Air Date: Week of December 15, 2006

We dip into our mailbag to hear from our listeners.

Transcript

GELLERMAN: From disappearing documents to memorable mail. Time now to hear from you, our listeners.

[LETTERS THEME]

When you’re eight feet tall and 900 feet long, it’s hard not to attract a lot of attention. And our story about the giant neon conceptual artwork that spells out “It is green thinks nature even in the dark” along the New Jersey Turnpike caught the attention of Andrea Palmer. She listens to the show on WHYY in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania and writes that she was bothered by the use of electricity to spread a message about global warming.

And we got a lot of feedback about our segment on the controversy over the global warming film “An Inconvenient Truth.” The National Science Teachers Association turned down the producer’s offer of 50,000 free DVD’s of the documentary. Our story led to a discussion among grad students at a Purdue University party that Sally Grant attended.

GRANT: And one of the post docs mentioned that he had been listening to Living on Earth and he had felt that neither the producer of An Inconvenient Truth, nor the President of the NSTA had acquitted themselves very well.

GELLERMAN: And how did you feel about that?

GRANT: When I first heard the segment I actually agreed with him to the point that I sat down and sent an email before it was even over to Living on Earth because as a former teacher and current member of the National Council of Teachers of English. I felt that the real issue was being obscured. If the NSTA is seen as endorsing particular movies or textbooks or points of view it becomes a very slippery slope where the NSTA is being seen as speaking for all science teachers.

GELLERMAN: You can speak to us – we’ll listen. Call our listener line anytime at 800-218-9988. Our email address is comments at loe dot org. That’s comments at loe dot org.