Not a day goes by without some staggering scientific marvel revealed that we have helped pay for, like a genetically modified potato for McDonald's that offers less cancer risk when fried up for french fries or the stunning 10-year, $1 billion journey of a washing machine-sized spaceship now hitchhiking on a comet.
They are amazing accomplishments whether we really need them or not. The genetic work produced a potato that bruises less -- a big boon for growers. Similar accomplishments failed market tests, but this newest one seeks to overcome consumer fear of genetically modified foods by offering a health perk: These potatoes are said to produce 50 to 75 percent less acrylamide, a cancer-causing chemical (in mice) produced when the potatoes are fried. The genetically modified taters contain fragments of potato DNA that silence four of the potatoes' own genes involved in forming certain enzymes, or proteins.
But then there are the things we're not tackling with science that we really do need: Ebola vaccines, an Alzheimer's cure, a new genetic switch to turn off diabetes. These are things we can't accomplish on our own in the same way that we could just eliminate fries from our diets.
Yet McDonald's makes money on french fries, and drug companies won't make money donating Ebola vaccines to poor African countries.
No, it's not a perfect world, but it is our world, the one in which we just can't seem to reconcile science and faith, poverty and excess, lack of opportunity and education.
This is the world where, when the White House announces a landmark agreement with China to reduce climate-warming greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, our Congress -- which has long whined that our emissions reductions were useless as long as China keeps polluting -- now is acting as if President Barack Obama is a traitor for seeking and reaching this pact.
This is the world where the 80-year-old congressman who is set to become the new chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee come January is the king of U.S. climate-change skeptics -- Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla. This is the same guy who penned a 2012 book titled: "The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future."
While publicizing his book on a radio talk show, Inhofe quoted the Bible (Genesis 8:22) to support his thesis. Then he said, "My point is, God's still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous."
If we're going to play the God card, let us add to that: The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, should be free -- even encouraged, no exhorted, by our politicians and their billionaire funders -- to trash what He has given us.
On the up side, let us hope that the comet-riding space probe, named Philae and now gliding 310 million miles from Earth, will enlighten us. Philae has already begun tweeting: "Touchdown! My new address: 67P!" it chirped Wednesday shortly after it alighted on the comet dubbed 67P. (What scientists lack in imagination, they make up for with sliderules.)
The gadget is taking measurements and "sniffing" the comet, according to European Space Agency lander system engineer Laurence O'Rourke. He also said the probe will drill into the comet's surface to analyze the material and conduct other experiments.
Philae's orbiter, Rosetta, will remain alongside the comet for more than a year, watching as the comet approaches the sun, seeing what it is made up of and how it evolves and interacts with the energy and heat of the sun.
Other than the ooh and aah factors, why do we care? Well -- that sort of brings us back to Sen. Inhofe's comment and attitudes of belief or disbelief.
Comets are thought to be predominantly made of ice, but they also are considered to have been a possible delivery mechanism for water to the Earth, along with organic material that could have provided the building blocks for proteins and possibly life. You could think of comets as frozen relics of the formation of the solar system -- tools of Divine design, if you will.
Just as we do archaeology and geology research into how our planet formed and evolved, it's also important to understand where our planet -- and we -- came from. And maybe even get an idea of where we should be going.
The King James translation of Sen. Inhofe's Genesis 8:22 Bible verse, by the way, is this: "While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease."
That's comforting, perhaps profound. But it's also like saying that as long as we are living, our heartbeat and breath will continue.
Senator, would you like fries with that?