Looks like them big tough guys at the coalface can’t take a little heat.
A Wyoming politician has expressed his own displeasure with a University of Wyoming artwork attacking coal’s environmental effects in this way:
[E]very now and then, you have to use these opportunities to educate some of the folks at the University of Wyoming about where their paychecks come from.
See, folks at the University of Wyoming don’t understand that ideas critical of funding sources are forbidden. This here’s a kind of learning opportunity for them in the limits of free expression.
July 22nd, 2011 at 1:27PM
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/440/game-changer
July 22nd, 2011 at 5:27PM
For an example of the influence that Big Agriculture wields (without saying a word) see Troubled Waters Fiasco at http://ptable.blogspot.com/2010/11/comments-on-troubled-waters-fiasco-at.html#links.
July 22nd, 2011 at 11:05PM
Yeah, “Game Changer” was an interesting TAL episode. In it the poor, put-upon former academic says tons of “bromium” are being dumped into wastewater, and our helpful if somewhat credulous narrator/reporter points out that “bromium” causes cancer. Problem: there is no such thing as “bromium”. So much for fact checking. Or, you know, facts. Good story, though.
What was meant was bromide, present as a counter ion to many of the metals. Not a carcinogen in itself, although a carcinogen can be formed when reacted with certain chlorinated wastewater treatments. Solution: use other agents, or non-halogen treatments.
July 22nd, 2011 at 11:20PM
It is misleading to have “insult to coal” in quotations, as if one of the toothless and ignorant politicians had said such a thing. That appears only as a characterization by the Guardian reporter, as far as I can tell. One of the links goes to a subscription site, so I suppose in some fuller comment this was uttered, but this is not apparent in the article.
July 23rd, 2011 at 8:46PM
OK, I agree that the politician is a twit. But why should a publicly-funded university be creating (or displaying) politically charged art? Was it a student project, or a university installation? If the latter, that would seem at least questionable. What would be the reaction if the university had for whatever reason paid for and displayed a piece of art that in some way praised the burning of fossil fuels?
July 24th, 2011 at 7:32AM
I’m having a hard time seeing the oppression here.