This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Video: The end of the François Trauffaut's 1966 film, "Fahrenheit 451." Climate scientists may not be able to memorize all the scientific data they are working to protect from the incoming Donald Trump administration. But it's an example worth thinking about.
It's what someone needs to do when knowledge becomes forbidden.
"I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know."
— Socrates
"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."
"I'm, like, a smart person. I don't have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years."
The fact that Trump assumes that the daily intelligence briefings that presidents receive — or used to receive — will say the same thing over and over displays the kind of ignorance that Socrates railed against 2,400 years ago. And that even Donald Rumsfeld was too smart to dismiss.
Seems to be a lot of that going around.
— CIA found Russia tried to hack election to help Trump? That's BS, says Utah congressman — Thomas Burr | The Salt Lake Tribune
"Washington • Rep. Chris Stewart, a Utah Republican and member of the House Intelligence Committee, says Russia was trying to meddle in this year's presidential election but not to help one candidate or another.
"He also charges that reports asserting that Russian hackers intended to boost Donald Trump's chances to win the election are false.
" 'That's BS,' Stewart said Monday. 'It's just not true. … There just isn't any CIA analysis to draw the conclusion that they wanted Trump to win. There just isn't any.' ..."
— Carl Bernstein: Trump 'thrives in a fact-free environment' — AP / Salt Lake Tribune
" ... Bernstein said on CNN's 'Reliable Sources' on Sunday: 'No president, including Richard Nixon, has been so ignorant of fact and disdains fact as this president does.' He says, 'It has something to do with the growing sense of authoritarianism he and his presidency are projecting'. ..."
— Trump not interested in daily intelligence briefings — Laurie Kellman | The Associated Press
"Washington • Donald Trump on Sunday called a recent CIA assessment of Russian hacking 'ridiculous' and says he's not interested in getting daily intelligence briefings — an unprecedented public dismissal by a president-elect of the nation's massive and sophisticated intelligence apparatus. ..."
By Brady Dennis The Washington Post
"Alarmed that decades of crucial climate measurements could vanish under a hostile Trump administration, scientists have begun a feverish attempt to copy reams of government data onto independent servers in hopes of safeguarding it from any political interference.
"The efforts include a 'guerrilla archiving event' in Toronto where experts will copy irreplaceable public data, meetings at the University of Pennsylvania focused on how to download as much federal data as possible in the coming weeks, and a collaboration of scientists and database experts who are compiling an online site to harbor scientific information. ..."
Wonder if those climate scientists have some extra room for something else?
— Utah's Guv seeks $50k from taxpayers for anti-pornography push — Robert Gehrke | The Salt Lake Tribune
"Tucked into the back pages of Gov. Gary Herbert's $16 billion budget is a request for $50,000 to fund statewide anti-pornography efforts — the first time in more than a decade that taxpayer money has been directed toward such a purpose.
"The request, buried on page 92 of the governor's annual budget request to the Legislature, would grant the money to the Utah Coalition Against Pornography, a private nonprofit group that hosts annual conferences and conducts seminars on preventing children from seeing pornography and helps spread information about recovering from pornography addiction. ..."
— Anti-porn school program misrepresents science — Eight Ph.D.s | For The Salt Lake Tribune
"We write to express our concern regarding an Oct. 8 op-ed focused on the supposed neuroscientific backing of a sex education program from Fight The New Drug (FTND). Based on our expertise in neuroscience and clinical psychology, we find that FTND is systematically misrepresenting science. ...
" ... There is extensive evidence showing that the hypothesis that pornography use is universally harmful is false. ..."
— Trump's Potential FDA Pick Says Drugmakers Shouldn't Have to Prove Their Products Work Before Selling Them — Jordan Weissmann | Slate