Blue Collar Scientist

Less than one minute in 300, which works out to less than 1 minute per five hours of viewing. This is the conclusion of Pew Research’s new report, The State of the News Media 2008.

The report lumps science and technology together; so that one minute per five hours includes breathless blurbs about the latest iPhone and so on. I don’t watch cable news, so I can’t really guess the ratio of technology to science reporting, but I’m guessing, just from being exposed to these channels in bars and restaurants, that science is significantly less than 50% of “science and technology” reporting.

The report also finds that all domestic policy issues put together, except immigration, makes up 13% of airtime on cable news. Celebrities, crime, and disasters, on the other hand, take up 24% of airtime.

Adding up the per-five-hour figures that they publish, you come up with about 170 minutes, or almost three hours, out of five hours of viewing that are unaccounted for. I’m sure a big chunk of that is commercials and fancy but pointless graphics, but surely some of that time is spent discussing stories that weren’t categorized.

Is it any wonder that Americans are so illiterate in science and technology? Anyone actually promoting and teaching science here is doing so in a culture where a wealthy and influential media makes essentially no contribution.

The BCS will be interviewed for a television news-magazine show on Monday, or possibly Tuesday. The topic will be evolution, which is outside my field of expertise¹, but that never stopped me from shooting off my mouth before. Fortunately I’m at least quite well-read on the topic and am known in the market it will be airing as a science educator/popularizer type person.

Since I know a little about what is coming down the pike, I’m preparing for it. I’ve worked up some talking points, because I know TV is brutal about keeping the word count down and the clarity as high as possible. I’ve been practicing in front of a camera to work on looking at least vaguely competent and likable. I’ll have some time to do a couple of mock interviews with others posing as hostile interviewers². I lack any media training, but that doesn’t mean I have to go in without any clue.

If any readers happen to have any advice to offer, please shoot me an e-mail or comment here. Hopefully I can get a copy of the interview and post it after it is all over, and we can all do a post-mortem.

1. I’ve noticed there is very little demand on television for experts on the application of simplified heuristics approximating Hamiltonian paths as applied to astronomical search order algorithms that are optimized to instrument-imposed overhead limitations. But I can’t imagine why. [↩]
2. Or at least “hard hitting” ones, although if this journalist actually takes a swing at me I’d be quite surprised. [↩]

USS Lake Erie launches a missile at USA 193. See more at the Department of Defense website.

The DoD has a press release stating that at 10:26 PM EST (6:26 Alaska time), the USS Lake Erie fired a missile that hit the errant National Reconnaissance Office satellite known as USA 193. The missile had no warhead, which supports the DoD’s assertion that they are concerned about an intact hydrazine tank re-entry, and not with preventing classified technology falling into unfriendly hands.

The DoD states that confirmation should be available within 24 hours that the hydrazine was released harmlessly in space. This will be apparent from the decay rate of the satellite’s orbit; with about the same surface area, but much less mass, the orbit will decay noticeably more rapidly than if the hydrazine had not been released.

This provides yet another confirmation of the government’s story that amateur observers can make: Assuming that the satellite is largely intact and still visible, in the event the hydrazine has been released, the satellite should show up later, and on a track that is more westerly, than predictions with the current elements indicate. However, there isn’t much time - the bulk of the orbiting material is expected to re-enter within two days. Heavens Above is still providing easy-to-use predictions on the satellite’s visibility.

UPDATE: DoD says that nothing bigger than a football survived - so much for that! Also, I replaced the picture of USA 193’s launch, to a picture of the launch of the missile that hit it, from the DoD website.

I was interviewed a few days ago by a local radio journalist who was asking whether the interception would be visible from southcentral Alaska. My polished and very educational answer was edited down to a succinct “No, it won’t” for airing. The interest seems to have been generated by the occasional visibility of missiles fired from Kodiak Island, but the ships doing this work were too far to the south and west in the Pacific Ocean, and the satellite much too low, for the interception to be visible.