These are my notes from one of five sessions at a Seattle Net Tuesday event. Sessions were limited to five minutes, so I followed up with presenters as needed. The Knowledge As Power presentation was delivered by Executive Director Sarah Schacht.

Sarah Schacht has published the current version of the Knowledge As Power web site herself, for a low cost, with little technical experience, and using her personal computer. She updates the site herself, and has even depended on it for live video presentations, critical and successful first impressions, and fund raising.

Much of Seattle Net Tuesday is an ongoing discussion of better ways to connect nonprofits and technology. So how did Sarah pull it off? She used iWeb from Apple Computer. With iWeb and about $75 spent on the iWork Suite, plus Emma for email marketing at about $24 per month, Sarah’s young organization has a simple, sustainable, and professional online presence.

In this context, other Seattle Net Tuesday attendees mentioned that Windows Live Spaces from Microsoft was catching up, including that they offer a free domain as Apple does with iWeb. However, it was also mentioned that Live Spaces also still has issues with the increasingly popular Firefox and other Mozilla browsers.

For online donations, Knowledge As Power has made good use of a PayPal button, the code for which is provided by PayPal.

Sarah recommends the iWeb and Apple technologies to anyone wanting to get something started online, without too much technical fuss — provided you own or can easily access a Mac computer.

Of Knowledge As Power, I say: may it live long, and prosper.

Give Knowledge As Power’s legislation-tracking web site a try!

They write: Comments from a cross-section of our signatories provide a glimpse at the the depth of concern to Defend Science, the broad support for this initiative, and the diversity of viewpoints that gives strength to this effort.

My comment was:

All people must employ critical thinking, must understand the scientific method, and discern clearly between fact and opinion, between truth and theory, and between understanding and belief. It is essential for the progress and truly for the life of humanity that we educate and inspire with science. It is our responsibility to do so, as scientific and educated and motivated people. This fire is not a mystical gift we were given, rather it is of our making and in it humanity should take its greatest pride. The fire of science as a gift will also not be given to others supernaturally, rather we must share the warmth, force, and light of it. When threatened by mass fear of the unknown, we must stand up with courage and defend the bravery of discovery, the human will to demystify, to know, and to understand.

My gainful employment is currently in software, and I was cited as “Brian Glanz, Software Developer.”

Other signatories’ comments are at times alarming, touching, and all of them challenging. I will paste another half dozen below from other signatories which I want to emphasize. If you’d prefer, read the full collection here.

Then, review and sign the Defend Science Statement.

More Comments from Signatories of the Defend Science Statement:

The defense of the scientific method should be viewed as part of a larger fight to protect basic civil liberties from the onslaught of corporate-funded, right-wing extremism.

– Matthew LaHaye, Caltech, Department of Physics

Six years ago I took the ‘defence of science’ seriously and formed a nonprofit California Corporation with the mission to promote science education be encouraging existing institutions to sponsor and produce EVENTS to celebrate Darwin, Science and Humanity. The events are held each year on, or near Feb.12, Darwin’s Birthday and are open to the public. In addition, are promoting a GLOBAL celebration in 2009 for Darwins bicentennial birthday. I invite all scientists who support the ‘Defence of Science’ to visit our website and participate in by developing their own EVENT each year. We must cooperate in this important effort to Defend Science!

– Robert Stephens, President, Darwin Day Celebration

It is a sad commentary on the current political and social climate, that, despite recent and breathtaking advancements in science and medical technology, we find ourselves having to defend science, the only mechanism we have for gaining new information about the natural world. In the face of increasingly complex social, environmental, and medical problems, seeking solutions while ignoring the insights that science can provide is pure folly.

– Ola Fincke, Professor, Dept. of Zoology, U. of Oklahoma

The effect of years of non-scientific government policies on HIV and AIDS are plain to see in South Africa. Medical Scientists should not hesitate to speak out at every opportunity against this type of influence on their work.

– Antoine Van Gelder, Internal Medicine, University of Pretoria, South Africa

The definition of science is not open to debate. Science is not “a marketplace of ideas” in which consumer behavior dictates truth. Scientific findings may, at times, challenge the status quo, be unpopular, or even counter-intuitive. But, scientific findings are ALWAYS demonstrable, testable, and measurable.

– Brian Bolea, Grand Valley State University, Michigan

As a professor of psychiatry and psychoanalysis I confront daily the damage to hope that lack of understanding causes. There are all too many medical and environmental agonies the cause and cure of which we don’t yet know, and we must bear the often overwheming emotional burden such ignorance imposes. Such are cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, global warming.

But there are many other medical and environmental agonies whose cause and cure — or at least prevention — we now DO know. To be deprived by anti-science zealots of this understanding — and the possibiity of averting these blights by appropriate action — is the grimmest tragedy. Such are AIDS, tuberculosis, rickets, unplanned pregnancies.

We must not succumb to efforts by ignorant zealots to return us to the pre-scientific dark ages, in which much human hopelessness was perpetuated for centuries longer than necessary, by the arrogant imposition of faith-based doctrines of anti-science.

Aside from the injury and death that they guarantee, they produce another and equally unnecessary blight: prolongation into our adult life of the sense of helplessness with which we are all born. Every baby is a scientist desperately struggling to become a strong and safe grownup by figuring out the truth. Whether he or she becomes a professional scientist or remains an amateur, we must preserve the freedom of everyone to observe, think, discuss, apply, and celebrate that scientific quest. For, next to love, the scientific quest is the most powerful protector of hope.

– Roderic Gorney, Professor of Psychiatry, UCLA

My comments on defending science were recently included in a collection of comments by signatories of the Defend Science Statement. Today, I thought right away to invite Vice President Gore to broaden his defense of climate related science to a full-throated endorsement of the scientific method. My emailed reply to Vice President Gore included the following.

Open Congratulations to Al Gore:

Congratulations, Mr. Vice President!

I would like to take this opportunity to encourage you and everyone to broadly embrace and defend science, in this and in every endeavor.

See comments from me and others on defending science at:

http://www.defendscience.org/fund_signatory_comments.pdf

Please sign and share the Defend Science Statement at:

http://defendscience.org/

Your compatriot,

Brian Glanz

Al Gore’s announcement email, Subject: I am deeply honored, in full text:

Dear Brian,

I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. This award is even more meaningful because I have the honor of sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change–the world’s pre-eminent scientific body devoted to improving our understanding of the climate crisis–a group whose members have worked tirelessly and selflessly for many years. We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level.

My wife, Tipper, and I will donate 100 percent of the proceeds of the award to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan non-profit organization that is devoted to changing public opinion in the U.S. and around the world about the urgency of solving the climate crisis.

Thank you,

Al Gore