Here's my prescription for fixing K-12: Make it 30% writing, 30% reading, 20% math, 5% science, 5% economics/government, 5% history, and 5% geography. All the new-age "progressive" crap, sex ed, and all the various forms of entertainment disguised as education, should be dropped like bricks. The 5% science is just to give everyone a decent general knowledge of the current state of the sciences. For those actually interested in science, it doesn't matter if they take high school chemistry or physics anyway. They start with the same 100-level courses in college regardless. If the U.S. adopted a plan like that, we would once again become the intellectual superpower of the world, and therefore have a chance at remaining the economic and military superpower of the world. As it is, though, we're an embarrassment to ourselves. Even most of our professional writers seem to no longer know how to write well.
As for toys, yes, leave the toys at home. Offer a small computer lab with an assistant for any kids who don't have one at home. But DON'T add programming classes or other garbage. The nerds will have already taught themselves to program, and the borderline nerds can learn it in college. Instead, USE THE TIME TO TEACH THEM TO WRITE BETTER.
In fact, it runs through the middle of Memorial Stadium in Berkeley, which is built in two halves that have crept about a foot and a half offset since the stadium's construction.
Talk about home field advantage! "Upon further review, the 10-yard-line is now 11 yards from the goal line, and the first down is voided. Bears' ball!"
I suspect that they were lying to you to prevent panic. Mines are a favored place to study earthquakes. Indeed, being in a mine probably gets you closer to the epicenter, as most eathquakes are centered miles below ground.
Yes, being a couple km down gets you probably closer to the epicenter. But since the weight pressure on the rock increases linearly with depth, it is reasonable to think that the movement in earthquakes decreases linearly with depth, until it reaches whatever movement was at the epicenter.
Imagine if you took a large compression spring, held it vertically from the bottom, placing a rock on top. Any sudden movement you make with your hand (the epicenter), will result in an amplified oscillation of the rock (the surface), with linearly smaller movements along the spring. IANA earthquakeologist, but it seems to me like an roughly appropriate model.
And dinosaurs didn't really disappear. They just look different now. Step outside and look at all those feathered things flying around. Those are modern dinosaurs.
By this method of classification, plants ans animals should be called "modern bacteria."
Yes, but it depends on the presumptions concerning where the mutations are happening. This would imply that mutations accumulate during the cell division that precede actual reproduction. This also implies something I've thought about in the past, which is that (at least in mammals) it is the males that are responsible for mutations, as the sperm are the product of a long line of cell divisions of the course of the male's life, and the eggs are formed while the female was a fetus, and then put in suspended animation until they are ready to be used. I'd be really interested in experimental exploration of that. Also, does anyone know if this applies to non-mammals as well as mammals?
What's really sad is turning "jumping to conclusions" into "erring on the safe side". What happens if the actions that you deem "overprotective" are actually detrimental in the long run?
Agreed. Jumping to conclusions is bad science, though it's not usually too harmful in science, because sooner or later experimental results will catch up with your bad conclusion and force it to be rejected. However, we're not talking about SCIENCE, we're talking about legislated limits on technology, and the materials used and researched in technology. And this DOES have a very real and very human impact on the world. Imposing such limits on humanity without a SOLIDLY DEFENSIBLE scientific basis is immoral.
They got radio-controlled motors to make the X-wings open and close during flight. Why? Doesn't it seem a lot more worthwhile, if you're going to go to all that trouble, to make actual control surfaces -- so you could maybe actually roll, or level out into level flight after hitting a certain altitude? It would seem a whole lot cooler to do that, and leave the wings fixed, rather than flap the wings around just so you can see them flapping around.
I, not surprisingly, agree. What tries my patience, however, is when I get into a debate with an atheist, and the point comes where they stop trying to defend their position, and simply send a link to a Richard Dawkins book or video, saying that he explains it better. It doesn't exactly inspire confidence that they had been speaking from their own reason up until that point.
Of course, one of the most egregious forms of dogmatism is censorship. When intelligence fails, intellectual cowards wish to silence competing opinions. While it is not an unusual occurrence, such a coward has apparently been given mod points in this forum.
Science is about Facts. Religion is about Faith. Science, by definition, is based on observation. Faith, by definition (Hebrews 11) is based on the unobservable. Science addresses questions of WHAT? and HOW? of the world and events.
While this is a common perspective, I do not agree with it. I would assert that science and religion are equally about facts, and deriving understanding from those facts. The difference is in the kinds of the facts, and in why those kinds of things are accepted as facts. Scientific facts are the products of sensual empiricism. Science is therefore based on the subjective, yet nearly universal presumption that the repeatable sensual input we receive from the natural world is worthy of being treated as facts. We can then form deductions from these facts, but the nature of the facts determines the nature of the possible deductions. Thus science is limited to the question of what exists in the natural world. Religion, on the other hand, let's say Christianity specifically, is based on the equally subjective, though less common, presumption that the words of the Bible are facts, and that what is perceived internally as interactions with God are facts; and that these facts are worthy of using to deduce understanding of the world. Due to the nature of these facts, the understanding that results from them is generally spiritually related, but it can be interpreted naturally as well. When it is interpreted naturally, it can of course become at odds with the natural conclusions from empirically-based facts. At that point, it becomes a question of whether you esteem the "sensual facts" or "biblical facts" more highly (and how confident you are in your interpretation).
But one is not inherently more about faith, unless it is that the subjective process of finding that the Bible is connected to reality somehow requires more faith than the subjective process of finding that your sensual input is connected to reality. It's a harder leap to make, to be sure, but I don't know that the leap is of an essentially different nature.
they are simply oil and water, science and religion. they don't mix. at all.
I don't believe this. It has happened far too often in history that the greatest scientists have been devout far beyond their peers. (Newton may be the best example.) I believe that religious exploration, that is exploration that transcends time and space, is capable of lending a superior perspective when returning to questions of space and time.
Religion, when it comes to impact on Scientific Advancement, seems to have little to no effect so long as there isn't fundamentalism and intolerance. If you get those two in conjunction with religion, then the answer to "How does this happen" ceases to result in theories and experiments. Instead, the answer becomes "Because it says so in The Holy Texts and anyone who questions them must be killed." The more society falls prey to fundamentalism and intolerance, the weaker science gets. Right now, most Islamic countries are highly fundamental in nature. Science there doesn't stand a chance.
The problem isn't "fundamentalism," but dogmatism. Unfortunately, scientists are no less susceptible to dogmatism than Christians, Muslims, or anyone else. Of course different cultures are infused with different degrees of tendency toward dogmatism, which is the point. Yes the greater dogmatism in the muslim countries originated in their religion. And the lessor dogmatism in the West originated largely in our religion -- in the God that said, "come, let us reason together." But the question of what will become of Western science comes down to how dogmatic Western science is going to become.
Of course, it's not just Islamic fundamentalism that's the problem. Imagine if Christian Fundamentalists got their heart's desire and could pass whatever laws they wanted to in the US. Evolution would be banned in favor of "God did it." The Big Bang would be tossed from classrooms to make room for a story about the 7 Days and Nights of Creation. Questioning the literal "word of God" would result in severe punishments. Science would grind to a halt.
This claim is crap. I defy you to find a single Fundamentalist Christian who claims that that would be his desire -- a single one. Or do you think that Fundamentalist Christians are just shy about giving their opinions?
Remove fundamentalism and intolerance, however, and science can easily co-exist with religion. The religious just need to stop being literal about their religious texts. I'm religious (Jewish) and I see no conflict between the first part of Genesis and the Big Bang. That's because I don't see Genesis as being a literal History Of The World. It's a morality lesson. For example, there are actually two stories as to how man was formed. In one, man was formed in God's own image as the crowning achievement of creation. In another, he's made from mud. A great rabbi I once knew described the moral of this story thusly: Every person should walk with two pouches at their side. One should say "The whole world was made for me." The other should say: "I am nothing but dirt." In this manner, a person can strike a balance between being proud of themselves and humility. Notice nothing in the example above contradicted anything about the Big Bang or Evolution.
As a Christian, I agree with your general approach to the beginning of Genesis. You may not realize this, but the Big Bang theory was created by a Catholic priest. It was a scientific theory that had nothing to do with his religion. But he was still a priest, and the theory sounded so religious, and so highly seemed to imply a creator, that the scientific community completely shunned it, even though it was the theory that best fit the available evidence. Secular science, regardless of evidence, preferred a model whether the universe simply always existed. Many decades later, as technology improved, the definitive proofs started coming in, and the rest was history. The exact same story is repeated with they guy who discovered the biblical-style floods that covered Oregon after the ice age. Yes, science doesn't stand a chance where there is dogmatism; but least of all where there is scientific dogmatism.
The stories are just used to tell a lesson in morality, not to tell the literal events of the past. And before someone mentions it, there are passages whose moral lessons collide with mode
Both islamic and stalinist countries violently suppress free speech, consequently having almost no scientific breakthrough.
I was about to give a counterexample, but you did it for me. The Soviet Union -- a Stalinist society, had several significant scientific breathroughs: independent discovery of the atom bomb, first orbital probe, first pictures of the far side of the moon, etc.
Those are not scientific breakthroughs. Those are technological/engineering breakthroughs. There is a HUGE difference. Scientific breakthroughs require at atmosphere of freedom of thought. While one could in theory create such a bubble of freedom for scientists, I seriously doubt it has ever happened in a meaningful way.
There is a lesson here for the fundamentalists here in the United States. Hopefully we will be wise enough to learn it, but unfortunately it seems that we, as a society, are taking the same long road to stagnation in science that others have in the past.
I think you are totally misguided here. The lesson isn't for "the fundamentalists." It is for the dogmatic. It is dogmatism which destroys free thought, and science and religion with it. The Muslim world is full of it, and it radiates out of their currently dogmatic religion and cannot help but infecting everything else. Sure Christendom has seen more than its share of dogmatism in its history. Christian sects used to fight one another over dogma. However today, non-denominational churches and cross-denominational movements are dominating the spiritual landscape. Dogmatism indeed infects the West, though. It infects our politics, and the infection is rapidly spreading to our science. So there is absolutely a lesson to be learned. Maybe any scientists who feel they need to figure out how to overcome dogmatism should make friends with a fundamentalist Christian.
Thank God we're just talking about a bunch of ignorant dumbfuck ragheads here. I mean, could you imagine how scary this would be if anything you said were applicable in our own country? Ouch! I just got an acid burn from some sarcasm that splashed on my hand.
I hear you brother! I assume you're talking about the mindless drones who refuse to believe anything that they don't hear straight from the mouth of Richard Dawkins, right?
Color me cynical, but what do you suggest when the whole election process has been subverted to the point that only pro-business candidates ever seem to get far enough to be voted upon?
If by "pro-business," you mean people who haven't (openly) advocated lining up business owners against a wall and machine-gunning them, then you're right -- we sure are stuck with a lot of pro-business candidates. OTOH, if by "pro-business" you only include people who haven't threatened to directly confiscate the profits of private industries, and use the money for her own ends, (IOW, people using the same rhetoric as people who went on to machine-gun business owners against a wall) well then you have Hillary Clinton, for one.
Seriously, when was the last time a truly progressive (and I don't mean "liberal", I mean "working for positive change for more than the candidate's own pocketbook") candidate made it through all the primaries and other BS to reach the ballot with any serious chance of gaining office?
Oh, THAT kind of progressive! Well, GW Bush, Ronald Reagan, JF Kennedy, Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington come to mind, for starters.
Armed revolution has been brought up a few times as one possible option, but it really looks to me like the vast majority of the country is either too apathetic or too enamoured of the status quo to go that far. People aren't poor and pinched enough yet to really get motivated.
Hey, I'm game. The REAL descendants of Jeffersonian thought (I'll give you a hint, they don't refer to themselves as "progressives") happen to also subscribe to his views on the virtues of gun ownership.
While that might be a perfectly logical technique in say, interrogations. Using it in a robbery would be pretty stupid. Robbery victims do not exactly show predictable behavior, so the robber works very hard to maintain control. As soon as he feels that he has lost control of the situation, he may very well pull the trigger to get it back.
Both you and the parent poster are clueless as to the actual goals of the Jihadists. They couldn't care less about instilling paranoia and uncertainty in the U.S. or Europe. They couldn't care less if the average Westerner feels some minuscule degree more "terrorized." They couldn't care less if there are longer airport waits, more time-consuming screening, or unquantifiable detrimental effects to the U.S. economy. They often claim that they care about causing as many deaths to Westerners as possible, but that's not what they really care about either.
What they care about is perpetrating large and visually satisfying acts of violence against their perceived enemy. That's why they will not go after things that would REALLY affect us, like going after our water supplies -- there is no visual impact. It's a matter of performance art. It's a matter of creating a spectacle of carnage to prove to your coreligionists that you are a great warrior and powerful taker of life from the infidels.
So, no, causing delays and uncertainty is not a success to them. To them success absolutely requires loss of life, and in generally requires large explosions as well.
"The Earth is a sphere, and its first satellite also must have a spherical shape"
Actually, I'm revising my theory. This is something far more devious. This is MANAGERIAL LOGIC! Instead of him, the Nobel Prize people should have offered the award to the engineers who had to work under him!
ccording to this page, if you chose your 'one true language' by the number of people who spoke it as a first language, English would be second or third on the list. And if you chose it based on the number of people who could speak it (eg first or second language), it still might not win.
So? What's more imporant, being able to understand a bunch of destitute rice farmers, or being able to watch Rocky XXII without overdubbing?
Is it just me, or is the frequency of cheese eating surrender monkey jokes increasing of late?
I don't recall making any mention of cheese. I myself find cheese delicious.
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Here's my prescription for fixing K-12: Make it 30% writing, 30% reading, 20% math, 5% science, 5% economics/government, 5% history, and 5% geography. All the new-age "progressive" crap, sex ed, and all the various forms of entertainment disguised as education, should be dropped like bricks. The 5% science is just to give everyone a decent general knowledge of the current state of the sciences. For those actually interested in science, it doesn't matter if they take high school chemistry or physics anyway. They start with the same 100-level courses in college regardless. If the U.S. adopted a plan like that, we would once again become the intellectual superpower of the world, and therefore have a chance at remaining the economic and military superpower of the world. As it is, though, we're an embarrassment to ourselves. Even most of our professional writers seem to no longer know how to write well.
As for toys, yes, leave the toys at home. Offer a small computer lab with an assistant for any kids who don't have one at home. But DON'T add programming classes or other garbage. The nerds will have already taught themselves to program, and the borderline nerds can learn it in college. Instead, USE THE TIME TO TEACH THEM TO WRITE BETTER.
Talk about home field advantage! "Upon further review, the 10-yard-line is now 11 yards from the goal line, and the first down is voided. Bears' ball!"
Yes, being a couple km down gets you probably closer to the epicenter. But since the weight pressure on the rock increases linearly with depth, it is reasonable to think that the movement in earthquakes decreases linearly with depth, until it reaches whatever movement was at the epicenter.
Imagine if you took a large compression spring, held it vertically from the bottom, placing a rock on top. Any sudden movement you make with your hand (the epicenter), will result in an amplified oscillation of the rock (the surface), with linearly smaller movements along the spring. IANA earthquakeologist, but it seems to me like an roughly appropriate model.
By this method of classification, plants ans animals should be called "modern bacteria."
Yes, but it depends on the presumptions concerning where the mutations are happening. This would imply that mutations accumulate during the cell division that precede actual reproduction. This also implies something I've thought about in the past, which is that (at least in mammals) it is the males that are responsible for mutations, as the sperm are the product of a long line of cell divisions of the course of the male's life, and the eggs are formed while the female was a fetus, and then put in suspended animation until they are ready to be used. I'd be really interested in experimental exploration of that. Also, does anyone know if this applies to non-mammals as well as mammals?
Agreed. Jumping to conclusions is bad science, though it's not usually too harmful in science, because sooner or later experimental results will catch up with your bad conclusion and force it to be rejected. However, we're not talking about SCIENCE, we're talking about legislated limits on technology, and the materials used and researched in technology. And this DOES have a very real and very human impact on the world. Imposing such limits on humanity without a SOLIDLY DEFENSIBLE scientific basis is immoral.
They got radio-controlled motors to make the X-wings open and close during flight. Why? Doesn't it seem a lot more worthwhile, if you're going to go to all that trouble, to make actual control surfaces -- so you could maybe actually roll, or level out into level flight after hitting a certain altitude? It would seem a whole lot cooler to do that, and leave the wings fixed, rather than flap the wings around just so you can see them flapping around.
I, not surprisingly, agree. What tries my patience, however, is when I get into a debate with an atheist, and the point comes where they stop trying to defend their position, and simply send a link to a Richard Dawkins book or video, saying that he explains it better. It doesn't exactly inspire confidence that they had been speaking from their own reason up until that point.
Of course, one of the most egregious forms of dogmatism is censorship. When intelligence fails, intellectual cowards wish to silence competing opinions. While it is not an unusual occurrence, such a coward has apparently been given mod points in this forum.
And... when was this happening? And by whom, exactly?
While this is a common perspective, I do not agree with it. I would assert that science and religion are equally about facts, and deriving understanding from those facts. The difference is in the kinds of the facts, and in why those kinds of things are accepted as facts. Scientific facts are the products of sensual empiricism. Science is therefore based on the subjective, yet nearly universal presumption that the repeatable sensual input we receive from the natural world is worthy of being treated as facts. We can then form deductions from these facts, but the nature of the facts determines the nature of the possible deductions. Thus science is limited to the question of what exists in the natural world. Religion, on the other hand, let's say Christianity specifically, is based on the equally subjective, though less common, presumption that the words of the Bible are facts, and that what is perceived internally as interactions with God are facts; and that these facts are worthy of using to deduce understanding of the world. Due to the nature of these facts, the understanding that results from them is generally spiritually related, but it can be interpreted naturally as well. When it is interpreted naturally, it can of course become at odds with the natural conclusions from empirically-based facts. At that point, it becomes a question of whether you esteem the "sensual facts" or "biblical facts" more highly (and how confident you are in your interpretation).
But one is not inherently more about faith, unless it is that the subjective process of finding that the Bible is connected to reality somehow requires more faith than the subjective process of finding that your sensual input is connected to reality. It's a harder leap to make, to be sure, but I don't know that the leap is of an essentially different nature.
I don't believe this. It has happened far too often in history that the greatest scientists have been devout far beyond their peers. (Newton may be the best example.) I believe that religious exploration, that is exploration that transcends time and space, is capable of lending a superior perspective when returning to questions of space and time.
The problem isn't "fundamentalism," but dogmatism. Unfortunately, scientists are no less susceptible to dogmatism than Christians, Muslims, or anyone else. Of course different cultures are infused with different degrees of tendency toward dogmatism, which is the point. Yes the greater dogmatism in the muslim countries originated in their religion. And the lessor dogmatism in the West originated largely in our religion -- in the God that said, "come, let us reason together." But the question of what will become of Western science comes down to how dogmatic Western science is going to become.
This claim is crap. I defy you to find a single Fundamentalist Christian who claims that that would be his desire -- a single one. Or do you think that Fundamentalist Christians are just shy about giving their opinions?
As a Christian, I agree with your general approach to the beginning of Genesis. You may not realize this, but the Big Bang theory was created by a Catholic priest. It was a scientific theory that had nothing to do with his religion. But he was still a priest, and the theory sounded so religious, and so highly seemed to imply a creator, that the scientific community completely shunned it, even though it was the theory that best fit the available evidence. Secular science, regardless of evidence, preferred a model whether the universe simply always existed. Many decades later, as technology improved, the definitive proofs started coming in, and the rest was history. The exact same story is repeated with they guy who discovered the biblical-style floods that covered Oregon after the ice age. Yes, science doesn't stand a chance where there is dogmatism; but least of all where there is scientific dogmatism.
And... when was this happening, exactly? And by whom, precisely?
Those are not scientific breakthroughs. Those are technological/engineering breakthroughs. There is a HUGE difference. Scientific breakthroughs require at atmosphere of freedom of thought. While one could in theory create such a bubble of freedom for scientists, I seriously doubt it has ever happened in a meaningful way.
I think you are totally misguided here. The lesson isn't for "the fundamentalists." It is for the dogmatic. It is dogmatism which destroys free thought, and science and religion with it. The Muslim world is full of it, and it radiates out of their currently dogmatic religion and cannot help but infecting everything else. Sure Christendom has seen more than its share of dogmatism in its history. Christian sects used to fight one another over dogma. However today, non-denominational churches and cross-denominational movements are dominating the spiritual landscape. Dogmatism indeed infects the West, though. It infects our politics, and the infection is rapidly spreading to our science. So there is absolutely a lesson to be learned. Maybe any scientists who feel they need to figure out how to overcome dogmatism should make friends with a fundamentalist Christian.
I hear you brother! I assume you're talking about the mindless drones who refuse to believe anything that they don't hear straight from the mouth of Richard Dawkins, right?
If by "pro-business," you mean people who haven't (openly) advocated lining up business owners against a wall and machine-gunning them, then you're right -- we sure are stuck with a lot of pro-business candidates. OTOH, if by "pro-business" you only include people who haven't threatened to directly confiscate the profits of private industries, and use the money for her own ends, (IOW, people using the same rhetoric as people who went on to machine-gun business owners against a wall) well then you have Hillary Clinton, for one.
(Since I'm always challenged for a citation when I make this accusation, here's your damn link. Thank God for youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1PfE9K8j0g)
Oh, THAT kind of progressive! Well, GW Bush, Ronald Reagan, JF Kennedy, Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington come to mind, for starters.
Hey, I'm game. The REAL descendants of Jeffersonian thought (I'll give you a hint, they don't refer to themselves as "progressives") happen to also subscribe to his views on the virtues of gun ownership.
While that might be a perfectly logical technique in say, interrogations. Using it in a robbery would be pretty stupid. Robbery victims do not exactly show predictable behavior, so the robber works very hard to maintain control. As soon as he feels that he has lost control of the situation, he may very well pull the trigger to get it back.
Both you and the parent poster are clueless as to the actual goals of the Jihadists. They couldn't care less about instilling paranoia and uncertainty in the U.S. or Europe. They couldn't care less if the average Westerner feels some minuscule degree more "terrorized." They couldn't care less if there are longer airport waits, more time-consuming screening, or unquantifiable detrimental effects to the U.S. economy. They often claim that they care about causing as many deaths to Westerners as possible, but that's not what they really care about either.
What they care about is perpetrating large and visually satisfying acts of violence against their perceived enemy. That's why they will not go after things that would REALLY affect us, like going after our water supplies -- there is no visual impact. It's a matter of performance art. It's a matter of creating a spectacle of carnage to prove to your coreligionists that you are a great warrior and powerful taker of life from the infidels.
So, no, causing delays and uncertainty is not a success to them. To them success absolutely requires loss of life, and in generally requires large explosions as well.
It RIPS OFF the tail? Really? You do realize, of course, that comet tails aren't actually connected to the comets?
"The Earth is a sphere, and its first satellite also must have a spherical shape"
Actually, I'm revising my theory. This is something far more devious. This is MANAGERIAL LOGIC! Instead of him, the Nobel Prize people should have offered the award to the engineers who had to work under him!
Ooookay.
So? What's more imporant, being able to understand a bunch of destitute rice farmers, or being able to watch Rocky XXII without overdubbing?
I don't recall making any mention of cheese. I myself find cheese delicious.
TROLL??? +5 Funny! I demand it!