no regenesis for regenesis

Oh well, that wraps it up for ReGenesis, a wonderful Canadian-produced fictional science series of a quasi-autonomous biological threats lab. They finished the fourth season (and presumably the whole show) with what seemed to be a rather hastily put together Deconstruction of Falling Stars type episode set in the future, where they revealed some of the ideas they had been playing with for future episodes as well as attempting to tie-off the major plot arc they started at the end of the third season. Which was kind of them, rather than just having the show drift off into limbo with an unresolved plot arc. The uncomfortable part of this show, for me, was that it was supposedly taking part in a "World Science Court," in a future where science (or more correctly in this instance "Science"), itself was on trial. This makes sense, given how most people misunderstand the nature of science, but it always rubs me the wrong way. Still, the writers did an excellent job on the chief scientist's presentation, particularly making a point that economics and politics were the major contributing factors to the disaster occurring, rather than the technology (which is something that is different from science). Of course the existence of this technology allows people to make bigger mistakes that affect more people. However I feel this message was lost in the episode, and probably ignored by those who think science is Science and therefore automatically demonized. I read an interesting article about the psychology of this once. Of how it was the failure of Science to deliver the Future in the 60's that caused the congregation to turn away, despite the fact that it's disciples rarely promised anything to anyone; the majority of the Priests of Science at the time were drawn from the unenlightened laity. Still, it was an excellent show, with a strong veneer of reality, even though the incidences of events that personally affect the lead cast was a few orders of magnitude higher than you'd really expect outside a television show. Well worth watching. And there doesn't seem like much on the horizon to replace it, unfortunately. On popular perceptions of science however, one could be forgiven for believing that in order to be a successful physicist in the 50's, you had to be either an avid outdoorsman (hunter or fisherman ["gone fission"], so you could be on hand to advise people when the aliens landed the next valley over...