Wednesday, June 25, 2008

And the Winner of the Science Fair is . . .

Really Mac? If you haven't heard, the Republican presidential nominee, John McCain has proposed a contest with a $300,000 purse to whomever can come up with a car battery that out does current ones in price, power and size.

Oh lordy. I'll admit I have never been someone to wax poetic over Bill Nye the Science Guy or anything of that sort, but these seems just silly to me. What's next? A contest to see who can buy the most votes from the wealthy to be the leader of the free world. Oops, wait, we already have a winner to that contest . . .

I get that McCain is trying to siphon off the moderates who may be inclined to lean toward Obama. I guess he figures that his posturing to the religious right isn't working, so why not go after the moderate greenies. Good luck and God speed Mac, I think you are going to need more than a better battery to wins the hearts and minds of the nation's environmentalist.

NewsHour on PBS has a nice little story about McCain's plan here.

2 comments:

Rev Wes Isley said...

I think I've finally figured out what bugs me about this offer. It's as if McCain thinks the $$$ will suddenly trigger Joe Six Pack to look at his wife and say, "You know, honey, that new-fangled battery I got in the basement might be worth something after all!"

Does McCain think people and corporations aren't already working on this? Or maybe I'm making assumptions here. But if they're not, his offer--and at this point, it's only a promise of an offer because he hasn't been elected yet--isn't going to suddenly get their asses in gear. "Well, Mr. CEO, I know you haven't been keen on better batteries up til now, but with McCain sort of promising to offer money, don't you think this would be a good investment?" Yeah, right.

There are plenty of technologies that we should be exploring and investing in, but the oil, gas and auto industries work very hard to make that next to impossible. McCain's offer is actually adding insult to injury.

broad minded said...

yes something tells me the oil industry is willing to (and has) ponyed up ten times as much to make sure this sort of thing doesn't come to pass.