Lucy in Debt with Dollars

The six-month-long museum show featuring the Lucy fossils at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle lost about $1.25 million. Museum officials blame the recession, bad weather, and the presidential election for the lack of patrons.

http://www.ethiopianreview.com/content/2009/03/woyannes-attempt-to-profit-from-lucy-failed/

Worksafe.

Static Clinging

I was just thinking about how much progress has been made in treating AIDS. It's shameful we still don't have a vaccine or even a cure, but the lifespan of AIDS patients who start proper treatment early and stay on it is now measured in decades instead of months.

Then I recalled some woman (A speaker for the Reagan administration?) at a press conference telling reporters - in near-hysterical tones - that AIDS was the only disease in human history which was one-hundred percent fatal.

At the time I wanted to find this woman, pin her to a wall and shout in her face "Have you never heard of rabies?!" Besides her medical ignorance, I couldn't believe her attitude that there was no hope; that the situation would never improve. She all but said anyone with HIV should be rounded up and put in d/e/a/t/h/ c/a/m/p/s/ tuberculosis hospitals for the rest of their miserable, short lives.

That was then. Due to remembering this, and other examples, it now strikes me that there are many people in this world who don't understand that things change. That life is not static. That medical science advances. That governments fall. That climate runs in cycles. That banks fail. When these events inevitably happen they're left floundering and confused.

This isn't just _social_ evolution in action. People who die because "It could never happen here." does are less likely to reproduce. Which makes me wonder why we still have so many such people in the gene pool.

And why we keep letting them run things.