Super Space: Royal Observatory’s Astronomy Photo Winners
On Sept. 8, the Royal Observatory Greenwich, home of Greenwich Mean Time and the Prime Meridian, announced winners from the third annual contest, which drew more than 700 entries. Prizes went to participants from four main categories — Deep Space, Our Solar System, Earth and Space, and Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year — as well as three special awards.
‘Shape of the Earth – Both Sides Have a Point’
The argument is that the mainstream news media attempts at all costs to appear “balanced”, by giving both sides of any dispute equal footing — as opposed to simply trying to report what is actually accurate. Thus, in the debate over climate change, they give undue emphasis to arguments claiming that climate change lacks scientific consensus, when in fact the opposite is true.
Jon Huntsman, the lone voice of scientific sanity in the US Republican Presidential race
It’s like trying to explain the behaviour of football players without acknowledging the existence of a game of football. Why are these strange people running around after a sphere and kicking it to each other? What is the significance of the rectangular white box at the end? Why don’t they use their hands? Sure, we could posit some “laws” of “Association Football”, but that’s just a theory!
Similar to something I observed a while back. The difference here is that it’s in application to people who are vying to be leaders of a country, and to me it’s scary to think that the list is almost exclusively comprised of people who put ideology first, force the facts to fit and toss out anything that doesn’t.
The Bad Astronomer mentions this in reference to Rick Perry’s baffling “Galileo got outvoted for a spell” remark: Republican candidates, global warming, evolution, and reality. Galileo vs the church was not two scientific schools of thought duking it out, it was the suppression of science by holders of an ideological truth. Which is what is going on here, except that Perry got it exactly backwards.
Update: if you don’t want sports* analogies, here’s another.
Listening to GOP Presidential candidates talk about science is like listening to children talk about sex: They know it exists, they have strong opinions about what it might mean, but they don’t have a clue what it’s actually about.
*Though I’m sure there’s an xkcd cartoon where sex is a sport, and it does fulfill many of the basic requirements: physical activity, somebody possibly winning (I finished first. And you, not at all**) and I will never be mistaken for a professional practitioner.
** Which is why you shouldn’t keep score
What teachers really want to tell parents
In all honesty, it’s usually the best teachers who are giving the lowest grades, because they are raising expectations. Yet, when your children receive low scores you want to complain and head to the principal’s office.
Please, take a step back and get a good look at the landscape. Before you challenge those low grades you feel the teacher has “given” your child, you might need to realize your child “earned” those grades and that the teacher you are complaining about is actually the one that is providing the best education.
The Scale at the Bottom of a Pool
“An Olympic-sized swimming pool is filled with 660,000 US gallons of water. An imaginary scale under the pool reads 5,511,556 pounds — the weight of the water. Now a 12,000 pound, 5 foot wide spherical wrecking ball is lowered halfway into the water by a crane. What does the scale read?”
The Preconception Eliciting Tennis Ball
While holding the ball near the ceiling, I ask, “When the ball is at its peak, what is its velocity?” (They confidently say “zero!”)
I now expose their preconception by immediately asking, “What is its acceleration?” (The answers are split between “9.8 m/s/s” and “zero!” depending on the class) I keep the ball near the ceiling and ask one of the students who enthusiastically answered “zero!”, “If its acceleration is zero and its velocity is zero, what would happen to the ball?” After some thought, the student realizes that the ball wouldn’t fall. I then release the ball and it sticks to the ceiling.
Did Einstein discover E = mc^2?
One thing that bothers me about the “somebody had mc^2 and only had the proportionality constant wrong” arguments is that it ignores one very important point: whatever you come up with, the units have to be that of energy. So it’s not like the Far Side cartoon where Einstein has written E=mc^3, E=mc^7 and various other powers and the cleaning lady says “Everything’s squared away. Yessir, squaaaaaared away!” (and Albert has a wonderful look on his face). Funny, for a cartoon, but in reality you need a speed squared term to go along with mass in order to get units of energy. E=mc^7 doesn’t have units of energy. E=mc^2 does. So, really, showing what the proportionality factor is is really the majority of the battle.
