Posted on 11/16/2003 11:25:46 AM PST by blam
"Lighten up a little."Sorry about that, didn't mean to come across that way. I meant it more in the sense of a light hearted poke in the ribs.
"If you'll check page 34 of the December edition of Scientific American..."I grew up on Scientific American. There was a time when I'd wear out and dog ear nearly every copy of Dad's subscription. I particularly loved Charles Stong's, column, "The Amateur Scientist". From there I learned enough to build my first laser, an x-ray source and a (nearly deadly) Pockels cell (trying to make an ultra-high speed camera shutter similar to Harold Edgerton's).
But imo, the days of scientific preeminence of that once great magazine are long gone, as they have given themselves over to hawking politically correct science. I first noticed this when they began publishing the writings of the leftists at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that were highly critical of our cold war defense efforts. This political bias carried over to their pseudo-scientific rantings against nuclear power and in the 80's they continued their journey to the left with very biased (and often incorrect) hyperbole about ecology and the environment.
Because of their anti-science political bias, I haven't subscribed to SA in the last 15 to 20 years. But because I'm a perennial optimist, about once a year I'll look through a copy at the news stands in hopes that they may have changed their left-wing editorial bias, bus so far, no luck. If anything, it's gotten worse. jmo...
If the claim that the star cluster on the "sky disk" was Pleiades, came from SA, that would explain a lot since it is so obvious that the star disk does not depict anything like Pleiades on it. Someone confused wishful thinking with science.
Here's another example of the holes in this story. Did you think to stop and question just how they dated the disk as being 3,500 years old? Dating metal objects is a very subjective science. And it gets even harder when, as in this case, the scientists didn't have access to the original extraction site that the object was found in.
One last thought. I really was curious about your propensity to post stories about astronomical archeology. What's up with that? Does this interest extend to your profession?
--Boot Hill
I'm a retired chip-maker, click on my name (profile page) for more particulars, I post on all archaeology/anthropology articles as a hobby. Go here: Gods, Graves, Glyphs to see lots of previously posted articles. I agree with your assessment about Scientific American.
LOL, now I'm curious why you seem to be attracted only to the ones about astronomical archaeology.
"I'm a retired chip-maker..."Oh yeah, the TI guy, now I remember reading your profile a long time ago. We're the same age (if your profile is current), but I just haven't had enough sense to retire yet. Did you ever work with Jack Kilby? I always found the history of his invention and the contending claims between Kilby and Noyce, TI and Fairchild, Ge vs Si, wire bonding vs passivation, to be fascinating. Gosh, that seems like a long time ago.
"LOL, now I'm curious why you seem to be attracted only to the ones about astronomical archaeology."Turn about is fair play, huh? Well after reading the first paragraph of this reply, I'll bet you've already got a pretty fair answer to your question. You can't truly understand and enjoy science without knowing the history of science. In high school I hated history, but history is like a narcotic, it will sneak up on you and addict you before you realize what's happening. Once you get started, you just can't get enough.
And speaking of such history, I just finished an interesting book on the life and times of Léon Foucault ("Pendulum, Léon Foucault and the Triumph of Science", Amir D. Aczel, Atria Books, 2003), and his famous pendulum experiment. Two things I learned from this book were, first, what were the politics involved in why his experiment became so widely acclaimed (from the title: "the triumph of science" [over faith]) but perhaps more importantly, I learned that the simple and common explanation of why the plane of oscillation rotates (the pendulum maintains its inertia in reference to a universal frame of reference, rather than an earthly one), is only a first approximation at a precise explanation of Foucault's Pendulum and even Mach's and Einstein's later attempts at explanations fell short of providing a comprehensive explanation. At least to some degree, it is still in doubt 152 years later.
Regards,
Boot Hill
No, never met Kilby...he received the Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the IC, in 2000 if I remember correctly. I started my IC career in 1967 at a small start-up company in the San Jose area, National Semiconductor, most of the originals came from Fairchild.
|
|
|||
Gods |
This is a topic from 2003 which never got added to the catalog. No ping. |
||
|
· Mirabilis · Texas AM Anthropology News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · · History or Science & Nature Podcasts · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists · |
|||
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.