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Mars & The Teachable Moment
Gallenod writes "In this article at space.com, Edna DeVore, Director of Education and Public Outreach for SETI, states that people are being continually exposed to pseudo-science from watching television and reading tabloids. Her examples include the "face" on Mars (which she discusses in detail in the article), alien autopsies, Area 51 in the Nevada desert as alien storage quarters, the "non-landings" on the Moon, UFO's, and alien kidnappings. DeVore describes the current Mars missions as a "teachable moment," an opportunity to teach factual science and astronomy in the context of sensationalistic psuedo-science and the legion of money-grubbing opportunists who make their living churning it out."
The examples given are more like pseudo-reality than pseudo-science... I was thinking more along the lines of the show 24, where they can track a suspect from their cell-phone to the exact room they are in.
We regular readers of /. are continually being exposed to pseudo-intelligence and it does us no harm. Now wheres my teddy bear, I want him to explain this 2 + 2 thing to me again
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
fark mars rover photoshop contest
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
where is my tinfoil hat....
the world being round is pseudo-science. Ah how later discoveries can change things.
I don't need your "teachings" you alien brainwashers! I'm still wearing my tin-foil hat!
... I know that they have all been following the progress of both rovers on Mars. It has been an ongoing "project" for them since the rovers were launched and it has even driven a few parents to donate various bit of hardware to the school's computer room.
Free Firefox news reader.
I have a few friends that seem otherwise rational, but are fascinated with the pseudo-science. From what I can see this stuff is a new age religion for people who think they are too educated for classical religion. It provides a framework of an intelligence beyond understanding, that has a plan for us and provides a reason for our existence. Instead if God, you have Greys. Factual science is not going to convert people away from this.
But if I said we found evidence of Martian civilization that killed themselves because of high-carb diets? I might end up on Oprah.
The problem is the American public wants exciting news so much, they'll believe anything. I mean, look at your local news. Then look at BBC. BBC would put most people to sleep in America. Our news quality is done in Europe, but there they call it "The Sun."
What science needs is more Page 3 girls.
Or is it that she is just another cog in the vast conspiracy machine trying to detract people from what is really going on? I mean, it would seem so simple for the Illuminati to put an "actual scientist" in a place to debunk the "myths" that about. Come on, we know what is really going on! Stop covering things up! Maybe they should reveal the truth behind the s786fh&^23b!@}{!n7afy23jsdf.... NO CARRIER
FNORD
--Chag
I have friends who have visited there and they got me a T-shirt. They even visited the Little A'Le'Inn right off the E.T. Highway. There are serious guards there and those signs warning about deadly force.
Now for real aliens....
if a lot of Sci-Fi on TV wasn't a big "public education" project.
This was covered, on a tangent, in a STNG episode. The short-version is Picard attempts to make first contact, but the political leaders decide that the populous isn't ready - and that a public education project will be started/expanded.
For example, there are the persistant rumors that Orson Welles radioplay was an experiment designed to gauge public response, and that shortly thereafter it was decided that *we* aren't ready.
Continuing rumors like that the original Star Trek didn't have enough advertising income to keep it on the air for a single season, and certainly not enough to carry it for three.
Now the government is getting publicly involved in the effort, with the 'life on Mars' possibilities that were thrown about in the last few years.
40 years ago, how would people have reacted to the government saying that there might actually be life on Mars? Today, it's no big deal - because we've been "educated".
Thats if the people are teachable, you still have those people who think the moon landing was faked, and then some people do not trust the government all together. I realize that this may seem extreme, and maybe a lil OT, but honestly, I think a private corporation reaching space will do a better job of teaching. Like X-Prize for instance.
je suis parce que j'aime
anyone with thier head screwed on right doesnt take the sudo-stuff seriously.
What does the "Face Detector" have to say about that thing on Mars?
but I found a Battle Axe, then a Rocket Luancher and a Shotgun, and I blew all those Creatures back to their motherplanet... or maybe that was a game I played.
- Your stupidity got you into this mess, why can't it get you out? -Will Rogers
*THEY* are trying to convince us to take the tinfoil hats off so they can begin the reprogramming! Don't do it!!!!
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
And what about pseudo-life ? Pseudo-widsom ? Pseudo-philosophy ? The goal of TV is not to teach people things, but to enslave them using a well-defined notion of "normality" which is nothing but an illusion to blind the masses.
If you want to learn something, light off the TV...
Since the RIAA's so good at tracking down people,why don't we adopt their tactics and start tracking the IP's of people who read and support this crap. We could sneak into their homes at night and sew big scarlet D's onto all their clothes and erect yard signs that say "WARNING! DUMBASS INSIDE!" People who pass "the truth about the face on Mars" to other dullards around the water cooler could be forced to spend a day in the stocks in the public square, where they could be pelted with fruits, vegetables, and PDA's that were browsing badastronomy.com. And if we could actually nab some of the people who *produce* all this junk science, we could hand them over to a pay-per-view assraping at the hands (and schlong) of Kobe Bryant.
This is the best one
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
...we just need to apply the face detector to that hunk of rock on Mars and see what IT has to say about it!
Edna, I don't know but I would be happy that people are talking about space on any level. For all of us who grew up watching Star Wars and Star Trek, I think some sensationalistic psuedo-science has it merits in getting people interested about space. I don't know what would be more sensationalistic than finding aliens.
...it was actually pseudo-science that got me interested in the real thing. Books from the elementary school library about UFOs, Bigfoot, and ghosts scared the hell out of my teachers, I'm sure, but they got me interested in peeking into life's mysteries on my own.
I'm not sure what flipped the switch from credulity to skepticism, but those early things got me interested. Maybe it was like the old myths of our ancient ancestors: wrong, but they still showed some drive towards explanation and understanding, however over-simplified.
I'm not saying we should have classes on UFOs, but I wouldn't be too alarmed to see my kid reading about them.
Unless he started growing strange mushrooms in the basement or wearing a tin-foil hat...
"You can sell sh!t and get thanks...that's what I learned from the Yanks."
I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
I think pseudoscience meshes better with many people's worldview than actual science does. It's hard for laypeople to understand the terminology and goals of real science, and the language is often couched in ambiguity and qualification (because scientists don't want to make unsupported statements). "Pseudoscientists" on the other hand, can say whatever they want, because their only concern is attracting eyeballs and therefore either religious converts (in the case of "Creation Science") or people's dollars (in many other cases). And there are a huge number of people out there who are PROFOUNDLY uneducated about science, and either distrust REAL scientists because they can't understand them, or because they've been taught that nonsense feel-good alternative theories etc. are being "suppressed" by the scientific community.
The scientific community shares some blame as well - "popularizing" science is seen as a vulgar activity by many, when in fact it should be seen as essential as long as the truth is not distorted along the way.
Freedom: "I won't!"
I always took those reports with a grain of salt and enjoyed them as bits of entertainment. I remember when the "face" came out. I was in my high school science club and we had a scientist from NASA show up to our school. He gave us this pretty neat (geek alert) report discussing the face. Just remember, half of what you hear is a lie, the other half is a mistake.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
freaks will get more time on TV (Check Jerry springer) and most people believe TV, so if you put idiots infront of a TV which says "ET will beam you up" they will start packing their bags ready to go.
If you tell them it's just a very rocky place with no aliens, maybe some very very minor life forms and a former ocean. They go "pfft, it's like a desert, I perfered the green men on NBC and Fox"
It's the modern world.
--- [Insert intresting Sig here]
This is certainy not an issue limited to pseudo-science.
It seems to me that schools don't do a very good job of teaching critical thinking.
Does what I am reading/seeing make sense ?
How do I verify that what I'm someone is telling me is reasonably true and accurate ?
I think the author does a very nice job of pointing out that something like the face on mars is a great way to teach those skills with very specific examples.
It certainly should not be limited to science.
The ability to reason and think critically is also being severely hurt by the increasingly abusive marketing aimed at children, IMNSHO.
I'll even go out on a limb and say that this is in large part the cause of the political polarization in the US. Critical thinking includes taking in opposing views and trying to understand if they are valid or not.
Absolute statements are never true
Here is the key part of the article.
"Now, imagine being a science teacher with a classroom full of 15-year old students who believe the television accounts of the face on Mars, cities on the Moon, alien autopsies, etc., and you are teaching your unit on space and astronomy. A careful excursion through the characteristics of the planets and their moons interests your students; the red spot on Jupiter would hold at least 3 Earths, a cool factoid, but it doesn't grab them. The face on Mars does. And this was what I discussed with the science teacher at NSTA. "
Have you've ever thought it is the failing of teachers, not of the students or tv producers? If these shows are wrong, prove it to them. Show the students how to questions these things. You could talk about media motivation, about what other scientists points of view are. You can talk about past things which were thought that were wrong. There are a lot of things that a teacher can do. Don't blame the student for being a weak teacher.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
There really are people who believe this stuff. And forget the pseudo-science, just having a dumb story in the media, ANY media, is enough to convince a lot of people.
As much as I desperately want to believe that most people are fairly intelligent and take this stuff with a large grain of salt (like a salt block) I continually meet people who absolutely stun me with their gullability (stupidity is too mean a word, but perhaps more applicable?).
I have an Uncle who was absolutely convinced that the Mars rover had snapped a picture of a "Martian Cat" with big "martian-looking" eyes and then thought for sure the government was covering it up by removing all the copies of the "World Weekly News" from the stands before anyone else could buy a copy. The obvious fact that the store sold out is perhaps even more depressing though. Who buys that crap? Oh yeah, my Uncle.
I was in college when Cassini launched, and I thought it seemed like forever until it would reach Saturn. My alma mater has a few instruments on-board Hyugeuns or however you spell it. Anyway, there will be another great opportunity to teach REAL science. When was the last time a major probe reached one of the outer planets? I remember when Voyager II passed Neptune in the 80's, kids in high school now weren't even alive! To them, Voyagar is some relic of an ancient era.
But I agree in general, pseudoscience is everywhere and quality science is scarce. Science Fantasy tends to dominate, whereas Speculative Fiction is very thin on the ground, and pure science is almost extinct.
Part of the blame is with the scientists. Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan managed to combine science with art. So did Isaac Newton (pianist) and Steven Hawking. If the rest can't be bothered to reach the unwashed masses, then they can't object too hard when the unwashed masses try to figure out the world for themselves.
The other part of the blame is with politicians. Science and arts get next to no budget, whereas the military gets a fortune. Guess the mindset of the next generation - it's not going to be on physics or painting!
The arts and the sciences need EQUAL time and EQUAL budget, and the artists and scientists have to do whatever it takes to get that, or their discipline will die out, to be replaced with re-runs of Scooby Doo. If that's not what you want, then show the world why it should care.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The trouble with psuedo-science is that it sounds good to the untrained mind. But the thing I love the most is when a purveyor of psuedo science says the me something like, "You need to be more open minded to understand this". I have a relative that was trying to sell me a "Ozone Generator" and air purifier ( filter ) for my home. I had one of these units in my home as a trial ( I paid no money ). I checked out the supposed "science" behind the device and found that there was ample evidence that high concentrations of ozone are actually dangerous to people especially asthmatics. Since my wife has had asthma in the past, I became very concerned. I called my relative and told him I would be returning the device and that he should think twice about making outrageous unsubstatiated claims of scientific evidence where none existed. He had the gall to tell me I would understand the "science" if I were more "open minded".
It is muddy headed thinking like that that results in most of the worlds troubles.
I hate egghead articles like this. She seems to assume that everyone without her credentials and background is a moron with no common sense.
Frankly, in my experience, the opposite has been true. Friends of mine with little to no post-secondary education, blue-collar types, seem to be more grounded and sensible, whereas the highly educated literate I dealt with in University were so gullible it was ridiculous.
But that's besides the point.
I know Nessie and Bigfoot are just ghost stories. I know ghost stories are make-believe. I know no spaceship crashed at Roswell, I know Neil Armstrong really did land on the moon, I know the face on mars is as real as the faces in any random cloud. So do 99% of the population, I'd imagine.
So why do I watch the alien abduction "special reports" on sci-fi, or the hunt for Nessie on history channel? Because it's ENTERTAINING.
Sure, you could replace those shows with dry astro-geology lectures, etc, but people will just tune out.
TV (and I'd say all mass media) are primarily forms of entertainment to people. That's the primary reason so few share the slashdotters outrage that $NEWSCHANNEL may be biased. Endless reporting/speculating about the latest little kid to be raped and murdered is entertainment to people. They don't know or care about the child, have no personal stake in the story, yet we'll keep having news about Jon Benet et al forever.
Nothing on TV is factual, everyone knows it. I watched one of the designers on "trading spaces" install what had to be 500 square feet of laminate flooring one episode, and then at the end sit there with a straight face and say that the entire room was less than $1000 bucks.
The day I care about the "factual science" of martian geology or microbiology, I'll pick up a textbook.
I don't watch TV for "factual" science, just like I don't read slashdot for "factual" computer science.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
But it's not what people think. NASA did actually get to the moon; the problem was that it was deemed too controversial to allow footage of what was actually found there to be released to the public. Thus, faked landing footage was created.
Silly rabbit.
There's a great book by Carl Sagan that talks about his perspective on Pseudo-Science and how it's affecting Science, as well as the dangers. It's a wonderful read. The book is called The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in this topic.
Life today. Uncertainty tomorrow.
Not being an astronomer myself; I can't speak for the validity of faces on Mars or Moon non-landings. However, I do know that for my whole life I've been assaulted by pseudo-computer-science. A couple examples include:
- Absolutely ridiculous user interfaces -- giant 3D worlds representing data and algorithms where they still require the programmers to type like mad in order to get them to operate.
- Computer screens that project their contents onto the faces of their users in a dark room.
- 'Hackers' that look like Reeves, Moss, the Wolverine guy, the Laura Croft woman, etc...
There are millions more, but these bother me more than any others.
-m
-
#
# Modus Ponens
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Part of the problem is that "regular" press reports much of the shadier stuff because many debunkers are not very good, and have lost credibility with journalists. Most debunkers try to paint everybody and everything as superstitious idiots. They focus more on personality patterns than the evidence itself. This triggers reporters to dig into the personality of the debunkers as well (to be even-handed), and being human, they sometimes do stupid things or jump to bad conclusions also. It thus becomes a personality shoot-out instead of an evidence shootout. If the debunkers don't have a good answer for something, they should just say so rather than point to some past "believer" transgressions.
For example, some UFO debunkers have created some rather elaborate psychology theories to explain the alleged hallucinations of airline pilots and cops with regard to some rather detailed and unusual UFO reports. (Surprisingly, most UFO debunkers don't think outright fibs are the biggest cause.) If you don't have a decent counter-explanation, just say so. Just say something like, "Just because it is odd does not necessarily mean it is from outer space". Instead they will point out a case were a train driver mistook Venus for an oncoming train in the fog and imply that all sightings are the same kind of thing. Sometimes you just plain don't have an answer. Leave it at that. If you force explanations, you start to resemble the "believers".
Table-ized A.I.
You know, Johannes Kepler was also considered "pseudo-science" when he suggested that the Earth is not flat. He turned out to be right. There is plenty of information on the internet to rebuff this buffoon with that points to the existence of aliens, their presence among us and the lies that the government uses to try and prevent us from knowing the truth.
In my own personal experiences, I've travelled to various parallel universes through parallel dreaming. It is really amazing to explore our sister universes and see what is there and how your double's life is both similar and different from your own. On one of the parallel Earths I visited on Saturday night, there was an invasion by aliens in London. Interestingly enough, their "invasion troops" were gigantic Pteradctyl-like birds. They were silvery grey, and had helmets on that must have exerted some kind of control over them to guide them in their invasion. It was terrifying to witness the plume of this swarm flying out of it's ship and approaching us. Their shreiking was horrific as well. The birds, when they landed, stood about eight to ten feet tall. I got a close look at one of them and realized taht they must have been some kind of biomechanical hybrid as their eyes were metallic.
I am completely serious about this. I honestly believe that I was witnessing an alien invasion of a parallel Earth. Quantum theory supports my belief quite well. I tend to be very sensitive to things that people would term "psychic" but I believe there is a more scientific explanation and it lies within quantum physics. Some of us are more attuned to the multiverse than others. Just as some people have better visual accuity. This stuff is not bullshit. It's very real, but it's an uphill battle convincing fools like this woman.
This has made it terribly unfashionable to have both feet on the ground. Anybody refusing to believe astonishing claims based on the flimsiest of evidence is looked down upon with pity.
DeVore describes the current Mars missions as a "teachable moment," an opportunity to teach factual science and astronomy in the context of sensationalistic psuedo-science and the legion of money-grubbing opportunists who make their living churning it out.
I think it's a great idea, but probably doomed to fail for a couple of reasons.
First off, pseudo-science is usually described as sensationalistic because it is fairly sensational. Light on reality, but very sensational. It's much more entertaining to see faces on Mars than trace water. If you doubt this, examine the headlines on the tabloid rack the next time you're checking out in the grocery store. Style usually beats substance.
Also, given the huge volume of crap that people believe about space, any useful information will probably be lost. My last attempt to fix this problem was a discussion with a family member who is a conspiracy theorist. This person does not believe we landed on the moon. And had loads of total crap pseudo-science to back him up. As I calmly talked him through the problems with his "facts", he became more and more agitated. I was ruining his world view.
After a while I gave up. He wanted his belief, and anything I said was because "they" had gotten to me, and I couldn't open up my mind to other possibilities. Facts be damned.
I think really the only people who want the truth about what's out there are the scientific types in the first place. We don't need to see faces on Mars to get excited. Trace water is exciting enough, because we know what it implies. If the Teachable Moment finds a few of these people, that's great. Just don't expect many converts.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
so mod me down :) But I couldn't help but note an interesting bit of synchronicity here. This person called DeVore speaks of Mars - and in the Chung Kuo series by David Wingrove (HIGHLY recommended, by the way) a Howard DeVore, a really bad guy (TM) operates from Mars... Lovely.
----- One learns to itch where one can scratch.
My friend says, "The moon landings were faked, and I found a website with lots of evidence."
:)
I respond, "I am familiar with it, and have found equivalent websites that debunk their "evidence" as pseudoscience, with their own, solid, evidence."
He responds, "Oh no dude, you just GOTTA read it again, it was totally faked."
Though one example is not a representative sample, his actions seem consistent with those of the masses....people simply will not bother to consider true evidence objectively, nor to educate themselves to the point at which they can even discern good evidence from crap. They respond better to a good story, and good rhetoric, and that is just the way it is.
Oh well, its just one more way in which geeks are better than other people.
Let's ask the Face Detector!
all that pseudo science. In years past when I'd fall asleep to Art Bell and watch too much X-Files, those things seemed plausable to me. After ridding myself of those inputs, the fake science and the paranoia revolving around it have vanished. Not letting a radio show fill my subconscious sleeping mind every night was probably the number one way to de-program that garbage from myself.
*TheDarb
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"Teachable science" is a cool concept and a good practice, but most science will always look like magic to some people simply because of their I.Q.s and/or mindset.
They'll continue to be unable to differentiate between genuine discoveries and pseudo-science, no matter what. But we have to try to explain these things, because they'll also continue be able to breed and to vote. However, I could be wrong, I often am.
I'm not really a web designer, I just play one on the Internet.
++
.gov is spraying us with chemicals as some kind of a test, that there are aliens abducting people all over the place, that we never landed on the Moon, that there was a civilization on Mars and NASA knows about it and is covering it up. Etc... He listens to those fools at Coast to Coast every-single-day-all-day-long and believes everything they tell him. It is like propaganda almost. Crazy.
I have a friend who's otherwise pretty intelligent. But he believes that the
All he ever talks about is the conspiracy stuff. He's trying to get me to believe, despite the fact that I think he is crazy. Physics major in me understands why layman fall for this stuff. They don't understand the scientific process.
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Stephen Hawking
since the advent of the movement of enlightenment, science has more and more become a replacement for religion. but instead of making every one of us enlightened, rational persons this process has led to a situation in which we no longer question our "scientific" believes. instead we just assume that somebody else will have proven it, and that things couldn't be different from our expectation and our world view.
in fact, we are little better off today than the population before the enlightenment, who had serious problems with superstition, general fear of the unknown, etc. superstition is still a non-negligible factor in the lives of many today, even if outwardly sniggered at.
but most of all we tend to cling to a set of believes without ever questioning them! as my prime example I often use the phases of the moon, which nicely demonstrated my own "illusion of knowledge" which I had acquired during my childhood and never questioned.
ask yourself how the shadow on the moon is produced while it goes through one "monthly" cycle and how the sun and the earth are involved.
I will bet that more than half of you will actually have a wrong model of what is going on!
this in itself is not such a bad thing because the shadows on the moon are of such relevance for our daily lives, but it vividly demonstrates how little rationally we tend to be on topics which are not related to our "special field" of interest!
even more disturbingly it showed me with what fervor people will give blatantly wrong answers when asked about such problems. and this surely is a major problem of our para-scientific society today: applying scientific certainty and zeal to scientifically wrong statements!
jethr0
Earth is the only worthwhile real estate in the solar system. Mars and Luna are both essentially airless. Venus is way too hot. Everything else is worse. Even the places we've explored have boring geology. Space is boring.
Rocketry has hit a wall. After sixty years of rocketry, the things still barely work. In aviation, sixty years took us from the Wright Brothers to the Boeing 707. In rocketry, by 1970 we had the Saturn V and the Space Shuttle. In the 35 years since, there's been essentially no progress. (Even if the X-prize succeeds, it will have accomplished less than Yuri Gagarin did in 1961.)
If it weren't for psuedoscience and hype about space, NASA would be funded like ocean exploration. NASA would be on the Discovery Channel, like Jacques Costeau, asking for money. Psuedoscience keeps the funding flowing.
Amen!
Er...
I think you've really nailed it... whoops. What I mean is that... uh.... You're right!
Wasn't the existence of water on Mars once thought to be Science Fiction? They used to think the canals held water until what, about the 1950's? Then that became out of favor. Now they found evidence again with the last probes that Mars DID have running water. I don't pay attention to scientists. Especially Biologists, Astronomers, and Physics. They change theories every few years and everything that was known is completely disproven. For instance, Quantium Mechanics would have made Scientists in the 1950's spin on their heads...
Fortunately, the article is really about teaching students critical-thinking skills, not deriding a "legion of money-grubbing opportunists," so the submitter of this article has [perhaps inadvertently] provided an example for this lesson.
--
"Hello. I'm Leonard Nimoy. The following tale of alien encounters is true. And by true, I mean false. It's all lies. But they're entertaining lies. And in the end, isn't that the real truth? The answer is: No."
- Leonard Nimoy {The Simpsons, "The Springfield Files"}
We have to be careful with science fiction and pseudo-science. Ideas from fiction, pseudo-science, science fiction, etc., may inspire real products (star trek communicator -> cell phone, bullet to the moon -> moon landings).
The real problem is with the junk that is sold as real science (face on mars) and marketed to the masses. It sells papers....
Learning is made easier with immediate results that make students wonder 'Why? How?' Otherwise, it's dry, boring, and students don't learn anything. They memorize what they'll need just long enough to pass the test and then forget it.
All computers make all sorts of little bleeping noises every time something moves on the screen. Just like motorists are capable of driving along with their heads turned 90 degrees to face their passenger and can drive for endless miles through the traffic without looking where they're going.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Oh, I see. Some "dork" nitpicks the hell outa the LOTR movies and he's ridiculed. Yet the /. community goes nuts over the same level of (in)accuracy in the sciences.
Yes, our (esp US) media is full of inaccuracies... newspapaers that can't get stories right, TV and movies that dumb down advanced ideas to the point of silliness.
You can't pick and choose. "It's ONLY a book..., this is science," is crap. It's a set of rules... be it writted my Tolkein or Einstein.
This article assumes teachers know the truth and ought to correct students misconceptions, but sadly back in 7th grade I had a social studies teacher who filled our naive young minds with such gems of truth as:
* Atari video games were funded and developed by the department of defense in order to improve our reflexes to prepare us for 21st century automated combat... the company name "Atari" was just an acronym for special black ops project.
* The United States could easily bring the Soviet Union to its knees at any moment simply by flying the space shuttle at supersonic speed back and forth high above Soviet cities, the barrage of sonic booms would cause mass confusion and panic that would cause the Soviet republic a catastrophic collapse... therefore we do not need nuclear weapons, we have the space shuttle.
There were many other examples of his wit but those two stood out in my mind. This teacher was highly regarded by students for many years because his insights, and also he would buy Chinese food for the entire class on Fridays, so we all listened to him intently... it wasn't until some years later that most of us figured out how far off base he was. I wonder how many of his students still to this day accept everything he said as fact.
...sensationalistic psuedo-science and the legion of money-grubbing opportunists...
Well, as long as we are being fair and balanced about it.
People who disagree with you are not automatically evil, greedy, or stupid.
pseudo-science like the shit the FDA passes off as research? Oh, wait, that's just me trolling. The scientific media (if you don't think the media is largely insane, you haven't been paying enough attention to The SCO Group's antics) is the worst -- opinions of scientists who have never pursued the material in question are given as irrefutable fact. Where's the real science?
History just keeps repeating itself... Don't believe me? Galileo comes to mind, but I think Edison said it best: "The inventor tries to meet the demand of a crazy civilization. Society is never prepared to receive any invention. Every new thing is resisted, and it takes years for the inventor to get people to listen to him and years more before it can be introduced." (emphasis added) And this is for actual inventions -- ideas made into reality and easily demonstrated. Something more esoteric is orders of magnitude more difficult to convey.
Hell, "pseudo-science" is the kind of snide commentary that might have been applied to Semmelweis in his day. That's the doctor who tried in vain to get other doctors to realize the importance of washing their hands after working with cadavers and before assisting in labor and delivery. He was ridiculed and ignored, too, until the microscope was invented and finally made it blatantly obvious why washing hands was a good idea. But because he did not have that proof, his contemporaries dismissed him as a lunatic, and women continued to die due to easily preventable childbed fever.
There are charlatans out there, but that does not mean that every wild idea is the uttering of some nutball. The term "pseudo-science" is used by the closed-minded to justify their continued obsessions with The Way Things Are(TM). It's just as bad as the Church's refusal in Galileo's day to look through the frickin' telescope. No, actually, it's worse, because we have the advantage of historical perspective.
Well, students of history do, anyway.
There aren't any canals. The "belief" that there were canals on Mars, carrying water was an artifact of the relatively poor resolving power of the telescopes of the day, and the human mind's desire to find patterns. It's virtually the same process behind the claims of the "Mars face".
Current science says that it would be extremely unlikely that you would find liquid water, on the surface of Mars given it's current conditions (temperature, pressure).
Evidence found by the Rovers indicates that at some point in Mars past, there was likely a standing body of water, probably a highly saline "ocean".
These statements are not contradicting each other.
WTF does "PC Load Letter" mean?
Antidotes:w w.randi.org
http://www.badastronomy.com
http://w
Jason Ohler just gave a talk at NASA/Goddard, in which he discussed the problems with technology, and in teaching students about art as related to communication.
He also touched upon issues with manipulated information, and how most kids these days just think if it's on a website, it's got to be true. [which was the slogan of ScoopThis.com, since gone, but by the same person who did the Metallica Hoax].
One of Dr. Ohler's points about deception in communication was that it's best to make it seem plausible, but incorrect, rather than just ranting. [He cited a webpage about Martin Luther King, that was indirectly tied to a white supremicist group, that just slightly skewed the details] Unfortunately, kids don't understand that a website has no due diligence required in confirming their sources -- and newspapers and television news are trying so hard to scoop each other, that we end up with Jack Kelley, Jayson Blair, and the like.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I think the trend with pseudoscience is a reaction to the fact that mass media has basically given the populace attention-deficit-disorder.
Instead of teaching people about robotics we now have "robot war death matches". Instead of Paleontology we have the story of the lonely Velociraptor fighting for his life in an epic miniseries. Instead of archeology we have shows teasing the viewer over whether or not aliens from Mars built the Mayan temples. No more "scientific-themed" shows about weather, geography, or geology unless they involve tragic sinkings of famous ships, cars being blown through the air, the search for amazing lost treasure, or cities overrun by lava with frantic cameramen running for their lives.
Your average person nowadays, can't seem to stomach "pure science", unless something involved isn't bleeding, exploding, covered with gold and diamonds, or posessed by a supernatural/alien presence.
I'm sorry but I read the article and followed up on the "Face on Mars" links provided within. The only thing it's done is convince me further that there IS a face on Mars and that a lot of people are going to a lot of trouble to cover this up.
1. Why would one of the first things that Mars Explorer would be charged with doing be to take pictures of that area? There is only one conclusion. They want to get people to stop thinking and talking about that face and it's possible implications.
2. The image that is supposedly "high resolution" doesn't look anything like the image from 1976. This is not a picture of the real face on Mars. They either doctored the image, use a computer rendering, or took a picture of a very similar location.
3. Quantum theory states that the act of observing affect what is being observed. So, the face on Mars is obviously real since we all saw it and realized that it must be there. The shear volume of people who believe in the face on Mars makes it a certainty that it is there. When Lowell looked at Mars and saw canals, there really were canals there. But since humans as a group have been dissuaded from believing in such things, the canals have been forced into another universe, and we are stuck with a dead Mars. Do not let this happen to the face on Mars.
It sounds to me like this woman needs to get fucked because she's trying to take the piss out of something that has major implications for the human race. I call bullshit on her because we all know what we saw and we all know that the new photos are just what the controlling body want us to believe. It's warfare through mind over matter. And we need to grab this horse by the reigns if we are to break the tyrranical system that is trying to lie to us.
Mistaking entertainment for news/sports/other is common these days. The human abilities that allow us to imagine wonderful, futuristic technologies are sadly housed in the same brains that often have difficulty distinguishing reality from fantasy. Not to get all "Matrixy" on you, but have you ever dreamed something that you absolutely thought was real? I know I have had dreams that I _swore_ were real, only to eventually realize that they were in fact, dreams. This ease in confusing the real with the unreal is something that is persistent accross cultures and as another poster mentioned, is also what makes it so easy for humans to believe in religious dogma. Humans as a whole are easily duped.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
The problem is that our educational system doesn't teach basic critical thinking skills - those aren't developed until college (if then). The problem is that our educational system is a garbage-in, garbage-out system with a watered-down politically correct curriculum that warps context and is rife with inaccuracies and some outright lies. They're designed to increase "self-esteem" for some, at the expense of actually being able to be a productive and informed citizen.
There is an excellent article that was online a while back called Sesame Street, Epistemology, and Freedom that gives a good background into some of the problems, causes, and solutions in terms of our educational system's woeful lack of critical thinking skill-building. Thankfully the Internet Archive still has a copy since I've not been able to find it online. A sample:
If we can't teach children to think abstractly and learning how to quantify and qualify the streams of information that blast them every day, we can't expect to maintain an informed and reasonable democracy. Unfortunately we have an education system build by people like Horace Mann that were designed for the Industrial Age and are wholly inadequate for the intellectual demands of the Information Age.
Just a REALLY blurry one.
Not that I believe it's anything but a coincidence, I'm just saying it still bears resemblance to a face...
Maybe we should use the technology from three stories down to settle this once and for all!
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
Have you ever seen a phone conversation in a movie devolve into a fifteen minute discussion on a coworker's hair? Or seen a lead in a movie take a ten minute dump? Movies don't include the mundane details because they are boring and don't move the plot along.
Waiting for a PC to boot up, or seeing the real quality of video conferencing, or even watching people use the relatively user-unfriendly interfaces of real software would be boring.
Don't get your news from Stargate. That show is NOT realistic.
For example, there was one episode where they had an ion gun, but they needed many more. That is such a riduculous premise.
I mean, they have MacGyver. He can whip up ion guns using banana peels & rubber bands, for crying out loud!
this is all just folklore. There will always be a tradition of folklore.
It's not that people are really suckered by this stuff 100%. It's half entertainment, half a way to 'put a plug' in things that they don't fully need or want to understand, and half a social statement ( I don't trust my gov. = they are hiding ufos ).
Same as it ever was.
Fairies used to serve the same purpose. "Don't walk in the woods at night" is all the idle speculation and credulity really means. If you expect to get the whole world to begin thinking rationly about everything, I would say you need to start with the folks nearest you.
These psuedo-scientists aren't all about money either. some a lunies. others are just ignorant. A few have a point ( there are, after all, secret planes flying around area 51 and it's probably worth watching, if you care ).
Then, while you are fixing people one at a time, you can being counting to 1 billion, starting with 1, in your head. Probably achieve both ends in the same amount of time.
I would stick with 1 or two that might show up to vote... wish I knew who they were.
Do they have a facial recognition program for that yet?
Believe me, I've tried to correct her, but she's clinging to this dream.
Of course, then there's my grandfather who thinks that Venus is actually a chunk of another planet that existed between Mars and Jupiter. It was in some book he read, so it must be true!
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
What kills me is that we see computers used in a way that doesn't even make sense within the loopy rules established for them in the same danged story. Everything's dumbed down, that's to be expected, and okay, they exaggerate what today's machines can do. (You expected long moments while the characters wait for a good carrier signal?) But I at least want the rules to be consistent.
Good example: The Star Trek computers show radically different amounts of independent agency according to situation. They can make holodeck characters act according to their characters in a freely-branching story, but they can't, apparently, problem solve the task of looking for the meaning of alien symbols without specific verbal commands from a human. We're talking about a simple correlation between sounds and meanings, you know?
The quintessential pop culture computer would be Doogie Howser's. Enormous, colorful screen with GIANT letters being typed slowly enough for the camera to follow, at excruciatingly slow "silent film dialog card" pace, D-O-O-G-I-E-'-S T-R-I-T-E D-I-A-R-Y E-N-T-R-I-E-S. If Doogie was to ask for the meaning of life, and the computer was to whir and grind and maybe show an outsized Windows "progress" bar, you'd have the archetypal TV computer. (In the movies it'd maybe be more like "WOPR" from War Games.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
i helped make a movie about the faces on mars
it was my first official credit as a 'computer programmer'
i put on a screen saver and a powerpoint show..
was funny though
i still have the tape,
my friend was a freak, he wrote a 2000 page document he called the 'new maths' where all sorts of crazy stuff went on, dunno if he was insane or brilliant
but the videos now are all underground train panels and shiznit
word to true trainspotters and thanks for all the fish!
first post
12ozprophet.com
Absolutely nothing compared to the butt on Mercury!
People of Earth, Prepare to taste the Mighty foot of my Planet! Ha ha ha ha ha a ha ha.
is due to the polarizing atmosphere in the US.
On the one hand, you have liberal relativists, for whom no fact is concrete, and who cheerfully will advance kids through schools whether they can read/write or not, simply to make sure their "self-esteem" is intact.
On the other, you have conservative absolutists who will not only excoriate dissent, but both deny obvious facts and assert such ridiculousities as truth (or, more likely, Truth) that all actual facts become valueless.
Yeah, THAT's an atmosphere that's really going to bring out the intellectual cream of a civilization.
Now, tell me that's not flamebait!
-Styopa
I have a friend who has gotten more and more "involved" in the chemtrails phenomenon, and despite my best efforts to convince him otherwise (both factually and logically) he refuses to believe otherwise. I used to think it was a kind of tongue-in-cheek joke, but since he's started building "emitters" (large bits of copper tubing encasing helical copper wound-crystals, titanium shavings..) and claiming their power attracts forced entry into his house and black helicopters I'm kind of convinced he's slipping into a delusional paranoia.
Factual rebuttals are always refuted by claims of faked evidence or collusion based on the political/military capabilities of the people behind the phenomenon. You can't refute this -- if the person believes that the contra-evidence is faked and it can be logically fit into the conspiracy as a whole, it just reinforecs the conspiracy.
Logical rebuttals at least cause a pause, since asking how the government is able to maintain an effective, secret program that requires the participation of tens of thousands of people and billions in expenses and equipment when the CIA/FBI/Military/et al fail so spectacularly to maintain even minimal secrecy over other aspects of their operations is tough one to counter.
Regardless, there are just too many conspiracists with too much time on their hands to ever be satisfied with factual, logical explanations. In the case of the Mars rovers, it's all too easy to just deny that stuff even happened, just as they've been doing with the moon missions for decades.
In some ways the Internet makes it worse. It used to be that a conspiracy theorist focused on a single conspiracy (ie, Kennedy's assassination). Nowadays, they have access to so many conspiracies that they all get tied together, and are all part of a conspiracy universe that is self-referential and self-reinforcing.
I can only presume that the conspiracies fill some social/psychological vacuum that religion has failed to do so in modern society, that, or whatever they're putting in the water is breeding paranoia....
I have a few friends that seem otherwise rational, but are fascinated with the pseudo-science.
:)
Define fascinated... I mean, heck, I watch those shows too. I get angry at the more obvious absurdities and proceed to throw popcorn at the screen and yell loudly about how stupid these people are being. Now that's entertainment.
It works well if you are watching with friends around who have tendancies to believe in this sort of thing. After a while, they smarten up and start noticing the problems for themselves.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
OK, the one that really gets me is the people who don't believe we went to the moon. It is so damn easy to prove.
We've got some fantastic optical telescopes on this planet. Why don't we point one at the moon and take pictures of the footprints?
-Chris
-- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
I think it's much harder to deal with the kinds of issues in the article; issues that most people have little or no direct experience with (Who's been to the moon or Mars or even JPL? Who's actually been to Area 51?). I think it is much more productive addressing issues that either come up in everyday life, or that can be demonstrated directly (hands-on) in a classroom. Then use these to build a good scientific skepticism.
Plenty of pseudo-science can be debunked by properly teaching probability. There are plenty of fun, hands-on demonstrations related to false coincidences. But these are all too rare. I remember a middle school math class argument among several of the top students in the class in a top district. They spent much of the class arguing over whether the probability of getting 2 heads from independently flipping two coins is 1/4 or 1/3, and never came to a resolution. It would have been simple enough for the teacher to run the experiment. My point is that if it's this difficult to get across even a simple result among bright students, then the lesson plan is wrong to begin with, and it certainly doesn't scale up to the more interesting fallacies related to coincidence.
There are plenty more demonstrations that can debunk ESP. Imagine a teacher giving a mind reading demonstration, then showing how it was done, and afterward explaining how the pros do it.
As for the "face" on Mars, the article starts to suggest some of this by bringing in examples closer to "home": local clouds and mountains that look like objects but are much more clearly coincidence.
And another avenue would be to critically examine in class some commercials or other easily accessible and refutable examples of TV propaganda. The goal would be to break down the idea that any media source is unconditionally reliable.
But as long as the gambling industry continues to grow, and particularly those games with fixed odds against the players like the slots and lotteries, I see little hope of wide success.
The problem is not real science verses psuedo science. It's a problem between boring science and exciting science, real or otherwise. How many people care to watch show about a 2 foot robot take a rock sample? How many will spend an hour or more speculating over the "face" on mars?
My wife loves this old movie (starring Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn). She loves to watch it whenever it comes onto AMC.
I for one hate the movie because of the butchering they do to the IBM computers back then. To some extent, it's a byproduct of our education and experience, we can recognise the major inaccuracies in a movie or TV show, and want to fix it.
On the other hand, when a show comes on that utilizes speech pathology or audiology (what my wife has a masters degree in) she cringes and tries to explain what they've done wrong.
In short, it depends on your level of knowledge about the props or plotpoints in the movie.
Yeah. I can't believe I spent all that money on my "Face on Mars" mug and Alien Autopsy Med-Kit.
RFOL
... there's another pseudo science ... also, bush failed his pseudo science class
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
there was a those NOVA specials "eligant universe" that were a bit senesational but still informative, why can't all teachings be like this, it would reach more people. Cater to teh lowest common demonitaor possible and you will reach more people and soon the lowest common denominator will todays highest as learning continues
"The Day After TOmorrow" or whatever it's called.
Jam-packed with non-science.
It's everything. People would rather listen and repeat, like a bunch of parrots, than actually think.
A friend recently started up some nonsense about how only some (unspecified) miracle had saved the US from conquest in WW II by Germans and Japanese. It does no good to explain that the Japanese started the war with just enough shipping for their civilian economy, that the invasion fleets and resupply fleets for the nearby Asian invasions were an incredible strain. They couldn't even have invaded Hawaii, let alone the mainland. Then he got off on Germany having developed a long range bomber which could make the round trip from Germany to New York, as if having a few such bombers drop insignificant numbers of bombs had anything to do with their capability of actually invading.
People hear something fantastic, and it is so simpler to believe without thinking than to have to wake up from their couch potato stupor long enough to think.
Infuriate left and right
...And who do you think is sitting on the other end of that "Spyware" beside the secret government agencies that are interested in spying on everyone?
Question for the day: 'Do you have to be associated to a Sovereign Government to be an Illuminatus?'
-shpoffo
Im sorry but if this guy is saying that none of that occurs, he's just ignoring the evidence. For example on the alien abductions phenomona:
-the witnesses
-the mysterious scars
-the missing time
-the hypnotic regressions of that missing time
Roswell, New Mexico 1947:
-the witnesses
-the pieces of the crashed UFO wreckage
-the alien bodies
-the pieces of the craft that when burned would not burn
-the pieces of the craft that looked like tinfoil that when crumpled up would uncrumple itself once put down and look as if it had never been crumpled up
-the eye beam pieces that major jesse marcel brought home to his son from the crashed alien wreckage that had the mysterious writing on it that could not be decyphered
-how the eye witnesses were threatened by the army to keep quiet or else their bodies would never be found in the desert and it was kept a secret for 30 years
Travis Walton, November 1975:
-He was gone for 5 days
-His friends saw the UFO that later on abducted them along with the beam of light that hit him knocking him unconcious
-when he was returned 5 days later, he was not hungry only thirsty
-the hypnotic regression used on him that recovered the missing memories of the short amount of time that he was concious when he was on the alien craft after being taken
-during the 5 days that he was missing, they could not find any evidence what so ever of where he went
-sometime after travis walton was returned, him and the other guys all took a lie detector and passed.
UFO Sightings in general:
-the last 50+ years of pictures, videos, eye witness accounts of ufo's in the sky doing manuveurs that no man made object could do at the time
Area 51:
-eye witness accounts of people that have worked their of what they saw
-the fact that the govenment has lied of its existence for the past 50+ years
Egypt and other ancient civilizations:
-the egyption hyroglyphics depicting aliens and their alien technology
-a painting done in the 16th century showing a flying space ready vehicle being flown in the sky with its occupant shown in it
-the ancient myan civilization on the unknown reasons why they built it looked like huge runways that could only be viewed from high up in the air on the patterns they showed
-evidence showing that we have been visited for alot longer then the past 50+ years that is more in the centuries.
Yeah sure none of this exists. You can continue on believing what you want. But tell that to the eye witnesses who has witnessed all of this. I dont believe in the tabloids either like weekly world news or that the moon landing was faked. But don't dismiss all the points I've made. There is truth in it. Then again, there are people who are religious and believe in god and yet have never needed any evidence to believe in that. There is evidence here that all this is a possibility. Unless you open up ur mind, all you'll be is close minded.
My Gawd WTF...
You might just be *completely* mindless. Astounding.
Capitalism: Taking advantage of impressionable people since time immemorable.
I don't believe these "pseudoscientists" are the problem. Hell, they are just making an honest buck selling their stories to the masses. If the masses choose to believe them, why are they to blame?
(Its not like they're spammers).
No. The problem is with the educational system that allows these people to finish high-school without even having the ability to critically think about what they are being fed.
However, smart consumers are bad business.* Given the current non-separation between big-business and state, there is too much short-term gain to be made by keeping the population stupid.
*As an IT management book I was reading on the weekend stated, IT people don't care why the Marketting people believe that consumers want an intimate, emotional relationship with their hand soap, we just implement the web-page.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
Here's a relevant cartoon to go along with the article.
Rent or buy Penn and Teller's Showtime series "Bullshit!" on DVD. Put on the episode about creationism.
You want to fret about pseudo-science? In Georgia, they modified the textbooks to remove references to Darwinism, or in some cases, put it up against some cockeyed theory wrapped in a vaguely reasonable name, "Intelligent Design".
There are entire relious groups in the American South dedicated to "Intelligent Design". It postulates an absolute literal reading of the bible. The heavens and earth really WERE created in 7 days. 6 actually, he rested on the seventh. No word on the 8th or 9th. Adam and Eve were real, we did not evolve, we were blond haired and blue eyed right from the start, etc etc.
Penn and Teller then proceed to smash these idiots in the mouth. But, it's pretty scary. When the religious factions of the U.S. start re-writing textbooks, and debunking real science in favor of pseudo-science, it's scary. They interview this moron who thinks the Grand Canyon proves God created the earth in 6 days. How, I'm not sure. But he has an entire museum, well funded, dedicated to smearing Darwin. He tells people that at the end of his life, Darwin recanted all he said, and begged forgiveness from God. That and a bunch of other lies.
Penn postulates at the end of the episode that bullshit science is usually easily spotted for it's adherence to some sort of faith based postulate. Dogma eventually gets exposed.
That's why I love P&T, promoting a different kind of lifestyle. They call it, "Intelligent Skepticism". Thank your God for guys like them.
A big problem with science education is just that; teachers often are ill equiped to answer important and difficult questions. I've most often seen evidence of this in the evolution versus creationism debate. If a kid asks (probably in highschool) how evolution could be possible in light of the second law of thermodynamics, most high school teachers cannot give an adequate answer. That doesn't mean that adequate answers do not exist (they do).
Take for another example the intelligent design propaganda piece Ten questions to ask your biology teacher - excellent and compelling answers to all of those questions exist, but they are seriously tricky and would trap an average educator. You need to be very well trained in biology and other natural sciences to field those questions. Most teachers with an undergraduate degree in science and an education after degree simply don't have the knowledge.
In some ways, the new stuff is scripted to appeal to the modern mindset. Who wants a anthropomorphic god that demands particular moral actions under the threat of retribution? Or who wants to follow the five pillars? Who wants to bother with Hail Mary's and the attendence of mass to ensure the slate stays clean? Much more appealing is to believe that we've already had exciting past lives, that we can acquire knowledge through lucid dreaming, and that the stars show us what we need to do.
But regardless, I agree, people generally are not concerned with making objective investigations regarding their beliefs. It's amazing to hear well-educated engineers at my workplace testify to veracity of astrology.
and maybe not.
if the moon is new when it's closer to the sun than the earth, then the new moon should never be in the night sky. because it's only in the day sky. because it's closer to the sun than the earth. that seems to be what you're saying. ??
Many are worried about pseudoscience, but not as many are worried about people being exposed to religion. Why? Both are antiscientific.
Then where's my free cheese?
--
What would Bill Clinton do?
This is a joke, SETI is a nerd fantasy, MORE so than UFOs. Let's look at the basic premise of SETI "science": -other intelligent life exists, but is stuck on planets like ours and therefore MUST use radio to communicate they have already "scientifically" decided that aliens cannot get here...why? because our technology is primitive?! they must use radio waves like smoke signals? why and to whom are they sending these signals? Can anyone present scientific evidence for any of these assumptions?
Now think about that for a minute. Come on, don't tell me I'm the only one here hatching a plot for world domination around that one simple fact? Not that the idea's particularly new. Look at pretty much every religion ever.
And you people think that this condition of absolute gullability by the population at large is a bad thing? You just need to think outside the box!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
All aim to convince the public that aliens have been here or nearby on the Moon or Mars, and that all of the "evidence" is being covered up by a grand conspiracy of seriously un-fun people in the government, universities, and research organizations. Folks like me. Denying, providing alternative explanations, or criticizing the "evidence" somehow "proves" there is a cover-up.
She would say that! Like she said, she's one of them! Instead of criticising evidence, they're now going undercover, into guises of rationality, to convince us that we're foolish! Just look at it without the quotes - it's the truth! Get your tin foil hats, a cover up this smart can only mean one thing - they're coming! Coming! From... up there! Wuaaaaaaargh!
"I love infotainment!"
Scooby Doo (the cartoon, not the movies).
The old Scooby Doo cartoons were a rare case where rationality won in the end, and wasn't a big downer (at least, not to this kid). There was never an actual ghost; it was Old Man Grumby all along (and he would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for those meddling kids!).
"Ow is mars the fourth planet in our solar system, what is a solar system anyway?" Are replies quite common. But Hell they all know that the moon landing was fake, and they all know that the government covered up the whole Area51 bit. I mean I just wiped someone's ass who was trying to convince me that *they* had made a 12TeraHerz processor out of 'Roswell technology' told it him it can't be done 'cause of HUP. But this is not the point, I actually believe that people should be told those stories, but there has to be a feedback mechanism, people who really know what is going on, and we lack those people. Start a rumour, everyone will believe it because it won't be falsified by the 'normal' people, and the scientists keep their mouth shut most of the time. The world would be a better place if those scientist and geeks would have a more active role in interacting with the 'normal' people. And indeed science classes have become boring, but I see that it is necessary. It is necessary for me to know newtons first law it is necessary for me to know how to draw a vector diagram. Because with out those I would never understand the laws of thermodynamics or quantum mechanics.
I also liked pretty much all three. I was happy enough with what pseudo philosophy there was...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...was when the previous lander crashed because of a unit conversion problem. It shows the importance of units and unit conversion.
/. and me.
I use this in lecture and lab as an example of why we just can't assume the next person will kind of know what we are doing, even if we don't completely specify it. Ironically, I just mentioned it today before reading this story - but maybe I shouldn't mention that. Maybe someone will take it as evidence of a psychic connection between
_____________________________________
a war on terrorism? How can we end a war on a method?
(cough cough)Religion(cough cough).
I don't find SETI so much better... seems to be a wishful thinking scheme.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Or people who think they are too smart for the modern science and education systems.
Granted, some of these people may be indeed very bright, but in their arrogance, they missed a lot of the very important things about critical thinking.
Critical thinking IS a learnt skill, it took a long time for civilization to cultivate it and the basic scientific method. So many people just don't get science. I don't mean they don't understand math or biology. I mean they just don't get that it's about an approach, a way to do things that eliminates variables in order to trace down the root of things. Replicateable experiments, control, the things that make an experiment more then just observing cause and effect.
The purpose of life is to find the purpose of life.
I have relatives who believe everything in/on:
- In Search Of...
- Art Bell
- Weekly World News
- etc..
There is no point to arguing with them. Any outright contraditions to their beliefs, even when backed by hard science, are simply ignored as being part of the "plan". Whose plan, I'm not really sure. At any rate, according to the aforementioned accounts, we're currently being experimented on, mind controlled and invaded by soviets/aliens/time travellers/elvis/whatever.
Here's what has been working with them. Every time they mention [insert appropriate psudeo-science here], I counter with something completely factual and only marginally related to what they are talking about. If they mention alien cities on mars, I talk about the latest findings in martian geochemistry and don't mention aliens at all.
This has two effects:
1) They sometimes learn something.
2) I have factual ammunition that I can use later. For instance when Art Bell says that mars is made of pocket lint, I can bring up the conversation we had last week on mineral salts. And then they listen to reason (sometimes).
Hope this helps (despite some very hopeless people in the world).
#include "humorous_pop_culture_reference.h"
I have major doubts about the landing of the moon... Because as a space physics course points out there is some heavy radioation belt between the moon and earth, one that the electronics needs heavy protection from. And organic substances would have a very hard time surviving... So when I see some results from an experiment of what damage that the radiation of sending organic material into the radiation which comes from the sun btw, causes... And the experiment isn't made from a sneeky country like USA which has their own selfish purposes to fullfill. I doubt that they wouldn't falsely construct their own results... When I see some legitimate data of the effects of the radiation then I can consider that a moon-landing has actually been done! But I would preferably have some other country repeat the same achievment as well!
While they do not fly or take a part or store alien space craft at the location. More funky unusual aircraft have flown from Groom lake than you can shake stick at. The U2, SR-71 family, Have Blue, F-117 and even some Russian aircraft used for evaluation have flown and still fly from that area.
Lots of cool stuff but no space people I am afraid.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Do you have links for both sides?
I will pass up moderating this thread.
This is exactly like having pictures in a novel that don't corespond with your mental image of the characters and the scenery. After watching the first movie, possibly the second as well, theories started to form. Most people had a personal theory as to the reasoning behind the matrix, or even the "Matrix in a Matrix" theory to explain the multiple existances of Neo. The disallusionment came from the third movie being too simple and not satsifying the expectations and theories the first two movies raised.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Hey, I've got one of those in my home too! Although mine's called a 'laser printer'.
You must think in Russian.
Except the 'organic substances' that were the astronauts spent only about an hour in these belts, and they were in a shielded spacecraft when they did so. Their exposure and accumulated dose was minimal. http://www.clavius.org/envrad.html
Rather backward of me, wouldn't you say? You might be right, but I do have very good reasons.
Art is necessarily symbolic and can only be properly be judged subjectively. Those properties bring immense power and danger to art.
If the artist paints a picture of a bird, is it only a picture of a bird? Could it be a symbol of any particular religious or political movement? Could the artist be coding any messages or meanings in the painting?
When deciding how or if we should pay the artist, how do we judge the matter? do we pick the artists that can paint a bird picture that looks most like a bird? That would probably be my choice but it would leave out the cubist freaks and just about any other "school." Shall we have a nationwide moderation system with meta-moderation by a self-selected group of expert critics? How about a huge lottery where artists get 20 year positions regardless of what they do or do not do?
I'm not fundamentally against publicly funded art, but I don't see any way to preserve artistic freedom and have some kind of control and order over the whole affair. I don't think it can be done. Some of the most beautiful and technically excellent art was done for similiar reasons as some of the most offensive stuff out there. Both pieces make a religious point.
I can't say one is technically better than the other, in part because I haven't studied the two and don't care to do so. I then have only my preferences in art and social viewpoint to fall back on. That will never be completely rational and the process will be corrupt the artist eventually.
I certainly will not willingly fund art that offends my religious background like some art always will. It is also important to my religious ideals not to dictate tell the artist what they can and can't do on their own time.
Therefore the only solution I see is for people to buy the art that they like. The goodness/appropriateness/interest factors take care of themselves.
Science, on the other hand, can be objectively measured. Pons & Fleischmann were wrong. We could justifiably cut them off if they we dangling from the public teat. The guys that interpret the Hubble images do interesting but practically useless stuff, and we still gladly pay them.
The point is we can measure science objectively and THEN assign value. There is a small but rational hook we can use to make tax money spending choices. It is the opposite way with art. I know I'd get violent if I was assigned to support some idiot performance artist from New York every April 14, but do not care if you want to buy a ticket.
In reality we will always indirectly fund art, but we should at least try to make it look like arts spending is a private matter.
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
Since SETI is effectively junk-science, I find it funny that she complains about UFO phenomenon.
At least UFO researchers are effectively dealing with a real sociological phenomenon (regardless of whether we're being visited).
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
I'm constantly exposed to pseudo-science here on Slashdot. Most of the articles here wouldn't know the difference between a flux capacitor and a resistor.
What science needs is more Page 3 girls.
The one in the middle's not bad, nor the one on the far right.
-T
I stand corrected. Scooby Doo cartoons, final bastion of rationality in a sea of naivete.
Once we got to modern physics, with all the weirdness of quantum mechanics and relativity, people figured you could just make up anything and someone would believe it. Oh well...
My favorite dramatic convention is the way an image that starts out at about 200x200 pixels can be "enhanced" to high definition in order to read license plates, recognize faces.
I also had to stand in the right place to see the "bear"; otherwise, it just looked like a mountain peak. Like the bear, to see the face on Mars, you have to "stand" in the right place, and at the right time of day.
Sorry, but 'That Face' was photographed from multiple angles by multiple spacecraft and has never been explained to any satisfactory degree. If it was looked at from a different angle and ceased to be a face, then these comments would be valid.
What's more, this face is not in the middle of a rocky region of Mars - it is out by itself in the middle of nowhere. If it was in the middle of a huge mountainous region then this could easily be explained. The chances of an exact face being carved into the surface in the middle of a fairly featureless region are extremely remote.
No conspiracy theories. This just needs to be explained, and not with all the usual dismissal. Let's land there!
Hopefully my Anonymous Coward status won't bury this post too far. I didn't see Snuffed Candle Award in the other posts.
/War Room out in Parumph Nevada.
Didn't the Skeptical Inquirer's http://www.csicop.org/si/ Snuffed Candle Award go to Larry King this year?
I don't really listen to Larry, I am more of an Art Bell http://www.artbell.com / http://www.coasttocoastam.com Wildcard Line type of guy. (note: I use real Science to speed dial the line.)
Art got his Snuff Candle Award http://www.csicop.org/articles/19981113-awards/ in 1998. And he displays it proudly in his Radio
But I like Richard C. Hogland too! And all the others, like Linda Multon Howe and the crop circle, cattle mutilation, deformed frogs; man this stuff is great, and when Art Got sick and the radio show dried up, something inside of me died, I LIVE for this stuff late at night. George Noory does a half decent job of holding this all together. BUT THE MASTER IS ART!
PS. For added Karma Points email Wayne Green @ AOL.COM (hahahhah) and have a dull discussion about ham radios and switch to Healthy Food, and then . . . Landing on the moon. He'll write you back more than once! Tee Hee Hee
About 50% of the American public believes that UFO's are real, and what they mean by "real" is that UFO's are piloted by aliens from some distant world, not Earthlings from the local Air Force Base or actors in Hollywood costumes.
This is presented as if it were "evidence" of anything bad going on, as if it has been proven that UFOs are NOT extraterrestrial craft. The point isn't whether they are or not. WE DON'T KNOW. Hence the "U" in "UFO".
Of course I agree that it's bad that misinformation is spread, but come on, give the public a break. Sometimes it is rather tempting to get on a high horse and pity the fools that believe all this BS that is churned out by the movie industry and its ilk. This overlooks an important point though: A lot of people realize that Science Fiction isn't necessarily "realistic" (as if any movie is), a lot of people realize that there is no moon landing hoax. Just because this trash is widespread does NOT mean everybody believes it or buys into it. This is what the intuitor guy and the writer of this article can never get into their heads. But then, they wouldn't be able to sit on their perch and feel good about how they're never fooled by the "bad science" that everybody else is fooled by.
--I am Sun Tzu of the Borg. Resistance is feudal.
Most people are profoundly uneducated about science because most good science is very difficult. Most science can't be 'popularised' because it takes years of education to understand.
alien autopsies, Area 51 in the Nevada desert as alien storage quarters, the "non-landings" on the Moon, UFO's, and alien kidnappings
You forgot 'the discovery of Antarctica' and 'satellite pictures of a round Earth'.
an opportunity to teach factual science and astronomy in the context of sensationalistic psuedo-science
Going to have to do better than that. That's the exact same excuse used by everyone Edna is rebelling against. Trying to make everything into pseudo-science and expecting people to take you seriously just doesn't work. Maybe a century ago, you could do that and get somewhere with it, but these days you can't get off just making empty claims that everyone's conspiring and planning to take over the world by stating the painfully obvious.
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
"popularizing science" is vulgar precisely because to do so the truth must be distorted. popularity is a quantification of attention. to pay attention to undistorted truth is tiresome for most people: it requires self-discipline, respect for small and numerous details, deep understanding of the roles of the observer and the observed, and so on. that's a lot of work! it is easier to pay attention to when self-discipline is not so much needed, when details can be glossed over, when the methodology of observation is taken for granted, and so on.
thus, the road to popularity crosses the road to scientific rigor only very rarely. those who attempt to walk both cannot help but be vulgar, with their legs stretched so far apart...
...we are all continually being bombarded by fantastic claims and 'psuedo-truths', and this is not limited to just the media. For the best part of human history the best explanation for just about anything has been because of the intervention/whim of some omnipotent god(s).
The best and really only defense we have against falsehoods is by applying the scientific principal to all claims. This may not be entirely practical in reality, but a healthy skepticism can go along way to help pick out the truth from the 'avalanche' of ideas we are continually exposed to.
I try to form the analogy of a firewall or filter for the brain. some people might run 'Faith' on an open port but I prefer to route everthing through the Skeptic sub-routine, unless I am conciously aware that something is supposed to be fictional.
God was my co-pilot, but then we crashed and I was forced to eat him.
The moon landing is a commonly accepted belief. If you can provide a compelling and somewhat convincing story that seems to disprove it, you run the risk of forcing a weak person's brain into crisis mode. Their beliefs are turned on their head and they become susceptible to suggesion and the retention of new, contrary information. In other words if you really shock someone with apparently valid facts that contradict what they believe, you can reprogram their mind.
It's also commonly called the conversion experience and religious people use it all the time to convert people to their tradition. It's especially popular with Christian evanglelists.
Your friend was converted -- that's why he didn't listen to you. Notice he tried to convert you too; that's the viral side-effect of the conversion experience -- you want others to go through it too.
-JemIn the United States, secondary school education is available to EVERYONE. Unlike Germany, which about 10% of its citizens even receive a high school education (like the US), and that is based on a test you take in the 4th or 6th grade. Everyone else goes to vo-tech high school. (It has been a long time since I read the actual figures, but it is well less than half). Japan and France also use a similar system of education.
The myth of American schools as poor performers vs the rest of the world is that when American high schoolers (and 8th graders) are compared to the world, those stats are comparing 10% (or even less in some countries) to the US's 100%. If you compare apples to apples, our top 10% competes quite well against the 10% of other countries.
Yes, our schools could use improvement. However, we don't base who can get the education required to go to university based on a test taken in the 4th or 6th grade. Some students are not diagnosed with learning disabilities until later than 4th grade, and this completely ignores a student's ability to mature academically later. Public education in the United States is far more democratic.
Erm, no, that's not how it works.
The first 4 years all German kids go to the same form of school - Grundschule(loosly tranlated: basic school) - where you learn to read and write, basic math and all the rest.
After that there are three forms of schools which cover 5th - 10th year.
Which school form you go on to, is not decided by a test, but from overall grades on your yearly report. Plus the teachers give recommendations and the parents have a say too.
The three school forms are:
Hauptschule, for the weakest pupil. Which is aimed at preparing the children for the crafts and trades.
Realschule for the middle Ground.
Gymnasium for the strongest. Which is aimed at preparing the children for Univerity.
After the 10th year Haupt and Realschoolers can choose to go upwards to Gymnasium which then goes on for 3 years. After that you get a certificate called Abitur. Which is basically just a university permit.
But you can STILL get the abitur even when your already adult, your not barred from it. And you can even get to University without Abitur, if you worked for some amount of time in a line of work corellated with your study, e.g. working as a carpenter you can go to University to study architecture, or as a metal worker you can study engeneering and so on.
As for the number of people who visit each school form I have only the 1995 numbers - which were as follows
Hauptschule 26 %, Realschule 40 %, Gymnasium 24 %.
The missing percent come from some special school forms which I didn't list in my summary.
Hope that clears it up a little.
Money-grubbing?! It was only 2 offers (www.newpath4.com/hometimeprofit.htm). hehehe Pseudo space travel? www.newpath4.com/travel2space.htm . More like pseudo-floating! Then there's pseudo-exercise in space: www.newpath4.com/NNINDEX/spacemach1.htm. I guess hhmmm I must be cornering the market on PSEUDO-EVERYTHING ABOUT NOW, including RELIGION: www.newpath4.com/fireontheplanet.htm ! Slashdot needs a slashdot song, a slashdot motto, a ./ bird, and a mascot. Do mascots eat Wheaties? ooohhh.
The levels of consipracy that you would have to believe in are more than you know, btw. For instance, the Russians would have either had to have been tricked or were in on it too. Anyone could pick up the radio broadcasts from the moon sent by the astronauts. At the time, there was never a word from any country that it was all fake, so that would have had to have been one helluva hoax. I could go on for hours (literally)...
Thanks, that does clear it up a bit..and it has been a while since I looked at the German system.
:) My mistake!
One issue that still remains is when US students are compared to German students, our "high school students" (which here makes up 100% of the public school students) are compared only with Gymnasium students (the top 24%). Using this comparison it is easy to see why American students seem worse off than their German counterparts.
I know I was off topic, and didn't mean to bash the German system, just bash unfair comparisons between your system and ours. Here in the US, the attempt is made (however faulty this may be) to get everyone through a high school curriculum, which in theory is university prep.
Vo-Tech (which I believe is like the Realshule) programs aren't everywhere, and only a minority of students utilize them.
What I mean to say is that if you compare the United States's top 25% of high school students they would perform on par with Gymnasium students.
My beef is with people who say the American public school system is terrible, and cite these blatantly unfair comparisons as justification. Our schools are in need of serious work, I'll admit. Just make sure we use the right comparisons.
Thanks again for clarifying my memory...we covered that in German class a little each year but it has been so long since then
According to Star Wars movies, sound travels in the vacuum of space. Furthermore, in the first trilogy, many spaceships seemed to "fall" when they exploded. Nobody complains about it though.
"I have major doubts about the landing of the moon... a space physics course points out there is some heavy radioation belt between the moon and earth
I don't expect you to listen to rational discussion because your mis-informed mind is made up.
NASA has addressed this question time and again.
As others have said there are three elements to radiation exposure
1- Type of radiation
2- Duration of exposure
3- Intensity of exposure.
At some point in a typical lifespan you will probibly be exposed to all types, known and unknown, all of them will get a chance to kill you, none of them will do so instantly.
If you insist on disputing fact join the flat world society and avoid computers because everyone knows that the radiation from them will kill you, make you sterile (a moot point if your dead), and ruin your marriage (sterile, dead and divorced, the ultimate ubergeek).
> Do you have to be associated to a Sovereign Government to be an Illuminatus?
No, just "in." And extremely wealthy.