Comments on: Mooney and Kirshenbaum’s “Unscientific America”

By: ideonexus

ideonexus — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 01:03:43 +0000

Well said Stevo. Thanks for commenting.

By: Stevo

Stevo — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:10:19 +0000

It seems the giants of science are being lost over time. The science race was a huge undertaking during WWII and the Cold War eras. The U.S. recruited and actively funded scientific programs. The Manhattan Project and other programs received huge amounts of funding. We seem to want to know so much but at the same time place restrictions on study and knowledge. Currently, basic chemistry books are being banded because they could be a threat to homeland security. We dumb things down so much in schools our children cant get the tools they need to think outside the box. Dreamers and thinkers are penalized. We reward the robots that can copy repeat and say exactly what teachers and administrators have programed. We do not reward innovation and critical thinking. An environment of such is not even promoted. When the atomic energy race was on we placed bright minds in think tank camps until they came up with bright ideas. I work in science with very bright minds. We scramble and cobble together old equipment. Although we are bright and innovative it would be nice to ask for something as simple as working and reliable equipment so the scientific research could be conducted unabated. Going back to the basics of hard work, think tanks, and lab bench tinkering we might progress as a nation. The standard is.. import cheap desperate scientists from other countries then fund the short term high payoff targets. Then exploit technology for profit. If there is no profit then what is the reason for the science. Even it it might save more lives or increase the standard of living. The intelligent design folks should be the intelligent rewind folks. Money spent on intelligent rewind could be used for programs that employ the traditional scientific method in a scientific community with peer reviewed mainstream research oversight.

By: ideonexus

ideonexus — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 01:38:33 +0000

GAH!!! That commentary is scary. I love the metric system, and firmly believe that not using it promotes scientific illiteracy in America. Thanks for sharing that.

I loved Sundiver too, Startide is my favorite of the trilogy, it was filled with hard SF concepts too.

By: John

John — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:09:49 +0000

wow almost too much to comment on here, right?

as a scientist, sometimes science fiction writer and always science fiction reader… yeah just too much to talk about.

i find myself being critical of ‘bad science’ in movies, but i will also stand up for it when it is not such a key element as to distract from the core of the story, it takes a lot of variables to weigh it all that there is no pleasing anyone.

rigidly scientific stories become less of a story, but to many can still be enjoyable, I found Sundiver by David Brin to be absolutely fantastic and while being in the realm of sci fi, it was very hard sci fi and had a lot of extremely accurate scientific elements about solar physics.

at the same time, i’m all for absurd space opera too, oh well. i’ll maybe post later, it’s a lot to go through :)

On a maybe related subject, about Al Franken, there is a fantastic commentary here: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/01/feehery.franken/index.html

The author, Feehery, a republican, is talking about the ‘filibuster proof’ democratic senate.

One of his points AGAINST it:
”
The metric system is the kind of thing that you can expect from the 60-vote filibuster-proof majority Democrats now have in the United States Senate.
”

Holy shit? To quote a fantastic song about the metric system:

‘we can use units of 10, and convert with ease like all the other countries. we are in command, we are taking a stand! from this disease we must be free!’

I find it more comedic than al franken EVER was that this guy thinks that the metric system is a threat to our ideals!