power can’t even dream of without a major update, and offer an upgrade to the field of supercomputing that would make today’s most complex simulations a snap to run, provided that their algorithms are updated to take advantage of all quantum computing has to offer of course. It’s not like the machine could actually be moved so you might as well try to make a stationary hyper-computer. Bot don’t fear for today’s laptops, desktops and smart phones. They’ll also benefit from research into quantum physics, only their path to greater efficiency and faster processing speeds will come from a set of experiments intended to reach temperatures in the range of 4 trillion degrees by making a quark/gluon plasma…

See: O’Connell, A., et. al., (2010). Quantum ground state and single-phonon control of a mechanical resonator Nature DOI: 10.1038/nature08967

[ futuristic supercomputer illustration by Ethan Martinez ]

Today, there are more than 6.8 billion humans on our planet living in almost every corner of the world, making us one of the most successful species of macroscopic animals of all time. And we’re still growing in number by approximately 1.15% every year, giving quite a few scientists and politicians good reasons to start worrying about the potential impact that a runaway population explosion will have on the environment, infrastructure, and energy demands around the world. Since the vast majority of future growth will come from areas affected by poverty and with highly underdeveloped infrastructures, some are even saying that we need to put a freeze on advanced research projects until we can put nearly 80% of the species firmly on its feet. Others, myself included, advocate the exact opposite, that we need to boost global R&D to find new and better ways to build efficient, reliable power grids and critical infrastructure where it’s needed most. And yet others are saying that we need to push into space in the next few decades or we’ll run out of room on Earth.

But maybe, we shouldn’t really be worried about global population growth. Maybe, this problem will solve itself by the end of the century and our real concern should be runaway consumption of wealthy nations? That’s the question posed in a recent column for The Prospect by British science journalist Fred Pearce, and this idea is backed by sound facts from a demographic and statistical standpoint. As noted in the first link, we might be reaching the limit of how much our species can expand and the rate of growth has been steadily slowing over the last few decades from its peak of 2.19% in 1963, something on which Pearce expands with his examples of falling birth rates across the world thanks to modern medicine and today’s industrial lifestyle. With farming being treated as a corporate enterprise and higher survival rates for newborns, even in rural areas of nations still struggling with providing the basics, less and less kids have to be born to keep the family going. And that means longer lifespans for more people will eventually be offset by lower birth rates and the world population will eventually decline, reaching an equilibrium.

The immediate problem with that scenario is that fewer young workers will be supporting a disproportionately large number of senior citizens, presenting a massive economic burden on the developed nations facing this scenario. In the United States, the presented solution is to allow seniors to keep working, delaying retirement as long as possible to draw less money from their government benefits and making it easier on the younger generations. However, there’s a problem with this approach because it limits the number of jobs available to those just trying to enter the workforce. Generation Y could well bear the brunt of this solution, putting up with a longer climb up the corporate ladder, more glass ceilings and depressed wages for decades. But as odd as this may seem, the dilemma of a population decline in the developed world illustrates the limits on how much our species can expand. There are only so many jobs, so many resources and so many places to live. One of these days we’ll run out of all three, especially resources which are being rapidly consumed by the developed world. As wealthy nations throw away mountains of plastic, burn through fossil fuels, and pollute the planet to their hearts’ content, they’re making fewer of our finite natural resources available to billions.

Humans, like all living things, are subject to our biological and environmental limitations. And while we’re still going to be around for the foreseeable future, evolving faster and faster as we reproduce, our numbers will eventually peak and level off. The advances of the past two centuries allowed for much better medicine, food, shelter, and necessary infrastructure which allowed for a population explosion. However, we’re running out of both the capacity and the need to keep propagating with no limits. If we do, we’ll end up with a population that we can no longer support and poverty, famine and disease will do their grim work and cull our numbers…

[ illustration by Alexandru Popescu ]

Maybe the media outlet had a massive surge of traffic after it ran its first story about the search for otherworldly life, maybe the number of comments on its subsequent stories in the same vein went off the charts, or maybe it’s just a slow news day, but quite a few of the biggest newspapers and blogs around the world just keep on repackaging the same ten articles about the day we may find an alien world scurrying with living things. Don’t get me wrong, there are some very important studies that certainly deserve extensive coverage in the world of popular science, like the finding that water in meteorites can affect the chirality of amino acids, or that after exposure to typical cosmic radiation, certain chemicals in space debris become nucleobases in RNA, and a few curious ideas about finding traces of forests and vast biospheres just by looking at the light they reflect. However, articles like the Telegraph’s newsflash recounting that meteorites might have helped spark life on Earth simply fail to add anything even remotely new to an extremely popular and oft repeated theory.

I know, exciting research regarding potential aliens doesn’t happen every day. Trying to find something which may be radically different from life as we know it in almost every imaginable way without knowing what it is we’re actually trying to track down is very difficult. Even if we were to stick to searching for clear markers of life we could readily identify, these efforts require a major investment in an entire fleet of orbital telescopes and years of searching to find another terrestrial planet we could photograph with a high enough resolution to get some concrete data, something that’s simply not going to happen overnight or any time soon for that matter. Profound science like this takes time, effort and a commitment to press onward with space exploration efforts for decades to come, something sorely lacking in today’s political climate. Maybe the very real potential for the developed world to throttle back its scientific and technical leadership thanks to today’s short sighted politicians could be the pop sci subject of choice on a slow news day since this problem hasn’t been getting through to the public nearly as well as another rehash of basic astrobiology primers…

[ illustration by Frieso J. Hoevelkamp ]

Unless you’ve figured out the secret of immortality, you probably don’t have to worry about something that may happen over such a long stretch of time and as pointed out by Dr. Ian O’Neill on Discovery Space, the human species might not even be around that far in the future. And the odds of Gliese 710 actually brushing the Oort cloud, disturbing the nuclei of large, icy comets could change as we get more and more data. Since the star catalog used for the study’s models was completed in 1997 and newer probes with far better instruments are known for helping to revise older data, we can’t rule out that a few decimal points off here or there may change the entire outcome. Even a slight change in the data projected over hundreds of thousands of years can yield very different statistical models. In addition, the study’s author, Vadim Bobylev, focused on stars that would be about 7 light years away from the Sun or less. Considering that the closest solar system is just a little over 4 light years away and we’re not being pelted by comets today, just how close and disruptive Gliese’s 710’s flyby will be is still a somewhat open question.

The marauding dwarf sun could send comets bouncing into each other, out of the solar system, or into Kuiper belt objects rather than towards us. What would happen depends on a myriad of factors which include everything from Gliese 710’s speed and angle, to the layout of the section of the Oort Cloud by which it should pass. There could be a much greater potential for something destructive if the rogue star wanders into the Kupier belt itself and affects dwarf planets or very large asteroids, but the odds of that happening are far, far less, about 1 in 1000. And let’s keep in mind that there’s a 14% chance that Gliese 710 will miss our solar system altogether and its orbit may change as it flies through our stellar neighborhood…

See: Bobylev, V. (2010). Searching for Stars Closely Encountering with the Solar System Astronomy Letters, 2010 Vol. 36, No. 3 arXiv: 1003.2160v1

First and foremost, my beliefs in anything other than opinion pieces are irrelevant so I really don’t think a logo for a particular philosophy will add anything of importance to the posts on this blog. When it comes to science, anything presented here will stand or fall by the weight of evidence rather than how many people say “atheist!” and point their digital fingers at me with scorn or a wink in agreement. I’d much rather have readers classify a post as right or wrong, obvious or controversial, atheistic or just plain, old science news on their own instead of waving a flag in the air. Maybe it’s something left over from the Soviet Union in me, but I’m in no rush to start declaring myself to be this or that. My views and positions are out there, they’re uncensored, and it’s not exactly a secret where my sympathies lie. And in that spirit, I would much rather just speak for myself. Plus, I’m really not much for the politics that come from positioning oneself in a particular group of people.

Secondly, it’s pretty obvious why atheist groups want to establish themselves through logos, a stream of very popular, must read books for those who have doubts about religious dogmas, and showing the kind of rapidly growing strength in numbers that makes religious pundits want to faint in panic. However, one of my concerns with creating Atheist Brand™ products and organizations is how it may be seen not from a theistic standpoint, but from a social one. Just like there are fads in new religious and philosophical movement, often based on a celebrity’s endorsement, we need to be aware of people who’ll identify themselves as atheists just because it’s the cool thing to do. Like overzealous born-again Christians, those who suddenly have some sort of life- altering atheist revelation can and do go out there, portraying a mere caricature of the atheistic mindset which reduces its scientific and empirical foundations to the same kind of bumper sticker and schmaltzy chain mail discourse practiced by many of those they mock.

That’s one more reason why I’d rather just let my posts speak for themselves instead of looking for some sort of official atheistic endorsement of the concepts I present on a daily basis. While atheists shouldn’t become a small, excusive clique which requires at least a scientific PhD and four peer-reviewed publications to join, and atheist writers should never be afraid to keep tearing into dangerous superstitions, we should be aware that a simple snarl or rehashed caricatures of all believers as mere simpletons and troglodytes simply isn’t going to help matters. The atheist position has to be explained thoroughly, with facts, logic, evidence and in the depth required for whatever discussion is going on. And more importantly, the empirical framework must come first and the atheism second since without good science and solid fact, atheists wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. The same goes for individuality. Just because something was defined as atheist or seems atheist-friendly, it shouldn’t receive unconditional support and cheers but be scrutinized for accuracy and logic.

Thirdly, in probably in sharp contrast with my pretense at being contemplative on the prior points, I’m not sure the scarlet A is what I’d have in mind to express the atheist position, possibly because it’s so reminiscent of a book about sexual morals in Puritan colonies: The Scarlet Letter. Maybe a version of the Darwin fish would be slightly more fitting since one could describe atheism as a constant evolution of ideas, scientific facts and the determination of going forward with the pursuit for empirical truths no matter what? Sure it might give many of today’s vocal creationists another excuse to claim that evolution is “an atheist belief” but really, don’t they use this line at every opportunity already? What’s a few more angry scowls in the general direction of those with a scientific frame of mind? It’s not like we don’t get enough of those already…

While that video was supposed to be a parody made in good fun, it really seems that accommodationists see the atheist movement as lacking ideas any more nuanced than expressed there. We can see this very clearly in Pigliucci’s post in which he solicits readers for their thoughts as to whether we should make concessions to religious groups, while at the same time dismissing the atheist opinion as narrow-minded, ignorant and in a venture towards extreme political correctness, even balks at the use of the accommodationist term.

A new word entered the atheist vocabulary of late: “accommodationist.” It is meant as a derogatory term toward those atheists and assorted rationalists who try to extend a metaphorical olive branch to moderate religionists and find common ground against the real danger, fundamentalism (of any kind, religious or not).

Since when has that term been derogatory? Accommodationists want to make accommodations for religious groups and this is why this term is used. Whether Pigliucci likes the term or not has nothing with do with how it’s meant. Sure, many atheists refer to this position as an erroneous one, but that doesn’t mean it’s a smear. I’d also like to point out that referring to “any kind of fundamentalism” is an appeal to the golden mean fallacy, a logical twist which assumes that the correct answer to any problem must lie between two extremes, which may work for a philosopher who tends to float in the clouds and focus on semantics, but not in science where many positions are either right or wrong according to the weight of objective evidence. Is Pigliucci saying that we should be extending an olive branch to people who insist that 2 + 2 = 5 because the real danger is sticking to the idea that the result is actually four according to the rules of math?

Contrary to what many people think, this isn’t a debate about pragmatic tactics in the culture wars, it is a matter of principle. Few people — possibly not even Dawkins — would disagree that, say, the fight for a true separation of church and state has to include a broad coalition of religious and non-religious groups, partly because the goal is in the interest of both parties, and partly because there simply wouldn’t be hope for just secular groups to prevail, considering that they represent a (sizable) minority of the population.

Why would secularism be in the interest of religious groups? Why would they possibly want to forgo the power to make laws or pass down edicts about everything on which they have an opinion? And if we’re talking solely about principle, why are readers being told that because secular groups are just too small to prevail against a religious majority? Oh no, we’re not talking strategy, we’re just talking about what it takes to win this thing. See, it’s completely different when we preface these points with a sentence saying it’s all a matter of principle. I’m not sure if the point here is to convince the reader that Pigliucci is only interested in the principle or just huddle with him in a strategy session, but it’s not making a good argument either way you look at it. On the one hand, there’s a reliance on the notion that the groups who benefit from dominating the public debate would decide to pull back since it was declared to be in their best interest to do so, and on the other hand, we have a bait-and- switch argument promising a discussion of core principles and ending with a textbook strategy session.

When Dawkins says that science can refute “the God hypothesis,” or Coyne claims that a 900-ft [figure of] Jesus appearing in London (why London?) would disprove atheism, they are making epistemological assertions that are founded on a naive understanding of philosophy of science (and it is interesting that both of these esteemed colleagues scoff at the very idea that philosophy has anything to contribute to the debate).

Why London? Maybe because Dawkins is British and said London off the top of his head. And he’s right. Were supernatural forces to very openly and bluntly reveal themselves, atheists would have no leg left to stand on. It should also be noted that in the context of religious fundamentalism that’s so opposed by atheists, this literal, simple manifestation of the supernatural as proof of religious beliefs makes perfect sense. Plenty of theology busybodies like to go around saying that no one takes their deities that close to heart, but considering that we have prayer sessions about controversial legislation and people will pray for everything from getting to a very important appointment on time, to a parking spot in a crowded mall, that’s just not true. Finally, I can’t see how metaphysical discussions about epistemology have anything to contribute to hard sciences where ideas stand and fall by the weight of evidence in favor of them rather than how much you talk. It’s one thing to debate questions to which we have no real answers, but once a good, logical answer is found we’re really just going around and chewing the rhetorical cud rather than contributing anything of substance.

Yes, you read that right. Instead of taking their cues from academics, who many of the school board members loathe in their roiling anti-intellectualism, they apparently decided to ask Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh what Texan academic standards to peruse. How else can you explain the notion that the word capitalism has to be struck from that curricula so it could be replaced with a buzzword from archconservative economic think tanks solely on the basis of irrational, partisan hatred?

The board removed the word “capitalism” from [state] standards, mandating that the term for that economic system be called “free enterprise” throughout the standards. Board members such as Terri Leo and Ken Mercer charged that “capitalism” is a negative term used by “liberal professors in academia.”

Really? That’s the ironclad expert justification? To use the term liberal the same way one would pronounce a diagnosis and say that it’s used by college professors? How could there be a clearer example of the searing hatred the creationist/culture war faction of the Texas SBoE has for anything that even resembled knowledge or education that doesn’t simply pound students over the head with their personal ideologies? I don’t think the duo in question, Leo and Mercer, seem to have a working neural synapse between them. Or perhaps the two share a brain that was left on a dark, dusty shelf somewhere before the meeting began. How does one even begin to describe how utterly inane and imbecilic this kind of reasoning is and the damage it will do? While a horde of far right ideologues pat each other on the back, praising American exceptionalism as they dilute the crucial educational standards of the nation’s second biggest state with nonsense and propaganda solely for the sake of their personal self-validation, they drag the country farther and farther behind. And then, they have the gall to call these standards “world class.” Are they even talking about the same world as we are?

To put it plainly, the school board members who thought it would be a great idea to turn a social studies class into an audition for right wing talk radio and declare that when teaching the importance of considering any and all opinions in a democratic republic, the teachers should really just explain that the students have the right to buy guns under the Second Amendment, are societal parasites. They complain about intrusive, heavy-handed government intervention in business and society, yet they get themselves elected to government posts, issue intrusive societal mandates, take advantage of government-run medical care for them and their families, get a paycheck funded by taxpayers, benefit from all the things modern science gives them while viciously smearing scientists and academics, and produce nothing positive in their wake. The fact that American students aren’t quite on par with other students in the developed world in countless international surveys should be a glaring example of the cost of having these people mandate educational standards.

But then again, I’m sure they can find some tenet in their “exceptionalism” doctrine that can somehow “prove” that not teaching kids science or math and pounding them over the head with talking points borrowed from a partisan, hypocritical news pundit instead of involving them in social debates, somehow produces education so superior to the rest of the world that no standardized test could fully measure its sheer brilliance. Or simply call their critics “liberal academic demagogues” and spit in their direction, as they usually do.

From an empirical standpoint, there’s evidence that students exposed to creationist viewpoints do seem to be swayed by them and those who author anti-scientific textbooks for religious homeschooling say that we’ll just have to accept that creationism is just as valid as modern evolutionary theories. But this is argument is a disingenuous one. Sure you could sway someone without the proper scientific education to trust what you’re talking about as long as you position yourself as an authority figure and your audience doesn’t have the skills to critically evaluate your claims. This is exactly what creationist teachers tend to do, as shown on this blog by one educator who couldn’t keep his theology out of his science, failing in both areas in the process. And we should note that after encountering those who could refute his claims, his reply was to declare that I was just ignorant and that all the critique he received simply inspired him to keep proselytizing in class, i.e. the exact opposite of the message someone who’s been trained in science would get.

You can see that same kind of determination in textbooks intended for homeschooling as Jay Wile, who runs an apologetics curriculum, lashed out at Jerry Coyne for pointing out the obvious fact that the books written for religious biology lessons are riddled with errors and intentional misrepresentations of science.

Wile said that Coyne “feels compelled to lie in order to prop up a failing hypothesis (evolution). We definitely do not lie to the students. We tell them the facts that people like Dr. Coyne would prefer to cover up.”

Really? I suppose it’s not lying in the conventional sense when you sell your ignorance as valid facts but when you say that biologists are covering up facts while you run around furiously declaring that over a century and a half of scientific research never happened and every evolutionist is an evil, godless liar, you’re the absolutely last person who should open his mouth about honesty. Then again, I suppose when you think you’re lying and being a hypocrite because you think you’re defending your faith, this somehow lessens your guilt in the matter. What’s really happening is that Wile and his Apologia textbook series is trying to tap into the kind of paranoid, hysterical fear of evolution his audience desperately wants to see in a “textbook,” and when exposed to actual experts with fossils, genetic sequences, an extensive set of zoological studies, and hundreds of thousands of high quality, peer reviewed papers, he’s protecting his very lucrative business with Freudian projection. In fact, he barely tries to hide what’s going on…

The textbook carries a religious ultimatum to young readers and parents, warning in its “History of Life” chapter that a “Christian worldview … is the only correct view of reality; anyone who rejects it will not only fail to reach heaven but also fail to see the world as it truly is.” When the AP asked about that passage, university spokesman Brian Scoles said the sentence made it into the book because of an editing error and will be removed from future editions.

Whew, that’s one hell of an editing error. It would be sort of like this blog accidentally declaring that my goal is to turn all my readers into worshippers of Satan who sacrifice young virgins in their basements, according to some of the very best Satanic Panic pulp Christian fundamentalists have to offer and keeping it as the first paragraph of the bio page. Since day one. Until I’m called on it by a major news agency for a story which was going to be published in almost every major news outlet and say I’ll have it fixed next time the blog gets a big, sweeping update. I’m also kind of curious why this little editing error, which should be brushed off, was aimed at people who decided to send volumes of vicious hate mail to Jerry Coyne over his quotes in the AP article to call him everything from a hairy ape to things that are simply not fit to print. Really, no one is fooled when an apologetics book publisher tries to play expert and hide his true colors. We all know the game plan because we’ve seen it time and time again, and we know it’s not about the hunt for accuracy or a quest for the truth. It’s about a very long tradition for indoctrination for the sake of personal validation and no false indignation or excuse for obvious Freudian slips is going to somehow justify dragging children into the scientific Dark Ages as anything other than cheap proselytizing in the name of self-affirmation.

Aside from puzzling references to blogging tools and social media interaction being novel apps despite being around for about seven years by now, the paper tries to pigeonhole science blogging into the realm of making the scientific process accessible to the world at large and seeking collaborators for original research. But the problem with this approach is that science blogs aren’t designed to do that. They’re sources for expert reviews of new studies, science headlines in the mass media, and uncensored opinions on matters that interest the authors. The communities they build, the kind of discussions they foster, and ultimately, the tones of the blogs are side-effects of their growth. Treating a blog as an entity which just disseminates scientific content it sees fit instead of a dynamic ecosystem driven by traffic patterns and reader feedback, misjudges what’s going on behind the scenes and why it results in a grab bag of many different blogs under the same umbrella. There’s a reason why Pharyngula, Cosmic Variance and Bad Astronomy are very different sites and that reason is not the authors’ neglect for the proper standards for a science blog. In fact, those standards don’t even exist.

Still, after picking out eleven blogs from a quick web search, Kouper veers off into analyzing their use of snark, sarcasm and other “undesirable means of communication” with a level of detail that seems unnecessary and beside the point. Lost in her bureaucratic dissections of science blogs is the fact that science bloggers often deal with manufactroversies and anti-scientific rhetoric, so all our negative reactions to it come from repeated exposure to conspiracy-speak, cranks, quacks and insults after speaking our minds or that after you get your share of experience with those who don’t let little things like reality or the scientific method to get in the way of their arguments, you learn that being nice to everyone simply doesn’t work. Instead of being given a genuine exploration of the science blogosphere, we’re treated to snippets and tut-tutting about our use of sarcasm or lack of patience with creationists and conspiracy theorists. I assume this is what it’s like to read the diary of a newly minted anthropologist who spent a few years on a distant island only to learn the proper ways to curse someone in the native language, ignoring the religious traditions, home life and the usual social interactions along the way. It’s a classic example of missing the forest for the trees.

This lack of required perspective plaguing the paper could be explained by the small content sample. Kouper only chose posts over a month from her small clutch of blogs and limited her analysis of comments to fifteen replies per post. Even worse, she based her demographic information on only one blog and concluded that a small number of replies from scientists, grad students and research assistants meant that science blogs are read primarily by academia and researchers who have “water cooler discussions about the latest papers.” So the goal of science blogging, she continues, should be making science more accessible to laypeople. Um, I’d like to ask where all the comments from non-scientists, vocal critics of science and cranks went. How does a normal palette of posts about atheism and religious follies on Pharyngula fit into her idealized picture? What about Phil Plait’s explanations of astronomy for those who aren’t experts? Oh, right. She didn’t include his blog in her sample. Neither did she include Respectful Insolence or many other skeptical sites.

What we’re left with at the end are sweeping recommendations based on very limited research, a tiny sample that doesn’t cover the full scope of the science blogosphere, very skewed idea of the blogs’ demographics, as well as faulty assumptions about the nature and goal of science blogging in general. We do popularize many scientific fields, but we’re not specifically looking for research collaborators. We’re concerned with correcting, analyzing and discussing scientific topics important to us, but we’re looking to start debates and discussions instead of disseminating edicts from on high. Our blogs are fluid entities driven by traffic patterns and readers who comment on our work. We deal with a wide variety of opinions from scientists and curious non-experts. It seems that all this was either lost on Kouper, or more probably, she didn’t really try to understand her subject in the first place and ended up with a paper that reads as if it’s appalled at their sheer variety, but tries to jam them all into a neat little box anyway with little regard for the social world they inhabit.

[ illustration by Simon Varisto ]

Here’s the thing. I’m not saying that Avatar should’ve won an award for Best Picture since, as was said before, the story was an exercise in contrasts, pitting amazing visual effects against a painfully simplistic parable that relentlessly pounded every viewer over the head with an environmental message containing all the depth of a Captain Planet rerun. Sure, some cool transhumanist ideas were left in the final product because there was another chance to stuff something about unity with nature, but it was definitely not a serious contender for the title. It wasn’t the only science fiction movie however, and the far more dramatic and politically charged District 9 was also on the docket. It was thought provoking, inspired by real and brutal events, and had an ending that spoke volumes in just a few minutes of screen time. But of course, it couldn’t win against another politically inspired film based on real and very current events.

Giant shrimp eating cat food in decaying slums vs. bomb squads in Iraq? That’s an easy one for the Academy. The aliens and their shantytown were a metaphor? Yeah, whatever. Nerds. And that’s the problem. It’s hard to believe that in over 80 years of the Oscars being awarded, not a single science fiction movie has ever won an award for Best Picture. Even a fantasy movie managed to barge its way into this category after hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars poured into the Lord of the Rings Trilogy to the delight of fantasy lovers across the world. Are science fiction tales really that sub-par compared to war movies and drama? Considering how the votes have been going so far, I would think it’s safe for any filmmaker who decides to explore themes that aren’t on the Academy’s approved list of award worthy genres and looks into the future for an allegory of today, to abandon hope of ever being rewarded for the effort, no matter how well the movie turns out.

[ illustration by Tomasz Miazga, some images may be a tad NSFW ]