One of my favorite astronomy anecdotes is that Pluto was predicted based on the gravity perturbation of Uranus and Neptune but when Clyde Tombaugh found it, it wasn't where it was supposed to be and pretty soon was determined to not have enough mass to be the "Planet X" everyone was looking for. Then over the decades they recalculated the orbits of Neptune and Uranus with greater and greater precision until at some point in the '60s, Carl Sagan(?) observed that at the current rate of diminishment, Pluto would cease to exist some time in the late '80s. Of course, it's now impossible to find that quote because the whole world is all HURR DURR I LEARNED PLUTO HAZ PLANET SO WILL MY KIDZ without recognizing that the thing about science is it changes. I wonder if francopoli knows what I'm talking about.
That quote was from Cosmos, speaking about the discovery about the new-found moon circling the planet. I know it is out there, just need to work on my google-fu because sweet fucking retards of shit. You do a space search anymore and it is all churches and conspiracy tards and flat earth fuckery. These people must have tons of cash. Seeing that most of these guys are in their late 60's my guess is retired and nothing else to spend their SSI on. (sorry end of rant). The Neptune, perbutations? They cleaned the main telescope used during the data collection, this caused a change in the pointing of the equipment. This explains why nobody else outside of France were able to find the change in speed. It was not until Voyager 2 went by Neptune in 1989 that the exact mass of Neptune was worked out; with that data point all the math using Neptune to find "Planet X" went away.
Who? How much do you think Russia is dumping into this sector? How about business's AGW disinformation campaign? Does it even require active funding anymore? Can the snowball of stupidity be set rolling with only a few bucks? I think it can, but it does also feel to me like there's still a false/troll/bought component pushing forward on the perceived-as-grassroots "campain 4 stoopiditie" thread woven into the last couple of decades. I'm only correcting for the effects of living in my little bubble as best I can, mind you, but there does seem to be a disconnect from people on the streets vs. people on the internet. Folks I meet, elders included, are generally polite and trusting when they listen to me discuss anything technical that they're unfamiliar with. I'm hoping that the effects of the security accompanying anonymity on the internet (and two incomparably different age groups) aren't wholly accountable for this. If even half of these people on some of the internet forums and comments sections I've seen are real, we're fucked. No, really. If those are the actual ideas and thoughts of people on the other side of town or somewhere out in the countryside, we better make sure some serious legal penalties and mental treatments are an option (and do we have decent mental healthcare? nope). At least a few members of hubski don't go to (m)any of those realms of the internet, I think. I don't blame you. If this disconnect is real, that is to say, if the distrust of mainstream science truly is at the highest level in decades (and if the lower rungs of society are only going to get even angrier within the next few years), I think differences between the higher and lower tiers of education will not be sustainable in the near future, if they are right now. Then I arrive at a familiar question: "How do you fix a culture?". We can try, I guess. Cultural fitness selection will "fix" things, eventually, especially in this geopolitical climate, but the selection process doesn't give a shit about human life. Donald Trump might be a chemotherapy that some of our institutions end up benefiting from, in the long run, but I'm not sure that what's going on now isn't the new normal, or quickly on the way to becoming such. If this isn't a one-and-done type of political phenomenon, I might look at going global. But hell, Donny might save us all, somehow, in the long run. The "problem" may have compounded further under Hillary (or even Bernie). "Problem" being whichever one of the myriad things plaguing our society fails first. To me, student loan debt looks like it's first up to bat, but my view is obscured by all of the fake Monopoly money raining down from the upper deck. And all of this (frankly, bullshit) analysis is just as good as what's in the papers! Nobody seems to know hardly anything anymore, but that doesn't stop people from taking an absolutist stance, and I myself have been guilty of this inclination more than a few times. A calm, calculated approach doesn't sell. The sky is falling if we say it is, I guess. I agree with you though, francopoli, I think some very nasty disinformation designed to further U.S. anti-intellectualism isn't a conspiratorial notion, it's something we probably should've taken seriously before Putin figured out how to weaponize the internet. Speaking of which, I'll be looking for boots-on-the-ground, little-guy style reporting about the climate of French social media leading up to their election. This is a reminder to myself to post in that thread. Tell me what you see out there. My perspective is but one, and it's quite limited for the time being.You do a space search anymore and it is all churches and conspiracy tards and flat earth fuckery. These people must have tons of cash.
Ken Ham and Liberty University are both active in fighting godless science online. Add that in the shit show that is the baby boomer generation being retired, backwards, anti science, hell fucking anti reality, and flush with SSI cash and you really don't need foreign involvement to blame. Ads on Youtube, and promoted channels are not that expensive when you have a house paid off, free health care from the government and a retirement check. Editing to add. After I wrote the original comment I snooped around some of the flat earth and anti science stuff to see more about the people involved. Retirees and you people working with megachurches. And a few weird people here and here.
I've seen some people tactfully keep god in their lives while doing great science, and I'm trying to shy away from phrasing things in a militant tone. At least for now. The opposite comes more naturally anyway. I won't blame any one age bracket, either. My generation has plenty of dumbshits, trust me, and as we've beefed up standardized curriculum and increasingly formalized the classroom, critical thinking has suffered. No time for self-actualization. I'm not sure that those social media accounts have a one-to-one correspondence with American citizens. I'm also quite aware of how conspiratorial all of this must sound. Maybe my refusal to believe in the extent America's ignorance will come back to bite me.
The Big Bang Theory was proposed by the Vatican's Astronomer after looking through Einstein's equations. Darwin was a very devoutly religious man who had major a crisis of faith over evolution. Those are off the top of my head. Newton and Leibniz fought over calculus in part due to the religious differences between the two men. Ken Miller is a devout Catholic who gives pro-evolution speeches and presentations. We could sit here and name thousands of people in this camp. Religion is not the issue. Fanatic, regressive, nutballs are the problem. Ken Ham is a one-man atheist creation engine. Liberty University is using their narrow religious world view to fuck over the country. We could sit here and name thousands of people in this camp. Canada, Australia, UK, Ireland, Turkey, Germany and Russia are putting in a good fight against the American nutballs. I'd love to link a few but screw helping them rise in google searches.I've seen some people tactfully keep god in their lives while doing great science, and I'm trying to shy away from phrasing things in a militant tone. At least for now. The opposite comes more naturally anyway.
I'm not sure that those social media accounts have a one-to-one correspondence with American citizens.