On This Independence Day
Jul. 4th, 2007 01:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
browngirlOn this Fourth of July, I'm going to write about one of the things I love about living in the United States, and touch on a bunch of others. I decided to write in this vein awhile ago, when I was contemplating the often-leveled charge that liberals and/or intellectuals don't love the US, that we hate it and think we're too good for it. (I have a bad habit of almost always examining insults and accusations, rather than just dismissing them.) So.
I'm proud to be an American because, despite widespread anti-intellectualism and religious attacks on science, we have a society advanced enough to track space weather.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOAA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_weather
Why is space weather important? Well, in this electronic age, electromagnetic disturbances caused by the interactions of Earth's magnetosphere and the Sun's solar wind and coronal mass ejections can affect everything from satellites to power grids. (That's oversimplified, but I'm not an astronomer, I just read a lot). To say nothing of other events that aren't strictly weather but emerge from outer space, such as asteroid strikes.
The US has a governmental agency that tracks these things. Building on millennia of knowledge gathered by people who refused to keep from looking up and accepting explanations of natural phenomena that came from other sources than nature itself, as part of a society complex enough to retain and transmit this information and wealthy enough to spare a few resources towards maintaining and using it, we have made an ongoing effort see what's going on in space and figure out how it'll affect our concerns with some lead time.
I think that's a nifty accomplishment for group of little two-meter-tall hairless apes, a well-set priority for any nation primarily concerned with food and shelter and entertainment, and I don't mind the part of my taxes that goes towards this. (All 50 cents of it, most likely, considering all the things the US government spends money on.) And I think the philosophy, intertweined pragmatism and exploration, behind such an agency is an idea I like the US for having, and one I think is in constant danger as well.
There are lots of other things I like about the US, other things I'm proud of this country for, other reasons I don't plan to leave, and other reasons why as a liberal I'm going to keep doing what I can towards certain necessary changes. But I thought, on this Independence Day, I'd write about this particular feature of this country I live in.
I'm proud to be an American because, despite widespread anti-intellectualism and religious attacks on science, we have a society advanced enough to track space weather.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOAA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_weather
Why is space weather important? Well, in this electronic age, electromagnetic disturbances caused by the interactions of Earth's magnetosphere and the Sun's solar wind and coronal mass ejections can affect everything from satellites to power grids. (That's oversimplified, but I'm not an astronomer, I just read a lot). To say nothing of other events that aren't strictly weather but emerge from outer space, such as asteroid strikes.
The US has a governmental agency that tracks these things. Building on millennia of knowledge gathered by people who refused to keep from looking up and accepting explanations of natural phenomena that came from other sources than nature itself, as part of a society complex enough to retain and transmit this information and wealthy enough to spare a few resources towards maintaining and using it, we have made an ongoing effort see what's going on in space and figure out how it'll affect our concerns with some lead time.
I think that's a nifty accomplishment for group of little two-meter-tall hairless apes, a well-set priority for any nation primarily concerned with food and shelter and entertainment, and I don't mind the part of my taxes that goes towards this. (All 50 cents of it, most likely, considering all the things the US government spends money on.) And I think the philosophy, intertweined pragmatism and exploration, behind such an agency is an idea I like the US for having, and one I think is in constant danger as well.
There are lots of other things I like about the US, other things I'm proud of this country for, other reasons I don't plan to leave, and other reasons why as a liberal I'm going to keep doing what I can towards certain necessary changes. But I thought, on this Independence Day, I'd write about this particular feature of this country I live in.
