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How Bill Nye Insulted NASCAR Fans About the Sport Being the "Anti-NASA" (examiner.com)
MarkWhittington writes: Bill Nye, the former science guy and current head of the Planetary Society, is very depressed about NASA and NASCAR, according to a story in Business Insider. He believes that the red-state yokels pay too much attention to NASCAR, which employs gas guzzling cars in races, and not enough to NASA, which employs cutting edge and environmentally correct technology, to explore the universe. However, it is a meme that the space agency itself once disagreed with. Indeed, NASA has suggested that the exploration of space is like NASCAR only with rocket ships instead of souped up, high powered cars
Nye.jump(shark);
"People who don't like what I like are stupid." NASCAR is probably the most science/engineering oriented sport out there. Every variable is a factor from length, slope, temperature & curvature of track, weather conditions, in addition to the thousands of variables that go into the car itself. Pit stops including how much fuel & # of tires to change are all very accurately calculated to gain an advantage on their competitors. If anything NASCAR could be used to encourage scientific & engineering education.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Sorry, NASCAR's not a sport.
To paraphrase Mr. Nye, “You do not like what interests me, so you must be an idiot, a moron or a redneck."
This. Nor is plutonium.
Call me when we're putting things in orbit with hemp and sunshine.
Who in their right mind considers burning tons of dodecane (aka RP-1 kerosene) to produce tons of CO2 to be an "environmentally correct technology"?
STOP THINKING WISHFULLY, Mr. Science Guy!!!
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
First, NASA was pandering when it said space travel was like NASCAR. Any relationship is thoroughly stretched... except maybe the emphasis on orbiting. But space stations don't need to worry about camber.
Second, what Bill said was an "All tigers are cats" issue. Yes, you will probably see a higher concentration of NASCAR fans in the anti-NASA group, but by no means is he saying that NASA supporters cannot be NASCAR fans or that all NASCAR fans are unintelligent. He wasn't insulting "(All) NASCAR fans", he was equating people who pay more attention to NASCAR than NASA to a lower intelligence.
Ex.
A: Your cousin is stupid.
B: How dare you insult my family name!?
A: No, not your family name-- YOUR COUSIN.
My late father once told me that NASCAR rednecks were different than the ordinary rednecks of our family. I think it has to do with the gas (petrol vs. beans).
If Bill Nye actually visited pit row in a NASCAR race he'd see that there is a hell of a lot of applied science being employed to eek out a bit more performance and mileage out of these vehicles. It isn't a drag strip - stopping for gas in NASCAR costs time and position and the teams would love to run the whole race without pitting. There are a lot of brains behind NASCAR.
A lot of performance improvement applied to commercial vehicles comes from NASCAR, believe it or not. You need to look past the BMC-drinking fans in the crowd that are there for the crashes and actually see what is happening in the pits.
Bill, just a reminder, you don't get racing fans to embrace science by calling them illiterate, shit-beer-drinking rednecks. You do this by showing where science is applied in things that they already love, and let their interest take off from there. I am a proponent of science too, and you don't help the cause by being an elitist prick in a bowtie.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
NASA research brought us a lot of things in the past. Not so much any more. We get excited now about putting a camera with a transmitter out at absurd distances, to find out things about our solar system that will (possibly) affect our lives 50-100 years from now.
Would it improve if we took some or all of the money spent on NASCAR and funneled it into NASA? Maybe a little... but would the result be more exploration, or simply more expensive exploration? Money's really the only thing that could be repurposed, because there is certainly a limit on how many people can participate in NASA.
They're eating up the author's framing as if it was literally what Nye said. What he actually said was that NASCAR should reward fuel efficiency as well as speed, as it would make a more interesting engineering problem.
Besides, everybody knows that if you're not NASCAR, you're NASCDR.
I read the article expecting to read Bill slamming NASCAR, but in reality he acknowledges the excitement of speed in a race and the level of engineering involved which is why he suggested a fuel limit to spur advancements in fuel consumption (due to the competitive nature of the race and the engineering component that already exists).
It ain't cheatn' less the rule book says it's Cheaten' . (And it's not *really* Cheaten les NASCAR catches ya.)
Look, it's generally incredibly hard to "cheat" in NASCAR on a continuing basis and get away with it. There is a reason NASCAR keeps the acceptable car design VERY simple and why they do all kinds of inspections, before, during and after the race to insure compliance with the rules. They don't always catch somebody when they are breaking the rules, but if you keep it up, eventually they will catch it.
What I find amazing is how inventive teams can be. Like putting in 100' of extra fuel line, hidden in the frame of the car to get a few extra gallons of fuel on board is a classic. Everybody is angling for that extra edge, some way to eek out a little bit of performance or shave off a 1/10th of a second a lap. They come up with some amazing tweaks at times, at least until everybody figures out the same thing or NASCAR changes their rules and inspection procedures to stop it.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
You understand that ethanol is an indirect petroleum derivative right? That whole game was a means whereby one might shore up corn farmers. The only real difference between gas and ethanol is that in the case of the latter you have to first dump the petroleum onto the ground.
As for the rest, you're basically just describing logistics and driver talent. Maybe you can call it engineering, but it isn't what comes to most people mind.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Nye looked upon NASCAR and sneered, “Here I am trying to envision the smart, efficient transportation technology of tomorrow, and there is NASCAR celebrating a very old transportation technology of yesterday. You might call NASCAR the anti-NASA.”
I watched the video
I went to the links on the article.
The owner claims that Bill was sneering and depressed about things, and seems to have called NASCAR fans "red state yokels".
I watched the video twice - didn't have anything there on any of that, it was a rather nice conversation with Bloomberg's people about education mostly.
I asked the author of the story, if he could provide me the cites or any information regarding Nye sneering about NASCAR fans, or calling them red state yokels.
But that isn't it at all - is it Slash Dotters. Nye rubs you the wrong way because he believes in global warming, so in the truthiness bubble, he actaully did sneer at those NASCAR fans who are red State yokels. That's what will get repeated by y'all isn't it?
If you actually do read the article, what he said was an opinion, and knowing NASCAR fans myself, a fairly mild one at that.
One of the things he writes:
“There’s no reason why NASCAR couldn’t be like [NASA]: a race with rules designed to reward the coolest, most advanced vehicle technologies,”
Doesn't sound too bad now does it?
Now a more controversial matter, but hardly insulting - He speaks of making a fuel use limit - I'm not all about that, I'de sooner see them burning ally, (just my opinion) but I'm certainly not insulted.
He also notes:
“I get it. I understand the appeal of a stock car race. It’s just exciting, and I’m all for it,” he writes. “I just want NASCAR to adapt to the new mainstream. I want the circuit to produce vehicles that could compete in races anywhere in the world, and win. I want the racing series to spin off new tech that will do more with less. For me, as an American mechanical engineer, I hope NASCAR decides to look forward rather than backward.”
Amazing how those innocuous comments get turned into Sneers and calling NASCAR fans Red State Yokels.
Anyhow, here is the link to a site that isn't grinding an axe, and prefers actual quotes to made up stuff. http://www.businessinsider.com...
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Wow!
There are already racing series that encourage fuel efficiency. Formula E is all electric, and is growing in popularity. It has HUGE sponsors.
http://www.fiaformulae.com/
A mix of fuel efficient and aviation could be some flavor of aircraft racing. Aircraft can actually be fuel efficient. Quickie aircraft will get about 80MPG while going over 150MHP.
http://www.aviastar.org/air/us...
Two seaters can get 45 MPG (or go 180mph):
http://www.planeandpilotmag.co...
This guy tweaked his airplane to get 100mpg
http://blog.aopa.org/blog/?p=7...
There are *LOTS* of aircraft that will get these fuel efficiencies.
If you count seat miles per gallon, most modern jet liners will get about 100mpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Hell, after 5 laps you've seen it all...
around and around and around and around and around and around and around.
You'd be better off just waiting a few hours for the crash reel to find its way to the internet, since I'm guessing that's what most people watch it for... which begs me to wonder why we don't have a professional league demolition derby.
NASA sends you on one way trips somewhere else.
NASCAR sends you around and around and you never get anywhere.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
....is driving around in circles and wasting fuel a "sport"? NASCAR is as senseless as American Football.