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Earth revolves around Liberal Democrats

Earth revolves around Liberal Democrats

It’s not the “religious right” that caused America to fail the “Does the Earth revolve around the Sun” survey

http://youtu.be/rD5luu_UTzc

A recent report released by the National Science Foundation has garnered quite a bit of media attention after revealing a survey that found 25% of Americans couldn’t correctly answer the question, “does the Earth go around the Sun or does the Sun go around the Earth?”

The results of the survey prompted a slew of snark from national media outlets such as Time and Yahoo!. Even the tech site c|net felt the survey warranted some coverage.

But after the snark had settled, people began to seriously question how so many individuals in a country like the United States could be so wrong about a seemingly basic question. The popular but incorrect conclusion often arrived at was that it must be those “anti-science, bible-toting righties.”

A CNN Opinion piece by Sheril Kirshenbaum draws attention to my point. To be sure, I don’t think Kirshenbaum intentionally penned a hit piece on the Republican faithful. Indeed, the bulk of her article appropriately addresses the general need for improvement of science literacy. She also properly lauds the days when science was “cool,” recalling the public fascination with the Cold War space race.

However, when attempting to ascribe blame to the perception of scientific regression created by the study, Kirshenbaum makes the mistake far too many make, attributing the downfall of science to “the religious right.” [Emphasis Added]

Then things changed. The space race faded to memory, and nonmilitary science funding dipped. Science lost its prominence in policy, and today it’s treated as a special-interest group rather than central to the policymaking process.

The emergence of the religious right beginning in the late 1970s created unnecessary battles pitting religion again [sic] “reason,” as if we must choose a side.

Among other things, Kirshenbaum directly attributes the rise of religious Republicans to the sinking influence of science in public policy making.

This fits into the popular belief that conservatives were and continue to be anti-science. Interestingly, a recent report from Northwestern Law Professor James Lindgren turns that incorrect assumption on its head (h/t HotAir). The report examined the very same National Science Foundation survey and found the following:

A majority of Democrats (51.4%) could not correctly answer both that the earth revolves around the Sun and that this takes year. Republicans fare a bit better, with only 37.9% failing to get both correct.

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When the the political orientation was further subdivided, conservative Republicans — the group many would identify as the “religious right” — out performed even those intellectual titans known as liberal Democrats.

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The American public certainly may have a scientific literacy problem. However, in remedying that problem, it looks like we need to begin first and foremost with our liberal Democrat friends.

Talk about an inconvenient truth.

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Comments

From pg 7-4 “Highlights” of that survey:

“A survey of the United States and 10 European countries, including the 5 largest, suggests that interest in S&T in the United States is somewhat higher than in Europe.”

“Levels of factual knowledge in the United States are comparable to those in Europe and are generally higher than levels in countries in other parts of the world.”

And that’s including Liberal Democrats.

    But the proggie Dims will bleat about this ‘lack of scientific literacy’ problem as if the sky is falling, and of course the remedy will be more government ‘investment’ which will mean more taxation, more bureaucracy, and less freedom. It’s all they know. It’s exactly what they, and the bulk of the media in cahoots with them, did over healthcare back when Barry got elected. Remember how stellar the Canadian and Brit systems were supposed to be compared to ours?

    Not A Member of Any Organized Political in reply to mariner. | February 19, 2014 at 9:47 pm

    “Leftist”
    means the Left their Brain out – after the Brain-washing?????????

    “Leftist” means never have to say you know anything???
    Their dictator will tell leftists what to parrot???

    Things that make you go “Hmmmmm…..”

Libs, dems and frogs would rather take the lazy way of learning. Just listen to the talking points put forth by the dem party and never, ever bother to verify the truth of anything. Sounding like a boob is just so cool.

David R. Graham | February 19, 2014 at 3:04 pm

Much, at least, of what is considered great world literature happened when the earth was considered flat and the sun revolved or passed around or over it. “Science” as popularly thought and learned is stacks of logs in the brain, hardening intellect and sucking oxygen from blood and the heart. A more important bit of understanding than which globe revolves around which is why it is human to forebear rather than to be ruthless. The DemRep Party nearly 100% does not know that factoid. And the whole world pays the price of that ignorance.

    The Greeks knew the earth was round and they had a good approximation for the circumference. When the Catholic Church came along, they made that knowledge heresy.

    But I have no idea how that implies anything about the Democratic Party. So the Republicans aren’t ruthless? Your myopia boggles the mind.

      It was never a widespread Christian belief or Catholic doctrine that the earth was flat. Indeed, most Christian scholars and theologians from the early church fathers on believed in a spherical earth, or at most were ambivalent on the subject. Perhaps you were intending to bash the geocentric model?

I love science and always have. As a kid I loved reading about astronomy and astronomers; trying to figure out how to build a nuclear weapon; messing around with rocketry and explosives, etc. I have been seriously distressed by the political use of science: the poorly done or misinterpreted “studies,” the bogus polling, the faked up AIDS studies, and the biggest one, the whole global warming/climate change hoax which has discredited science and “scientists” in the eyes of the public. I am not surprised that so many people don’t know the earth revolves around the sun; I am sure they just mistrust some scientist who is on somebody’s payroll to promote that view . . .

    JimMtnViewCaUSA in reply to Diplomad. | February 19, 2014 at 4:15 pm

    Excellent, excellent comment.
    I used to subscribe to Natural History magazine and looked forward to its arrival each month.
    But then it became politically correct. Instead of “here is how animals find their prey, escape predators, raise their young”, nearly every article became “because ‘man is in the forest’ the following problems are occurring”.

      Ragspierre in reply to JimMtnViewCaUSA. | February 19, 2014 at 5:37 pm

      Back in the day, I was a religious (heh!) reader of “Popular Science”.

      Then they were infested by what I call “the Green Goo”.

      Just like National Geographic. I don’t have time for them.

        Rational in reply to Ragspierre. | February 19, 2014 at 6:45 pm

        Hmm, the paper states that liberals get the answer about the sun and earth correct 59.6% to Conservatives 56% That is hardly anything to brag about, but I wonder why that statistic wasn’t mentioned here?

        Oh course conservatives don’t believe in astrology. They have their own superstition that the bible is literally true. So Astrology would be heresy.

        I understand why conservatives are thought to be scientifically illiterate. They deny evolution based on a fairy tale book. The Catholic Church took 400 years to admit Galileo was right.

        Hey, Rags – Do you really believe that anyone who doesn’t agree with you is lying? It can’t be an honest disagreement? That tells me that you lie when the facts don’t work for you and you assume that is what others do. The House Troll has to always be right?

        Has Holder made any announcements, yet? When did you last read his mind? I do get your point. I can read your mind. But then I have trouble keeping my dinner down.

          Ragspierre in reply to Rational. | February 19, 2014 at 6:55 pm

          Saying you are NOT a troll is a lie.

          Another time demonstrated here.

          Again.

          Ragspierre in reply to Rational. | February 19, 2014 at 7:02 pm

          “They have their own superstition that the bible is literally true.”

          Ego, Pres. ScamWOW, the optional Christian, is a conservative.

          Hmmm…

          Seems to be totally stereotypic “thinking” on your part. Lacks a certain…I dunno…objectivity, and suggests strongly you are an ideologue.

          So there are two more times you lied in the last few days.

          Really mounting up, huh…???

          Ragspierre in reply to Rational. | February 19, 2014 at 7:11 pm

          “The Catholic Church took 400 years to admit Galileo was right.”

          Your lack of literacy and bigotry are showing here, which isn’t a lie.

          Just stupid.

          If you could read history, you’d know that Galileo had supporters in the Church, and that it was the guardian of the scientific literature and rational thought processes for centuries.

          But, hey… Don’t let me strain that brain…!!!

          Heh!

          Ragspierre in reply to Rational. | February 19, 2014 at 7:16 pm

          Hey, while I have you here dancing on my dirk…as it were…

          Why don’t you do as promised, and illuminate your stupid “Brietbart = Sharpton” bullspit.

          Remember…! You promised.

        tom swift in reply to Ragspierre. | February 19, 2014 at 7:48 pm

        you’d know that Galileo had supporters in the Church

        The Jesuit astronomers at the Vatican were particularly big fans of Galileo. All except, perhaps, Father Clavius, who wouldn’t even look through that new-fangled operculum (later, telescope). He realized that he was too old; this new universe Galileo had announced in Sidereus Nuncius was for younger men.

        A prominent lunar crater was named after him, anyway.

    Owego in reply to Diplomad. | February 19, 2014 at 6:55 pm

    Another for the list; Scientific American. It went PC-boring, then to France.

      tom swift in reply to Owego. | February 19, 2014 at 8:10 pm

      SI had reached a certain predictability by the 1970s. Every issue seemed to have an article about workflow control in Swedish factories, the genetics of the mosaic fruit fly, and a few other stoically repetitive subjects. Scientifically OK, but boring.

      Then the magazine went nuts. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but it became unreadable. I vaguely recall that it was something to do with early DNA sequencing. Its boosters claimed that this would pin down all sorts of evolutionary questions at last, with no possibility of dispute. It was all reminiscent of the claims for comparative embryology in the early nineteenth century. But the almost religious enthusiasm of the true believers destroyed the science.

      That fervor continues today, when the press is infested with statements about how some animal’s (… something, the press never seems to be too sure) is 98% identical to that of humans, or how evolutionary lines diverged so many millions of years ago.

      The whole “maybe yes, but … maybe no” which is absolutely central to scientific inquiry was gone from the pages of SI. I haven’t looked at the magazine in years. I strongly suspect that the Warmunists are solidly in control now.

      As Robert Conquest (not a scientist, but no dummy either) pointed out in his Three Laws of Politics, any organization which is not explicitly right wing sooner or later becomes left wing. And at SI, it certainly shows.

      Bruce Hayden in reply to Owego. | February 20, 2014 at 12:03 pm

      I remember reading the magazine religiously back when I was growing up in the 1960s, and after college in the 1970s. But then, as you note, it went PC, and started pushing the progressive meme or cause du jour. Very quickly, it became apparent that while they still had some good articles, there would almost inevitably be at least one article a month that would set my blood boiling. And, at that point, I quit.

MaggotAtBroadAndWall | February 19, 2014 at 3:26 pm

Other widely held but long ago debunked memes (I keep these bookmarked for occasions like this):

Tea Partyers are angry old white men:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/35094.html

Tea Partyers are poor uneducated angry old white men:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/us/politics/15poll.html?_r=3&

Tea Partyers are poor uneducated angry old white men who don’t know science:
http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2013/10/15/some-data-on-education-religiosity-ideology-and-science-comp.html

I too am a lifelong science nerd. The need for better education in American public schools is obvious, across the board subject-wise, but math and science especially.

Still, even more important to me than better science education would be to establish a four-year course of classes specifically in critical thinking, a new stand alone topic to go with math, science, history, etc, i.e. ‘Critical Thinking 101, 102, 103, 104’. Science and technology has become so incredibly complex that no single person can know all of it. We are all jacks and masters of very little. But, sound skills in critical thinking are invaluable to both the individual and to society as a whole. Folks have got to know how to discern shit from shinola, how to recognize poor arguments, and how to consider claims others make. The skill is so baseline its acquisition helps the individual in all areas: job/work, in the marketplace, politics, and religion too – it’s critical thinking that tells you the dirty toothpick being sold as a piece of the true cross for $5,000 on eBay is likely a scam.

Today’s world is a constant stream of information, data, stories, claims, etc., and who has time to fully research everything? Critical thinking is an excellent mechanism for quickly winnowing the reliable from the horsehockey, and also serves to help look deeply into whatever is kept.

A lack of details could be overcome to some degree by the low info voters if they had decent critical thinking skills.

    Bruce Hayden in reply to Henry Hawkins. | February 20, 2014 at 11:59 am

    Agreed with the critical reasoning. What is a bit scary to me is that a lot of people with STEM Masters and PhD degrees seem to get sucked into the AGW, CAGW, CAGCC (climate change), etc. “consensus”. It is out of their expertise, and so they trust the “experts”, except, it turns out, that many of the “experts” seem to lack expertise in other closely related subjects (in this area, esp., it seems, physics and statistics).

    Still, useful science is hard. AlGore, who turns out to have had decently high SAT scores, reputedly barely passed the two bone-head science classes he took at Harvard. And, I knew a number of people when I was in college who were in a similar situation – they just couldn’t do well, or sometimes even pass, science classes, even if their academic lives depended on it. And, then there were those of us who had the opposite problem – passing humanities or social science classes. I esp remember arguing with a philosophy prof who told me that my interpretation of Plato was wrong, because my interpretation was counter to the consensus interpretation. I asked him to prove that I was wrong, and that was his explanation – consensus. Somewhat unsatisfying for someone who did best in school in the sciences, where knowledge was based on experimentation and the scientific method, and not the consensus of like minded people.

      Henry Hawkins in reply to Bruce Hayden. | February 20, 2014 at 10:45 pm

      Science, of course, is about a preponderance of empirical evidence to the point it becomes illogical not to accept it, but even then it is held only tentatively against the possibility of new evidence.

      The ‘scientific consensus’ quote I usually bring out is by Michael Crichton, scientist and medical doctor later turned novelist (Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, Sphere):

      “I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.

      Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

      There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”

      Michael Crichton (2003 at Cal Inst of Tech)

I knew the Earth revolved around the Sun and it took a year – and all the other planets and their approximate orbit times, too – by the time I was in second grade. There were no science classes. It was just kids’ curiosity about space.

Granted, we had a space program starting up in those days, and the whole nation would pause to see the Mercury astronauts lift off. But it wasn’t information I got, or needed to get, from school.

And it is people this ignorant we are desperately registering to vote!!!!! In what universe does it make sense to register idiots and urge them to vote and make it super easy to do it?

It’s one way to elect Democrats, I guess.

    Olinser in reply to Estragon. | February 19, 2014 at 5:15 pm

    I was exactly the same way. As a kid I enjoyed reading and learning more than anything else – I have an absolutely massive library of books built up over the past 2 decades.

    I learned about the solar system because I was curious.

    I sure as hell didn’t learn about it from my school, whose ‘science’ textbook included such ‘facts’ as telling me that we were going to be out of resources for electricity by 1986. This ‘textbook’ was used in the mid-90’s.

For most of my life, our nation has been beset with a deluge of agendized junk science.

I remember reading “Silent Spring” as a kid.

I went to the movie “The Population Bomb”.

Somewhere along the line, I learned to think critically and realized I was being fed a lode of crap by people who pretended to be all “sciencey”.

If you ever find a copy of the great little book “Trashing The Planet” grab it. It was written by a genuine scientist who debunked a lot of the bunk then current.

Today, it is wise to read people like Mark Steyn, who takes apparent glee in skewering the sacred cows of the Collectivist druid religion that HATES science and modernity.

    Every year thousands of children die because of Rachel Carson. Every year billions are wasted treating malaria and other mosquito borne diseases.
    Now thanks to Rachel and Third World diplomats, millions are being wasted fighting an old enemy, once wiped out in the US and EU, the bedbug.

Mr Pain-In-The-Crank-Pedantic-Physicist has to point out that both answers are equally wrong. The earth doesn’t revolve around the sun any more than the sun revolves around the earth. Another way of looking at it, one which is entirely sound mathematically, is that both are right. The earth revolves around the sun and the sun revolves around the earth. This is all “classical” stuff; it’s been understood for centuries, even if not by the great American public. LaPlace and Newton knew it perfectly well. Possibly Claudius Ptolemy and Nikolai Kopernik did not, though I wouldn’t count on it.

I can say this because I actually devoted the intellectual horsepower and spent the time to get an education in the subject, complete with expensive degrees.

Most people who fancy themselves to be oh-so-scientific, including reporters and journalists, are actually scientific barbarians. And that’s a scientific fact.

    Ragspierre in reply to tom swift. | February 19, 2014 at 3:58 pm

    I remember a report on a horrific natural gas explosion near me in Texas years back involving a salt-dome storage facility.

    The reporter breathlessly speculated that the methanol had blown up in the underground storage.

    Methanol is an alcohol. LNG in storage can’t burn, much less detonate (the mixture is too “rich”).

    What really happened was that a surface valve failed, and the gas had been propagating over the ground in the nice, oxygen-laden night air of the Texas countryside until it was both a flammable mix and found an ignition source.

    Virtually all reporters are scientific idiots. There’s consensus on this…

      tom swift in reply to Ragspierre. | February 19, 2014 at 4:08 pm

      We actually live a scientific dark age. Not an easy thing for many people to admit.

      Rational in reply to Ragspierre. | February 19, 2014 at 7:13 pm

      ” nice, oxygen-laden night air of the Texas ” Is the air particularly oxygen-laden in Texas. That is scientific fact? BTW, The NYTimes got it right back in 1992.

        Ragspierre in reply to Rational. | February 19, 2014 at 7:18 pm

        …phttt.

        TWOT (total waste of time).

        Ragspierre in reply to Rational. | February 20, 2014 at 12:02 am

        Now that I have a minute…

        yes. Look up “Gas Law”.

        The low elevations in Texas WOULD mean there are more lil’ molly-cules of all atmospheric gases than where the elebation is higher.

        Plus, if memory serves, that was a cool night, and therefore the air was denser.

        Kinda like you…!!! Heh!

          Henry Hawkins in reply to Ragspierre. | February 20, 2014 at 10:48 pm

          Plus… when pollution enters the atmosphere it doesn’t compress the nitrogen/oxygen mix, it displaces it. Therefore, the less polluted an area is the more ‘oxygen-laden’ it would be.

    Midwest Rhino in reply to tom swift. | February 19, 2014 at 5:53 pm

    I assume your point is the sun also moves in response to earth’s gravity, but I’d question whether that means the sun is “revolving around” earth. The sun’s response is infinitesimal but the earth indeed orbits AROUND the sun.

    I only had a dozen hours of physics, so would be interested in your clarification, if there is one. Same thing with earth and moon … the earth’s orbit around the sun is altered very little as the moon orbits the earth. Would you also claim that classically, the earth is “revolving around” every satellite?

    The center point for the sun earth orbit is very near the center of the sun. So when you use inexact language like “revolves AROUND”, I think that changes the question. That might even be why they used “revolves around” instead of “orbits”.

      tom swift in reply to Midwest Rhino. | February 19, 2014 at 7:40 pm

      I assume your point is the sun also moves in response to earth’s gravity, but I’d question whether that means the sun is “revolving around” earth … Would you also claim that classically, the earth is “revolving around” every satellite?

      Gravity has nothing to do with it. It’s pure geometry.

      Mathematically the motion of any body can be described relative to any point you choose. For the purpose of charting the motions of the planets, it makes no difference. Sun, earth, moon, Mars, or some arbitrary point in space. The Ptolemaic system of epicycles is usually pictured in solar-centered coordinates, but that’s not essential to the system; any other center will work fine, but the geometry is more complex, and the epicyclic system is already somewhat complicated, so there’s little advantage to using other coordinates. But so far as specifying who revolves around whom, any coordinate origin works.

        Midwest Rhino in reply to tom swift. | February 19, 2014 at 8:05 pm

        Well you (not I) could use any point of reference to describe an orbit, but obviously gravity has everything to do with it. Describing the sun going around the earth mathematically becomes complicated, and does not change the reality of the relative masses and gravitational forces that allow us to (more simply) describe the orbit.

        Only math that conforms to the physical forces achieves practical goals. Distorting a formula with earth as a center does not make earth “revolve around” the sun, it only makes for a distorted (and difficult) equation. Other forces (centripetal force?) confirm that indeed earth/moon “revolve around” the sun.

        The question didn’t ask if that reality could be mathematically described with earth as a center point.

          tom swift in reply to Midwest Rhino. | February 19, 2014 at 8:21 pm

          You’re confusing the kinematic and dynamic problems. Mathematical physics had addressed this dichotomy by the early seventeenth century. Maybe by mid-century if we want to be picky.

          You have a lot of catching up to do.

          Midwest Rhino in reply to Midwest Rhino. | February 20, 2014 at 11:14 am

          Addressing a dichotomy in theory may be interesting, but it does not make the sun go around the earth. I switched to horticulture after two years as a chemistry major, and am still catching up in that field as well. I had 13 hours of calculus, but when I got to “diffy Q”, I remember looking across the aisle at another student, and we swore the guy was speaking Chinese. 🙂

          You can baffle me with brilliance, but you didn’t give me enough to go on to find that dichotomy exactly. I’m guessing it has to do with the real world versus mathematical theory.

          I can sorta process relativity arguments or fluid dynamics, but my brain more naturally still tends toward Newtonian physics. Apples falling from trees is logical, not earth falling up to the apple, as exotic as that argument may be. lol

          This may explain our current demise, though I think many teachers are more concerned about socialist indoctrination than classical physics.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxkHM4DUDKM

          tom swift in reply to Midwest Rhino. | February 20, 2014 at 5:09 pm

          Pure descriptive geometry, no gravitation involved. Try this –

          Recall the equation for a circle of radius r in a Cartesian coordinate plane, r**2=x**2+y**2 where the r**2 means “r squared” in ASCII coding. The exact same circle can be described in another Cartesian plane offset from the first by a, b. The formula for our old circle is then r**2=(x-a)**2+(y-b)**2, for x and y measured in the second Cartesian plane. No problem. a and b are arbitrary, and the circle is unaffected. Even better; so long as the offset between our Cartesian planes isn’t too large (that is, so long as r**2 > (a**2 + b**2) ), the circle is “around” both. So an object moving along the perimeter of the circle will be seen to be circling the origins (the point 0,0) of both Cartesian planes.

          The same goes for the orbits of things whizzing around the solar system.

    Bruce Hayden in reply to tom swift. | February 20, 2014 at 11:35 am

    Technically, you are correct, the Sun and the Earth revolve around each other, along with the other planets, and, indeed, the wobble in a stars’ movements can be utilized to detect planets. But, realistically, since the Sun is so much more massive than the Earth, the Earth doesn’t affect the Sun very much, whereas the Sun does control the Earth much more. And, even that is a bit off, because you have to include the Moon in there too, so, since the Moon revolves around the Earth (or, more accurately again, they rotate around a common axis relatively close to the center of the Earth), the two revolve around the Sun (or, more accurately around a common axis relatively close to the center of the Sun). Except that the rotation of the Moon around the Earth (or their center) is affected by the mass of the Sun.

    But, luckily for daily life, you can ignore all the decimal places, and just treat the Moon as orbiting around the Earth, and the Earth (and Moon) revolving around the Sun, etc. Somewhat similar to ignoring relativity when dealing with day-to-day living here on planet Earth.

      tom swift in reply to Bruce Hayden. | February 20, 2014 at 4:57 pm

      Nope, nothing to do with it.

      The center of mass of the system is a perfectly good point, but it’s not a necessary one or the only one. Any point will do.

Meh.

Far more important to the culture: do parents revolve around the children, or vice versa?

ChuckBartowski | February 19, 2014 at 4:32 pm

25% got the question wrong, which means 75% got it right. But only 48% of Democrats, 55% of Independents, and 62% of Republicans got it right. That doesn’t make sense.

What mystery bloc of Americans was out there who brought the average up to 75%?

    According to the report, the 75% figure comes from the question “Does the Earth go around the Sun or does the Sun go around the Earth.” In the survey, if the respondent answered that question correctly, a follow up question was asked, “How long does it take for the Earth to go around the Sun: one day, one month, or one year?”

    The political orientation figures were tabulated based on how many could answer both questions correctly. If respondent missed the first one, that was an automatic incorrect answer and the second question wasn’t even asked. However, if the respondent was correct in the first question, they had to also correctly answer how long it took the Earth to revolve around the Sun to be considered completely “correct.” It appears that while 75% of people surveyed knew the Earth revolved around the sun, only 55% knew that the earth revolved around the sun *and* that it took a year to do so.

I’m not bored.

I am currently reading local Nobel physicist Leon Lederman’s Beyond the God Particle (Higgs Boson, particle ‘physics stuff.’’ I have also read his Quantum Physics for Poets.

I have read at least a half dozen other books dealing with quantum physics and also a book about the periodic table describing each element as well as a couple of books about genomes and of course, theistic evolution.

These are just my science books. I also read books on economics, political ideology and a ton of fiction.

I love hearing about the mars rover and space exploits.

The Left is boring on every level.

That survey cited is bogus. I’d expand, but my head is still spinning spending several hours combing through it the other day.

The “survey” is a subjective summary of subjective polling.

That’s what passed for “science” at the National Science Foundation.

The conclusion? More government funded surveys. Sure, why not.

    tom swift in reply to Browndog. | February 19, 2014 at 8:40 pm

    NSF itself in not a scientific organization, it is a political one. Much like NASA, the NIH, or DARPA, it is a bureaucracy which distributes government money to individuals or institutions to do technical work the government wants done. (Caveat: NASA and NIH also maintain their own laboratories, although what they’re worth is another question.)

    Unknown to many is that most of that money is from the defense budget. One advantage to NSF is that its name is a bit less obvious than DARPA, or Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Between the 1950s and the 1990s the name of DARPA changed several times, eliminating the “Defense”, then adding it back, but it remained a child of the DoD. By virtue of its name, NSF has managed to avoid that whole “defense” stigma, at least publicly.

    DARPA’s major importance to webaholics was probably DARPAnet.

Oh for Pete’s sake what difference does it make. It’s more important to build self-esteem, teach diversity courtesy, like that Heather has two mommies, sex education and stuff, the Obama song, and make sure that no kid points a dangerous pop tart at another kid. Geesh, heave, big sigh.

Priorities…!!!

Doug Wright Old Grouchy | February 19, 2014 at 6:39 pm

The journolists who breathlessly talk about SYG relating to any firearms shooting surely are those best qualified to discuss the scientific knowledge of our society! Of course they are!

./sarc off

All right, stop the presses.

Interestingly, a recent report from Northwestern Law Professor James Lindgren turns that incorrect assumption on its head (h/t HotAir). The report examined the very same National Science Foundation survey and found the following:

Where is this report?

The NSF report (Science and Engineering Indicators 2014, chapter 7) has no data breakdowns by party or dominant dogma.

So the sun does not revolves around Obama..?

I recently looked up the Flat Earth Society because Kerry and Obama keep mentioning it. Apparently it was founded in the 19th century, hundreds of years after Colombus discovered (quote/unquote) America. I hope this little fact helps place the issue in perspective for others like it did for me.

Wait until they find out that every day, every danged day, the sun is responsible for global warming.

Whew…All this time I thought the earth was flat?…It seems we at the society will finely have something to discuss?

Was that a trick question? Everyone knows that the Earth and the Sun revolve around each other, each creating a distortion in the space time surrounding them proportional to their mass. To the Copernican mindset, it appears that the Earth revolves around the Sun but this is just the way our brain perceives reality.

It’s really hard to blame these poor ignorant souls, as they have been taught the Earth – no, the entire universe – revolves around Obama for so long, they can remember little else…

There are those who are naturally curious and good at solutions. Their freedoms
come from discipline.
And there are those who are afraid of what they don’t know and tend to follow.
Their freedoms come from retreat.

When you take the second group and push all their emotional
buttons – you get what you got with Obama.