BAN #184: On the naming of things

[Spiral Galaxy M81 image credit: Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona]

Astro Tidbit

A brief synopsis of some interesting astronomy/science news that may be too short for the blog, too long for Twitter, but just right (and cool enough to talk about) for here.

On the blog recently I mentioned that the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, a massive project that will observe enormous parts of the sky every night looking for things that move and/or change brightness (novae, supernovae, asteroids, comets, and so on) has been renamed. And in very welcome news, it will be named the National Science Foundation Vera C. Rubin Observatory, after astronomer Vera Rubin. You can read my blog post about why that’s so cool.

You can also watch this truly wonderful video made by the folks at LSST — I mean NSFVCRO (and I think I’ll drop the NSF and just call it the Rubin Observatory) — to show you why this mission is so important:

Wow. That literally gave me chills. Tip o’ the dew shield to my friend Amanda Bauer for tweeting about it.

I mentioned in an earlier BAN (Issue 143) that a bill was moving through Congress for this to happen, so I’m glad to see this come to fruition.

Now interestingly, someone on Twitter (sorry, I lost the reference) pointed out that this is the observatory’s new name. The telescope itself will be named the Simonyi Survey Telescope, after Charles Simonyi, who donated five million dollars to the project.

Charles Simonyi is a silicon valley billionaire, having made his fortune with Microsoft. He donates a lot of money to many philanthropic causes, like museums, Universities, education grants, and so on. That’s very cool.

But… he also donated money to Trump early on in the campaign. It wasn’t a huge amount compared to numbers I’m used to seeing; just $2,700 in August 2015. That is, however, the maximum allowed by Washington State.

That’s… troubling. By that time Trump had already campaigned on some hard-core racism, and there had been allegations of sexual harassment before then, too (though I’ll note this was before the infamous “grab ‘em by the pussy” interview came out). So someone donating to his campaign is at the very least disturbing. And certainly enough to make me not want to unconditionally sing someone’s praises due to some good things they have done as well.

Which is why I bring this up. My political leanings are pretty clear, so obviously I am no fan of Trump’s, and yes, damn straight I will judge you if you voted for him. I may not dismiss you out of hand, but you’re starting from a deep, deep hole.

If I were offered money by someone like that (much good stuff but also donated to Trump) for a project, I’d have to dig deeper. Did they also donate to Clinton? What about local elections? What else has this person done?

I don’t think this is out of bounds, and in many cases I think the situation demands more investigation. Look at what’s happening at MIT because they accepted money from Jeffrey Epstein, who was convicted of trafficking in minors for sex.

The morality of that is pretty cut and dried — Epstein was a monster — but the case with Simonyi is far, far from that. I think in that case I’d want to know why Simonyi gave money to Trump, but lacking that knowledge my opinion is that this falls under where you draw your own individual line. It bugs me but I won’t make a hue and cry about it (I’ll just talk about it here). Your kilometerage may vary.

And remember, a huge number of retail outlets donate to the GOP regularly, and/or are owned by some pretty shady characters. In today’s world, it’s nearly impossible to avoid putting money in the pockets of someone who will give a percentage of it to the GOP.

As is usually the case, there’s a whole lotta fuzzy in our lives when we’d rather it were sharply defined.

Still, it’s aggravating. I think naming the telescope after Simonyi is not that big a deal relatively speaking. It would be worse if, say, it were a Koch brother donating. But also, mind you, the James Webb Space Telescope is named after a NASA Administrator who was a notorious homophobe. Dan Savage wrote about this, and it’s an interesting read, but in the end I disagree with his opinion that we have better things to do than spend time worrying over naming things. I feel that it’s a relatively simple thing to name something like JWST after someone who wasn’t a vocal bigot. I can think of a dozen astronomers — many of them women — after whom it would be better eponymed.

What we name things does mean something, or else we wouldn’t name them. Years down the road, when that person is dead or at least memories are fuzzier, they will be remembered by the names they and we have bestowed on our works. When it is something as grand as JWST and LSST we should have a care when naming it. That doesn’t mean turning anyone and everyone down if they did something at some point you don’t like. We all have feet of clay, and there are always things you can find about someone that would make you unhappy.

Nothing in the human Universe is black and white; everything has levels to it, a spectrum. Certainly astronomy teaches us this as allegory over and again! Something I may be fine with you may not, and vice-versa, and I can guarantee there’s not a definable line where that cutoff may be. I think these situations should be judged on their merits, within reason. I’d love to see JWST renamed, but for Simonyi I’d want to hear more first. Like I said, he’s starting with my suspicion levels ramped up, but I’m willing to listen.

Et alia

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