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Agree and disagree... The guy with the fortified SUV would be paste if he got into anything F2 and above.

Disagree... An M1A1 wouldn't have any trouble with an F-5.

Disagree... Tornados are hard to catch. I spend 2 weeks every year, driving 7000 miles each time, chasing them in the midwest. I know what I am doing, often travel with people who do this for a living, and I can tell you... they are HARD TO FIND. Some years we never see a single one.

When I lived in tornado alley, I saw a few (including the Topeka Tornado of 1966 - see my pictures), but don't count on finding one just on vacation.

There are also folks who run professional tornado chase safaris. These folks, for the most part, really know what they are doing, and provide a good value for the money. If you are really interested in chasing, a trip with them is a good way to get started.

There is also a tornado chase mailing list: WX-CHASE at LISTSERV@PO.UIUC.EDU or here in HTML. It has a lot of serious chasers and good information in it.

BTW... I do know a guy who has a fortified SUV. But his is fortified against hail - a real hazard on the chase. I have seen many folks have their cars trashed by 2"-5" hail on a chase.

My chase pages are here if anyone is interesting.

Agree and disagree... The guy with the fortified SUV would be paste if he got into anything F2 and above.

Disagree... An M1A1 wouldn't have any trouble with an F-5.

Disagree... Tornados are hard to catch. I spend 2 weeks every year, driving 7000 miles each time, chasing them in the midwest. I know what I am doing, often travel with people who do this for a living, and I can tell you... they are HARD TO FIND. Some years we never see a single one.

When I lived in tornado alley, I saw a few (including the Topeka Tornado of 1966 - see my pictures), but don't count on finding one just on vacation.

There are also folks who run professional tornado chase safaris. These folks, for the most part, really know what they are doing, and provide a good value for the money. If you are really interested in chasing, a trip with them is a good way to get started.

There is also a tornado chase mailing list: WX-CHASE at LISTSERV@PO.UIUC.EDU or here in HTML. It has a lot of serious chasers and good information in it.

BTW... I do know a guy who has a fortified SUV. But his is fortified against hail - a real hazard on the chase. I have seen many folks have their cars trashed by 2"-5" hail on a chase.

My chase pages are here if anyone is interesting.

The trailer park trick works. I am one of the folks who chased tornadoes in the midwest each spring (see userid). In 1995, we waited in clear sky next to a trailer park, watched a storm go up and produce a tornado.

I also have a model trailer home that I have mounted to the dashmat in my car... as bait. The first day we used it, we saw a tornado. Prices available on request.

See Storm Chase Vehicle - 3rd-5th pictures .

The article is correct - education majors on average are less well educated and less intelligent that most other majors. This is obvious to anyone who has spent time at a college (except perhaps in education or some other soft and fuzzy field). This certainly has a negative impact on both the attitudes and information they convey to their students.

At the same time, we have had a movement to debase grading. "Outcome based education" and other profitable fads that have emerged from our "schools of education" downplay good grades and effort. A strange new egalitarianism likewise inspires parents and others to demand equal grades for all students, or no grades at all. So students are not motivated to work. This impacts science and math more than other areas because those subjects are much harder for most students.

Most of our population, and most of our teachers, don't even realize that they are scientifically ignorant. Ask them to state an opinion on global warming or nutrition or any other scientifically related field and they will be glad do so with confidence! We need to at least educate people about what science is so they can have some idea of how to treat the results of science, and how to evaluate their own level of knowledge.

An addition problem more-or-less unique to the US is the monopoly status of the government-run schools. Because of the extremely powerful teacher unions, they essentially control the debate in this issue (not to mention the Democratic Party). This means that the standard failures of bureaucracy (see Laws of Bureaucracy ) are applied to our educational system - at least through the secondary level. It means that teachers and administrators cannot be properly rewarded or punished for their performance. It means that powerful social activists alter the focus of schools towards their particular biases, to the detriment of education. It means that the incompetent are protected, the effective are ignored, and the students suffer.

Finally, the scientific educational establishment has hurt this area. For example, the "new mathematics" movement resulted in more purity in elementary math education - no doubt to the benefit of those who would become mathematicians, - but to the detriment of everyone else. The focus at universities of creating PhD's means that the undergraduate courses too often are aimed only at potential PhD's and scare off the rest.

There are many problems with the scientific education of Americans, and I shared the author's fear of what this ever more ignorant populace will do as they apply their lack of knowledge to daily living and, worse, voting!