One of my favorite people in History-and I have lots–is Anaximander, an ancient Greek. He’s the philosopher who shocked Ionia by saying that the moon was not a goddess but a big rock up there in the sky. This, of course, was totally contrary to common sense. How could a rock hang in the sky? Rocks do not levitate. How could anything but a god or goddess float up there in the heavens, changing shape at will and sometimes disappearing entirely? The city fathers are said to have resolved the issue by banishing Anaximander, sending him out to the wilderness, which was a serious thing in those days.
I have thought of the poor old guy lately because the folks in Washington want to silence data about many things, but especially about climate. Again, sometimes truth flies in the face of common sense. The East coast has faced blizzards, the Midwest copes with floods and the Southwest suffers from drought. One TV channel has sent reporters out in snowstorms to ask people on the street if they believe in global warming, as a big joke. We don’t want to hear that temperatures off the coast of Greenland are exceptionally high or that another ice cap has calved, broken off from the main.
Anaximander got a crater on the moon named after him. Our contemporary scientists may be fired or banished if they speak up and that will be the end of it.
Nevertheless.blog 