Your Government In Action Options

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

http://sciencedems.house.gov/press/PRArtic...spx?NewsID=1007 :

"[House] Science [Committee] Democrats lauded an agreement reached today on
the Conference Report for S. 1281, the NASA Authorization Act of 2005.
Following today's approval by the conference committee, the legislation is
tentatively scheduled for consideration by the full House this week...

"During the conference, Rep. Jackson-Lee was a strong proponent for... more
educational programs in the sciences for minorities..."

I should hope so, given that she showed up at JPL a few days after the Mars
Pathfinder landing and asked if it could photograph Neil Armstrong's
footprints.

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

I remember a story when I was in an UFO association, incredible but true: a guy came to us, telling he was pursued by a round bright spaceship, at night, and from mad terror he speeded up with his car on the small countryside roads, just to find that the "spaceship" was still above him...
After one minute of questionning it appeared that the "spaceship" was just the full Moon...


Still with the Moon, there are still many people here who believe that we cannot see the Moon at day. This is really incredible, they read this into a mickey comic when they are a child, and never raised their nose toward the sky to see it is not true.

That people don't know about basic astronomy is already a problem, but when they even not SEE...

[ljk4-1]

And we have a former Canadian defense minister who recently declared that the US is planning for an "intergalactic" war as the reason for raising its defense budget.

I've known college-educated people who did not know what stars were, that the Moon had craters, and that the Sun "rose" in the east and "set" in the west.

I've met grown men who not only did not know what sundogs or moon rings were, but when shown them in reality were actually fearful of them. No, I did not time travel to 1305 Europe. I am thinking of ways to make a fortune during the next eclipse, however.

I frequently visit a local university observatory that has open house nights on Fridays. More often than not, it is the little children who know more about the stars and planets than their parents or the students who attend the college (and it ain't no trade school).

I taught an adult ed course on basic astronomy in the 1990s. I once asked my students - all adults - who was the first man to set foot on the Moon. I got mostly blank stares, with one student finally making the guess of John Glenn.

I had a high school student in my class who started out really eager to become an astronomer - until she discovered that there was math involved. I kid you not.

I remember an ABC news correspondent (Lynne Neary or Shear?) asking Carl Sagan when we were going to launch a manned mission to a star that was recently discovered at the time to have a protoplanetary disk.

I watched Charlie Rose interview two of the head managers of the Mars Rovers shortly after Spirit's landing in 2004 and essentially spend most of his time declaring he knew nothing about what NASA did or what was going on with Mars.

I remember either MacNeil or Lehrer (of the PBS MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour) become astonished to learn from someone he was interviewing that geosynchronous communications satellites orbit Earth at 22,000 miles altitude.

I recall the time David Grinspoon of Venus Revealed and Lonely Planet fame being "interviewed" by the DJs of a local Boston radio station who ended up asking him inane questions about global warming and other nonsense and not about Venus, the real reason he was there.

And on and on and on....

[JRehling]

I've known college-educated people who did not know what stars were, that the Moon had craters, and that the Sun "rose" in the east and "set" in the west.

Before we draw conclusions from this... do you (any reader in particular) know that some languages have postpositions instead of prepositions? That SVO and SOV are the most common word orders of languages, but all six possible word orders have been know to occur? That languages with postpositions tend to be SOV? That South America has the most native languages of any continent? That Papua New Guinea has more than any other continent? Etc...

There is a whole world of less-obscure to more-obscure knowledge to be known about dozens of different fields. A common trend among people who who have specialized in one is to endlessly tsk-tsk the rest of the world because they haven't also specialized in that field. Probably the number of people who don't know the basics of comparative linguistics is about the same as the number of people who don't know the basics of astronomy. But it's not a reasonable conclusion that both of those population-wide shortcomings is a shame. What would your education consist of: 700 brief introductions to every field?

All told, if someone was going to pick a field not to know anything about, astronomy is a hell of a good choice in terms of day to day usefulness.

For the nth time, I'll say that the "tsk-tsk"ing is not a flattering characteristic of the cognoscenti. We can easily devise basic tests that you, too, would get a zero on.

[ljk4-1]

Before we draw conclusions from this... do you (any reader in particular) know that some languages have postpositions instead of prepositions? That SVO and SOV are the most common word orders of languages, but all six possible word orders have been know to occur? That languages with postpositions tend to be SOV? That South America has the most native languages of any continent? That Papua New Guinea has more than any other continent? Etc...

There is a whole world of less-obscure to more-obscure knowledge to be known about dozens of different fields. A common trend among people who who have specialized in one is to endlessly tsk-tsk the rest of the world because they haven't also specialized in that field. Probably the number of people who don't know the basics of comparative linguistics is about the same as the number of people who don't know the basics of astronomy. But it's not a reasonable conclusion that both of those population-wide shortcomings is a shame. What would your education consist of: 700 brief introductions to every field?

All told, if someone was going to pick a field not to know anything about, astronomy is a hell of a good choice in terms of day to day usefulness.

For the nth time, I'll say that the "tsk-tsk"ing is not a flattering characteristic of the cognoscenti. We can easily devise basic tests that you, too, would get a zero on.

People should have at least a basic knowledge about the wider Universe they live in. They don't need to become astronomers as a result, but I think having a bigger perspective than the one they usually get stuck on this planet and self-centered group of societies will go a long way towards makig things better for all of us in the long run.

Yes, everyone should know that stars are other suns, that we live on a finite planet orbiting a star in a galaxy of stars. That the Universe is composed of billions of galaxies full of such stars. If people don't know what kind of place they really live in, we might as well go back to a Ptolemaic system.

There was a good reason Carl Sagan had the Voyager 1 engineers point the space probe's cameras back at the Sol system in 1990. The engineers objected that nothing could worthwhile could be seen. Sagan said that was the point.

[JRehling]

Sure enough!

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

When I see somebody who don't know that stars are suns, I don't feel superior (and I think the same goes for most members of this forum) I just feel rather sad that they don't know for such basic life facts. Eventually I had to explain these facts to third world people, who had some excuse to be ignorant; so I learned them readily. But when I see people who HAD MANY OPPORTUNITIES TO KNOW, especially politicians or media people, (who are so often telling us what we must do or not, and how we must live) or people who REFUSE TO KNOW because they are full of prejudices of ideologies, I think there is somewhere a gross failure.

7000 basic topics to know? Yes we live in a difficult world, where we must fight every hour of the day and every day of the life to obtain tiny pieces of understanding, even of very useful and relevant understanding, a world where laziness and feeling unconcerned are the worse mistakes. But we are not 5 years old, we are all grown up, and had several years of school. If you divide all these hours of studying by 7000, that still makes 70 minutes which are enough to understand basic astronomy facts, and basic facts about many things else.

The problem is that, since the school is mandatory, we all had more or less lessons on basic astronomy facts, and basic facts on many other subject. But there are people who were not interested by knowing the universe, just by their egocentric gesticulations.

I think for instance to city gangs, who had the same school opportunities than us, but who rejected everything, just holding the walls all the night long, without even noticing these tiny specs of light (often only messengers of hope in the ghettos). I think at all these people interested into egocentered strategies to grab favours or money, I think to all these people who were skilful enough to gather our votes or to get the best audimat, and who now keep with a great smile spreading their ignorancce of so many basic facts (not just astronomy, thoroughly all the 7000 without any exception).

That all does makes me feel superior, I just feel sad for them.

[JRehling]

Interesting thought.

[ljk4-1]

I allow that what stars are, and what object the Earth orbits are now basic life facts. The presence of Moon craters is not, any more or less than the top ten fashion designers active today comprise a basic life fact. Nor is it a basic life fact how many galaxies there are (even that there are more than ten).

I think a basic Internet truism is that you know you have a good argument when people argue against some trumped-up version of what you are saying instead of what you have actually said.
I am reminded of an episode of thirtySomething in which a successful adult remembered the "city gang" members at his school, and what it was like when they were all 15 years old. He said, "I got to be Class President and they got to have sex." Don't be so sure that all of the city gang members are missing life while all of the Class Presidents are experiencing life fully.

Pretend for a moment that astronomy and academia are the world you live on, and consider visiting other people's worlds, not just as you see them from 35,000,000 km away.

You know that interest in astronomy and space science is still a minority in this world. Which is even more ironic when you realize how vast the Universe is compared to us wee little bugs on one tiny little dust mote.

And if you are concerned about some of us not having any interests or knowledge beyond those two fields, fear not. I have many interests, but this forum is focused on space, so that is what I discuss (mainly). And as far as I am concerned, the Universe and all its implications are most important for humanity in terms of our survival and growth. As Richard T. said, when I hear someone spouting ignorance about the Cosmos, I am saddened, not amused.

As for the fear of what science ignorance could bring for society, read this quote from George Orwell's 1984 between Winston Smith and O'Brien:

'But you do not! You are not even masters of this planet. What about Eurasia and Eastasia? You have not conquered them yet.'

'Unimportant. We shall conquer them when it suits us. And if we did not, what difference would it make? We can shut them out of existence. Oceania is the world.'

'But the world itself is only a speck of dust. And man is tiny helpless! How long has he been in existence? For millions of years the earth was uninhabited.'

'Nonsense. The earth is as old as we are, no older. How could it be older? Nothing exists except through human consciousness.'

'But the rocks are full of the bones of extinct animals -- mammoths and mastodons and enormous reptiles which lived here long before man was ever heard of.'

'Have you ever seen those bones, Winston? Of course not. Nineteenth-century biologists invented them. Before man there was nothing. After man, if he could come to an end, there would be nothing. Outside man there is nothing.'

'But the whole universe is outside us. Look at the stars! Some of them are a million light-years away. They are out of our reach for ever.'

'What are the stars?' said O'Brien indifferently. 'They are bits of fire a few kilometres away. We could reach them if we wanted to. Or we could blot them out. The earth is the centre of the universe. The sun and the stars go round it.'

Winston made another convulsive movement. This time he did not say anything. O'Brien continued as though answering a spoken objection:

'For certain purposes, of course, that is not true. When we navigate the ocean, or when we predict an eclipse, we often find it convenient to assume that the earth goes round the sun and that the stars are millions upon millions of kilometres away. But what of it? Do you suppose it is beyond us to produce a dual system of astronomy? The stars can be near or distant, according as we need them. Do you suppose our mathematicians are unequal to that? Have you forgotten doublethink?'

Winston shrank back upon the bed. Whatever he said, the swift answer crushed him like a bludgeon. And yet he knew, he knew, that he was in the right. The belief that nothing exists outside your own mind -- surely there must be some way of demonstrating that it was false? Had it not been exposed long ago as a fallacy? There was even a name for it, which he had forgotten. A faint smile twitched the corners of O'Brien's mouth as he looked down at him.

'I told you, Winston,' he said, 'that metaphysics is not your strong point. The word you are trying to think of is solipsism. But you are mistaken. This is not solipsism. Collective solipsism, if you like. But that is a different thing: in fact, the opposite thing. All this is a digression,' he added in a different tone. 'The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men.'

The entire novel is online here:

http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/

If you think this is an exagerration or paranoia, just see some of the recent news.