Probably the most off-key refrain sung by our present administration is that of appointing agency personnel who either know nothing about or actively oppose the mission of that federal agency. This tendency is echoed within our culture by those who trust information from someone they like rather than information from somebody with actual expertise in a given area.

At the top, at least, that trend seems to be reversing. Our new Secretary of Energy will be Steve Chu.

Yes, that Steve Chu. The physicist who won the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics along with William Phillips and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji for figuring out a way to use laser light to trap and cool atoms.

The same Steve Chu who signed Project Steve.

Energy is the coin of the physics realm: how it is transformed, how it's partitioned, how it interacts with matter. According to the Washington Post, Chu has turned to more practical applications of energy during the last few years. His mission has been to make the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory "the world leader in alternative and renewable energy research, particularly the development of carbon-neutral sources of energy."

So we have an energy specialist in charge of our national energy policy! Rejoice!