Scientific American is the bomb.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Azazel

Obviously, logically someone shouldn't hold irreconcilable beliefs, and yet they do.

Given enough time, the cognitive dissonance would be solved one way or the other.

What are you smoking? Can I have some?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
The two are not comparable.

You're right. Communism has a lot more evidence against it.

[Ramo]

It wasn't even interesting engineering though. It was "they didn't work - are we wasting money?" I don't care about policy when I'm reading SciAm, I want SCIENCE.

Who cares what you want? I like to be informed about technical matters as pertaining to my gov't's expenditures, and SciAm is a good place as any for it, since they actually know what they're writing about (unlike most journalists).

I don't see why SciAm shouldn't cover policy when policy dictates science and the spread of science to so great an extent. As in the decisions to let Hubble fall into disrepair, abandoning the Superconducting Supercollider, dropping NSF funding, or teaching Creationism in public schools. Politics dictates technology to an even greater extent.

SciAm also covers the history of science and technology, should that be axed as well?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by DanS
What would science have to fear from a broad airing of the arguments on all sides? Is science that weak that scientists need to worry?

Oh man, this is so old

What "arguments on all sides?" This is about science, not about pseudoscience mumblejumble. Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory, thus, it has no place in a science class.

[RGBVideo]

MISSILE TESTS ARE NOT SCIENCE DUMBASSES.

I'm confused... for stuff like space exploration, missile tests are vital... Isn't space exploration about science?

Why are science magazines so political and defensive nowadays? It's not just Scientific American; I've noticed the same thing with Discover and National Geographic. How many more defenses of evolution am I going to have to slog through to get to something interesting?

NG isn't scientific anymore. It used to be about strictly about geography, but now it's all about history, alternative cultures and the like... BLAH BLAH BLAH NATIVE AMERICANS AND THEIR HERITAGE... BLAH BLAH BLAH EXCITING EVIL NAZI SHIP WHICH WAS 500 YEARS AT THE BOTTOM OF AN OCEAN.

I wanted a magazine about geography when I ordered it, now it has been hijacked by hippies.


Oh, and Kucinich really should either drop that 50-line long signature or start posting his messages in a single post.

[Az]

What are you smoking? Can I have some?

Before you spout, please elaborate.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc

Except he was threatened with torture - I believe it was called being put to question or somesuch, Inquisitional torture is not something I specialize in - if he did not recant. If anyone here does not believe that the results of toture by the Inquisitors at best resulted in massive pain, routinely resulted in crippling injuries, and not uncommonly killed directly or indirectly - delayed infections, unhealed bodily injury, etc. - more than a couple of the recipients, well, go google it or talk will Molly Bloom.

shawn, you're too kind.

'Shortly after publication of Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World - Ptolemaic and Copernican the Inquisition banned its sale and ordered Galileo to appear in Rome before them. Illness prevented him from travelling to Rome until 1633. Galileo's accusation at the trial which followed was that he had breached the conditions laid down by the Inquisition in 1616. However a different version of this decision was produced at the trial rather than the one Galileo had been given at the time. The truth of the Copernican theory was not an issue therefore; it was taken as a fact at the trial that this theory was false. This was logical, of course, since the judgement of 1616 had declared it totally false.

Found guilty, Galileo was condemned to lifelong imprisonment, but the sentence was carried out somewhat sympathetically and it amounted to house arrest rather than a prison sentence. He was able to live first with the Archbishop of Siena, then later to return to his home in Arcetri, near Florence, but had to spend the rest of his life watched over by officers from the Inquisition. In 1634 he suffered a severe blow when his daughter Virginia, Sister Maria Celeste, died. She had been a great support to her father through his illnesses and Galileo was shattered and could not work for many months. When he did manage to restart work, he began to write Discourses and mathematical demonstrations concerning the two new sciences. '

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Galileo.html

He was indeed well aware of the consequences of admitting to heretical beliefs, and being shown the instruments of torture was a way of pyschologically softening up an old ill man.

Shows one the danger of science made the pawn of politicans or religion- the Inquisition then was in the same position as the enforcers of Nazi and Soviet science.

Michael Servetus was a notable real sacrifice to religious intolerance, an unholy alliance between Calvinist and Roman Catholic intolerance and a great loss to science.

[Dracon II]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


The two are not comparable.

Of course, I wasn't saying that Marxism is airy fairy crap like creationism... I was just saying that if science classes have to teach something for which the field has such clear antipathy, then classical economics should be taught alongside Marxism, its alternate, and antipathetic theory.

And then christian church services should also include Muslim services... Republicans and Democrats should be able to endorse each other's candidates... and cats and dogs should share the same leash.

Oh and evolution should be taught at sunday school.

[Kuciwalker]

It wasn't even interesting engineering though. It was "they didn't work - are we wasting money?" I don't care about policy when I'm reading SciAm, I want SCIENCE.

Who cares what you want?

Presumably SciAm.

I don't see why SciAm shouldn't cover policy when policy dictates science and the spread of science to so great an extent. As in the decisions to let Hubble fall into disrepair, abandoning the Superconducting Supercollider, dropping NSF funding, or teaching Creationism in public schools. Politics dictates technology to an even greater extent.

Politics and policy may dictate what science gets done, but it doesn't mean that they have anything to do with the actual science.

SciAm also covers the history of science and technology, should that be axed as well?

SciAm devotes a single page to excerpts from articles 50, 100, and 150 years ago. Red herring.

EDIT: tags

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Azazel

What are you smoking? Can I have some?

Before you spout, please elaborate.

Do you really think people actually eventually resolve and discard some of their irreconcilable beliefs? Consider the evidence...

[Az]

If they're constantly conscious of them, and given enough time, yes.

[Ramo]

SciAm devotes a single page to excerpts from articles 50, 100, and 150 years ago. Red herring.

Actually, the history of the specific science/tech is included in many articles.

And exactly how many pages per issue are dedicated to policy matters alone?

And you didn't answer the question: should all references to the history of science/tech be axed?

Politics and policy may dictate what science gets done, but it doesn't mean that they have anything to do with the actual science.

Besides dictating what science gets done...

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

Oh lord, we've lost Oerdin too...

You laugh but I contend it is you who is not being serious. I reprint a post which Pontiuth Pilate made on a web forum visited by many poly-tubbies.

The Assault On Intellectuals And The Professions

I got to thinking about how so many of the more reactionary political hot-button topics can be construed or interpreted as attacks on the ability of professionals, intellectuals, and experts to do their jobs. And how many of the conservative causes can be interpreted as alliances with the forces of wilful ignorance. And I don't just mean Creationists and other fundamentalists.

I actually made a short list. It encompasses a surprising amount of the current Republican platform. Name me a profession and we'll see if it doesn't get on this list somehow. I just put down the more obvious examples: the doctors, the biological scientists, etc.

The first section consists of professions whose workings have been openly attacked; the second those which have been undermined; and the third those which have been ignored and shunted to one side in favor of less expert but more politically potent opinions. We already know about some of the most egregious examples of anti-intellectualism, eg bullying actuaries about the cost of Medicare, manipulating and deleting information in climate-change reports, etc. But I think this shows the pattern is far wider than that.

I also think there are examples of anti-intellectualism to be found in the radical left. PETA is no more a rational organization than the Baptist Church. But the Democratic Party has not exactly embraced those ideals. They've been publicly humiliated every time even a tangential connection comes up. That hasn't happened with the Republicans.

Without further ado, the list.

1.
DOCTORS
-Banning abortion
-Banning euthanasia
-Banning soft drugs
-Banning stem cell research
-Rendering birth control inaccessible
-Rendering parental counseling inaccessible

LAWYERS
-Repealing antitrust regulation
-Restricting class-action lawsuits
-Capping payable damages
-Restricting lawsuits for criminal negligence, defective products, bullying workers and unions, work safety and injuries, compensation,
-Tort reform, eliminating consumer rights
-Ignoring ABA recommendations on judge nominations

EDUCATORS
-Ideological affirmative action [“There should be more conservative profs”]
-Regulation of what high schools and colleges can teach
-Guerilla textbooks [“The Politically Incorrect Guide To American History”]
-School vouchers, enabling white flight and marketing ideology
-Awarding taxpayer money to schools with ideological mission
-Merit pay, No Child Left Behind, and other gov’t interference programs
-Growth of importance of STs

2.
SCIENTISTS
-Various attacks on evolution, climate change, abiogenesis, ecology, sexology, etc, etc
-Interfering in government-funded reports on global warming, sex education, etc, for political purposes
-Overall: rejection of scientific mode of thought in favor of faith and superstition
-Nonenforcement, “voluntary” pollution laws

JOURNALISTS
-Hostile attitude towards press, restricted access
-Myth of liberal media, derision
-Undermining with fake journalists
-Supplanting with think tanks and astroturf groups
-Psuedoscientific claims about a "Red vs Blue" America

3.
ECONOMISTS
-Trickle-down economics, tax cuts
-Lackadaiscal attitude towards deficit spending
-Rejection of notion of federal spending as investment
-Rejection of Keynesian economics in general
-Support for programs which are unequivocally wrong in economic terms [Social Security privatization etc]

POLITICAL SCIENTISTS
-The return to “states rights paramount” philosophy
-Rejection of the secular state
-Movement away from issue/fact-based politics
-Rampant personal and corporate nepotism
-Rejection of standard US foreign policy
-Rejection of diplomacy and a multilateral world
-Extremely strict application of FOIA to cast “Iron Curtain” around administration
-Loyalty oaths, manufactured political photo ops [far worse than before]

It's pretty clear that religous zeolots and anti-intellectuals are attacking independent sources of knowledge and thinking because those people have challenged some of the idiotic claims the religious right has made.

[Drake Tungsten]

What a ridiculous article...

[DanS]

That's exactly what I was thinking. What a crock of ****.