Public Education at Work

This is a little close to home considering I have family in Seattle and if this is an example of the governance they're receiving, they need to move.

Probably the funniest is the project manager for the building thinking that the reason the electric costs are so much higher is that the lights are further away from the floors. Bet she just aced her science classes in high school.

For those who may not be familiar with the area Seattle is a green town. I don't mean Irish either. It's an urban environmental activist dream. The highways are small and hard to navigate in order to discourage those nasty people who own cars. Recycling is mandatory(I know it's a good idea, but mandatory?? come on). My personal favorite though, and this is more Washington as opposed to just Seattle, but if you are in a boat in the sound and a whale comes up near or under you then you get fined.

There was actually a cruise ship that came into port and at some point on it's route it had hit a whale. There were people calling for the captain to be jailed, fined, tarred and feathered. I'm guessing the people who went for this never took a biology or wildlife course. Here's a crash course. Whales are aquatic creatures(that means they live in the water for you public school grads). You've seen them in such movies as Free Willy or Star Trek IV. As aquatic creatures, they eat, sleep, dive, mate, sing, HEAR underwater. Cruise ships make a lot of noise. Whales would easily be able to hear this noise. For a whale to get caught on the bow of a ship requires one of three things: a mortally wounded whale, an already dead whale, or a suicidal whale. No way to OD in the big blue. No bridges to jump off of. If only we could understand whale song we might have been able to talk him down from the ledge....so to speak.

Bottom line, when the people making the decisions on policies that involve science wouldn't even understand the basic Bill Nye episode on Saturday morning TV we have a problem. Maybe it was Rove's fault.