Postmodern Physics - Colleges Fail to Teach Basics - Even in Physics!

popecenter.org ^ | May 16, 2007 | Frank Tipler

[RachelFaith]

The University exists for three reasons only:

#1 to retard the moral responsibility of adults. Convincing them, and then the generations which follow, that a 20 something is still a “kid” and “just having fun”.. binge drinking and having multiple sex partners and subsequent abortions thereof.

#2 to indenture them in years of debt while conditioning them that government is the provider of all their means, so they will vote for those same programs which continue to expand, year after year thereafter.

#3 to indoctrinate them with lies, counterculture thinking and anti-american values and Utopian ideals.

Our High School for the most part quit graduating competent mature adults ready to face the world as productive independent free thinking citizens nearly 50 years ago.

It’s only natural that 2 generations later, these same godless, valueless, self indulgent and lazy hedonists would teach the same at the universities.

[RachelFaith]

Anyway, my freshman English comp teacher said that studies show that the brightest and fastest readers are terrible spellers


Yikes... do I know THAT to be true....:::gulp:::

[Physicist]

Why?

Back in October, it was made clear that disabusing creationists of their beliefs constitutes an attack on Christianity.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

If the football coach trained his charges as badly as the academic faculty, he’d lose his million dollar paycheck.

Football coaches don’t have tenure and are forced to produce results in competitive situations, unlike the academics who handle critism by dismissing it.

[pjd]

Yet I am aware of no physics department in the United States that requires a course in the Standard Model for an undergraduate degree in physics. Very few, if any, require a course in the Standard Model even for a Ph.D. in physics.
So one can get an undergraduate degree in physics and even a Ph.D., without knowing anything at all about the fundamental forces that control the universe at the most basic level.

This is poor logic and a gross exaggeration. The author implies that students learn nothing at all about the Standard Model simple because there isn't a required course in the Standard Model.

However, most Physics Departments do indeed require a course in Elementary Particles, of which the Standard Model is always an important part. Just because the course isn't exclusively about the Standard Model doesn't mean students learn nothing at all about it.

[Eva]

Good sight readers, not only don’t read a syllable at a time, they don’t read a word at a time. Good sight readers read a phrase or even a line at a time. That is until bifocals slow them down.

[RachelFaith]

Yes, indeed. I see paragraphs the way most folks see “H-ell-o, My, Na-me, is, Ri-ch-ard.” But it makes spelling tough...

[Eva]

I have a bit of a photographic memory, so I am able to recall where in a chapter I read an answer to a test question, like the center paragraph on the left page, or in a caption under a picture, but since I don’t read word for word, I can seldom pull up a single word answer. But, one time in a biology exam, I actually closed my eyes and read the word. It was the strangest feeling.

[dr huer]

For the GPS system Newton is not exact enough; to get things right you have to use General Relativety.

[Tribune7]

The guy is right. What’s the point of spending lots of money to create ignorant people?

[Tribune7]

Soon the tide will shift, and our best students will have to go out of country for a real education, to places like China and India.

I predict college's that are looked down upon -- Liberty University, Grove City etc. -- will start becoming the go-to places.

[balch3]

but they have no problem pushing the Darwinist religion.

[VOA]

bump

[Tribune7]

Look at Euclid, Mendel, Darwin, Curie.

OK, so what practical discovery did Darwin make? Antibiotics? No. Resistance to antibiotics? You think the reason for the resistance wouldn't have been figured out just as quickly without the theory of descent with modification from a common ancestor?

[xenophiles]

OK, so what practical discovery did Darwin make? Antibiotics? No. Resistance to antibiotics? You think the reason for the resistance wouldn't have been figured out just as quickly without the theory of descent with modification from a common ancestor?

??? Random mutation and descent with modification IS the mechanism of development of resistance. When breeding horses for speed, it's useful to know that training the sire won't make the foals faster. When breeding strains of wheat it's useful to know that pampering one generation won't make the next generation more healthy or productive. Both of these misconceptions are intuitively appealing and can be very expensive. If you want to deal with new strains of influenza you'd better understand how they originate. Is that enough, or do you want more?

[Tribune7]

When breeding horses for speed, it's useful to know that training the sire won't make the foals faster.

I think it's safe to say that this was well-known before 1859.

[newguy357]

This poor slob who payed his own way through an engineering degree is glad that all of his limited time and money were applied toward something that would put meat on the table rather than something that tickles the fancy of an erudite prof.

Read it again. No one suggested that the freshman physics sequence given to engineers ought to be changed. The suggestion was merely that those training to be physicists (not engineers) ought to understand physics.

[newguy357]

I remember using Tipler’s textbooks as an undergrad

Different Tipler....

[Ouderkirk]

The textbooks were by Paul Tipler....it was not until I went home and looked at them did I see that it was Paul and not Frank.

[xenophiles]

When breeding horses for speed, it's useful to know that training the sire won't make the foals faster.

I think it's safe to say that this was well-known before 1859.[link]

Nice wiki article on the history of horse breeding, but you don't seem to have read it; it doesn't support your assertion. Evolution is such a familiar idea now that it's hard to remember that it wasn't obvious to earlier generations. Have a look at this wiki article on Lamarckism. Satisfied?