In related news, Dante's "Inferno" placed the money lenders closer to the Devil Himself than murders. Ah, how the times have changed. Money, money, money!

There are things that do seem only to come up on job interviews; this leads to one brushing up on "how to write a sort algorithm" or memorizing all nine layers of the OSI model (religion, politics) and other such things that then can be forgotten once the job is in hand. On the other hand, putting "DNS" on your resume and then only answering "magic" as to how it works isn't perhaps the best of plans.

Sing along now! Oh we'll send him to outer space, to find another race

One might think that Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" might at least be touched on in these articles on science, but alas. Ah well, back to botched understandings.

For the real world, eh? Let's see. Optimism will not stop Ebola in its tracks. Optimism will not unfan the flames across the middle east and other regions, nor will optimism lower food prices—optimism was doubtless not why Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire—or create the three or four or more new Saudi Arabias necessary to fuel the oil craze (of Americans in particular) for a few more years. Optimism will not make the fracking boom any less of a bubble, nor cause the Oil Majors to stop speaking of an "age of austerity"—per the US EIA, 127 oil and gas companies are all taking on debt or chucking assests to try to reach a profit—nor reverse the decline of their supergiant fields, nor cause cheap oil to magically materialize from the marginal, difficult, and expensive sources that are now being resorted to, given the global peak of conventional crude oil back in 2005. Optimism may make the steps outlined in the Hirsch report a little more palatable, though that report advises, given the 2005 oil peak, migration to some new technology in 1985 (or starting in 1995 in crunch mode). I believe Tom Murphy called this an energy trap on his do the math blog. Optimism might call nuclear too cheap to meter, but that tune was young 70 years ago. Optimism will not reverse the draw-down of aquifers, nor reverse the drought in California and the other sun-burnt states. Optimism will not allow a single working class salary to suddenly pay all its bills like it did a few decades ago, nor will it end job erosion due to offshoring and automation. Optimism will not clean up the coal spills, deep water oil taints, nor any of the many other superfund sites that modern culture has blessed us with. Time and hard effort might, but that Augean labor is a far cry from fluffy all-is-well optimism. One might be optimistic that the Highway Trust Fund might somehow remain solvent, or you could wonder just how much of that $500 billion Interstate system can really be maintained now that the oil required to build it is busy pricing itself out of the market. Hey hey! Speaking of optimism, here's an article—"Billionaire Richard Branson failed to deliver on $3 billion global warming pledge." Points for trying?

Moving forward to a product that already has one marketplace failure under its belt? Oil cars slaughtered electric in the free market ~100 years ago, so this recent fuss about bringing back electric seems more about affordable oil pricing itself out of the market than anything new in the wheel'd battery department—but life in the Faust lane certainly has conditioned this culture to see only onwards and upwards, so uh I guess hooray for ACTUALLY DOING IT and all that jazz.

Nary a word about Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in particular the distinction between the puzzle solving of normal science and the different conditions of revolutions in thinking? Oh, the revolutionary thinkers face an uphill battle (like they always have)? I am shocked, shocked, at this sorry state of not learning from the history of science.