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rubysue
Skeptic Friend

USA
199 Posts

Posted - 05/14/2001 :  21:17:16  Show Profile Send rubysue a Private Message
Howdy, Skeptic Friends Network. After all of your "shameless" advertisements over on the BA board, especially after I've posted a troll rant, I finally decided to register and check out the discussion here. I've actually read your board many times, but only as a lurker, not a poster.

rubysue "the hoax troll annihilator"

Lisa
SFN Regular

USA
1223 Posts

Posted - 05/14/2001 :  21:49:52   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Lisa a Private Message
'Bout time, too! Welcome Rubysue!!

Lisa

42
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Rift
Skeptic Friend

USA
333 Posts

Posted - 05/17/2001 :  00:48:06   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Rift a Private Message
Hi guys :)

Maybe we can talk about things Phil (wisely I might add) won't let us talk about over here.

That one guy that made that "abortion" crack about science really got my goat, but the board went down before I could respond. Trish beat me to it, was nicer then I would have been, lol.

BUT it IS an astronomy board after all...

PS- is it my imagination or did all us BAers pick Marvin the Martian for our avatars? lol

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Bozola
Skeptic Friend

USA
166 Posts

Posted - 05/17/2001 :  00:53:54   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Bozola's Homepage Send Bozola a Private Message
Hiya, everyone (belated)!

quote:

PS- is it my imagination or did all us BAers pick Marvin the Martian for our avatars? lol


It's only natural, Rift. ;)

Anyone remember The American Counter-Expeditionary Task Force to Mars, with Fred, Hugh, Five Dollar Bill O'Brady, and Norton Motorcycle?

...or am I just hallucinating?


Arf!
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Trish
SFN Addict

USA
2102 Posts

Posted - 05/17/2001 :  11:39:32   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Trish a Private Message
Hallucinating Bozola!

If it hadn't been the BAs board I might have gone off on it a little more. Bringing up abortion when I said who.

Oh well...no taste.

Trish
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Rift
Skeptic Friend

USA
333 Posts

Posted - 05/17/2001 :  14:37:14   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Rift a Private Message
Well, I nearly went off on it too. Blaming science for abortion? I find this whole Anti-Science attitude of a lot of people on the web very ironic. :)

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Trish
SFN Addict

USA
2102 Posts

Posted - 05/17/2001 :  14:46:51   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Trish a Private Message
Ah yes, science is responsible for all our woes. Indoor plumbing, central heating and cooling, electric lights, boobtubes, computers, etc. Gee, if they don't like science why don't they congregate under the trees during thunderstorms?

Trish
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Lisa
SFN Regular

USA
1223 Posts

Posted - 05/17/2001 :  15:41:38   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Lisa a Private Message
Okay guys, this was supposed to only be a couple of lines long, but I got into "rant mode" Mea Culpa. L.

No kidding. O'Roarke has pointed out (and if memory serves, so have Sagen, Shermer, and others) that these days, we're living in the gravy. (At least in the industrialized countries)
Infant mortality: down. We can expect to live longer than our grandparents. Overall quality of life, compared to a century ago, is awesome. (I could go downstairs and get the specific books for the references, but since you guys read pretty much the same stuff I do, why bother?)
For example, I have a very minor heart condition. Ever heard of Arrythmia (sp)? It's that "fight or flight" feeling in your chest. Everyone (according to my doctor) will experience it occacionally. I was getting about 20 attacks a day. My stress cariogram was all over the map. Thanks to a couple of little pills I take every morning, I lead a great life, and can do whatever I want.
I guess the folks who frost my shorts the most are the ones who bitch about medical research. My problem was minor, and in the 1990's easy to solve. There's still problems out there, and all the praying in the world won't solve them. Good, solid research by well-educated scientist/medical personnel will be the answer. Now, I know the news services like to scream their headlines and stir things up. But the last I read, we're going to lose 75% of the sub-Saharan population in the next 20 years due to AIDS. Less alarmists put it at about 40-45%. That's still a heck of a lot of people!

Science, research, and plain old curiosity have done a lot for us, but there's more to be done. Science education has got to be beefed up. The kids next door have already devoured their Mom's library, and mine, because they're not getting the information at school. Many public schools concentrate on the "warm fuzzy" courses, as not to offend anyone. Sad thing is, these kids are really interested in basic sciences! My next door neighbor was a language major, I'm in psych and electronics, and we're teaching her daughter and step-daughter the basics of earth science. Is there something wrong with this picture?
Whew, sorry for the rant, folks. Guess the "pray and it'll go away" crowd just gets to me.

Who do you serve? Who do you trust?
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@tomic
Administrator

USA
4607 Posts

Posted - 05/17/2001 :  15:48:49   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit @tomic's Homepage Send @tomic a Private Message
These kids need to get out on the web if the material isn't available at school, though obviously you would think a school would have the necessary books being a school and all. Why can't people figure out why Americans science and math skills are declining.

@tomic

Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law!
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Trish
SFN Addict

USA
2102 Posts

Posted - 05/20/2001 :  00:19:21   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Trish a Private Message
@tomic, one possible reason:

I have personal experience with is getting rid of teacher who are past their time in the classroom. My daughters second grade teacher was too lazy to work with the more advanced students. So instead of multiplication and fractions (which she had in first grade) she was bringing home simple addition. Her schoolmates hadn't even been introduced to subtraction yet. Consequently, she would come home questioning why she was smarter than the other kids. Tried explaining that her teacher had lower expectations of her students than her previous teachers. Her boredom in school eventually led to violent outbursts at home. She was frustrated with the entire system and didn't yet have the capacity to express that frustration.

Went to conferences, where her teacher politely kept trying to tell me how well she was doing in reading. Everytime I tried to steer the conversation to math, she'd push right back into language. This woman was nearly 70 years old and obviously of the belief that boys are better at math than girls and a girl should try to steer her education to language arts. Even so, the books she had my daughter reading were below her level of comprehension. When I finally pinned her down on the math subject, she claimed she had no help in the classroom and was too lazy to work with students more advanced than the rest of the class. Even more frightening was that as a girl, my daughter wouldn't need to understand math anyway. This about a child who at the age of five announced that she wanted to go to MIT.

Needless to say, I pulled my daughter from the school and sent her to a private school.

There's more to the issue, the school could do nothing about this woman because she was tenured. My question to the school was, 'How many childrens futures are you going to let this woman ruin?' I never did receive an answer to that one.

Spinnin' my wheels and gettin' no where - fast
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ljbrs
SFN Regular

USA
842 Posts

Posted - 06/03/2001 :  16:38:51   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send ljbrs a Private Message
Look, don't let the world's irrationality get you down. Do not let the lousy posts give you heart failure. Put yourselves in the shoes of the ignorant writers. They are the ones who should be experiencing chest pains and not you.

I feel very, very sorry for the poor souls who do not have science right. They are missing so very, very much. They, along with their pastors and priests, have created the universe as a ridiculous and impossible system. There is no way you or I will ever change any of their minds. Their minds were formed at an early age, and dreaming of never-never lands (or whatever) keeps them from confronting the cosmos (including our little portion of it) with open minds.

So, stop frothing at the mouth over imbeciles and enjoy the fact that you have a good handle on reality (at this point in scientific knowledge). Thank *whoever* or *whatever* that you are what you are and think as you think. If you had been reared in any other kind of family, you might have gone their way, too.

Amen...

ljbrs

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Tokyodreamer
SFN Regular

USA
1447 Posts

Posted - 06/04/2001 :  09:17:43   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Tokyodreamer a Private Message
quote:

There is no way you or I will ever change any of their minds. Their minds were formed at an early age, and dreaming of never-never lands (or whatever) keeps them from confronting the cosmos (including our little portion of it) with open minds.


I get very disheartened when I see this attitude. A great many atheists (myself included) started out as faithful believers in God (or insert-your-religion-here). I grew up Southern Baptist. I believed in God, ghosts, and magic. I have sinced joined the real world. Please don't give up on spreading reason to the believers of the irrational. It can be done, and is the worthiest of efforts.

------------

Gambatte kudasai!
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ljbrs
SFN Regular

USA
842 Posts

Posted - 06/04/2001 :  20:45:38   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send ljbrs a Private Message
Oh, it does not hurt to try to change ideas in the "true believers". However, not many people like change forced upon them. You would learn this in business that changing anything which is a great "seller" tends to diminish the number of customers for that product. Changing schedules for people irritates them. Non believers and atheists are one of the largest "religious" groups in the world. The numbers are given in the "World Almanac" and in the "Information Please Almanac".

Just realize that it is very, very difficult for anybody to change, including you. You were successful. The arguments behind changing have to be rock solid and "right" for you at the time you are offered them.

I, myself, have never, ever been religious. I had some help in that there were certain adults in my family who, although highly "intelligent", held obviously silly ideas. Others made blatant errors in their thinking that any halfway intelligent child could detect. It did not take much to become a non-believer in religion. Nothing at all. But I had help. A lot of help. I was lucky that some of my family were absolutely brilliant and very scientific. I followed after them. Very, very lucky...

ljbrs

If you KNEW better, you'd DO better!

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