Posted on 09/20/2005 7:02:45 AM PDT by Right Wing Professor
ITHACA, N.Y. - Lenore Durkee, a retired biology professor, was volunteering as a docent at the Museum of the Earth here when she was confronted by a group of seven or eight people, creationists eager to challenge the museum exhibitions on evolution.
They peppered Dr. Durkee with questions about everything from techniques for dating fossils to the second law of thermodynamics, their queries coming so thick and fast that she found it hard to reply.
After about 45 minutes, "I told them I needed to take a break," she recalled. "My mouth was dry."
That encounter and others like it provided the impetus for a training session here in August. Dr. Durkee and scores of other volunteers and staff members from the museum and elsewhere crowded into a meeting room to hear advice from the museum director, Warren D. Allmon, on ways to deal with visitors who reject settled precepts of science on religious grounds.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
dang!
bet the conversation over wine by candle-light would be... arcane.
theif!
I eagerly await your explanation of the Cosmic Microwave Background... Oh wait, that had already been predicted before it was observed, by standard Big Bang theory. It is even isotropic to exactly the extent predicted.
Am I overdosed on Fox News, or does John Roberts look like he could be Lisa Randall's brother? Maybe it's the eyes.
I think Lisa is just darling, period!
"Am I overdosed on Fox News, or does John Roberts look like he could be Lisa Randall's brother? Maybe it's the eyes."
Hah! Actually, she's kinda cute. Too young for me, though, and I'm sure I couldn't keep up with the conversation if it went toward her specialty. Ah, well...
I think if Nobel Prizes were awarded or denied on the basis of personality, the list of winners would be different. The biography of Feynman indicates he was as obnoxious at lectures as the question askers were at the museum.
The difference is, that when he was shut down by a lecturer, he was intelligent enough to notice.
Apparently before Newton discovered gravity things just floated about; and they steadily got slower if they were moving, until they stopped.
But boy could he tell some great stories; I just love "Adventures of a Curious Character" or whatever it is called.
"Apparently before Newton discovered gravity things just floated about; and they steadily got slower if they were moving, until they stopped."
Well, actually, you're mistaken. Before the Laws of Gravity were laid out by Newton, every 347th apple that came of the tree rose up into the air and disappeared into space. Other apples fell at varying speeds, while the occasional one floated motionless.
Once Newton laid down the Law, such activity ceased and all apples fell to earth with uniform acceleration. Things were much more interesting when the occasional apple could violate the law, IMO.
Now I'm waiting for the "You Feynmann lovers are just commies" ad hominem. I'm fairly certain that he was somewhat left of centre, so I guess that we've got to reject quarks as liberal.
Actually quarks are well-known as libertarians. It is only the charmed quarks that are liberals, but you're never sure which ones they are or where they might be at any given moment.
Uncertainty is everything.
"The professoriate, left to its own devices, will never ever agree to a Texas-style core curriculum."
It's amazing that people can't see the wisdom in a system like they have in Texas. I suppose it somehow steps on their personal agenda.
"And too many of them are now back in school, teaching!!!"
Oh, man, you should hear some of his comments about teachers. . . .
" As far as "too much curriculum,"
That sounds familiar. My father went to school in a one-room schoolhouse in a very poor rural area, and he still had a much better K-12 education than I ever did. He spent fewer hours in school every day, too. Of course, they didn't have all sorts of PC socialism junk to deal with and all the discipline problems and petty stuff that goes on today so they could actually teach a broad range of subjects.
The Democrats have sympathizers and cheerleaders in the "mainstream" (sic) media. Conservatives, by and large, do not.
Aren't they all? ;o)
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