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How To Make Science Popular Again?
Ars Technica has an interesting look at the recent book Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, a collaboration between Chris Mooney, writer and author of The Republican War on Science, and scientist Sheril Kirshenbaum. While it seems the book's substance is somewhat lacking it raises an interesting point; how can science be better integrated with mainstream culture for greater understanding and acceptance? "We must all rally toward a single goal: without sacrificing the growth of knowledge or scientific innovation, we must invest in a sweeping project to make science relevant to the whole of America's citizenry. We recognize there are many heroes out there already toiling toward this end and launching promising initiatives, ranging from the Year of Science to the World Science Festival to ScienceDebate. But what we need — and currently lack — is the systematic acceptance of the idea that these actions are integral parts of the job description of scientists themselves. Not just their delegates, or surrogates, in the media or the classrooms."
As much as many people would like to think otherwise, public policy is set by elected officials who may take science into consideration, but also must consider economic trade offs and cultural issues. Throw in the usual paranoid claptrap about corporations if you want, it doesn't change the facts.
Just because the Republicans did not rush headlong and unquestionably into the public policy positions championed by the James Hansons and Al Gores of the world doesn't mean they were conducting a war on science.
If science is unpopular today it is because of the arrogant, dogmatic and privileged folks who stand at its door. Add to that the people who embark on regular crusades, telling people they are stupid and ignorant for not listening to them, it's no wonder students shy away from science.
'nuff said
From TFA:
From quotes on websites to a joke by Stephen Colbert, they offer anecdotes about how the public was against the IAUâ(TM)s (International Astronomical Union) decision to remove Pluto from the list of planets, leading the authors to call the situation a âoeplanetary crack-upâ and then ask, âoeDidnâ(TM)t the scientists involved foresee such a public outcry?â Well, if the scientists did foresee an outcry, then what? Should they conduct a public vote next time?
Mooney and Kirshenbaum barely mention any of the scientific bases for the IAUâ(TM)s decision. Instead, they present the case as if the astronomers chose to reclassify Pluto on an inexplicable whim, and it makes one question whether or not the authors looked into any of the actual science for themselves.
I think it's pretty well established that the goal should not be to fit science into pop-culture, at least not if we want it to remain correct and relevent. Your average citizen doesn't care that pluto is only the first discovered Kuiper Belt object, they care that they learned it was a planet when they were a kid. That isn't thinking scientifically. There is no way to make the decision popular without compromising on proper science.
It's not an easy problem to fix. It seems to me like it requires you to teach people to care about science, rather than making science into something people care about. It wasn't that long ago when Bill Nye was getting kids interested in more pure science. Now about the best we have is Mythbusters, which certainly piques curiosity, although it has to resort to explosions and skipping most of the steps in the scientific method to make it palatable. They even have a "warning" for science content, which is a bad sign (tongue-in-cheek or not). Maybe we could get back to that, but it seems the prevailing momentum is toward smaller tidbits and shallower topics.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
Science's irrelevance is some of the long-time-in-coming consequences of a society that emphasizes short-term, extremely self-interested value system with a repudiation of the notion of social plurality.
Unless they adapt by supporting cavemen and women riding dinosaurs or hitching a ride on some other demagogue, Science remains irrelevant.
After all, I don't benefit from science in any special way. Where's my flying car so I (alone) can leave the unwashed masses on the ground. How about my super-smart pill so only my children and I don't have to work very hard?
I mean c'mon... This science thing is bunk unless I alone profit at the expense of everyone else.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Naked girls. Guys would flock to science if there wers lots of naked girls.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
a big part of the problem I suspect is that people don't get to do much science around the house or at school. I suspect that if they were actually allowed/encouraged to do so you would see a rapid increase in the public's interest in science. unfortunately, DIY science has been under attack for quite some time in the home and in the school system its self. mostly in the name of safety... The proper response to safety concerns would be to educate the public on relevant safety practices rather than ban or severely limit scientific experimentation by the public. It would also help to show how the sciences are relevant to everyone's every day lives. Much of the reason the public's interest in the sciences is lower than it could be is that they do not see why knowing basic science is useful to them. It has to be more expansive than "because it will create jobs" which it will certainly but the immediate impact of the sciences must be emphasized.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Speaking as a European, actually science is pretty popular in the USA, globally (except for the mad handful who think science is the sworn enemy of their faith). Actually, I quite like to think of the USA as the country of nerds. Case in point, that's where all the Europeans nerds want to go cause since some time around the 1930s that's where all the big science and engineering are. In Europe (UK excluded, too much of an American satellite to be representative) we don't make offerings to the holy ghost of Charles Darwin, and we couldn't care less about science fiction (seriously, we care nowhere near as much as people in the USA do). But we're better at mathematics, physics, chemistry or biology, because secondary education didn't fail us. It's not a cultural problem, it's all an educational one.
The problem is not how "popular" or "cool" it is, the problem is with education. To put it simply and bluntly, your educational system sucks, particularly when it comes to science. Reform it. Education is pretty much the same problem for anyone, you're doing it wrong, look at how others are doing it right.
An obvious rift exists between many religious and scientific communities.
Yep, and there shouldn't be one. Science and faith aren't incompatible, some great men of science were also men of faith. But in America more than anywhere else it was turned into an epic science vs faith war where everybody picks a side and the battlefronts are shit that no one would normally care about, like biology and genetics or palaeontology or even palaeoclimatology.
Also, why the hell can't I post this comment? It says "There was an unknown error in the submission.". It seems Slashdot is crumbling to pieces day after day.
You just got troll'd!
Become Neil Degrasse Tyson's facebook friend. He's making science interesting again, especially with Nova Science Nows profiles on science. If science oriented kids knew there a lot of people like them, they'd be more likely to pursue it as a career.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/cosmic/
If you're truly trying to integrate science with "mainstream culture", a big part of the overlap is in engineering. Science for the sake of scientific knowledge is great, but we've found that it's often easier to connect to people by looking at how science connects with their lives, which often falls into the realm of engineering (or medicine). We have tried to do that with our free educational electronics videos.
Even as science and medicine and gadgetry continue to advance, it's important to make it accessible and exciting to those outside the field. But while the original book being reviewed argues that "the scientists themslves" must take up the lead in educating the public, the fact is that making these subjects accessible has its own set of required skills that are not necessarily the same as those needed for being an excellent scientist. Some will be able to do both, but it's not for everyone.
For public school situations take that damn football money and use it for science classes.
2nd Hire decent teachers that actually enjoy learning and teaching.
3rd Encourage questions. Ask the students questions, and then wait for a response. Let them actually think! Have some actual communication.
Optional: go places! Take students to new environments to get them to think outside of the box. Science is awesome, you don't have to dress it up to make it fun!
All else fails: Blow shit up! Then explain why it blew up!
If you're going to be an evangelist for science, there are a lot of potential pitfalls. I personally was almost turned off science by the half-assed philosophy that many scientists seem to implicitly hold.
For people on the borderline---who might've accepted a scientific worldview but ultimately rejected it---anecdotally the biggest factor I've found is a feeling that accepting the scientific worldview is nihilistic. Usually this seems (again, anecdotally), to be a result of some particularly overreaching attempts to use science as a sort of naive-reductionist philosophy, where every discovery of mechanisms delegitimizes higher-level things, because now they're "only X", and in some sense don't "really" exist anymore. People particularly object to this with humans. Arguments like "X is just brain chemicals" or "Y is just evolved behavior" get thrown around, and you ultimately end up at claims like: "You don't really love her; that's just brain chemicals". "There isn't really any such thing as morality; that's just evolved group behavior". And people generally recoil at and reject that view, if you're implying that actually nothing about human existence is "real".
Of course, nothing in science actually demands that sort of explanation at a philosophical level. Nobody argues that since chemistry is "just physics", it's therefore in any sense not real or illegitimate. It's a perfectly correct way of explaining, at a particular level of description, how the universe works, and chemical properties are real properties, that really do exist. The fact that chemical properties are due to lower-level interactions doesn't change that. Daniel Dennett even coined a term for some of these kinds of philosophical misuse of science: greedy reductionism.
Fortunately, I was saved from that by some more philosophically sophisticated scientists who pointed out to me that the views held by people who study physicalist explanations of the world are much better thought out. And on, say, what the mind "really" is, fully defended physicalist accounts of mind don't have the same greedy-reductionism that characterizes the rather questionable comments of a lot of neuroscientists.
Sure, there are all sorts of other problems, like fundamentalist Christians who won't ever accept any explanation not derived from the Bible. But as a scientist, I tend to think some outreach is better than just attacking them: there's plenty I might change about their organizations, but I can't, so what can I change about mine? Simply being more accurate about the philosophical implications of science, I find, helps to dispel a lot of unnecessary worries, while having the added benefit of actually being, well, more accurate.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Not to make this a US only problem, but the books reference do apply strictly to US. There was a big sea-change in the 90s where smart became unpopular. The culture today is obsessed with celebrities and other voyeristic experiences. What is needed is some good old fashioned competition. When other countries start to drastically exceed the US in science innovations and applications to daily life, then some of us will wake up from the stupor and numbness of "reality" tv. It's already happened in several key areas like commonly available bandwidth to the home. Society needs to: wake up and rediscover the joy of learning, creativity, and exploration.
As you can tell, I think this article touches on a very serious problem. Sagan said it best:
If each schools Academic Decathlon team got the same amount of exposure as the high school football team did then you would see a lot more interest in academics from the general population.
My senior year our Academic Decathlon team made it to the national conference in Chicago. I heard that we placed in the top 10 in each category, but I never did see a single thing about it in our local paper. And this was a small rural school.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
1. Teach critical thinking - Kids need to learn at an early age how to figure things out for themselves. This goes from how do I turn the TV on to Why is the sky blue. Self exploration of knowledge leads to a door that's hard to close. Starting at an early age, this could be enough on its own
2. Teach humility - We've all ran into ridiculous theories and misconceptions perpetuated by someones unwillingness to admit error. Before any progress can be done to foster a world driven by scientific process people need to be willing to say "I was wrong".
3. Say goodbye to religion - I have no problem with any specific ideology but an organization whose very approach means ignoring point number 1 and some amount of point number 2 will have no place in a scientific society. Sorry.
We must all rally toward a single goal: without sacrificing the growth of knowledge or scientific innovation, we must invest in a sweeping project to make science relevant to the whole of America's citizenry. We recognize there are many heroes out there already toiling toward this end and launching promising initiatives, ranging from the Year of Science to the World Science Festival to ScienceDebate. But what we need--and currently lack--is the systematic acceptance of the idea that these actions are integral parts of the job description of scientists themselves. Not just their delegates, or surrogates, in the media or the classrooms.
They briefly touch on this when discussing movies but somehow everyone is forgetting that the problem isn't in science or scientists, it's in what motivates us. Our capitalistic society is simply getting better at convincing us that research and experimentation aren't rewarding. Making money is. A 9 to 5 job coding Jakarta Struts will net me more cash than working on my doctorate regarding AI or NLP ever will. Sure I could hit on something big and then put in 80 hours a week and try to launch a start up but that's like playing the lottery.
... that's not the answer. The answer is to increase monetary rewards for scientists. We can rip on intellectual property and intellectual property law but that's one of the few examples where our capitalistic system ties inventions and discoveries monetarily to their originators. And when that's in place we'll ask why it matters that those "scientific" progresses were made since we can't readily access them in a cheap manner?
We don't need to destroy the whole system, just make it monetarily worth while to devote your life to science and the scientific process. This mission statement seems to just make scientists more popular or more prestigious
Right now, you'll make more money as a surgeon doing gastrointestinal bypasses than you will experimenting in surgery and medicine. Because GI bypasses are a surefire bet in America. And one person doing them will help individual people but not really society unless you look at GI bypasses on the whole. The same can be said in so many other fields.
The funny thing is that the general populace isn't really interested in science, they're interested in how science can provide them cheaper things, better health, easier money, naturally selfish goals. Look at the quest for knowledge, it's only worth pursuing if it has very practical uses that are often tied to money. In short, you're not going to change this because capitalism's been so successful and changes to how it works now are going to make people unhappy. The discussion is worthless unless you're willing to change how the system rewards scientists across the gamut--not just special institutions or foundations but from the single scientist up to the largest corporation.
My work here is dung.
I think you're a troll, but I'll bite anyway. As someone who is fascinated with all things science related, I bemoan the total apathy towards science within the community. However, I feel that it is important to point out that it is not just science that is being neglected by the community; politics, philosophy, social conscience and other highly important fields have also been totally lost to the common mind.
It's not just discussing the latest article in Nature magazine or Scientific American that results in dumb stares, but also trying to discuss things like the relative merits of current geopolitical policies of various nations, how and why the legal system has gotten to its current state, even this very subject, the apathy of the common person, is not the sort of thing that most people are able to discuss in any depth.
This may all sound very high-horsey, however, I challenge anyone to go to a party, bring up a discussion about the question of whether mathematics is invented or discovered, and see how long you can keep it up. I'm likely to get laughed at for the mere suggestion of this, someone will call me a dork or similar.
The thing is, I actually get out a lot. I travel several times a year, and spent a lot of time meeting new people. It's something that I really enjoy. I'm not a dork. I think.
So, how do we make science (and other "intelligent" subjects) popular again? I dunno, how about priming children in an environment that's a bit more stimulating than the modern day care facility. How about teaching them the basics in an environment that's a bit more positive than the jokes that are primary schools where teachers' hearts are rarely in the job. Don't even let me get started on the barbaric mass-cagefight that is high school.
You want to know why science is not popular in the first place? Because we (as a society, we can't just blame the "education system", after all, parents, they're YOUR kids) as a society are teaching our kids to be consumerist, apathetic, self-centered brats. We need a whole new social order, including a new social mindset that teaches people a proper set of values. Science and all the higher arts won't be popular again until people learn to value them.
Thus, asking how to make science popular I feel is the wrong question. The correct question is how to teach people it's value.
I hate printers.
The argument isn't that random processes prove that a designer doesn't exist, but rather proves that a designer isn't necessary to have design.
Basically, the default stance is, "There probably isn't a god because of the lack of evidence supporting the hypothesis." Creationists use, "all things designed that we know of have designers, therefore we have been designed by a designer." Dawkins and Hawkings embraced random chance in the ability to make things that appear designed, effectively shooting down that argument as evidence to support the existence of a designer.
The general idea being there is a lack of discord in fields of research because the money for research comes with strings attached in the form of corporate sponsored research or politically motivated public-sector grant processes.
Here's a nice example of one way the social science of economics has become irrelevant.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/09/why-economists-rarely-saw-bad-things-about-the-fed.html
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
In Cat's Crade, in the guise of Dr. Hoenikker "Any scientist who cannot explain his work to an eight year old is a charlatan." If you can't separate scientific process from opaque jargon, you'll never be able to engage the layman. As such, IMO, the burden falls on every one of us to try and make scientific knowledge as accessible as possible to anyone who cares to listen. Also, spending some cash on science education (maybe as much as we spend on athletics...) to get good teachers, and engaging materials and activities might help. Or maybe another Star Trek TV series. It worked for me when I was growin' up.
Chris Mooney interviewed earlier on The Colbert Report about the importance of science. Funny, tragic, effective.
I'm glad the article mentions this aspect of the problem. I work in a university maintaining computer equipment. Just last week I was in a biology class as it was ending, and the professor got into a heated debate with a student who was clearly a creationist. And it reminded me of how some who should know better do so very little to help the religious understand science, rather, they distract from the actual questions that need to be asked. (For the record, I was raised a creationist and I am certainly not one now, if I am religious in any sense it is perhaps in the vein of Einstein's 'god'.. and I can tell you that if anything impedes the creationist coming to understand evolution, it is belligerent atheists who do not understand the creationist mindset.)
As an example.. back to my anecdote: The creationist assumes that all scientists are acting out of some personal vendetta to get god, that's what his bible literature and church has told him. The teacher immediately makes the tactical blunder of outright implying 'you can't scientifically prove your myths' and as correct as that may be, saying this outright only confirms the fears of the student, making the student become defensive, hence confirming the fears the teacher has that his student is living in a delusion. And the conversation can go in circles for hours, the teacher not really helping the student, the student not learning anything about scientific methodology.
How different that conversation would have gone if the teacher simply started things off by saying 'science is simply a method for testing and observing the world. it cannot prove or disprove the existence of your god. that's not what it's for. some religious people think god exists and used evolution and the big bang to create the universe. scientifically, we can't know. all we know is that pretty much all observational evidence points out that the universe is expanding and that life is evolving. it doesn't tell us how/why/where it all came from.'
I don't know if this would convince the student, but it would at least be a start, rather than arguing about the student's internal belief system, which will certainly not get the student to crack that textbook and start analyzing the facts for himself.
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." George Bernard Shaw
The argument this clown is using is exactly WHY so many distrust science. Because the scientists are so obviously political these days. Now this wouldn't be bad if they were political scientists (i.e. the fuzzy social sciences) but it has no place in physics or chemistry.
You can't have it both way folks, which view of a scientist do you want the masses to have?
1. The scientist as the almost monastic searcher for facts, discovering new wonders by relentlessly collecting facts in the field, doing careful experiments in labs full of shiny equipment, publishing carefully reasoned papers which are mercilessly peer reviewed and basically being devoted to following the facts wherever they lead. But in the end, scientists tell us how the universe works and what is possible. Engineers use that knowledge to build things after the marketing dept identifies a customer for it and then the politicians decide how to regulate and tax it.
2. Philosopher Kings. Politicians with PhDs. Victims of several bad ideas, namely that a) expertise in one narrow area implies a general wisdom; b) that rule by a technocratic elite is 'better' than rule by the consent of the governed; c) that just because science says something is possible means we must do it, because morals aren't scientific after all.
The last century has shown a marked shift in the public's idea of the word 'scientist' from the first to the second. This explains their change in attitude. In other words if Hansen and his ilk stopped the politicking and went back to their lab and produced some results that didn't get shredded people might start readjusting their views again. Even better would be if the other so called 'real scientists' policed their own a little, forcing the ones who want to take up a new career in politics to LEAVE science first. Because it should now be clear that attempts to lend the good name of science to a political argument doesn't actually work, that instead the bad name of politics attached to science.
And here is another good example of the problem. Carl Sagan's _Cosmos_. It is a wonderful introduction to science in many ways yet terribly flawed by Bad Idea A from above in that Sagan mistakenly believed himself an expert in Foreign Relations apparently for no other reason than he was a smart fellow. But the series is full of the most naive useful idiot twaddle of the sort that, with the Cold War ended, few would dispute. When the grandkids are older I plan on showing them the series and use it as an example of the problem of scientists trying to become political leaders without first investing the effort to actually become an expert.
Democrat delenda est
Christianity demands reason being left at the door. There are some things you just don't question. Period. The bible is true - period. The world is 6000 years old - period.
And you're wrong. Period. The percentage of overall Christian sects which are biblical fundamentalists is small. And I'm not even including the non-fundie Roman Catholicism, which is the largest Christian denomination by far.
But don't let the truth stand in the way of your bigotry.
The outcome of a science and/or engineering degree at this point is competition with millions of people making $8/hr.
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Seriously, in a self-interested, capitalist society what could POSSIBLY motivate a young person to expend limited educational resources on something that resulted in that?
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Any rational person would go for medicine, law or finance or any other field with higher pay with less chance of outsourcing.
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Whine and hand-wring all you want. We did this to ourselves when we started giving away the store to save a few bucks for next quarter. We'll never win another war because of superior technology. Any technology we *do* create will be outsourced in seconds, so why please explain to me why I would ever bother?
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Hope you're all enjoying the global marketplace.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
http://libwww.freelibrary.org/closing/
Quote:
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* Sigh *
"We must all rally toward a single goal: without sacrificing the growth of knowledge or scientific innovation, we must invest in a sweeping project to make science relevant to the whole of America's citizenry."
Science is relevant to every last person on the planet, given the science behind world-altering technology related to Nuclear energy, Climate Change, and biological engineering (just to name a few). The problem isn't that it's irrelevant (although that may not have been the author's precise intent in that word.) The problem is that what little science is picked up by the general public is subject to spin by those who have nothing to do with (and little comprehension of) science, namely politicians.
What's required isn't to make science popular, it's to make fact checking and critical thinking popular. It doesn't matter how little or much you understand of Clean coal technology (as an example); when you are subject to misleading information from all angles of mainstream media what you need is the ability to think for yourself or you are going to be led astray (from science). Too many people are willing to believe whatever 'preferred news outlet x' has to say on a subject and their beliefs quickly align with whatever interest the "journalist" has in mind for them. They proceed with their lives thinking that they are sufficiently informed since they were assured by their favorite news outlet that the "science behind" a particular issue aligns with their interests.
You can't change the laws of the universe, and well done science is almost as unwavering. When these things conflict with what you want, your best bet is distraction and misunderstanding. THATS the problem we face.
Of course, a lot of it has to do with education... but a lot of education has to do with what your philosophy of life is.
For example... more recently, it seems, individualism has been raised to an incredibly high pedestal. It no longer really matters what others think, as long as you think you're doing the right thing. It doesn't matter what your parents teach you; in fact, your parents really don't know anything. It doesn't matter how well you do in school, as long as you are popular and have "social skills." It doesn't matter how you succeed in your line of work, as long as you think you do well. It doesn't matter what kind of art you produce, as long as it's "self expression." It doesn't really matter what you learn, as long as you LIKE learning it.
With that sort of prevailing pop-culture attitude/philosophy, how CAN scientific endeavors thrive? There's no reason to look or learn about science. It's just some other guy's research, why would I want to read about it? Why should I care?
There IS a correlation between some historical scientific figures and their philosophy of life. For example, some believed in a Creator, and that had a great deal to do with their philosophy of science, and thus gave them a reason to pursue it. That's just one example, there are examples of completely atheistic scientists too, I suppose.
Short version: if your philosophy of science (which comes from your philosophy of life) gives you no reason to pursue scientific endeavors (including "education") then why should I expect you to do so?
And, at least in the US, when our schools promote a rather distinctly weak philosophy of life and philosophy of science, when the schools are more interested in "educating" with political and social agendas instead of actual useful educations..
I actually came from a homeschooling situation and then went to a public junior college for a year or two. I learned far more before high school than most of my junior college peers knew... and not just in scientific subjects, but things like grammar and vocabulary. As for what I missed socially and politically... yes, I did miss out on some things. Like drugs and learning that wearing pants such that you have to hold them up with one hand is "cool." And learning that treating girls like sex objects is a good thing to do. And learning that lying and cheating is the way to succeed and get an education... or at least get through high school. Somehow, these kids were in "college," presumably "graduated" from high school, and didn't even know what an "adjective" or "adverb" was... let alone how to do simple algebra or what in the world an ion is.
I think there's something wrong with a lot of our philosophy... philosophy of education, of science, of life... and it distinctly shows up in schools. It seems that the ones I saw in my limited public school experience that succeeded were of two kinds. The first: they came from a family that promoted (or required) a different philosophy. The second: they were older people that realized what a failure the philosophy they had or their family had, and were now working to fix it by finishing their education and actually working hard and learning. I very much respected the older (30s and 40s) students in my classes because I knew they were likely having a harder time than I was (had children, had full time jobs, etc) but were still dedicated to doing it. I didn't particularly respect the normal-aged college students that didn't care about learning and just didn't want to get an F, because then they'd have to take the class over again (what a drag!)...
Having finally read this book (despite low expectations), I can confirm that per the poor reviews it offers very little that's new. When it does forward a unique point of view, such as this suggestion that public communicator become part of the job of 'the scientist' (as in just about every scientist), it's absolutely ridiculous. Scientists usually have enough on their plates with little things like research, grant writing, internal politics, etc., without some science writers who completely lack data to back up their thesis telling them to start up and maintain a blog, column, or attend even more conventions. Those who do maintain such things tend to be either 1) incredibly busy, busier than I'd like to be, or 2) have a lighter research load than is desired by many. I'm not badmouthing option 2), it includes scientists who do try to focus more on public outreach and teaching, which is very admirable and valuable. Just don't expect every person interested in scientific research to want to devote their time to it.
All of this is a little beside the point, too. Sheril and Chris make a large part of their thesis into blaming the scientists for a lack of communication. It's why this recommendation quoted in this article is one of their only unique ones, unique in how extreme it is. While you can blame scientists for misrepresenting the importance of their research (not all research has a direct practical benefit, even if it's fantastic), blaming them for not being in the public sphere is difficult when we already have so many teaching scientists and public scientists who would love to come on television or radio and do attend conventions. The thing is, when they can even get on a show relevant to their expertise, they get a 2 minute blurb at best to dumb down their subject and try not to mess things up. They get paired with a creationist or 'holistic doctor' or just general ignoramus and have to spend their time (again, just a few minutes) attempting to debunk the inanity. That is not an environment conducive to educating the general public nor for raising appreciation for the sciences. The (partial) exception is public radio, where scientists can speak about their research for twenty minutes to an hour on something like Science Friday.
By focusing on scientists, they avoid the larger problems with the public's appreciation of science. Everyone here at slashdot knows about the fantastic solar cells that are 'just around the corner' and other tech predictions which never come to market and the same applies to science articles in general: there's a glut of misrepresented research which has been illegitimately hyped up for sensationalism, especially in medicine. Such irresponsible journalism, supported by low-level science journalists as well as their editors (either one can make a piece way too hyped), leads to a mistrust of news about scientific breakthroughs. Now, I don't have data for that (just like Sheril and Chris!), but I know that I ignore every article about a scientific breakthrough just around the corner unless I have to 1) debunk it or 2) it's related to my major and I know that other people do the same. Furthermore, journalists often simply don't understand the science they're reporting and make serious errors. Chris knows this, he's criticized shoddy science journalism in the past on his blog and made it into a theme. He knows that it hurts the reputations of scientists and the general undestanding of science. Apparently, however, rather than promoting good science reporting directly or finding a market solution to avoiding too much hype, it's time to blame the scientists for not reaching out enough.
Sorry, got on a bit of a rant there. Aside from poor journalism and a generally inhospitable media, there's also the problem of science education in school (mine was atrocious, in retrospect) and the elephant in the room: anti-intellectualism in all its forms, including a number of religious and political movements. Despite all of these forces working against the pu
Possibly because it's a barely significant difference. Take a look at the studies that have been performed and you see a tiny offset of the top of the bell curves. Over 95% of all people, regardless of race, fall into the same region, with slightly more of the outliers being of certain ethnicities. Given that IQ tests contain very strong cultural biases, it's difficult to draw any conclusion from the available data unless you are cherry-picking results to justify an existing bias.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Dawkins' point is an epistemological one. We have a perfectly good explanation for how the life that we see on earth today evolved, through (internally) random processes, from more primitive ancestors. Thus, it is not rational to introduce a new agent, God, to our concepts of the universe to explain what we can already explain without him.
I take it that you are arguing that, given what we know from computer science, the evolutionary process may well be designed by God. And this is true. But the point is that there is no positive reason to make this leap. Therefore you shouldn't make it. A standard for rational belief has to require a positive reason for the belief and not its mere compatibility with the observed evidence. If compatibility is all you require, then a whole flood of unverifiable propositions sneak in the back door. Suddenly you have reason to believe in invisible fairies, haecceities, ghosts, any force you can think of a name for (and then some) that has no observable effect on matter, etc.
caritj.org
This is an old theme of American history, called anti-intellectualism. The American public isn't so much "anti-science" as anti-intellectual.
I think that GP has a point about the proper relationship between science and policy; all too often people use the authority of science to sneak in policy and value judgements as science (for example, intelligence testing). We need to be critical of the people who insist that science should set policy, as GP recommends.
However, to do so successfully we can't be anti-intellectual, and that's where I part with GP. The Republicans are the party that panders to anti-intellectualism; their war on science was real. G.W. Bush is an anti-intellectual poster boy, too.
Invented, just like chess.
Are you adequate?
If there is a difference in IQ tests between different races (and if you manage to genuinely isolate cultural factors from your testing, then I'm gobsmacked), then it's a very small difference, or else it would be obvious to us. And if the difference is that small then it's (a) going to overwhelmed in pretty much all instances by more significant factors such as upbringing, amount of free time, etc. and (b) worthless to base generalized behaviour on. Besides, everyone is shagging each other so in a century's time, it will all even out anyway.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/14107/Third-Americans-Say-Evidence-Has-Supported-Darwins-Evolution-Theory.aspx
The poll shows that almost half of the U.S. population believes that human beings did not evolve, but instead were created by God -- as stated in the Bible -- essentially in their current form about 10,000 years ago...
A segmentation of Americans based on their responses to the questions about creationism and biblical literacy finds that a quarter of Americans can be considered to be true literalists -- believing not only in the literal interpretation of the Bible, but also in the creationist view of the origin of humans.
Of course you don't believe there are many creationists out there, because you're not a creationist. I have trouble imagining how many people accept this ridiculous idea myself. But there the numbers are.
And of course, Michael Crichton was a man with a serious sense of debate and mature behaviour when it came to Global Warming.
Bonus points for reading the section above that one about Michael Crichton's misuse of Peter Doran's work, and similar issues with his "evidence".
It's the fact that people consider what should be fascinating topics boring that is the problem
Thankyou for proving my point so perfectly. You did it so well that I think I may be lining myself up for a whoosh...
I hate printers.
Sorry, but you seem to state that
however; it is certainly true that
just so we could move forward, could you please give some example of a "real IQ test" which uses logic, math, and spatial recognition without any cultural biases? Most of the cases I have seen have shown problems that probably have the same solutions in different cultures, but are much easier to solve for people who have some specific experience or lack some other experience (e.g. a pattern of numbers may match some standard sequence in a culture and so the "next in the sequence" may be completely different in one culture from another. For bonus points, please tell us how to identify good "real IQ tests"; for example an association of testers you would recommend.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Spatial cognition has been shown to be culturally variable; check out the work of Stephen Levinson on language and spatial cognition. It is possible to design spatial reasoning tests that are culturally biased in that regard; e.g., the Queensland Test was designed to raise the score of Australian Aborigines relative to Australian Whites.
In fact, there's just nothing culturally neutral about getting somebody to sit down to answer an intelligence test. Read the New Yorker's article on the controversy about the Pirahã and ask yourself, in the end: how would you administer an IQ test to this tribe, and would the results be more indicative of their "intelligence" or of their cultural differences to us?
To paraphrase William Labov: if you want to figure out how intelligent somebody is, you have to enter the appropriate social relationship with that person. IQ tests simply fail this; they presuppose that everybody is a well-mannered urban European middle-class authority-fearing white-coat-deferring sit-downer, who is just delighted to sit down and perform decontextualized, pointless intellectual exercise on command.
Are you adequate?
Not so much is at its the solution that lacks utility.
Think of it this way. We have a murder suspect. We have a body with a knife in the back. The knife has his fingerprints. There's a trail of blood that leads to where his car his parked. The victim's blood is in the car. The victim's blood is found at the suspect's home and the knife is in the suspect's garbage can.
The most parsimonious explanation is, of course, that the suspect did it. It creates a testable hypothesis, has a logical series of events, each in and of itself testable.
Or we can say God did it. None of the evidence is incompatible with that claim. God's powers are unlimited. But the explanation lacks all utility. Nothing in claim can be meaningfully scrutinized. No test can be formulated, no observation is incompatible with the statement "God did it". It is the great irony of trying to use God to explain phenomena; God can explain everything, and thus explains nothing.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"...And the hundreds of Nobel Prize scientists who got involved with trying to communicate the dangers of global warming to the world long, long before Al Gore got involved in anything... Ignore them! Al Gore's special lethal uber-cooties makes what all those Nobel Prize winning scientists say irrelevant.
Al Gore and James Hansen aren't just making this stuff up. They're simply relaying what 90% of scientists in related fields and what 90% of all scientists agree with. This is what folks in the world of science call a "scientific consensus". Unfortunately, because this particular scientific consensus is ideologically inconvenient for you, you want us to believe that 90% of all scientists in the world are part of a massive international conspiracy run by Al Gore.
No offense, you are exactly the problem that is being discussed here.
How about ceasing to overregulate home chemistry sets (which now really do little more than allow kids to see color changing tricks), and allowing for private citizens to once again be citizen-scientists without the fear of drawing the suspicion of the DHS (Look! He's got a lab in his garage! He must be a terrorist!) or the DEA (Look! He's got a lab in his garage! He must be a making meth!). Heck, I'd love to set up a hydroponic tomato garden in my basement so I can have tomatoes during the winter in Minnesota, but I don't want to risk being booked on having "drug-growing equipment" (Look! He's got them plant lights in his basement! He must be growing pot!)
I mean, come on, people! In the days after 9-11, restrictions put forward governing certain incediary chemicals nearly killed the ability of model rocket hobbyists to purchase engines online or at distant hobby shops (due to proposed shipping restrictions). The model rocket and hobby industries had to lobby to make sure those changes didn't cripple a hobby that spurred the interest of many people in the fields of aerospace, aerodynamics, engineering, chemistry, and physics. Heck, let's get back to being able to order our own chemical supplies so we can make our own rocket engines!
It has even changed kitchens. My mother had a recipie that used baker's amonia as a primary ingredient (I'm assuming as a levening agent in conjunction with baking soda). As far back as the 1980s she could no longer buy it herself without registering with a pharmacist and having them order it for her (in limited quantities--you know how often cookie-bakers must have engaged in bomb-making activities). Recently, I went to a number of pharmacies, but none of them could get it for me.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
I recommend Jerry Coyne's review of this book. It eviscerates it.
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/unscientific-unscientific-america-part-1/
It's easy to make science-related careers more popular: pay scientists more than poverty-level. Having passion for a career is one thing, but at the end of the day, passion doesn't put food on the table. The paycheck does.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
As the world continues to make scientific progress (albiet more slowly than theoretically possible, but that is acceptable), it will slowly become increasingly difficult for the unintelligent and uneducated to survive.
All things and people being equal, your point might actually be true. However, with the way that western societies have been doing anything and everything to ensure the survival of the weakest, laziest, most unfit of it's citizens at the expense of the rest of the population, I doubt your premise will come true while those states continue on their march towards socialist, nanny state policies. While social welfare programs tend to give folks a big warm and fuzzy, in the long run, it squeezes any incentive for trying to get ahead in life out of all but the most motivated of individuals. While it is definitely admirable that some individuals will continue to excel regardless of the social structure they find themselves in, this policy will eventually lead to downfall of western civilization as it takes more than just a few girders to hold up an entire bridge.
Two things in our favour, though:
Like anything useful, critical thinking is best considered as a form of technology, and as such it will have benefits and detriments, usually not the same to a large, mixed, group of people. I like it because it's consonant with my values and because I believe that it improves our spiritual and material well-being, but I know that this might not apply to everyone. Oh, and great point about humility: I've often said that graduate study's best contribution to my education was schooling me in being very ready to be wrong .
*...which is, coincidentally, the name of my retained law firm
Ah, that's a Feyerabend quote--and probably the worst of his otherwise excellent Against Method. Feyerabend is very worth reading, but let it be said that he is somewhat of a troll.
Um, do you seriously think that Galileo's contemporaries ought to have judged his theory on the basis of evidence that wouldn't be discovered until at least one hundred years later (like stellar aberration or observation of stellar parallax), not to mention a theory of mechanics that hadn't yet been invented?
Science-infatuated people today have a very unfortunate tendency to overstate Galileo's scientific case, and understate the objections of his contemporary astronomer colleagues--which were very good objections, when judged by contemporary standards. The aforementioned book by Feyerabend goes at length about this; Galileo needed to overturn Aristotelian mechanics to really win the scientific contest, and he didn't manage to overturn it.
The Church's treatment of Galileo, also, was more politically and personally motivated than scientifically so: the church authorities initially protected him from his conservative opponents within it, and then he went and wrote a book making fun of the pope. The Galileo affair is certainly a textbook case for separation of church and state. It's hard to conclude much more beyond that--and do we really need to? Again, there's a point that Feyerabend makes that is crucial here: the Copernican system only overcame the Ptolemaic one after being developed for at least 200 years, over which there were all kinds of serious objections that needed to be overcome.
Not that I want to make the parallel case about human-induced climate change, though.
Are you adequate?
For all the references to popular esteem of the sciences the 1950s and '60s, no one is asking, 'why?'
I think the answers goes to why we follow spectator sports. It also goes to why we have the current political environment.
People like Us v Them. We like having winners and losers, even if it means sometimes begin a loser.
Fox News and MSMBC have the following they do not because the common man wants to get in to the minutia of the government sausage factory. We are not a nation of policy wonks. It's Democrat v Republican; conservative v liberal.
Science was the same way after WWII. It was our scientists v their scientists. Our bomb v their bomb. Our rocket v their rocket.
The problem with science, though, is that it isn't sexy. By the time you're an elite scientist, you're old and grey whereas elite sportsmen are young and vigourous and all the things our hindbrains crave.
Not true. While a successful scientist is usually able to maintain a productive level of performance longer than an athlete, the physical sciences and mathematics are very much a young persons game.
And science is slow - you can't follow Fermilab like some do a baseball team. Let's face it: science is slow and tedious and not very exciting day-to-day.
Again I disagree. Sports are slow. Sunday on the pitch is exciting. Perhaps the highlights of training camp are exciting. But the thousands of hours in the gym, lifting the same weights or climbing the same stairs for hours are just as boring as thousands of hours of practice a musician goes through or the preparation a scientist goes through.
The difference is not the speed and the amount of drudgery to achieve excellence.
The difference is scheduling. For the sports fan, the practice is boring but come Sunday noon, there will be excitement. For the music fan, the practice is boring but come Saturday night, there will be excitement.
For the science fan, we don't know when the excitement will come. Science doesn't work on a schedule the same way.
You want people to be able to discuss science the same way they discuss politics? You want the public adoration for scientists bestowed upon athletes? Just make science the Us v Them competition it was during the height of the cold war.
I wonder if the lack of interest in Science in general is due to there being less and less 'easy' things to discover?
Back in the 1800's/1900's, Science was often associated with inventions or entrepreneurial activities. Now so much of science is very minute discoveries, often requiring specialized equipment and intense training, that the average person out there probably feels very distant from it.
What grabs the average mind more, the invention of the steam engine or the discovery of some obscure physics particle? To appreciate the physics discovery, you need to have a much greater understanding of physics, while just about anyone can be excited about a big steaming engine:)
The problem is this. . .
You, (the elite managerial over-seer), wants all the little people to toil in order to provide you with food, shelter, safety, power and luxury. It takes back-breaking effort to provide these things to you and there is no good reason to do it. As with most people of your sort, you live with a constant shadow on your shoulder; you harbor a morbid fear that one day the flow of wealth and abundant resources (which you don't work for) will cease. Because you have never really worked at anything, you fear work; nothing is more terrifying than the thought of being reduced to the status of a common peon. And so in fear, you cast about with great concern! How is your fear most likely to manifest? Why a popular uprising! Any moment now, you will be discovered and the slaves will take back what they have given you and which you do not deserve to have.
Thus, population management becomes a great concern to you. An obsession.
So how do you make sure that the slaves never have enough energy or awareness to see who is making their lives miserable and come together to do something about it? Why you make damned sure they are stupid and distracted and constantly fighting amongst one another!
Thus enters the Paradox! --To have the most fashionable elitist lifestyle, you need to employ the Wonders of Science! However, to employ the Wonders of Science, you need thinking men and women capable of sharp awareness and bright imagination. --And yet thinking men and women of awareness and imagination are exactly the kind of people who are most likely to realize that they are slaves and that you are their bitter enemy. They are the ones you fear most!
If only there was some way. . . --A method to mind-program people so that they retain the brain power necessary to engage in research and experimentation and other skills required by the Wonders of Science, while ALSO being remaining stupid and distracted. Is such a thing possible?
Fortunately for you, the answer is YES!
Among the maneuvers used to create the perfect army of mindless scientists and engineers are. . .
-Age segregation in schools. (Humans are pack animals; in healthy communities children of many ages play together, and the older and more experienced ones naturally take on leader/protector roles. In the school system, there are no clear leaders established through age, leading to endless, un-resolvable competition, generally resulting in the most base physical attributes becoming the dominant deciding factors. Say hello to "Jocks v.s. Geeks" --Those who are strong thinkers tend to seek love and approval from the only authority figures who appear to value such attributes, the teachers. All you have to do is program the teachers according to your system and they will make sure that the students are similarly programmed.
-Media! --Children who have survived the school system are shell-shocked by that war zone social structure. Their brains have developed strong wiring as they grew up, programed to have low self-esteem, to fear above all things, ridicule. So all you have to do is create a popular media which tells the population what is being laughed at this week, and you can rest assured that even the most progressive thinkers will shudder and cringe as their deep-programming kicks in.
-Meaningless debate! --It is important to maintain and nourish two opposing camps of thought on any number of emotionally evocative subjects. The population will self-divide and spend all their free energy fighting and arguing and hating one-another, while you rest safely up in your ivory tower and collect taxes.
-False Money and False Economic Theory. My typing muscles are getting tired, so I won't bother going into this. Any smart person, (who hasn't been laughed at recently), is capable of working out how money and debt keeps everybody in check.
-War. Again, no real need to explain this one.
There are, of course, many other techniques available, but these three are the work-h
It took long enough for me to find this response!
I'm sorry, I've been alive for twenty years shorter than the parent poster and I do not remember a time when science was ever "popular". Popularized, maybe, with the moon shots and all, but NEVER popular. If science was ever popular how would it ever lose popularity? Think about that for a moment. Science is a constantly changing beast, with something new emerging from an enormous variety of fields ... hourly! How could you ever get bored with science should it ever become popular?
I call shenanigans on the whole notion of science having been "popular" ... well, ever! Not even in Newton's time, and certainly not Galileo's when it wasn't even called science. Hell, it wasn't even called science until the last, what? 150 years of its existence. It was a branch of philosophy (natural philosophy) before that!
Science has never and probably will never be popular. Sorry to burst anyone's bubble, but use some scientific method and tell me when science was ever popular. I have no evidence to support the assertion and know of none to even test.
So if something is random, there is never any design behind it? It's always the case that when randomness is observed that it's unguided?
No. "Randomness does not imply a designer" is not the same as "Randomness implies no designer".
The enemies of Democracy are
I worked in Dr. Tim Townsend's lab during grad school. He was an all-American linebacker at the University of Tennessee as an undergrad and a rising star in transgenic animal research as a PhD. We used to play pickup basketball with Dr. Robert Guyette, a famous surgeon, who was the center for the 1975 UK NCAA finals basketball team. One of my grad school classmates in our pickup group was the division II player of the year, another started for Western Michigan. So yeah, all jocks are dumb. BTW, I was the late-blooming nerd who didn't have any athletic ability but got a fellowship for my academics. That didn't stop me from competing with all of these world-class athletes - and being world class athletes didn't stop them from being world class scientists. They also happened to be terrifically nice people. The whole world isn't high school - it just seems like it while you are there.
Horseshit. You've been drinking Feyerabend's Kool aid too much.
Galileo's observation of the phases of Venus alone was enough to disprove the Ptolemic system , or at the very least, cause it to be modified into something like the Tychonic system. Once Jupiter's moons had been observed, another pillar of the Ptolemic and indeed human thought had been broken. There are celestial bodies that can orbit other celestial bodies. Boom. Blown, out of the water. The rest was just maths. The main work had already been done.
There were fuck all serious objections to be overcome. The Ptolemic system hadn't a leg to stand on. This wasn't even the first time a Heliocentric model had been proposed. The only thing holding it up was tradition and deference to the church (who employed too many astronomers). Keeping the whole rotten structure aloft required torturous, torturous intellectual atrocities like the Tychonic model. You didn't have to be an astronomer to see what was going on, even in those days.
The Copernican system was published in 1543. In 1609 Kepler dropped the intellectual equivalent of the atomic bomb in the form of his first two laws of planetary motion in the Astronomia Nova. That's 66 years, not 200. Unless you want to include the publishing for the third law in 1619. That gives you 76 years. The Ptolmeic system toppled before Galileo was even....
Holy Presentation Order Batman!! Turns out Galileo was tried and found guilty of heresy in 1633, a full 24 years after Kepler published his laws of motion for planets. What a kick in the balls. Not only did his theory have observational evidence, but it even had scientific data backing it up. Pity those churchmen were so keen on reason and justice in their verdicts, eh? Oh well, at least they didn't, you know, burn him at the stake or anything. No, they were far too enlightened for anything like that.
Yeah, maybe Galileo was a bit of a jerk. Kind of like how I'm being a bit of a jerk right now. But that doesn't change the fact that he was scientifically and ethically justified both his heliocentric theories and methods, and that the church was a dogmatic, intolerant and tyrannical censor, prepared to use any means to stifle progress it saw as unfit. And it also doesn't change the fact that both Feyerabend and yourself are gross historical revisionists with an axe to grind against the honest and correct assessment of what happened to Galileo and its meaning for the interface of science, religion and politics.
Stellar parallax....? Some people spend too much time on Wikipedia.
May the Maths Be with you!
Sure. But that's not the point. A random process is observed. Is it correct to therefore conclude that the process is unguided/blind?
It is the point in so much as contradictory statements by scientists was your point, since they were not contradictory.
But to answer your question, no it is not logically proper to conclude that the process is unguided. Scientifically speaking, though, if you were trying to create a model for that process, then in the absence of any evidence suggesting a designer, and without any need for a designer to explain the evidence you do have, it would be correct not to include one. In every case of a random process with a known designer, there is ample evidence of said designer. There is no scientific evidence of a designer behind 'natural' random processes. In fact, in the case of the most common and popular hypothetical designers, said hypothesis is untestable and thus improper to ever include in a scientific theory.
I think you may be confusing "a 'designer' is not necessary, ergo I choose not to believe in one" with "a 'designer' is not necessary, ergo we have proven that one does not exist."
You can't prove God doesn't exist. However you can disprove the argument by the IDers that He must exist.
The enemies of Democracy are
Why do so many /. posters use every topic as an excuse to bash socialism? Look, if we just redistribute all wealth, then yes, we do lose the incentive to work. But that's a straw man. Socialism (these days) is more about making sure you don't have to base your job on how bad your health is, which means you can actually become MORE productive since you can take that research job instead of working at comcast because you need the health insurance.
"People worship "American Idol" over Stephen Hawking, because they are SOLD and MANIPULATED these values"
I'd love to see a reality show about contestants developing their own Theory of Everything.
Geometrodynamics, I choose YOU!
(Actually I've still got a soft spot for Einstein's classical UFT.)
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Maybe it was natural selection and a good thing. I survived multiple chemistry sets and so did my parent's homes. Of course, I got my free sample of thermite igniter with the model rocketry catalog and stuck it to a power cord. Got an amateur radio license and built a bunch of stuff from kits and scratch and, perhaps as importantly there, I learned that a license that took some study could be revoked for irresponsibility -- much like my life could be if I stuck my hand in the tank circuit irresponsibly. All good stuff.
"Popularized, maybe, with the moon shots and all, but NEVER popular."
I was born in 1959, and your statement is dead-on.
Ever ready to reap the benefits of science, American culture is still bitterly backward and only changes slowly despite what popular media would have us believe. The capable few change themselves, while the mob just drone along as usual. America despises smart people, exalting the retarded (note all the programs for window-lickers) and largely abandoning their gifted superiors. The US school system was a Hellmouth long before Jon Katz wrote about it.
We need a self-aware, pro-science counterculture than can enable those who are deserving and eager, and rescue/separate them from their toxic inferiors.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
As WrongMonkey said, it sounds like you went to a pretty "Movie Stereotype" High School. My experience was different. One of my best friends was easily the best all around athlete as well as the smartest person at my high school. Basketball was his real interest and he spend a lot of time honing his abilities. Unfortunately for him, he stopped growing at about 6'3" so any serious future basketball playing got tossed out of the Window. Years later, he still plays ball in the Faculty league at Notre Dame where he is a professor. I would put myself in the top five or so in my class in intelligence and was also a pretty darn good athlete in high school. I didn't have anyone that could compete with me in short distance running (50 yards to 1/4 mile), had a 40 inch vertical, and was deceptively strong. Unfortunately I topped out at 5'10" cutting my organized sports career shorter than I would Have liked. ;(
Football was the sport I was referring to when I was talking about strategy but don't kid yourself if you don't think intelligence doesn't play a part in other sports. The friend I talked about above, myself, and two other intelligent, height challenged individuals played in a lot of 3 on 3/4 on 4 tournaments up until our mid 20's. We beat teams that all appearances suggested that we didn't even belong on the court with because we played smart and played as a team. It is amazing what some really quick thinking can do to make up for inferior physical skills.
When off the court/field/gym my friends and I mostly did nerdy stuff (And still do to this day when we get together). Talk about computers/science/philosophy, have LAN parties, play strategy board games, play AD&D, that sort of thing. I guess I get angry when I see people who like sports get lumped into this category of being idiots because of how much sports enriched (and continue to enrich) my life. Maybe it was never your thing, perhaps due to complete lack of interest or early exposure, perhaps due to being born with a frame that didn't lend itself to organized sports but try to open your mind and see how it could be enjoyable for others. Who knows, you might find yourself enjoying them. ;)
Anti-science indeed. Bitching that God made the earth is not nearly as damaging to society as the liberal penchant to remove freedom from people to actually do science.
You know why science isn't popular? Who can actually do it? It's because liberals and all their sissy crap made it off limits and useless to kids. Between the lawyers, consumer advocates, and all the other crap, liberals have successfully gotten rid of teaching electronics, teaching chemistry, having model rockets, building model aircraft, are trying to get rid of cars and would probably get rid of boats if they could, and people are expected to learn about science? Seriously. Show me the state park where you are allowed to launch a model rocket. Show me where you can fly a model airplane. God help you if you put a remote control boat in a pond. That would be some nature area for ducks and some endangered spore. Meanwhile, spores and mold have their own land but human kids have to sit in their rooms with nothing to do but play Wii and pump each other in the ass.
Liberalism and science are fundamentally at odds, even more so than creationism and science. Liberalism says that the earth should not be altered by man to save the spores. But you can't learn about something unless you play with it...
This is my sig.
It may have been. Curiously, the 1920s had a lot in common with the 1997-2007 era, with technology being popular and nerds were common. From Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920's
That book was required reading in a general studies history class I took in the late seventies, I still have the paper copy. Apparently my college wasn't the only one using that text, as the whole book's hosted at the University of Virginia's web site. It's a well written eye opener.
Free Martian Whores!