.
.
The NYTImes chats with Dr. Neil Degrasse Tyson:
… Is he saying that we treat science and mathematics shabbily in this country, where many people are all too proud to admit to a fear of all sums? Actually, Dr. Tyson said, “I don’t think the country’s less literate in math and science than ever before.”
“I cite, for example, how familiar people are with images from the Hubble telescope,” he said. “The Hubble did not require a P.R. person to become famous. It did all the P.R. on its own.”…
Here’s the real problem, as he sees it: “You have people who are not scientifically literate who have risen to positions of power and control,” whether on local school boards or in Congress. He mentioned Representative Paul C. Broun, a Georgia Republican (and doctor) who sits on the House Science Committee and who says the world is 9,000 years old and was literally created in six days.
Voters, Dr. Tyson said, need to grasp the consequences of their electoral choices, especially if they produce officials who “undermine the source of creativity for tomorrow’s economy.” Meddle with the citizenry’s understanding of science and technology, he said, and people “will emerge on the other side incapable of making the discoveries and innovations that the nation requires in order to stay economically competitive.” …
Apart from waiting for the asteroid (Apophis isn’t due again till 2029), what’s on the agenda for the start of another work week?
Ben Cisco
In the middle of opening a new headquarters building. How’s it going? The IT department is on schedule to move in and set up shop tomorrow. Customer Service, Senior staff, and Engineering (home of the project “manager” for the move) move in TODAY. I guess Megamind thought Keebler elves were going to do the work in our absence.
I love my job, but a couple of people around here have thought processes that a lobotomy would acutally improve.
End transmission.
raven
It’s bad enough living in that cretins district, reading his name this early really sucks!
raven
@Ben Cisco: We’re beginning a major addition to our house and watched “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House” with Myrna Loy and Cary Grant last night. We’re trying to make sure IT is in first!
SiubhanDuinne
Okay, who thought it was cute to put up a big ” Stand With Rand” money bomb ad (Donate Rand2016) at the top of this thread?
PurpleGirl
Up early and planning a morning at my hospital clinic to take care of some paperwork stuff. (I need a new ID card by this Friday.)
@SiubhanDuinne: The stuff I miss because I use AdBlock and FlashBlock.
ulee
Apparently they can’t predict the approach of asteroids the size of city blocks until a couple of days before they are detected. Stock up. Get ready. It’s coming on Wednesday. Well, they can’t say for sure, but hey…
a
Winston Smith
We like reference the “young bucks on welfare eating prime rib” here on Balloon Juice, but do wingnuts actually say that? Yes. The linked article actually cites a common viral Facebook post as a source.
This was written just a few weeks ago. Bookmark it in case you need a text-book example. The racist comments are precious, too.
HeartlandLiberal
Well, retirement is letting me and wife resume playing duplicate bridge, which is fun, and one heck of a mental challenge.
I am in middle of planning this year’s vegetable garden. I sent a soil sample of for analysis Saturday, expect results by Friday. I hope to have garden tilled and prepared if it is dry enough, and greens and cabbages in the ground within 10 days, all the early crops I can plant and get started.
I do have some reports to write for a database application I continue to work on as a part-time consulting job. Even in retirement extra money is appreciated.
FWIW, it hit 68 degrees here in South Central Indiana yesterday. On March 10th. The Geothermal furnace has been simply turned off and fan left on for air circulation for 36 hours, and it is still 66 degrees in the house, it only cooled down to mid-fifties overnight.
ulee
Is it just me or all comments awaiting moderation?
HeartlandLiberal
Oh, I forgot. Celebrating since Indiana Hoosiers defeated Michigan at Michigan yesterday, winning the Big Ten Title for first time in about 20 years, I think it is. I felt bad for the Michigan player whose almost game winning basket rolled around half the rim of the basket slowly, and fell out into hands of IU player, who passed it off as the last three seconds expired. But then again, IU lost to Illinois in the same sort of last moment play, it is part of the game.
Having working at IU Athletics for 15 years preceding retirement, I want to just point out what a good coach Tom Crean is. He took a program which literally was rubble five years ago. He had to dismiss all of the kids Kelvin Sampson had brought in. He started with two seniors he kept, who were just walk-ons. He literally rebuilt a program from scratch. He recruited kids like Oladipo and Sheehey, ranked down around 146 – 147 by recruiting stats, because he saw their potential as players.
It is really quite an amazing story of hard work and commitment by coach and players to get to this point at Indiana basketball.
ulee
I can’t get an answer to my question. An airplane just flew over my head but I think it may be a drone. When did this site get so lame?
Ben Cisco
@raven: Good luck on the project.
As for my adventure, this guy has been spectacularly petty about the whole business. He got a bug up his hindquarters b/c we wouldn’t buy iPhones or allow them to connect to our internal wireless network. He’s badgered the only four people above me in the management chain about it (apparently b/c as a non-manager, I couldn’t have possibly known what I was talking about) to the point where he “bought” his own, comped by the company (SERIOUSLY?).
Why yes, I’m steamed about it. Yes I am.
Nicole
I’ve been up for several hours, working. I do audio recording at home and our upstairs neighbor, while a lovely person, was apparently an elephant in a previous life and still walks like one. So I have to be awake when the rest of the building isn’t.
No home improvements, though we are finally going through our massive pile of CDs, transferring what we want to hard drives and getting rid of the hard copies. The only CD player we have any more is the desktop’s drive, so they really are just taking up space. Lots and lots of space.
Calming Influence
@raven I’m trying to remember:
“It’s not exactly a robin’s egg blue…”
dr. bloor
I’m never forgiving that goddamn rock for missing us this time around.
HeartlandLiberal
Correcting one error: Hoosiers won the Big Ten basketball title for first time since 2002, in other words, in ten years. My dyslexic memory images at work, I guess.
raven
@HeartlandLiberal: Fuck Indiana, GO Illini!!!!@
HeartlandLiberal
@Nicole: Please tell me you have a backup drive to image all of this collection? I speak from 30 years system experience, and as someone who has seen people and companies lose data irretrievably because they did NOT grasp the concept of regular backups.
I now have even started adding second drives in all my key PCs, especially the ones used for work, at home, and use Western Digital Achronis to periodically image the main drive, including the boot sectors, so if my drive fails, I just reconnect the cables to the backup drive, and boot the PC.
Actually, you remind me that now I am retired I can maybe get to one of my projects, and that is burning a lot of our vinyl LPs accumulated for over fifty-five years to CDs, at least the ones we really like to still listen to often, so we can play them somewhere besides the one remaining turntable in my upstairs office.
raven
@Calming Influence: Yea, that was hilarious, my bride is a color FREAK so we had a good laugh.
Calming Influence
Muriel Blandings (Myrna Loy): “I want it to be a soft green, not as blue-green as a robin’s egg, but not as yellow-green as daffodil buds. Now, the only sample I could get is a little too yellow, but don’t let whoever does it go to the other extreme and get it too blue. It should just be a sort of grayish-yellow-green. Now, the dining room. I’d like yellow. Not just yellow; a very gay yellow. Something bright and sunshine-y. I tell you, Mr. PeDelford, if you’ll send one of your men to the grocer for a pound of their best butter, and match that exactly, you can’t go wrong! Now, this is the paper we’re going to use in the hall. It’s flowered, but I don’t want the ceiling to match any of the colors of the flowers. There’s some little dots in the background, and it’s these dots I want you to match. Not the little greenish dot near the hollyhock leaf, but the little bluish dot between the rosebud and the delphinium blossom. Is that clear? Now the kitchen is to be white. Not a cold, antiseptic hospital white. A little warmer, but still, not to suggest any other color but white. Now for the powder room – in here – I want you to match this thread, and don’t lose it. It’s the only spool I have and I had an awful time finding it! As you can see, it’s practically an apple red. Somewhere between a healthy winesap and an unripened Jonathan.”
Mr. PeDelford (Painting contractor, speaking to assistant painter): “You got that Charlie?”
Charlie: “Red, green, blue, yellow, white.”
Mr. PeDelford: “Check.”
raven
Wonder what they are doing at Camp Casey this morning?
raven
@Calming Influence: What a great Facebook update!
JPL
@raven: Well that’s one way to get attention. What’s Joe yelling about this morning.
Face
“Produce politicians who oppose science”?
Feature, not bug
raven
@JPL: Our cable company moved MSNBC to digital so I don’t get it on the kitchen TV. I like Soledad but she’s leaving so I’ll have to figure out plan C.
Joey Maloney
Don’t panic, and don’t forget to bring a towel.
Todd Dugdale
One of the two big comets of 2013 makes its best showing this week. Tuesday and Wednesday, immediately after sunset. Binoculars are recommended for a good view of the tail. It should be just to one side of the crescent moon.
The much bigger comet will be in November.
NotMax
@raven
Might try something that worked for me when C-SPAN disappeared from my (non-digital) cable line-up.
When I next went to their office, I asked about that.
The clerk looked left, then right, a little furtively. Asked me “Is the cable hooked directly to your TV or do you have one of our boxes?” I affirmed the latter – no box necessary for my chosen level of service. She then turned around, walked to a set of locked cabinets, fished a key from a metal box atop the cabinet out and opened a lower drawer, extracting one sheet of paper which she proceeded to fold into thirds and, after locking back up and putting the key back, slid it across the counter to me, carefully placing it underneath the bill and receipt for the payment I’d just made.
When I got back to the car, unfolded it and there was a somewhat fuzzy and faded printed list (including C-SPAN) of channels and numbers to input using the TV’s remote, titled “How To Get Certain Channels Without Digital Service.”
JPL
What’s up with all this pope coverage? I wouldn’t mind coverage on vatileaks but the selection of a new Pope doesn’t really interest me.
Calming Influence
@raven: One of our favorite movies, and yes; we’ve been through it too. From 30 years experience we believe that Karma Rules say watching “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House”at any point in the construction process means your renovation is going to turn out O.K. (It might turn out OK if you don’t watch it, but I wouldn’t risk it.)
Schlemizel
I was bored so I clicked on the FEMA ad
So much panic and paranoia it is hilarious. It is Count Floyd level of very scaaaaaarrry boys and girls!
“46 million on food stamps when the program goes bankrupt!” “they will become a mob, many of them armed”
“MTV is currently showing government commercials showing marshal law in action”
This guy was trained by a vet who came how & started his own “elitist survival training program”
The family survival guide – on sale today! only $39 regularly $97
Raven
@NotMax: Wow, cool. They gave me one free (for a year) converter and I already have the high caliber one for my main set. They are in the process of phasing out analog entirely and just started with six. I wired the house with drops in every room but I knew some day they’d figure out a way to stop that. Another possibility is one of the satellite receivers that works on rf.
Raven
@Calming Influence: I did major renovations when we bought “this old house” 13 years ago but that qas under the guidance off my father-in-law who was an old school builder. He and my bride came up with all the ideas and design and I did the work (except the finish carpentry, sheet rock and electrical). This go-around is going tom be done by a contractor that we know well and trust. I’m doing dummy grunt work but the lion’s share is going to be done by youngins!
Calming Influence
@raven: Yeah,and we can’t get Ketchup (catch-up) TV now. I know this is going to cost us more to get cable boxes that work for older TVs. In a a capitalist utopia, shouldn’t the free market provide me with other options?
Kay
@Schlemizel:
Nothing makes me disrespect conservatives more than the food stamp obsession. It amazes me that they can’t look past the recipient, to see who else benefits. Agriculture and retailers, obviously. I mean, food stamps are a VOUCHER. They love vouchers!
They’re supposed to be such bidness experts. Who benefits from food vouchers, agribusiness OR retailer OR recipient? ALL of the above? A sixth grader could get this.
Raven
@Calming Influence: I’m looking.
Shalimar
@Schlemizel:
I don’t understand. Wouldn’t they become a mob even quicker if you take away their food intentionally rather than waiting for the program to go “bankrupt”? And isn’t eliminating the program what Republicans want to do?
Did nobles in the Roman Empire constantly bitch about how much bread and circuses cost, or was the immediate threat of getting killed in a riot enough to keep their mouths shut?
Schlemizel
@Shalimar:
The assclown is selling a survival course so he does not really care why the mob is loose – only that you fear the mob being loose.
I posted before seeing the whole pitch. Seems he really wanted to charge $997 for the whole thing but wanted to make it affordable so everyone could be safe when FEMA came to put in in the mass graves that already exist in the US! Even $597 and $397 were too much despite how valuable this info is! (can never have enough exclamation points!)
Paul in KY
@HeartlandLiberal: Think y’all have a keeper as coach.
bemused
After Krugman told Ron Johnson he is full of crap on SS, I am not surprised to see Johnson is on Morning Joe today with charts and stuff. He sounds nervous, talking very fast.
NonyNony
@Kay:
No – they love vouchers when those vouchers replace existing government programs. They hate vouchers when the vouchers are government programs.
The obvious truth is that if public education or Medicare/Medicaid were completely replaced by a voucher system, conservatives would immediately attack the voucher system as “big government” and start campaigning to dismantle it. Like they do with food stamps.
Nicole
@HeartlandLiberal: We haven’t yet, probably because none of the stuff is out of print (we can get it on iTunes if we lose it) so it’s not urgent. The husband is going to move it to a separate hard drive, though, so we’ll have it in two places.
I honestly could probably toss them all out and not notice; I tend to listen mostly to Pandora these days and if I get a hankering for a specific song, someone out there has put it on Youtube.
And yet my LPs still sit in my parents’ basement. It’s hard to get rid of them. Sentimental. And a reminder that I really have atrocious taste in music.
Punchy
Whatever you do, do NOT get raped in Missouri.
Yeah, that’s the GOP “turning the corner” to become more moderate.
handsmile
Seems to be an uncommonly mellow morning among the first shift regulars here, so in that spirit….
A fascinating profile of Magnus Carlsen, the world’s top chess player. Twenty-two years old, he is now officially rated as the strongest player of all time.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2013/mar/10/chess-magnus-carlsen-world-title
While I don’t recall ever seeing this topic mentioned, I would imagine that chess would be a popular activity among the BJ community (at least on those occasions when the game consoles are broken). A rather weak player myself, chess has interested me since childhood.
Svensker
Can someone explain the “Obama Golfs!” meme that the wingnuts are always on about?
Winston Smith
It’s similar to the “teleprompter” meme in that its basis in reality is tenuous.
According to the meme, Obama spends an inordinate amount of time shirking his responsibilities on the golf course. For example, one time, the press asked him about terrorist attacks in Israel, and he spoke about it for a few seconds and then said, “Here, watch this drive” and returned to his golf game as it it were the most important thing in the world.
Oh, wait… that was George W. Bush. Anyway, Obama is way worse than that, according to the meme. (It’s always about projection isn’t it?)
indycat32
@HeartlandLiberal: 2002 Indiana was co-champions. This is the first time since 1993 IU has won it outright.
handsmile
@Svensker:
i believe the answer can be found in the Handbook of American Racism (updated edition), under “Rules of Golf.” (Cf., Phil Mickelson.)
Also, the visceral horrors of a President Obama on a golf course are easier for lizard brains to grasp than “Benghazi!” or “Solyndra!”
PurpleGirl
@Winston Smith: Even more simple than that… President Obama is blah, he should be a caddy, not a golf player.
jayjaybear
@Svensker: The Million Dollar Pro or the Golfing While WH Tours Are Sequestered golf thing?
The Million Dollar Pro thing is the Presidential version of “Young Bucks Buying T-Bone Steaks With Their Food Stamps”…nobody has ever cared what a white president does with his own money, but a black president’s salary is OUR MONEY and therefore needs to be carefully monitored, even after being disbursed as salary.
The Sequester thing is a bunch of GOP congressmen finding out that the sequester just bit off one of the least painful constituent services they have available and if they can’t shut those damn voters up with a WH tour bribe, why can Obama keep going to play golf?!
wuzzat
Ignoring the geological age of the earth, we have evidence of human settlement that predates 9,000 years. What, does God recycle?
Cassidy
@wuzzat: No, God puts that stuff there to
trick peopletest their faith.Chris
@Face:
The thing is, so far we’ve had a live and let live approach where the Dark Ages preachers are in one corner howling into the wind and the scientists, most of them by necessity very un-conservative, are in another corner making the discoveries society needs to advance. (The public in the middle credits those advances to whatever it wants, usually Free Market Jesus). So while the country may be full of science-illiterate freaks, the freaks aren’t actually in charge of our scientific programs.
With the teabaggers demanding that they be obeyed in all particulars, though, scientists are right to worry about that line being crossed.
Fred
@jayjaybear: I thought the sequester aspect of Obama playing golf had to do with the fact that every time the POTUS goes out the door it costs a million buck$ or some such astronomical amount for security. Therefore Obama should be held imprisoned in the WH until he agrees to cancel SS, Medicare and especially Medicaid and throw widows and orphans out in the cold rain and snow too.
jayjaybear
@Fred: That, too, but the thing that really stings them personally is the loss of a prime “look how good I treat you people” treat that Congressmembers love to give out to their mid-level constituents (those too poor to actually fund a campaign themselves but not poor enough to completely ignore).
Winston Smith
@PurpleGirl:
I don’t think any of these people would even grant Obama the status of caddy — I’m not joking.
What ultimately bothers them is this: Barack Obama rose from nothing to be the most powerful man in the world. He is now a man surrounded by expensive security and lives in a mansion, and gets to take way more time off than they do. That’s great when it happens to a conservative white guy, but when it happens to a (somewhat) liberal black guy, then it’s an outrage.
They act as if Obama stole this from them. Yeah, they would have gone to Harvard Law and been editor of the Law Review if Obama hadn’t gotten his damn affirmative action! No, because of reverse racism they have to work for minimum wage at the plastic turtle factory while Obama — who never did anything — gets to play golf. That’s how they see the world.
The fact is, that the elite do get perks the non-elite don’t. That become invisible, if not desirable when the Freepers and their ilk perceive these elites as being “just like” them.
Chris
@Shalimar:
I feel I should warn you that they’ve got an entire theory all worked out about how the Roman Empire collapsed because it was being bankrupted by its ruinous welfare state (the “bread” part of the equation, presumably). They’ve even got a quote from Cicero, possibly apocryphal, to back them up. (Cause, you know, Cicero was totally around when the Roman Empire collapsed…)
Chris
@Kay:
Every now and then I start a sentence like that, and then I’m like “okay, that’s not technically true. There are probably LOTS of things that make me disrespect them at least as much. There’s just so much to choose from with them, all of it bottom-of-bottom-of-the-barrel level stuff.”
Raven
Here’s that jackass Indiana coach, fucking classless asshole.
Chris
@Winston Smith:
Keeping in mind that being laughed at is what these people loathe the most, I think it’s just them trying to get back at us for all the laughs we had at George W. Bush’s stupidity and incompetence over the years. When we fail to laugh at “Obama golf” and “Obama teleprompter” memes, they run to the refs and get to cry that we’re being partisan.
wuzzat
@Cassidy:
Damn, I was really hoping that once we’d finished fucking the place up, the planet would be “repurposed” into some kind of Cowboy-Steam Punk amalgam planet.
HeartlandLiberal
@raven: My graduate degree is from Urbana/Champagne, the Illini. But they don’t have that strong a team this year. Just the facts.
Paul in KY
@Chris: One of the main reasons for the collapse (IMO) was the bigwigs making themselves immune to state taxation & the following economic troubles being exacerbated by constant currency devaluation (reducing amount of precious metals in coins), which brought about rampant inflation.
Also Visigoth hordes.
jayjaybear
@Paul in KY:
Ah…ancient Teabaggers.
Chris
@Paul in KY:
It’s a general trend in how empires collapse… I think people have even written books about it, and now that it’s spring break I kind of want to check them out but can’t for the life of me remember the authors or names :(
Anyway, the same is true of the collapse of the French monarchy and several Chinese dynasties, if memory serves. The elites find ways to make themselves more and more immune from taxation, which means 1) the burden falls more and more heavily on “the masses,” but 2) since that’s not where most of the money is, you eventually hit a point where the state can no longer function because it simply doesn’t have the money. The breakdown of society happens then.
Oh, and if memory serves, the Visigoth horde thing happened because the Romans were hiring more and more of them as mercenaries rather than supplying their own forces. That should sound familiar too.