Among the developing nations, particularly of Asia, “There is a hunger for knowledge, an insistence on excellence, a reverence for science and math and technology and learning. That used to be what we were about. That’s what we’re going to be about again.”

President Obama spoke these words on Monday during a nationally televised address describing a new initiative in science and math education.  The entire text of the president’s inspiring “Educate to Innovate” speech is available here.

The President also called for “an informed citizenry, in an era where many of the problems we face as a nation are, at root, scientific problems.”  I wish someone had told Mr. Obama about our little Bay Area tool for building a scientifically informed citizenry: Wonderfest!

What a great weekend we had!  The peninsula and the east bay sparkled with the excitement of science as Wonderfest 2009 took place at Stanford, on Nov. 7, and UC Berkeley, on Nov. 8.

We participated in expert discussions on energy technology, media violence, modern Darwinism, space robots, emotion & spirituality, and the creation of brand new lifeforms.  We laughed with science comedians; we heard 20,000-volt “modulated thunder;” and we marveled at our own fallibility made plain by a neuroscientist magician.  But perhaps best of all, we taught each other at the Amateur Science Forum and the Bay Area Science Expo.

To relive some of these experiences, you can watch high-quality Wonderfest videos and then let the world know your thoughts: Wonderfest 2009 videos and blogs are now accessible from Wonderfest.org!

Happy Thanksgiving,

Tucker Hiatt
Director

P.S.  Thanks to Robin Farmanfarmaian and Herb Masters, lots of nice images from Wonderfest 2009 are available in our new Facebook photo gallery.

Christopher Chidsey – Associate Professor of Chemistry & of Chemical Engineering, Stanford
Cyrus Wadia - Faculty & Co-Director, Clean Tech to Market, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley

Paul Ekman, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, UC San Francisco
Dacher Keltner, Professor of Psychology, UC Berkeley

Albert Bandura, Professor of Psychology, Stanford University
Stanley Baran, Professor of Communication, Bryant University

Ken Croswell, astronomer and author of The Lives of Stars and Magnificent Universe

Chris McKay, Planetary Scientist, NASA-Ames Research Center
Kanna Rajan, Principal Researcher for Autonomy, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

On Nov 7, 2009, the Board of Trustees and the Wonderfest Advisory Board presented this award to Tucker Hiatt, for his tireless efforts in bringing Wonderfest to the Bay Area for its 11th year.
The inscription reads: “For illuminating our universe with the spirit of wonder. Tucker Hiatt.” It is followed by the quote, “We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers” – Carl Sagan

– Issac Asimov

Been there; done that. With agriculture and the directed breeding of numerous species of animals and plants, we’ve had a long history of genetic engineering, giving us distinct survival advantage. Science came to our consciousness giving us understanding of the physical and microbial world, allowing us to cure many of the great diseases in human history. Life spans were extended and so to our ability to circumvent hereditary ailments as well as improve our resistances to disease. All along, our social orders have exercised war, eugenics, slavery, and poverty upon various races and populations.

And now, with technologies on the horizon including man-machine “wet-wire” interfaces, bio-computers, nanotechnology, advancement of stem cell therapies, and artificial tissue generation, among others, being employed to fight disease or enhance human abilities. With the growth of genetic understanding and the ability to sequence genes, would we somehow integrate such technologies into the human genome as a delivery mechanism for some cure?  A genetic cure might be introduced at an embryonic level with the ability to be passed to your children. Or, we may engineer people to work more effectively in space or on Mars.

I would like to have the genetic modification to grow dark chocolate finger nails with candy coating.  YES!  Then my kids will have finger nails to harvest.

We invite you to weigh in on this subject as well as any of the following questions. Please leave your comments below.

• What can be said about the future of human evolution with these in mind?
• How can we distinguish natural selection from human directed selection?
• Has evolution fundamentally changed given human applied technologies and manipulations?
• What are the moral implications of life-saving genetic alteration that would impact heredity?

Don’t miss Wonderfest 2009 in November, where panel of scientist will debate “Is Evolution Still Darwinian?”

“A disquieting era of genetic manipulation is coming, one that may revolutionize human capacities…”

~ George F. Will

For further study:

• The Future of Man – How Will Evolution Change Humans
  http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-future-of-man
• Book: Future Evolution
  http://www.amazon.com/Future-Evolution-Peter-Ward/dp/0716734966
• Human Evolution At the Crossroads
  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7103668
• The Third Chimpanzee – The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal
  http://www.amazon.com/Third-Chimpanzee-Evolution-Future-Animal/dp/0060845503/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1251822162&sr=8-1
• Future Human Evolution Website
  http://www.humansfuture.org

Would you like to make that salutation, above, a little more meaningful?  Just capitalize the F in “friend”!  Please become a formal Friend of Wonderfest.  No blood oath is required, and “Friendship” costs nothing.  Becoming a Friend just indicates that you support the cause of informal, provocative science education, and that you might want to get involved in helping to produce Wonderfest events.  Please do consider making this small commitment to America’s oldest science festival.

Introducing! The WonderOutpost Science Forum

Should the U.S. send astronauts on a one-way mission to Mars?! The savings in time and expense would be dramatic.  It might be tantamount to a death sentence, but there’d be no shortage of qualified volunteers.  And if the U.S. doesn’t do it, won’t the Russians or the Chinese?  Discuss this fascinating topic in the brand new WonderOutpost Science Forum at wonderfest.org.

Priestley Medal winner Dick Zare

Huzzah! Wonderfest advisor Richard Zare has been honored with the very highest award of the American Chemical Society.  Professor Zare, who chairs the Stanford Chemistry Department, will receive the 2010 Priestley Medal for his distinguished service to the entire field of chemistry.  Congratulations, Dick!

Speaking of Wonderfest Advisors, Board president Dan Werthimer is waxing scientific about the search for ET at an upcoming meeting of the Bay Area Skeptics.  Dan is chief scientist for SETI@home at UC Berkeley.  Join him for good talk about little green men at La Peña’s Café Valparaíso in Berkeley on July 15 at 7:00 PM.

Reminder: If you believe that the world is better off when people are engaged with science, then please formalize your relationship with Wonderfest: Become a Friend of Wonderfest today.

Wondrously,
Tucker Hiatt, director

P.S.  Each year’s festival is quite expensive to produce.  If you know of a public-spirited company or foundation that values top-notch informal science education, kindly drop me a line: tucker@wonderfest.org

“Sometime before the end of this century, there will be a human colony on Mars.  It will happen when people finally wake up to the fact that two-way trips to the red planet are unnecessary.”

So begins Arizona State physicist Paul Davies in an essay entitled “A One-Way Ticket to Mars.”  Davies does not envision a suicide mission.  Rather, he makes the following claim:

“Adequate supplies, including a nuclear power source, can be sent on ahead, and every two years more supplies, and more astronauts, will be dispatched to the new colony.”

Davies may be right.  But a truly adventurous nation will forgo the suicide proscription.  If a brave, aging astronaut wants to end his/her days on the Red Planet making unparalleled contributions to geology and, perhaps, biology, are we to say “no”?  I’ll bet that SOME spacefaring nation will say “yes,” and will do so before 2025.

We invite you to weigh in on this subject as well as any of the following questions.  Please leave your comments below.

• How much easier/cheaper is a mission that involves no return to Earth?
• How long could astronauts survive on Mars?
• What qualifications/motivations would qualify an astronaut for such a mission?
• Are we ethically willing to “send astronauts to their death” on Mars?
• Who is the “we” in the previous question?  Americans?  (What if the Russians or the Chinese are willing to do it?)
• Is it better to send robots in the first place?!

For further study:

• This NASA pdf provides excellent background on the inhospitable Martian environment: http://imaginemars.jpl.nasa.gov/info/DiscoverInfo.pdf
• Most of all, human martians may miss the radiation shielding that Earth’s atmosphere provides, protecting us from solar flares and cosmic rays. To appreciate the harsh radiation environment on Mars, see http://klabs.org/richcontent/Tutorial/radiation/space_rad_health/spaceflight_radiation_health_program.htm
• Michael Cole’s 1999 book “Living on Mars: Mission To The Red Planet” [Enslow Publishers, Springfield, NJ] describes the landing of Sojourner on Mars, summarizes the history of information gathering missions, and speculates about future plans for explorations of the Red Planet.