If you are a scientist, what are you supposed to make of the fact that one of the two major political parties in the United States has grown stone-cold stupid?
Education in science will be opt-out in Missouri, if a bill requiring schools to notify parents if “the theory of evolution by natural selection” is being taught at their child’s school passes.
The bill proposed by Republican State Rep. Rick Brattin had its first public hearing Thursday. Brattin has described teaching only evolution in school as “indoctrination” to local TV.
The language of the bill makes little provision separating discussion of the specifics of evolutionary biology from any other element of biology upon which evolutionary theory rests, like anthropology, examination of dinosaur fossils, genetic sciences, disease or modern medicine.
Fox News contributor George Will on Sunday argued that climate change was a hoax because the world had also gotten warmer during the Middle Ages…
“I’m one of those who are called deniers,” Will admitted. “Of course the climate is changing, it’s always changing. That’s what gave us the medieval warm period. That’s what gave us — subsequent to that for centuries — the Little Ice Age. Of course it’s changing.”
Will said that the only question was “how much wealth are we going to forego creating” by trying to stop the climate from changing?
Fox News contributor Kirsten Powers asserted that climate change had become an “article of faith” for liberals, making the president’s effort an “overtly political move.”
Alan Keyes claims that Rep. Michele Bachmann’s plan to sue President Obama doesn’t go far enough and may actually aid Obama’s “dictatorship.”
Instead, he wants the Tea Party darling — who last year accused Obama of “committing impeachable offenses” — to join his Jesus Christ-endorsed campaign to get congressional candidates to pledge to support the impeachment and removal of the president.
Americans are enthusiastic about the promise of science but lack basic knowledge of it, with one in four unaware that the Earth revolves around the Sun, said a poll out Friday.
The survey included more than 2,200 people in the United States and was conducted by the National Science Foundation. Nine questions about physical and biological science were on the quiz, and the average score — 6.5 correct — was barely a passing grade.
Just 74 percent of respondents knew that the Earth revolved around the Sun, according to the results released at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago.
I included Alan Keyes in my examples because the 26% of Americans who don’t know that the Earth orbits the Sun is suspiciously similar to the estimation that Kung Fu Monkey made on October 7, 2005 that the Crazification Factor is pegged at twenty-seven percent.
John: Hey, Bush is now at 37% approval. I feel much less like Kevin McCarthy screaming in traffic. But I wonder what his base is —
Tyrone: 27%.
John: … you said that immmediately, and with some authority.
Tyrone: Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. Hell, even like 5% of Democrats voted for him. That’s crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population.
John: Objectively crazy or crazy vis-a-vis my own inertial reference frame for rational behaviour? I mean, are you creating the Theory of Special Crazification or General Crazification?
Tyrone: Hadn’t thought about it. Let’s split the difference. Half just have worldviews which lead them to disagree with what you consider rationality even though they arrive at their positions through rational means, and the other half are the core of the Crazification — either genuinely crazy; or so woefully misinformed about how the world works, the bases for their decision making is so flawed they may as well be crazy.
John: You realize this leads to there being over 30 million crazy people in the US?
Tyrone: Does that seem wrong?
John: … a bit low, actually.
As it turned out, Bush actually plummeted to 25% in three separate Gallup polls, but I attribute that to a combination of the margin of error and Gallup’s inability to poll at an acceptable level. I am confident that Alan Keyes’ campaign against Barack Obama proved that 27% is the correct number.
One party is deeply cynical and takes advantage of the last educated and most vulnerable members of our society, getting them to vote against their own interests. Long term, this is a form of political suicide. But there are a number of elections between here and oblivion.
I don’t buy the voting against their interests argument anymore. They’re getting something out of it, economic or otherwise.
People vote for something, it can either be something positive or to vote for something that makes them less afraid. Whether it’s something positive or fear depends on the people running and the atmosphere at the time of the election.
The way we win is not by being louder than the other side but by having the positive vision of the future. It won’t be easy though.
Clearly they’re voting for something. A sense of security, a belief in supposed values or rightness of cause. But it’s stuff that has no basis in reality. The ACA makes people’s lives better. Cutting taxes for oligarchs and corporations does not.
The argument that people vote against their economic interests is half right.
They are voting against their economic interests in terms of having a secure job that pays well and allows people freedom to do other things.
They aren’t voting against their economic interests in the sense that they’re helping their masters keep everyone’s wage low. And they know damn well that minorities, women, and other people are going to have a harder time then they will.
Ignorant, low educated and hateful people might not be voting for their own economic interests by voting for the fascist oligarchs, but they’re voting in their economic interests by keeping the “others” in a worse position.
“Will said that the only question was “how much wealth are we going to forego creating” by trying to stop the climate from changing?”
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This is one of the stupidest things Will has said. A more logical question is how much wealth are we going to forego creating by sticking our heads in the sand and ignoring climate change? There is good old fashioned money to be made by developing crops that can adapt to or are more suitable for a changing climate, engineering, zoning, building materials and designs to adapt to a changing shoreline, and on and on and on.
But no, let’s just stick our fingers in our ears and go lalala. Go right ahead, Will.
Atheist Socialist Lies!!! The Bible says Joshua made the Sun stand still, so obviously it revolves around the Earth! Otherwise God would have made the Earth stand still! And the Earth is flat! The Bible says it has four corners!
Our youth must be shielded from these Atheist Socialist lies!
Will said that the only question was “how much wealth are we going to forego creating” by trying to stop the climate from changing?
I’ve come to the conclusion that Will doesn’t really believe this shit. He’s taken a page from Ann Coulter’s book, saying outrageous crap brings attention. Which brings the money train. And that is the bottom line.
One more bit of grist for the mill.
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2014/02/public-opinion-astrology-dumb
Is it possible that a number of those people mistake “astrology” for “astronomy”?
Also, regarding the Earth revolving around the sun, I wonder how the survey dealt with people who thought the question was so absurd that they decided to mess with the survey rather than answer accurately. I can’t help but be suspicious at those numbers.
Donald Trump thinks the world revolves around Donald Trump, so we’re used to celebrities being stupid. At least Ms. Perry has a bit of talent.
When did US parents stop wanting their kids to learn more than they had had the opportunity to learn? Weren’t there a few decades when evolution wasn’t even that controversial?
Not at all coincidental that the backlash against education began right along with the expansions of civil rights and liberties and less income/wealth disparities. The bloody elites and pulpits won.
Marie, how many people do you know that understand evolution and natural selection?
This is what I don’t understand: the worry of the Christianists about teaching their “theory” or as in this case letting parents opt their kids out — clearly none of the adults learned a damn thing about evolution or natural selection in school.
What makes them think kids will learn intelligent design? In the latter case, what makes them think that their children will be able to get a job in any kind of medical field? Will they just be construction workers, or moochers?
Well, they don’t really understand the science in the first place, and what a person actually needs to know about it to become a doctor. And there are plenty of doctors who are religious and reject evolution(Tom Coburn, Paul Broun, Bill Frist, just for examples of some wingnut politicians with M.D.s), so they can’t imagine there being a conflict.
And if there is some sort of issue with prospective physicians somehow not being able to get their degrees because of a lack of understanding of evolution . . . well, it’s just further evidence of how Christians are being unfairly persecuted because of their faith. As well as further support for the notion that if only everyone would conform first and foremost to good and true Christian values, then people could become doctors without having to learn anything about that immoral evolution garbage, which is entirely unnecessary anyway and only exists so godless atheists can corrupt people, etc., etc.
It would probably have a much greater impact for those with children who would like go on to do research in biological sciences, but without being exposed to science at an early age, not many of them are likely to decide to go down that path. Many of these kids could probably easily get their M.D.s with only ever having the slightest brush with evolution. And besides, being a physician is a proper trade (and pays pretty well), whereas research science is probably less lucrative– and depending on the area of study– somewhat less respectable, or even entirely pointless to many a hardcore Christianist (everything one really needs to know is in the Bible, after all).
Obviously Missouri isn’t looking towards their schools preparing students for college since science classes are a prerequisite for acceptance. Oh…yeah…higher education, mmm just gets in the way of a good job at a fast food chain.
And then there’s Marcia Blackburn. Someday it would be nice to toss her ‘there is no consensus among scientists’ back at her with the recognition that the NIH has thousands of Clinical Trials going on in which there is never and can never be 100% assurance that any given drug will work every time for every patient.
Gawd who allows these people to breed?
Isn’t Kung Fu Monkey also the one who had that famous quote about LOTR and Ayn Rand?
This one?
Yes!!!!!!!!!
The answer to BooMan’s question is that not very many research scientists are Republicans, for obviously good reasons.
This whole business has been steadily building since the seventies. For the highlights, check out “Managing Our Way to Economic Decline” in the Harvard Business Review, July 1980. This article is widely regarded as eerily prescient.
It’s not Reagan’s fault, personally, but he stands as a convenient totem representing the forces that put him and his cohort into power in both Government and Business and allowed them to eat this country whole.
Since the beginning of time people have feared scientists because we ask dangerous and uncomfortable questions, but they tolerate us in so far as we make possible the engineers and technicians who market cool toys and design the weapons that make us powerful. By way of example, massive government investment in silicon chip technology for the military-industrial complex was the matrix from which the civilian computing market emerged with all its attendant penumbrae and emanations.
Come the eighties, the corporate types strangled the great industrial research laboratories in the name of boosting short term returns and passed the job of basic research over to the universities. Then the end of the Cold War choked off a lot of the defense contracting jobs, and opened the gates of immigration to a flood of top notch Soviet scientists fleeing starvation in the old country. The so called tech sector picked up a bit of the slack, in the way that defined contribution 401(k) plans picked up the slack on the elimination of defined benefit pension plans: nice, sort of, but nowhere near up to the job.
And all the while the seething mass of Americans paid lip service to Science, by which they meant plasma TVs and portable telephones, while roundly abusing scientists. Just ask an American about nuclear radiation, or windmill disease, or vaccines and autism, and stand back to receive a high pressure stream of fearfully ignorant gibberish.
So now the universities can’t do the job anymore, disastrously underfunded but that’s irrelevant because there are no jobs requiring an advanced degree anyway. Who on Earth, who has the smarts and tenacity to be successful as a scientist, would be so foolish as to set out on the long, arduous, and expensive path of becoming a scientist when he might quickly, easily, and cheaply land a lucrative position as mouthpiece for the one percent?
Under these circumstance, the real surprise is that Americans are as educated and and science savvy as they are.