Comments on: Lizzette Reynolds: another reason why Texas is doomed

By: Supernova

Supernova — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 23:37:31 +0000

I’ll second PK’s call for more entries in the RSS feed, or maybe a longish index of recent posts in the sidebar. It is sometimes hard to keep up!

By: Lyle Gaulding

Lyle Gaulding — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 06:01:14 +0000

I think things have changed , but formerly writers of ’science’ fiction on television and movies confused ’solar system’ with ‘galaxy.’ I remember that ‘Lost in Space’ did it, and almost every alien was from a ‘far off galaxy.’

By: Nigel Depledge

Nigel Depledge — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 21:21:39 +0000

Jim - you beat me to it. Hear, hear.

By: Jim

Jim — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 14:11:30 +0000

Barton,
Can you name any scientific or technical discovery any of those people made by faith? Did Galileo discover the moons of Jupiter by faith? Did Maxwell formulate electromagnetic waves by faith? Is food pasturization ‘faith based’?
The plain truth is faith sucks raw eggs when it comes to discovering attributes of the physical world. Science is done by observation, experiment, and honest evaluation of the data. Faith has nothing to do with it.

Jim

By: BaldApe

BaldApe — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 14:07:03 +0000

Another excellent argument for national science and math standards, by grade level, from elementary school. Texas would still have influence, but would not be in a position to dictate.

“How, how is it possible to even finish grade school without knowing what is a galaxy?!?!?”

My dad retires from NASA. He told me about a conversation he had with a co-worker in which he mentioned other galaxies. His co-worker said “There are no other galaxies. The Milky Way is all there is.”

But wasn’t it controversial until a few decades ago just what distant galaxies visible from Earth were? ISTM that the establishment that they were really other galaxies, and not clouds of dust or something, was a big deal within the last century.?

By: Barton Paul Levenson

Barton Paul Levenson — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 13:02:54 +0000

Davery posts:

[[Despite all the prostrations, faith-based thinking is a dead end pursuit.]]

Yeah, just look at all those failures who used it — Augustine, Aquinas, William of Ockham, Nicolas of Cusa, Albertus Magnus, Copernicus, Galileo, Louis Pasteur, James Clerk Maxwell, Alfred Russel Wallace, Jane Goodall, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Francisco Ayala, Allan Sandage… what a bunch of losers!

By: PK

PK — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 09:14:44 +0000

davery, while it is true that praying doesn’t work, neither do the people who think so care much about the fact that science does work. They do not seem to appreciate that their SUVs, handguns, and all the other technology they use is a direct result of the scientific method. With deteriorating levels of education (”what’s a galaxy?”), it is not inconceivable that the US will be slipping into a new dark age. Let’s hope your next president does not pander to these Neanderthals.

PS. Off topic: BA could you set your RSS feed to show more blog entries? You blog at a phenomenal rate, and often a discussion gets cut short (at least for me) because the entry does no longer show up in the feed. As a comparison, you show the latest 7 entries, while for example Cosmic Variance shows the latest 20. I think for your blogging speed 20 is about right.