Enrolling in Webinars

While it's always comforting to sit amongst the people, something that Coronavirus has negated, there are surrogates, some of which will likely endure ones personal gatherings have returned.  Online shul may as well be online Hebrew school.  For me, the people may be the only attraction.

What has gone well are organizations whose conferences would not have been reasonably accessible taking advantage of the situation and making their seminars publicly accessible.  And if you are looking at a talking head, a screen serves the purpose quite well, which is why live televised sports and news shows of varying types have acquired their followings.  But now I can sit in on events of learned people, which previously would not have been readily accessible to me, usually discussing an issue with one another.  I have registered for sessions with AJC, which have proven particularly enlightening, ADL, and later this week Brookings.  AEI has their sessions available, though the upcoming options seem to pitch their political hardball more than they capture ideas.  Some of the speakers end up in the Twittersphere without making on-screen pests of themselves so I added a few that way.  Since the speakers cannot get to the central location either, people a long air ride apart can appear on opposite sides of the screen.  They always take viewer questions, most very thoughtful as they go through a moderator rather than a speaker calling on a raised hand blindly. 

Amid the buffoonery that has become our rather toxic social media interactivity, we actually have erudite people with expertise and perspective making their thoughts accessible to people capable of benefiting from their wisdom.  No people prancing around hoping to get their picture with their arms in the air or disparaging quote into the public arena.  Just people who really want to partake of what the invited guests want to convey.  We are fortunate enough to have an abundance of generous experts and an abundance of listeners intent of making themselves wiser.

Disappointing Webinar

A good friend traceable to the Year Gimel hosts a project to promote the accuracy and meaning of scientific studies to a largely non-scientist public.  For the most part, science is the ultimate revelation of what you see is what you get, but it is open to its vagaries, not yet figured out, and adaptation to various non-science agendas from political policies to promoting drugs for doctors to prescribe.  And there have certainly been scientific frauds where real scientists alter results to look more important than they really are for secondary gain, usually promotion in the scientific workplace.  We can watch anti-vaxxers on TV or You Tube.  We have elected officials downplaying global warming, a form of Russian Roulette with our descendants and not that much benefit for us now.  Public visionaries don't seem to have the value that they once did, at least in America.

My friend pointed me to a Webinar on Climate Change, for which he and his organization take a great interest, one conducted by a reputable organization called the Union of Concerned Scientists.  There being no tuition for this and it occurring on an afternoon not otherwise occupied by appointments, I signed up and signed in at the appointed time.  My presence lasted 15 minutes.  I closed the Adobe connecting program, proceeded to my car and went shopping instead. 

Instead of discussing anything that required a modicum of scientific background, or even interest, they were discussing a piece of doomed legislation when what they really need is regime change.  There is science and there is agenda.  Impediments to science, be they elected officials or the shills with PhD's that sign aboard for career gain, need to be looked at as impediments to overcome.

The best way to do this is with voters figuring out that devaluing science is just one more of the global depravity that we watch on our daily screens.  Banging your shoe on the table with a "Nyet" Khruschev style doesn't bring credibility to the realities of global warming and its consequences or the best scientific evidence that causes our most astute scientists to think that way.  Creating alliances with others that have their own reasons for unseating some of our elected officials might. 

And we have rogue scientists.  PhD's who promote falsehood for personal gain are worthy of blackballing from the scientific community.  Assembling a catalog of these people and making an effort that they are unwelcome in any respectable scientific workplace might be a better project for ethical scientists to implement.

Science goes forward with objectivity and planning.  This seminar had neither.