We have designed a civilization based on science and technology and at the same time arranged things so that almost no one understands anything at all about science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. - Carl Sagan
Last night, famed biologist and prominent atheist Richard Dawkins made an appearance on The O'Reilly Factor, and a more illuminating and revealing six minutes of television I can't imagine. It was educational, not because of the content of the interview but due to the stark contrast of the participants' knowledge and understanding of the subject at hand. I had limited anticipation about the interview despite being highly familiar with both figures.
After September 11, I began to follow politics more closely, or should I say at all. When it was clear that Bill O'Reilly was an established media star, I watched his show out of curiosity. Over time, I became less and less impressed but continued to watch as his popularity increased and the broadcasting major in me yearned to understand why. Long story short, I have seen pretty much every episode since 2002. It has become less about keeping informed (ha!) and more about studying the "journalistic" tactics and style of (sigh) America's most watched media figure.
During my senior year of college, I needed 3 additional credits and decided to take an introductory astronomy class just for fun. It planted a seed that, over the following years, would develop into a strong interest in the natural sciences, particularly astronomy and biology. I seldom read anything other than science nonfiction books anymore and I'm always anxious see science first hand, hence my trips to Body Worlds 3 and Fermilab. And after 5 months of on and off reading and incessant highlighting, I'm 85 pages from completing the epic journey in The Ancestor's Tale by .... Richard Dawkins.
The limited aniticipation I had for this interview was for good reason. While both men are comfortable public speakers, they are accustomed to two very different formats. Tonight, they would unfortunately be utilizing O'Reilly's which I've noticed is custom-made to entertain rather than inform his viewer, hence his show's success. O'Reilly's interviews are 5-7 minutes, and if you are presenting an opposing viewpoint, you get half that if you are lucky. O'Reilly masterfully uses this to his advantage in every way possible. In this particluar interview, Dawkins spoke for about 1 min. 40 sec during a four-minute interview. Right away you can see the problem - Dawkins is an intellectual and a scholar who discusses highly complex ideas and concepts. He gives lectures, writes lengthy papers and books and engages in lengthy debates. In other words, 15 second soundbytes are far from sufficient for making his points. In addition to this, you'll notice that when O'Reilly speaks, he makes a shotgun spray of claims (science provides no moral framework, Jesus is still influential today, science doesn't know everything, there are more believers than non-believers), some of them only tangentially related, and then Dawkins gets to respond - but to which one and for how long before being interrupted. This common tactic often makes O'Reilly's opponents look unprepared and incompetent despite having a stronger case for their side. But Dawkins handled himself pretty well, and that's what usually pushes Bill to make over-the-top statements. In this case, he actually claimed that preventing "divine intervention" from being a plausible explaination in science class is a form of fascism. Bravo.
On most nights, I have an admittedly lacking but passable knowledge of the subjects discussed on the O'Reilly factor. But every once in awhile, a subject springs up that's right up my alley. Bill's vast ignorance of science education and policy, the scientific method, and even what science is floored me. Yet, he spoke with such conviction and certainty in opposition to someone whose grasp on those subjects is world- renowned. What about all the other times Bill speaks so strongly? If he's half as clueless then as he was tonight, his ratings are scarier than anything else I've seen this month.
On Monday, I'm making another quest for scientific knowledge - I'm going to the University of Indiana to see if I can get Richard Dawkins to autograph my copy of his new book, maybe get a picture with him. But, he'll also be speaking.........for two hours.........uninterrupted. I might learn more there than 7 years of watching "the Factor".
Currently Brian's Song By James Caan, Billy Dee Williams, Jack Warden, Bernie Casey, Shelley Fabares see related
Bespoke is old hat. Off-the-shelf is in. Even Google runs the world’s biggest and scariest server farms on computers home-made from commodity parts. DIY is cheaper and often better, as Justin Lee and Oliver Yeh found out when they decided to send a camera into space.
The two students (from MIT, of course) put together a low-budget rig to fly a camera high enough to photograph the curvature of the Earth. Instead of rockets, boosters and expensive control systems, they filled a weather balloon with helium and hung a styrofoam beer cooler underneath to carry a cheap Canon A470 compact camera. Instant hand warmers kept things from freezing up and made sure the batteries stayed warm enough to work.
Of course, all this would be pointless if the guys couldn’t find the rig when it landed, so they dropped a prepaid GPS-equipped cellphone inside the box for tracking. Total cost, including duct tape? $148.
Launch
Two weeks ago, on Sept. 2, at the leisurely post-breakfast hour of 11:45 a.m., the balloon was launched from Sturbridge, Massachusetts. Lee and Yeh took a road trip in order to stop prevailing winds from taking the balloon out onto the Atlantic, and checked in on the University of Wisconsin’s balloon trajectory website to estimate the landing site.
Because of spotty cellphone coverage in central Massachusetts, it was important to keep the rig in the center of the state so it could be found upon landing. Light winds meant the guys got lucky and, although the cellphone’s external antenna was buried upon landing, the fix they got as the balloon was coming down was close enough.
The Photographs
The balloon and camera made it up high enough to see the black sky curling around our blue planet. The intervalometer (interval timer) was set to shoot a picture every five seconds, and the 8-GB memory card was enough to hold pictures for the five-hour duration of the flight.
The picture you see above was shot from around 93,000 feet, just shy of 18 miles high. To give you an idea of how high that is, when the balloon burst, the beer-cooler took 40 minutes to come back to Earth.
What is most astonishing about this launch, named Project Icarus, is that anyone could do it. The budget is so small as to be almost nonexistent (the guys slept in their car the night before the launch to save money), so that even if everything went wrong, a second, third or fourth attempt would be easy. All it took was a grand idea and an afternoon poking around the hardware store.
A Bolivian religious fanatic briefly hijacked a jetliner from the beach resort of Cancun as it landed in Mexico City on Wednesday, police said. All passengers and the crew were released unharmed........The Bible-carrying hijacker used a juice can he said was a bomb to hold the 103 passengers and crew on the tarmac for more than an hour....... Flores hijacked Aeromexico Flight 576 after a divine revelation, according to Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna. Flores said Wednesday's date — 9-9-09 — is the satanic number 666 turned upside down.........Flores, speaking to reporters after he was detained, said he took control of the aircraft with "a juice can ... with some little lights I attached." "Christ is coming soon," he added, smiling......He ordered the pilot to circle over Mexico City seven times and asked to speak with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, saying he wanted to warn him of an impending earthquake.
Wait. It gets worse. They interviewed one of the passengers. Was she angry? Was she scared? Did she excoriate the hijacker for being a dangerous psychopath? Did she scold him for endangering the lives of everyone on board, including her own? Not exactly.
Passenger Pamela Cheatham, 48, an insurance industry employee from Colorado Springs, Colorado, is cautious about flying on "fateful" dates, but said she didn't make the connection with "9-09-09" — the number that obsessed the hijacker — until after the fact. "When I was doing my flight I was like, 'I don't want to fly on 9/11, but then it didn't hit me until this was all over," Cheatham said. "I should have evaluated that a little better."
Yes, and so should have everyone. What were people thinking flying on a date whose numbers, when arranged a certain way and then turned in a certain direction, bear a connection to an ancient mythical monster? Eesh. On a side note, I personally would prefer to fly on September 11. In addition to the statistical unlikelihood of an incident, on what other day of the year would airport and security personnel be more wide awake and on their guard than that day? On another side note, did anyone notice that because the proper abbreviation for this year is 09 and not simply 9, turning today's date upside down actually reads 6066? As Rosanne Rosannadanna might say, "Oh. Well, that's different. Nevermind."
President Obama indoctrinates nation's youth into socialist agenda of hard work, self-reliance, and academic pursuit!!!!
Conservatives/Republicans/the right wing have really gone off the beam on this one. They must learn to pick their battles with this administration so as to avoid coming off as knee-jerk contrarians, though that ship may have already sailed. This is one of the most apolitical, nonpartisan, milquetoast addresses you will ever hear a president give, and people were somehow outraged and threatened to pull their kids from school. Random citizens who opposed the speech were given a forum on the cable networks to explain the reasons for their objections - none of them made any sense whatsoever. 3 questions I wish I could have asked them -
1. Why is your child so weak-willed that a 20-minute address from the president will irreparably indoctrinate him/her into a political ideology?
2. What evidence can you provide me to ensure that your complaints stem from the content/concept of the speech rather than the person giving it?
3. As someone who has spent the last ten years working with teenagers in school and social settings, I have to ask: Are you really so naive as to think that during the course of their day, the most questionable or offensive thing your child will hear will come not from conversations with classmates, dialogue on a reality tv show, or the music on their ipod, but from the President of the United States? He's the one that concerns you? Really?
Currently Duplicity By Clive Owen, Tom Wilkinson, Paul Giamatti, Julia Roberts see related
Wow, I was way overdue to update my photo album. Skating parties, birthdays, Gems games, Easter, trips to K.C. and Chicago. It's been an excellent summer. So, here it is in pictures.
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