Posted on 12/04/2003 1:47:14 AM PST by JohnHuang2
Edited on 07/12/2004 4:11:01 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
"How can you tell whether a whale is a mammal or a fish?" a teacher asks her third-grade class.
"Take a vote?" pipes up one of the pupils.
This idea might be amusing coming from a child, but it's a lot less funny when applied by governments to the formulation of complex policies that involve science and technology. And it's an approach increasingly common around the world.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
Science is not democratic...Legislatures cannot repeal laws of nature
It's frightening how many people cannot comprehend this simple fact.
Remember how the Soviets would plant grain in snow because the Communist bureaucrats declared it to be the right time to plant?
LOL.
All kidding aside, I have to admit that I have never encountered a British person who didn't know that a whale is a mammal. I will, however, share with you some of the whoppers that I have witnessed while here:
I was shopping at Spar (kind of like a 7-11) picking up some things. The girl who was at the till lived on the same estate as I did and we recognized, so we struck up a conversation. She asked me where in the US I was from. "Texas." She asked me where Texas was. I told her it was in the south, in the middle...between Louisiana and New Mexico, and under Oklahoma, directly north of Mexico. She didn't know where any of those other places were. I suggested to her that she could look it up in an atlas if she was that interested. She asked me what an atlas was for. I told her it was a book of maps. She asked why someone would want to "read" a book of maps. Ugh.
A colleague of mine was cackling about a tabloid's claim that 90% of Americans that they polled could not pick out Iraq on a map. I told him this could not possibly be true and that I'd never met someone who couldn't tell me where Iraq was. He told me that I must know the 10 smartest people in America. I hit the internet and found a map of the world with the borders drawn but no country or city names printed on it. I printed out ten copies of this and handed them out to the ten colleagues closest to my desk (this included the one who thought Americans were stupid). The results: 0 got it right. 1 thought that Iraq was Poland. 4 thought it was Jordan. 5 thought it was Iran. 1 thought it was India. 1 thought it was Romania. 1 chose the Crimean Peninsula. 6 thought it was Afghanistan, and 1 (remarkably) selected Japan. My poll was as unscientific as the Mirror's, and I "proved" that 100% of British adults could not find Iraq on a map just as they proved that 90% of American adults could not find Iraq on a map.
In a garden center, I was selecting some plants for my garden. I commented that the lantana was native to Texas, as was the ratbida, or Mexican Hat plant. The horticulturalist scratched his head and said, "but that can't be...those plants can't survive in the desert." He thought that ALL of Texas was a desert.
I remarked to a colleague that I'd like to visit Brazil and practice my Portuguese. "You'd have a hard time doing that," he snorted. "They don't speak Portuguese in Brazil...they speak Spanish." (They don't. They speak Portuguese.)
A colleague of mine is from Chile. Someone at work once asked her what they ate in Chile besides nachos and tacos. Nachos and tacos are just as foreign to them as they are to us Americans...familiar and tasty, yet still not native cuisine.
Someone at the supermarket once asked me if we had Snickers bars in America.
A Mexican restaurant in this area of the country is called "Fiesta Mehicana." That's not a typo, nor have I misspelled the name of the establishment. I asked the owner why he misspelled "Mexicana" and he said, "Because if I didn't spell it with an 'h' these people would say 'mecksikana.'"
British diners at said restaurant were baffled by the concept of rolling their own fajitas and were very confused when, after filling a tortilla so much that they could barely roll it, they took one bite and the rest of the food fell out of the other side of the tortilla back onto the plate.
I have met British people who claim that the British invented popcorn.
I have to admit I have observed FReepers argue that humans are neither mammals nor animals.
Our most important cultivars were all essentially monozygotic before the advent of gene splicing. How do you decrease diversity where none exists?
Science without the brakes of society and the direction of it's members has been a recognized danger throughout history.
It's certainly been treated as a danger (i.e., viewed with fear and hostility). But do you have practical examples?
Coleslaw
Succotash
Tossed Salad
Pico de Gallo
Your example doesn't support your claim. The problem wasn't with the potato per se, but that the Irish had an essentially monocultural agricultural system - they would have had the same problem if the only crop was corn and there was an infestation of corn borers. But in either case, it's got nothing to do with the plant itself, and everything to do with the practice of relying on a single plant. Panda bears are going extinct for much the same reason - the bamboo forests they rely on are disappearing, and so are they, despite the fact that nobody to my knowledge has fiddled with the bamboo genome.
Besides, how is gene splicing supposed to differ qualitatively from selective breeding? Cabbage, kohlrabi, kale, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and broccoli are all the same species of plant, all modifications of the rather lowly wild cabbage - would there be a real difference if those changes had been introduced over the span of three months in a lab, rather than over 2500 years of selective breeding and cultivation? Isn't diversity increasing in such a case?
Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.
I didn't know that. Thanks for the information.
Prairie
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