SanSay.Co.Uk

Wellington Grey, a physics teacher here in the UK, has written an open letter to AQA and the Department for Education (link via BoingBoing) pointing out that physics as a subject is being watered down, with questions along the lines of "How does global warming make you feel?".

Reading the article, I had a nasty feeling I'd heard this before somewhere. Turns out I was thinking of Fallen Angles, a novell written in 1991 by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Michael Flynn (read it for free at the Baen Free Library).

The novell's plot revolves around the green movement going over the top, with proper science being replaced by vauge waffle. I read it and thought "nah, it'll never happen", but hey, turns out you just never know...

That reminds me of another of Larry Niven's books, The Long Arm of Gil Hamilton, which predicts the world of the future (bearing in mind that the book was written in 1976, so "the future" is basically now) to be a place where wandering down a dark allyway late of an evening might result in you being knocked over the head and turning up as component parts in the black market organ replacement business. That could never happen. It also contained a memorable (to me) quote about how population pressures had resulted in micro-apartments stuffed with high-tec space saving devices, as "in today's world, technology is cheaper than elbow room". That could never happen either.

In common with a bunch of other author's stories, the book has an unshakeable belife that The Future will see us travelling everywhere via a mixture of moving walkways and helicoptors or floating cars (the main propellant of which would seem to be dry ice). That could never happen.