Thursday -Went to go to the store and when I reached the landing to the door, my heart rate dropped and I passed out, tumbling, unconscious, down the basement wooden stairs, miraculously nothing broken. Lots of briises and scrapes. Friday - heart pacemaker installed.
There are many well meaning people who accept that science is real, but are unaware of what it really is. I am having a dispute with a family member who dutifully recycles the plastic water bottles they buy by the case from Costco. I have been filling the same 500 ml Smart Water bottle I've had for fifteen months from the tap. I'm the one who is "bad for the environment." Let's not talk about the carbon footprint of the massive amounts of food they throw out because "I don't feel like leftovers, let go out to Mexican."
There is a code stamped into plastic bottles that tell you the type of plastic used. I forget the codes now, but the plastic will leech into the water for some of the codes. Something to keep in mind
Ugh. I'm sorry, but that is a personal bugbear of mine. I'm reminded of people who keep insisting and arguing that the Theory of Evolution is not true, because "it's just a theory!" To which I can only say: fine. If that's what science meant by "theory", then the Theory of Gravity wouldn't be true, either. But you're not floating away, are you? And now I really wish you would.
I'm pretty sure what was meant was that people don't know science even though they claim to believe in it. Also, don't wish for people to float away.
Well the theory is an attempt at explaining the laws' relationships. I don't think evolution is ironclad enough, or has enough repeatable experiments, that laws are yet established in the same way they are for gravity. Even if someone demonstrated that the theory of gravity was incorrect, the laws would still be in place (at least at our usage level) since they're rooted down into mutually observable axioms. That's the cool thing about scientific process: after however many thousands of years, those in the respective fields are willing to still call their understanding of something as commonplace as gravity a work in progress. That said, those people dismissing a theory because it simply is one are funny, because they'll also follow their baseless intuition (and/or a con man) off a bridge.
I have to clarify this: I don't dislike people who claim to believe in science without knowing what it is. It's a start, and if they try to learn more about science they believe in, all the better. Rather, I dislike people who claim not to believe in science, because they don't understand it. All kinds of people fall into this group, but a large part of it believe in all kinds of conspiracy theories. Part of this group claims that if we teach evolution in science classes, we ought to teach creationism too -- oh, pardon me -- intelligent design. What cheek! I don't go to any churches or teach evolution to parishioners, so kindly keep your pseudoscience out of science classes. Thank you. Another part of this group are anti-vaxxers. *sigh* To be clear, I'm not including infants (who are too young to be vaccinated) or people who are not vaccinated due to allergies to a particular vaccine. Rather, I'm thinking of people who protest against vaccines, or claim that doctors vaccinating people are the same thing as the Nazis injecting their "inmates" with cholera and typhoid. (Don't laugh, I've seen people using that claim ... ... and, speaking as a person who was born with high-functioning autism, and who works with autistic kids and adults, it makes me mad as hell). One last group I have a major problem with are the people who claim that vaccinations cause autism and other neurodivergent phenomena. *shudder* Surely I don't have to explain why that's not true. Right? But even they pale into insignificance in comparison with the people who refuse to have their pets inoculated, because "the vaccine will give my Fluffy autism". Le sigh ... Oh, sorry -- one last group that raises my ire: the people who claim that they know what God (whoever he/she/it may be) wants. And now they want everybody to know. *sigh* There's one outside the major inner-city train station in my city. He cycles everywhere with a megaphone and tells people "the good news". Leave me the f*** alone, and STFU. Anyway, sorry to rant. Please carry on.
You'd be surprised by how fast you can become desensitized to all that lol. I used to find it annoying how they taught science and evolution in my catholic school and you still had students saying it didnt exist. In college, my biology class was taught by a nun who had a PhD in biology... And she had students calling her out like "if you are really a nun, you shouldn't be teaching this". Her response was "im a nun, not ignorant. You can believe in both the bible and science. You can have faith but you cant put all your faith in one basket. Hence, science" Also, as someone who works in the information profession... A lot of people who come into the library ask for materials to further their conspiracies. And when you cant find what they are looking for (because it doesnt exist), you are part of the problem and gatekeeping "the truth" Its not my job to tell them they are wrong or that the information they are looking for is not valid. "Earth is flat? Ok, here is a book on it, and a few articles off google. But if you are interested in science, you can find books about Earth and the solar system in the 500s. Have a nice day!" At this point, i dont even bat an eye
People forget that many of the early scientists were minks and priests. The majority of schools were run by the church.
I think I posted this before, but repetition is no sin. I hope, especially as I grow older. I was once out in an area of bluffs, buttes, and canyons (a state park) and happened to fall in with a couple nuns. We talked about the beauty of the landscape and I mentioned how it was the eroded floor of an ancient seabed. One of the nuns said, "I thought God made it." I said, "well, okay, but that's how He made it." And we were all three content with that.
I work in a wildlife museum. Most visitors are pleasant and happy to be there. Occasonally I get one who wants to be confrontational about "the poor slaughtered animals" or, more recently, how the earth is 6,000 years old. I politely told the latter gentleman that I wasn't open to discussing that matter, but if he had questions about the collection, I'd be happy to try and answer them. When he persisted, his wife said, "She told you she wasn't interested in the discussion. Leave her alone." That surprised me some, but I appreciated the back up. While I have no desire to be rude to people, I also have no desire to engage in endless, pointless debate. I am not paid enough for that.
I love that nun. If I were you, and someone asked me for a book about a flat earth, I would give them Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic. But ... all right, let's play this game. If the earth was really flat, how does this person explain the fact that a ship can sail off the horizon and disappear, but then come back and re-appear? Disappearing off the horizon -- fine, it might have fallen off "the edge". But how did it come back? Magic? Interestingly enough, as you mention, Greek geographers as long ago as 240 BC knew that the earth was round. (It's actually elliptical, but close enough). The number of educated people in the Middle Ages who thought the earth was flat is vanishingly small. The entire "flat earth" story only popped up in the 1800s, when erroneous "histories" by John William Draper, Andrew Dickson White, and Washington Irving were published. To give just one example: In 1828, Washington Irving's highly romanticized biography, A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, was published and mistaken by many for a scholarly work. The issue in the 1490s, as Irving rightly points out, was not the shape of the Earth, but its size, and the position of the east coast of Asia. The disputed point was not the shape of the Earth, nor the idea that going west would eventually lead to Japan and China, but the ability of European ships to sail that far across open seas. The small ships of the day simply could not carry enough food and water to reach Japan. The ships barely reached the eastern Caribbean islands. Already the crews were mutinous, not because of some fear of "sailing off the edge", but because they were running out of food and water with no chance of any new supplies within sailing distance. They were on the edge of starvation. Columbus and his men were saved only because they reached land and could re-supply. Otherwise, their ships would've foundered. So why did so many "historians" publish the "flat earth" story as fact? Because, during the Enlightenment and the so-called "Age of Reason", there was a strong anti-religious trend among intellectuals, and a desire to portray the "church fathers" as ignorant and bigoted about everything. (No doubt many of them were ignorant and bigoted, but not about the shape of the earth). There was also a desire to portray previous ages as ignorant, just to show how much progress had been made. Unfortunately, this led to the "flat earth" myth that we still have to live with.
