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News Gathering vs. Confirmation Bias
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Science
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[S]cience is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.
— Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996) at p.32.
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[S]cience is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
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Tag Archives: science
Bill Nye Saves the World
Netflix: Emmy-winning host Bill Nye brings experts and famous guests to his lab for a talk show exploring scientific issues that touch our lives. Wow. Great show! Even better than I was hoping.
Also tagged education, entertainment, reason, skepticism
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Eugene Cernan, last man on the moon, dies
R.I.P. Gene Cernan, Apollo 17 Commander and the last man to make a footprint on the surface of the moon.
Also tagged history, rip/remembrance, space
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A Skeptical Response to Science Denial
So, study after study confirms an overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. But what does the average person think about the consensus? A Yale survey of Americans found that on average, people think that 67 percent of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming. That already sounds disturbingly low, but it’s even worse […]
Also tagged climate, reason, skepticism
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The Last Steps
Great Big Story: On December 7, 1972, NASA launched Apollo 17, a lunar mission crewed by Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans and Harrison Schmitt. It would be the last time humans traveled beyond low Earth orbit, the last time man landed on another celestial body, and the last time man went to the moon. The Last […]
Nice Shot! Balancing the Supermoon on the St. Louis Arch
The supermoon appears to balance on top of the St. Louis arch. Photographer David Carson shot with a Canon 1DX. The exposure was ISO 250, shutter speed 180, aperture f4.5.
Also tagged photography
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The Unchained Goddess (1958)
We’ve known about anthropogenic global warming for decades and decades… “The Unchained Goddess” (1958), produced by Frank Capra and the fourth film in the Bell Laboratories Science Series (1956-1964): Even now, man may be unwittingly changing the world’s climate through the waste products of his civilization. Due to our release through factories and automobiles every […]
Cosmodrome
Netflix: Get a look at the sophisticated engines Russia designed for a Cold War-era moon landing and how a changing world led them to a strange fate. Excellent film. Anything space-related, especially Mercury-Gemini-Apollo era, you can sign me up.
Can science stop the looming banana extinction?
The banana is the world’s most popular fruit crop, with over 100 million metric tons produced annually in over 130 tropical and subtropical countries. Edible bananas are the result of a genetic accident in nature that created the seedless fruit we enjoy today. Virtually all the bananas sold across the Western world belong to the […]
R.I.P. John Nash
Yahoo News Digest: John Forbes Nash Jr., a mathematical genius whose struggle with schizophrenia was chronicled in the 2001 movie “A Beautiful Mind,” has died along with his wife in a car crash on the New Jersey Turnpike. He was 86.
Also tagged rip/remembrance
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“…or you can believe the Senator with the snowball.”
Scientific American’s ’60-Second Science’ podcast for March 2, 2015: Climate Skeptic Senator Burned after Snowball Stunt Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe carried a snowball onto the Senate floor to insinuate that climate change was not real, after which Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse torched Inhofe’s argument. Steve Mirsky reports “You can believe NASA and you can […]
Also tagged climate, denialism, government, politics
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