Communications of the ACM
Every Continent, and One Time Lord, Turned Out For the March For Science
Donald Knuth, recipient of the ACM A.M. Turing Award, the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award, and the ACM Software System Award, during one of Saturday's March for Science events.
Credit: pbs.twimg.com
Tens of thousands of people across the planet marched for science on Saturday. The first-ever March for Science was a pro-science and political event, according to the march organizers, but not a partisan one. But in Washington, as the crowd streamed down Constitution Avenue, several marchers broke away from the pack. They clustered by a plaque that read, "United States Environmental Protection Agency," snapping smiling photos. As the march passed the EPA headquarters, some began to chant, "Ho, ho, hey, hey, I support the EPA." Other chanters took up a briefer slogan, announcing to the world that EPA administrator Scott Pruitt "sucks."
The Washington march was one of some 600 rallies held in the U.S. and across the globe. Regina McCarthy, Pruitt's predecessor who worked under the Obama administration, addressed a rally at Boston Common. "As Americans, as New Englanders, as Boston Strong — we care about our natural world!" McCarthy said, the Boston Globe reported. "Now is the time to speak truth to power!"
A thousand miles to the west, in Chicago, more than 40,000 people marched, Chicago authorities told NBC 5. The crowd was so large that, at around 12 p.m., police asked those who had not yet joined the rally to turn back and not attend.
Once the marching ended in Los Angeles, the science demonstrations broke out. California Institute of Technology graduate students taught onlookers how to improvise a solar panel out of blackberries and sunblock. "The blackberry juice absorbs sunlight," the Los Angeles Times reported, "while the titanium dioxide in the sunscreen converts the sun's photons to electrons."
Not all marches took place in metropolitan hubs like San Francisco or New York. In one far-flung corner of the nation, Atka Island, Alaska, (population less than 100, according to the 2000 Census), ecology researcher Bruce Wright held up a small sign: "Science Is Truth."
And, off Wake Island, the tiny Pacific atoll that houses a U.S. airstrip, three divers posed at the bottom of the sea. (Their signs fared better than many of those caught in the rain in Washington.)
From The Washington Post
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