Metaphor: Is there any other way to talk science?

I was struck today by New York Times' reporter Dennis Overbye's use of metaphor to report scientists' pursuit on other planets for the origin of life on Earth. His piece evokes Eden as a metaphor for the hot primordial gunk where the first particles meshed to create living organisms. The metaphor instantly calls to mind the dawn of existence, a bountiful variety that subsequently sprung from its many mutations and a specific location outside of the Earth we know today.

In fact, most of our scientific understanding is neatly described through common or allegorical metaphors. Atoms are building blocks that operate like orbiting planetary systems. The Internet is a web of information, your browser accesses a series of packets to load a web page. String theory is built on the metaphor of electrons and quarks as strings. In physics gravity pulls us, in immunology microbes carry bacteria and in chemistry molecules bounce while heat flows.

Metaphor is a cognitive coping mechanism that helps us contemplate and understand phenomena that we can't see. Taken too literally, scientific metaphors can prevent us from truly observing all of the important details or attributes of a phenomenon and prevent further scientific discovery. What metaphors do you rely on to talk about science?

Is Barack Obama a Fascist Communist?

A few weeks ago, I listened with quiet bemusement to an interview with Patri Friedman. Friedman is the main proponent of "Seasteading":

"Seasteading means to create permanent dwellings on the ocean - homesteading the high seas. A seastead, like in the picture above, is a structure meant for permanent occupation on the ocean...

...the world needs a new frontier, a place where those who are dissatisfied with our current civilization can go to build a different (and hopefully better) one.

Currently, it is very difficult to experiment with alternative social systems on a small scale. Countries are so enormous that it is hard for an individual to make much difference. Seasteaders believe that government shouldn't be like the cellphone or operating system industries, with few choices and high customer-lock-in. Instead, they envision something more like web 2.0, where many small governments serve many niche markets, a dynamic system where small groups experiment, and everyone copies what works, discards what doesn't, and remixes the remainder to try again."

It's crazy. I mean, I'm a frequent skeptic of government, but have things really gotten so bad that we need to create new, floating societies? If we keep electing people like Congressman Paul Broun, I might just grab a life-preserver:

A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist dictatorship.

"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."

Read the whole article to see what Broun was talking about. I like his mixing of metaphors. Somehow Obama can be both a Marxist and a Fascist at the same time. He truly is a post-partisan president.

The Daily Show's John Oliver explains the many interesting parallels between Obama and Hitler: