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President Obama To Appear On Mythbusters

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the busting-the-citizenship-myth-at-last dept.

Muondecay writes "President Obama will be featured in the December 8th MythBusters episode, 'Archimedes Solar Ray,' during which he will challenge Adam and Jamie to revisit an ancient and somewhat controversial myth: Did Greek scientist and polymath Archimedes set fire to an invading Roman fleet using only mirrors and the reflected rays of the sun during the Siege of Syracuse? This is part of a White House effort to highlight the importance of science education."

30 of 795 comments (clear)

  1. Archimedes, again? Really? by Manip · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They're doing Archimedes solar ray AGAIN? Aren't we up to three already (the original myth and two revisits)? Obviously I think it is fun that Obama will be on the show but frankly aside from that I really don't want to see that same tired Myth for a third time...

    1. Re:Archimedes, again? Really? by BobMcD · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Tea isn't mentioned anywhere, either. OMG, the Tea Party is unconstitutional!

      And if the Tea Party were a function of the government, you'd be absolutely right to point that out.

    2. Re:Archimedes, again? Really? by BobMcD · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I would love it if the Tea Party kept themselves out of government.

      I have no doubt you, and many others, would. This is tragic, though. You could, as an alternative, take an interest in what their issues are and see if there is any progress to be made. Instead you ridicule, because that's easy. Partisanship makes people do some really stupid things, doesn't it?

      More seriously, the Constitution specifies an Army and a Navy. By the same logic used above, does that make the Air Force unconstitutional?

      I don't know, maybe. If so, is there any particular way in which things would be worse if the Air Force was merely part of the Army? Probably not.

      See how easy constitutionality can be?

      Now you try!

  2. Really? by orphiuchus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't really have a problem with the president appearing on random TV shows a few times during their term, but I would really like Obama to spend less time being cool and more time fixing shit.

    1. Re:Really? by CannonballHead · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How to be a good supporter of your candidate:

      When a president you like is in office and doesn't do "enough," you claim that the President doesn't really have a lot of power and is more of a figurehead, like royalty.

      When a president you dislike is in office and doesn't do "enough," you claim that the President should be doing more.

      When a president you like is out of office, you blame everything that went wrong in his term on Congress.

      When a president you dislike is out of office, you blame everything that went wrong in his term on him.

      When a president you like is in office and something bad is happening (e.g., the economy), you blame it on the previous administration, because economic problems take a while to develop.

      When a president you dislike is in office and something bad is happening (e.g., the economy), you blame it on the current President or the previous Congress.

    2. Re:Really? by vlm · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's not like there's a lot he can actually DO.

      As commander in chief of the armed forces, he can force a couple million personnel to do certain things. They dance to his drum (just as I had to follow Army orders in the early 90s)

      He could theoretically order that the concentration camp in Guantanamo bay be closed, or order all the troops out of the mideast, or order Iran's nuke facilities to be destroyed, or order troops posted on the Mexico border, or ...

      Claiming the commander of the worlds largest, most expensive, and most powerful military is powerless is a wee bit ingenuous.

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    3. Re:Really? by Quiet_Desperation · · Score: 4, Insightful

      and more time fixing shit.

      This. Right here. This is the problem. Everyone sitting around waiting for Uncle Sam/Samantha to "fix" things.

      Yeah, good luck with that.

    4. Re:Really? by Grishnakh · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah, I've heard people make that claim too. It's pretty ridiculous.

      The President and the Democrats in Congress are not Marxists, though sometimes they bring up some Marxist ideas to appease their voting base, but then they never actually do any of them.

      Instead, the President of Congressional Democrats are *corporatists*. We can see that in their actions, such as the healthcare "reform" which was nothing but a massive give-away to Big Insurance companies, as well as the giant, no-strings-attached bail-outs for mismanaged corporations.

      How does this make them different from the Republicans? It doesn't. They're all the same. The only thing different between them is what kind of extremist stuff they say to get the dumb voters riled up. For the Democrats, it's Socialist/liberal stuff like "a chicken in every pot", "wealth redistribution", etc., while for Republicans it's "homosexuals should all be put in concentration camps and exterminated." Then, when they get elected, they pay no attention to what they told the voters before, and just continue giving hand-outs to their buddies at giant corporations.

    5. Re:Really? by magus_melchior · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Wrong. The issue of prisoner abuse ("torture" to most folks, "enhanced interrogation" to certain folks) will surely compel a judge to set the detainee free. The reason Obama/Holder don't want to touch them with a 20-mile pole is because then they'd have a bunch of people they can't legally detain but no country in their right minds want to accept, and meanwhile the Republican ninnies in Congress will scare all the white folk about the terrorists on the loose and how Obama is their leader. Believe me, you do NOT want to be in the President's shoes.

      Mind you, I'm in agreement that suspected terrorists must be tried in a court of law-- it's what we've been doing to suspected terrorists up until the neocons in the Bush White House figured that it would be just fine and dandy to haul off brown-skinned Semites to secret prisons regardless of whether they committed acts of terror, and do things to them that were done to US soldiers in WW2 and Vietnam by militarist scumbags who couldn't give a rat's ass about the Geneva Conventions.

      --
      "We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
    6. Re:Really? by Eskarel · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Not exactly accurate, though obviously some people do do this.

      The nature of the current political system in the US is that, for the most part, the president provides a strategic direction for the country and congress either follows that strategic direction or doesn't. When a president provides a strategic direction which and congress goes along with it, it is fair to give credit or blame the president. When the president provides a strategic direction and congress does not follow it or mutates it into a monstrosity) then it is fair that congress gets the blame or credit.

      Specifically, Bush wanted to get us into two pointless wars which diminished US national security, cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars, enact legislation which would destroy civil liberties, and open a torture camp in Cuba, all of which congress let him do.

      Obama on the other hand has been dealing with a bunch of congress critters who have been only out for their own skin and generally shooting down or warping everything he's tried to do. This has been so excessive that incumbents on both sides are in serious jeopardy this November.

  3. Re:They've already busted that twice now by Pojut · · Score: 5, Insightful

    My favorite part was how people were (rightly) criticizing him for being such a media whore, when the conservative savior of 2008 Sarah Palin has a freakin' TV show .

    --
    Living With a Nerd
  4. Re:They've already busted that twice now by master0ne · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think this is more of a "media event" to promote sciences and education more than trying to prove anything. When the goverment wants to prove something, they dont turn to Adam and Jamie, they hire scietists with billion dollar budgets and secret labs. This is more just the president trying to get more kids involved in science/history etc.... i doubt he even thinks their orignal conclusion was wrong, just wanted a intresting "Myth" for the duo to revisit that might turn a few heads. Take this for what it is.... a attempt to revive education in the american youth.

    --
    Noone writes jokes in base 13!
  5. Re:They've already busted that twice now by h4rr4r · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And she is unable to mention one magazine she reads. How they could be proud of such a moron I will never understand.

  6. Wanted: by CaptSlaq · · Score: 3, Insightful

    -1 (flamebait) rating for articles.

  7. Truth, myth and how they blend into one. by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Say this battle happened. How do we know for certain? Because X number of people wrote about it or wrote about people having told them about it or having being told about people who heard it from others. If X is large enough, we accept it as fact. If not, well then it becomes myth or religion.

    Now, imagine a battle. Ships are going to attack an harbor. Ships ain't easily destroyed by the weapons of the age and worse, if you can hit them, they can hit you. They might be unable to hide, but neither can you, you are on the walls of the defences and the enemy knows this.

    So, how can you protect your archers from their archers? Blinding light? Pose them beside mirrors and the enemy can't see them. Simple trick if you think about it. With this blinding light, you can fire countless arrows, even heavy slow ones like fire-arrows and aim at ease.

    How would such a tactic, written down by someone who didn't understand and heard it from someone else be recorded?

    The mighty ships sailed at the harbour and a blinding light erupted from the walls and one by one the mighty ships were set on fire and sunk.

    Death ray is born. Nothing more then smoke and mirrors.

    THAT is what disappoints me about the Myth Busters. They far to often examine only part of a myth or add their own elements, the worsed of it being "well we two couldn't do it, so no-one could". Well, I doubt the myth busters could put a man on the moon. So the moon landings are a myth?

    Take the pycrete "myth". Why the paper substitution? THAT is not what the myth is about. And I still don't know how such a ship could have set sail. After all I presumed WW2 admirals were smart enough to ask "won't it melt". So why wouldn't it have melted?

    Or the Jaws myth. "We are going to examine wether a very large movie monster can ram a ship, but we are going to use a smaller shark because sharks ain't that large in real life..." No shit sherlock. And sharks also don't ram ships in real life.

    What next, I am going to test if my cat likes tuna by feeding it dog shit. If it doesn't like that that proofs it doesn't like tuna?

    As for the movie myths. Can a pen explode, kill a room of baddies but leave the hero intact... NO. If you think James Bond has myths, you REALLY need to get out more.

    The program was okay but has rapidly gone in the general direction of Discovery. Here is a hint. Gay fat guys building bling-bling bikes is NOT science. Mind you, they can go lower. Cakes? Tatoo shops? Why not just relabel it Oprahs Channel and be done with it.

    So cool, they are once again going to proof a couple of overweight Americans can't build something that is highly unlike to have ever existed and if it did, not have been able to destroy and entire fleet before the soldiers landed (or swam ashore) and destroyed it. That is supposed to encourage Americans back to science? Fat chance.

    We know what Americans think about science. We can see it in the nose-dive the science content on Myth-busters has taken. Unless it goes boom, not intrested. Note the increasing lack of myths that do not go boom.

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

    1. Re:Truth, myth and how they blend into one. by demonbug · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So, how can you protect your archers from their archers? Blinding light? Pose them beside mirrors and the enemy can't see them. Simple trick if you think about it. With this blinding light, you can fire countless arrows, even heavy slow ones like fire-arrows and aim at ease.

      How would such a tactic, written down by someone who didn't understand and heard it from someone else be recorded?

      The mighty ships sailed at the harbour and a blinding light erupted from the walls and one by one the mighty ships were set on fire and sunk.

      Death ray is born. Nothing more then smoke and mirrors.

      THAT is what disappoints me about the Myth Busters. They far to often examine only part of a myth or add their own elements, the worsed of it being "well we two couldn't do it, so no-one could". Well, I doubt the myth busters could put a man on the moon. So the moon landings are a myth?

      I agree that Mythbusters often doesn't exhaustively test myths, but that generally isn't realistic. You have to set some boundaries and often make some assumptions in order to come up with a testable hypothesis.

      Take your hypothetical interpretation of the Death Ray myth - if you are going to start coming up with hypothetical ways that the myth may have come into being, then there is simply no way to test them all. Maybe it was a sunny day, and light was reflecting off the shields of the city's defenders. In a completely unrelated event, someone in one of the ships dropped an oil lamp and started a fire. If the ships were closely grouped, and it was a windy day, numerous ships could be consumed in such a fire; some dude watching interpreted the fire as the result of the reflected light, and recorded it as such. Is it possible? Absolutely. But that isn't what the myth says. And there are innumerable other potential explanations, none of which really have any bearing on what they are doing.

      They are testing the myth, not (usually) what potential events may have caused the event that gave birth to the myth. In this case, the myth is that Archimedes developed a weapon using focused light to start fires on attacking ships. That is all they were testing - not trying to figure out what might have happened, but trying to determine whether the myth, as recorded, is plausible. In order to do that, they have to make some assumptions to narrow the test - try to stick to materials that would have been available at the time, etc.

      Now, I often take issue with their test methods and interpretations, but on the whole I think they do a reasonable job of taking a myth, defining what aspect of the myth it is that they are testing, and then devising different tests and quantifying the results. It is a fair balance of entertainment and genuine testing to find out neat stuff; while I (and probably most Slashdot readers) would like them to be a little more rigorous and at least acknowledge shortcomings in their tests, it would be very easy to get bogged down in details ("rigor" in the oblig. xkcd) and then instead of Mythbusters you would have the Televised Transactions of the American Society of Materials Engineering, Physics, and History, and all of five people would still be interested in watching.

  8. Re:They sucked at busting it by Joce640k · · Score: 3, Insightful

    About half the episodes of Mythbusters have either some sort of epic science fail in the experiment or are so obviously busted that they might as well not bother testing them (but they do anyway).

    We still watch them though.

    Obligatory XKCD: http://www.xkcd.com/397/

    --
    No sig today...
  9. Re:They've already busted that twice now by Pojut · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So let me get this straight. It's ok for her to do the TV show thing...because she abandoned her responsibility to the people that voted for her???

    I generally agree with much of what you post, Wyatt...but damn. Damn.

    --
    Living With a Nerd
  10. Re:They've already busted that twice now by Pojut · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The way I see it, I think more presidents should dress informally while in the Oval Office.

    I know I work much better if I'm comfortable. Wearing a penguin isn't my idea of comfort.

    --
    Living With a Nerd
  11. Re:Science? by Carik · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Their science isn't always perfect, no. But their overall methodology is pretty decent.

    Step 1) Define the question.
    Step 2) Make a guess as to what will happen.
    Step 3) Design a test to confirm or deny your guess.
    Step 4) Try the test and see what happens.
    Step 5) If the producers have given you enough money, and your first test didn't work, repeat until you get an actual result.

    Sure, it's not perfect, but they do push the idea of forming a hypothesis and testing it, rather than just assuming that common wisdom is true. Which is, when you get right down to it, the essence of science.

    (That said, they have been slipping the last few seasons... they've fallen a little to much into "We have lots of money, we can just add dynamite!" territory, and a little too little into "Hey, let's show the math to explain this weird thing we just found.")

  12. Re:Incidentally by schon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why is math education important in public schools?

    The vast majority of students will not be mathematicians or accountants, and will not have any opportunity to reinforce the information they learn, and hence will forget it all by the time they are 20.

    --OR--

    Why is english education important in public schools?

    The vast majority of students will not be writers, and will not have any opportunity to reinforce the information they learn, and hence will forget it all by the time they are 20.

    --OR--

    Why is history education important in public schools?

    The vast majority of students will not be historians, and will not have any opportunity to reinforce the information they learn, and hence will forget it all by the time they are 20.

    --OR--

    Why is physical education important in public schools?

    The vast majority of students will not be althletes, and will not have any opportunity to reinforce the information they learn, and hence will forget it all by the time they are 20.

    You can apply this argument to pretty much every school subject - so your question is really "why do we send children to school"?

  13. Re:They've already busted that twice now by toadlife · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Obama did no actual work for any of that...he doesn't apepar to have learned anything beyond gaming the system

    And you would know this because? Are you a lawyer? Did you graduate from Columbia or Harvard? Were you editor of the Harvard law review?

    --
    I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
  14. Re:Mythbusters does science? by Galaga88 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Really? Because I'm pretty sure they follow a fair approximation of the scientific method.

    1. Define the question (Can you destroy ships using an Archimedes style death-ray?)
    2. Gather information and resources (They look up how he theoretically did it.)
    3. Form hypothesis (Reflective shields using ancient construction materials are (in)sufficient to focus light to function as a death ray.)
    4. Perform experiment and collect data (They build a giant death ray and try to burn up a ship.)
    5. Analyze data (Did the ship burn? Which parts burned? Which parts didn't? Did the mirrors act as expected?)
    6. Interpret data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for a new hypothesis (The heat simply built up too slowly to set the ship on fire effectively. Smaller scale reproductions showed that further tests could be warranted.)
    7. Publish results (Tune into Discovery HD next week at xxx o'clock.)
    8. Retest (Their second and third goes at the myth.)

    Looks like a textbook example of the scientific method to me.

  15. Re:They've already busted that twice now by drakaan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't know if it's possible to burn nearly 10 years of positive karma in one post, but this appears to be the thread to attempt it on, so here goes...

    I have never before seen such a complete orgasmic crap-fest of bashing a single person in one place as I have with Palin in this comment thread.

    I get that people believe she is stupid (arguable). I get that people loathe her because she's conservative (fine). I get that people believe that not being fully-credentialed with a degree means that you have no intelligence (patently untrue).

    What I don't get is how this circle-jerk of "dude, I hate her TOO!" is not as evidently moronic to the people participating in it as it should be.

    Don't like stupid people? Cool...fine. Think Palin's stupid? Okie-dokie. Feel the need to be the 12,000th slashdotter to note her perceived ignorance in the same frigging thread? You fail it.

    Let me be clear, I don't expect people to rally around me, here, but I caught myself saying "seriously?" so many times while looking for actual discussion of the president appearing on Mythbusters that I had to share my irritation.

    As a side-note, "Flamebait" is the appropriate down-mod for a statement that you feel will draw a largely negative response because of its content. "Troll" is for when someone says something unkind or untrue in order to drum up a disagreement.

    --
    "Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
  16. Re:Troll?! by hedwards · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Really? At least under Obama things are moving in the right direction. The economy is picking up, albeit slowly, we're retreating from wars that shouldn't have been started in the first place, civil rights are for the most part being restored and there's been actual focus on real world problems.

    Sure he's not perfect, but at least he's trying to get it right. He'd be doing a lot better at this point if the Republicans were actually trying to contribute rather than find ridiculous excuses to shoot down every possible piece of legislation.

  17. Re:They've already busted that twice now by Bananenrepublik · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've never understood the Palin hatedom. She seems fairly representative of the mainstream of the American right - do people really hate their neighbors so much?

    Two points:

    • most people don't like to be reminded how stupid their peers really are
    • most people have neighbors that understand that they are not suited for the office of POTUS
  18. Re:Troll?! by Low+Ranked+Craig · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Spoken like someone who gets their news from CNN and Comedy Central. The real issues haven't changed under Obama. Gitmo? check, wiretaps? check, coming out against a lawsuit against a Bush AG? check, poor fiscal policies? checkerino.

    It's exceptionally easy to take the party line on this. For example, that Obama inherited Bushes' economy and that the wars started under Bush were the primary economic problems. Unfortunately that's not the whole, or even half the story. Speaking of economics, you should read Times list of the 25 people responsible. It's a very objective view of what happened, and guess what? The Democrats were at fault just as much as the Republicans, of course if you listen to Jon Stewart it was all Bushes fault, and if you listen to Limbaugh it was all Clinton's fault. I can't paste into the comments go just google "Time 25 people financial crisis".

    I also love you sentiment that the republicans should go along and not block things, even when it is becoming apparent that currently the majority of people want to stop a lot of the things that are currently happening. Just go to any major polling site and read the pols... I suppose that if a Democratic congress were blocking a Republican President you'd suggest that they were simply acting on principal?

    I stand by my original statement: they all suck, and that includes Obama

    --
    I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
  19. Why America withers by turkeyfish · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "but this feels like a really weak excuse to have the President on TV"

    Your attitude precisely expresses why America is faltering and why other societies are moving into the lead in so many areas of science and technology. Rather than recognizing the importance of any and all efforts to promote science and technology as interesting to kids and our citizenry in its own right, you would rather see the president fail and his appearance in support of such an effort become a political football.

    What is truly sad is that the average American kid's education in math and science has fallen so far, that it now takes the President going on an entertainment-based "science" program to even get their interest. Its gotten to the point that one no longer knows which is falling faster in America, its standing in math and science education, its standard of living, or life expectancy, all of which are highly correlated.

    I don't know if you have children, but frankly I feel sorry for them if you do. I also feel sorry for the countless other American kids who will grow up in a world where the finest universities will no longer be in the US, where the level of innumeracy and even simple knowledge of basic scientific concepts, such as what constitutes a theory, are beyond the vast majority to comprehend and who foolishly think that their lives won't be affected by the consequences and thus don't bother to promote it, want to pay taxes to support it, nor have the sense to encourage it at every opportunity.

    My own sense is that if the President does go on the show and this leads to just one kid growing up to make an important scientific discovery, it will be a far greater accomplishment than anything republicans have done in the past 20 years combined. However, that is just my own opinion and I'll let other scientists stand up and defend all the great work republicans are doing on behalf of science.

  20. Re:They've already busted that twice now by jbeach · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm not being biased at all. If you look up in the thread, I'm responding to a comment (now marked as troll) that said Obama and Sarah Palin were equally smart. Which, whatever you think of either of their policies or platforms, is absolutely ridiculous.

    I mean, even putting the degrees aside as evidence. Obama can go before an entire roomful of the best politicians in America who are arrayed against them, live, with no prepared questions, and defeat them in debate. Palin can't even handle unscripted softball questions from Katie freakin' Couric. That legendary "What newspapers do you read?" question was a **gift**, and Palin still freaked and blew it.

    Conservatives don't want to think Sarah Palin is dumb. But she is. Sorry.

    --
    The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
  21. I've never understood the Palin hatedom by turkeyfish · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Its because many, for very good reason, see the possibility of her becoming President of the United States as potentially catastrophic for our nation, given her lack of education, insufficient knowledge, or adequate intelligence to be anywhere within a zillion miles of the presidency, not to mention her incredibly divisive politics where she goes around the country to proclaim how happy to be "in the pro-American part of the country" as she did in a recent speech in North Carolina.

    If you can't see that, presumably you are stupid enough to be one of her supporters.