|
Drunkboxer posted:It's not accurate, but we are in one of the worst funding climates ever, and the sequester cuts are looming. It's a rough time to break into academic research. Conversely, it's a loving excellent time to leave the USA if you're an early career scientist.
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 10:26
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 10, 2024 18:53 |
|
|
LeJackal posted:I wonder who could have possibly made the population so fanatic and intolerant in the first place. Really? Look at the world today, it doesn't take anything for people to be complete assholes, intolerant is the default state of any population that isn't force fed a steady diet of tolerance since their formative years. How do you expect the vastly illiterate population of the middle ages would look upon anyone different from them when their crops failed? Monotheism by it's nature is going to make people even more intolerant. Gotta scapegoat 'em all! This isn't to say that sometimes the church or secular authorities didn't promote intolerance themselves but one thing you can be sure, there was never a point in time where the mob was more tolerant than the educated minority. MeLKoR fucked around with this message at 11:18 on Mar 12, 2014 |
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 11:14
|
|
|
MeLKoR posted:Really? Look at the world today, it doesn't take anything for people to be complete assholes, intolerant is the default state of any population that isn't force fed a steady diet of tolerance since their formative years. How do you expect the vastly illiterate population of the middle ages would look upon anyone different from them when their crops failed? This is an intelligent thought. The problem with religion is that people blame religion for religion. In the end, it is our own weakness that makes us turn toward religion. If religion did not exist, there would be something else filling the void that would be exactly the same as religion. People need something to feel important over. *By the way: the post I quoted made me think of this. I do not propose to be on the poster's side or represent their views.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 11:59
|
|
|
BIG HEADLINE posted:I'd watch NDT do his taxes, and I intend on watching every episode of this, but I just really wish they hadn't worked in the 'your god is too small' line. Of the vast majority of the 'faithful' in the country who weren't intending on watching this to begin with, lines like that convince the ones on the fence to fall back into their comfort zone, and *not* get their kids to watch, which I'm guessing was the intent in putting it after Simpsons and Family Guy. This is kind of a confusing way to read that bit when the show explicitly explains to us how his ideas were an outgrowth of how he saw God as infinite and unbounded. It was comparing his idea of God to the idea of God of his 15th century contemporaries, not any idea of God anybody in the audience might have. Taking it as a sneak-attack on the idea of God in general seems like a really peculiar way to read it when the whole thing was shown as a religious experience for the guy - to the point where it's illustrated with angels shooting arrows and such. I think part of the problem people have with the Bruno sequence is that they set it up like it would be a science vs. God thing... but then it doesn't actually do that. Bruno's vision of the universe is explicitly presented as an extension of his religious beliefs, at the re-enactment of his trial his "scientific" ideas are dead last on the list of charges against him, and it's capped off with NDT looking right at the camera and saying Bruno wasn't a scientist at all and just made a lucky guess. The most inflammatory thing NDT actually says on the subject of religion in the episode is calling the Inquisition "thought police." This being a specific (and long-defunct) organization from centuries ago whose purpose is usually defined as "a group of institutions within the judicial system of the Roman Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy." If some people are going to bail on the show for something like that I think it's pretty safe to say they were never really going to give it a fair shot in the first place and are fishing for a pretext to be offended. Then the show name-checks the births of Moses, Jesus and Mohammad as among the major milestones in human history without any hint of irony or snark. e: To expand on it further, I think the show is trying to walk a fine line of not condemning region as such, while still being fairly aggressive in its defense of science and reason. Anybody looking for a reason to take religious offense at the show will have no trouble finding it, but the idea that it's actively giving a big ol' gently caress YOU to everyone who isn't an Internet Atheist feels suspiciously like a willful misreading of the actual content of the show so far. It's easy to forget that shitloads of people thought Sagan was basically Satan, in spite of having a public persona so aggressively nice and friendly that it was almost a medical diagnosis. In his case, probably that of smoking all the weed all the time. sean10mm fucked around with this message at 13:11 on Mar 12, 2014 |
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 12:52
|
|
|
MeLKoR posted:Monotheism by it's nature is going to make people even more intolerant. Gotta scapegoat 'em all! Yeah, I wonder who engineered a strict monotheism so that so they could be better consolidate their dominance of human affairs.  MeLKoR posted:This isn't to say that sometimes the church or secular authorities didn't promote intolerance themselves but one thing you can be sure, there was never a point in time where the mob was more tolerant than the educated minority. No, that is the entire point. Their entire system was based on intolerance, that is what makes heresy a crime! If they hadn't been manipulating the common mob with incredibly narrow strictures on thought and belief, i.e. 'this religious philosophy is correct, its modes of action are correct, any variance will result in eternal unending supernatural torture', then maybe, just maybe, the mobs might not have formed spontaneous murder parties. Which were justifiable to them because they honestly thought that murdering people with fire could save their soul. I wonder where they got the idea that horrific murder could actually be the moral decision? I don't care how much you laud the Church for what was damage control, they created the problem by abdicating their responsibility as the 'educated minority' and building a system of slavery they could not, ultimately, control. LeJackal fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Mar 12, 2014 |
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 15:24
|
|
|
I listened to the Bill Nye episode of StarTalk and it was a bit of a mess. They completely punted on at least one question that none of them understood (about magnetars) and generally didn't have the chemistry the show normally does even though all the guests were regulars.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 15:31
|
|
|
Trig Discipline posted:Conversely, it's a loving excellent time to leave the USA if you're an early career scientist. Is it really excellent? Or just comparatively better. I've heard mixed things from people who left. Not that I'm keen on leaving anyway, since I have a family and what-not. Also I don't want to contribute to the brain drain or whatever.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 15:48
|
|
|
I wonder if the difference in philosophy between Tyson and Sagan will influence the show much as it goes on- despite Tyson's proselytizing for NASA funding and other scientific interests, he has said stuff in the past like how the space race being rooted in cold war politics was a good thing as it motivated humanity by competition, or something like that, whereas Sagan was more anti-establishment and obviously very anti-war and pro-
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 16:05
|
|
|
nuzak posted:I wonder if the difference in philosophy between Tyson and Sagan will influence the show much as it goes on- despite Tyson's proselytizing for NASA funding and other scientific interests, he has said stuff in the past like how the space race being rooted in cold war politics was a good thing as it motivated humanity by competition, or something like that, whereas Sagan was more anti-establishment and obviously very anti-war and pro- Getting high with Sagan would have been annoying, I bet. He'd get all heavy immediately, I'd just want to play Mario Brothers or something.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 16:09
|
|
|
Drunkboxer posted:Getting high with Sagan would have been annoying, I bet. He'd get all heavy immediately, I'd just want to play Mario Brothers or something. I'll bet it would have been even more annoying listening to a pothead insisting that we play a video game that didn't exist yet.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 17:18
|
|
|
LeJackal posted:Yeah, I wonder who engineered a strict monotheism so that so they could be better consolidate their dominance of human affairs. quote:No, that is the entire point. Their entire system was based on intolerance, that is what makes heresy a crime! If they hadn't been manipulating the common mob with incredibly narrow strictures on thought and belief, i.e. 'this religious philosophy is correct, its modes of action are correct, any variance will result in eternal unending supernatural torture', then maybe, just maybe, the mobs might not have formed spontaneous murder parties. quote:Which were justifiable to them because they honestly thought that murdering people with fire could save their soul. I wonder where they got the idea that horrific murder could actually be the moral decision? quote:I don't care how much you laud the Church for what was damage control, they created the problem by abdicating their responsibility as the 'educated minority' and building a system of slavery they could not, ultimately, control. Really, the problem is that people fail to realize how fragile and precious our relatively tolerant society is and what it took to reach this point. No amount of preaching good will and peace on earth is going to do any good when something like the Black Plague hits and you have people dying left and right without the faintest idea of why. The best you can do is manage the heard and slowly move people along. You can blame the church for not being more consistently liberal. You can blame them for trying to get earthly power. But that is the same as blaming them for what they were, a religious institution whose first interest was in the salvation of man's soul and who was the sole transnational institution trying to maintain peace within the flock, the rest flows from there. The need to secure their secular power, the need to suppress dissent, it was a product of the time, circumstance and their place in the civilization. Personally I think the church is more worthy of criticism today for it's opposition to condoms than they were for the Inquisition. Back then I can look at the world around the church and excuse them for being products of their time and more often than not ahead of their time compared to the mob. Today they have no excuse for poo poo like that. I'm going to stop batting for the church now, not only am I afraid of being responsible for a huge derail but it's making the "man will never be free until the last king is hanged in the entrails of the last priest" in me feel dirty.  In short, I just wish people would stop looking at people as inherently good, noble and tolerant. We really really aren't and never were. It took centuries of cumulative hard work to get where we are today and if any of us modern liberals used a time machine to go back and tried to enact our reforms we would be teared apart by the very people we were trying to help unless we enforced our policies with an amount of bloodshed that would make Genghis Khan blush. There is a very thin veneer that separates us from bestiality and the only thing that gives me hope in the future is the fact that short of an asteroid or nuclear war civilization won't completely collapse like it did after the barbarian invasions because most of the world will be unaffected by whatever hits some region and the flame will be kept alive somewhere within easy reach. MeLKoR fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Mar 12, 2014 |
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 17:19
|
|
|
Command Ant posted:I'll bet it would have been even more annoying listening to a pothead insisting that we play a video game that didn't exist yet. Super Mario Bros was released a whole 11 years before Sagan died...
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 17:22
|
|
|
thexerox123 posted:Super Mario Bros was released a whole 11 years before Sagan died... Yeah, but that leaves a large enough period of time where it wasn't around to make my snappy comeback plausible.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 17:29
|
|
|
ashpanash posted:05- Hiding In the Light Exoplanets hiding in the light of their sun?
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 17:56
|
|
|
Cosmos: Arguing the Dangers of Religion, Science Street Cred, and Getting Stoned with Sagan.
|
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 17:57
|
|
|
Man, I'd love to get high with Sagan and discuss the mysteries of the cosmos equally in turn with how awesome pizza is.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 18:13
|
|
|
MeLKoR posted:So yeah, the Inquisition was poo poo but the population was even more fanatic and intolerant than the Inquisition. At the end of the day the Church of the time was a largely secular institution trying to rein in a bag full of cats and preventing them from literally murdering each other in the streets. Bad for business. I'll admit that I'm no historian, but I don't think your interpretation of why the Church founded the Inquisition is actually supported by the historical record. It's a very forgiving view - that the Church established a system of torture-extracted confessions and violent executions to keep the mob from doing worse (?) things - but I'm pretty sure the commonly accepted reason the Church founded the Inquisition was to fight the spread of Catharism. The threat of heresy wasn't that it would cause everyone to go insane and start murdering each other, the threat of heresy was that it would create pockets of the population that practiced different religions that no longer respected the authority of the Church, and maybe someday wouldn't even respect the authority of the secular governments that derived their authority from the god of the Church. The Inquisition was founded more in the defense of tyranny than the defense of lives. I'm not saying that you're necessarily wrong about the Inquisition being a more fair system than mob justice, but I don't think there is any historical evidence that suggests that this is why the Inquisition was founded. I could be wrong about this, though, so if I am, feel free to take me to school.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 18:15
|
|
|
Kyle Hyde posted:Man, I'd love to get high with Sagan and discuss the mysteries of the cosmos equally in turn with how awesome pizza is. Truly, this pizza is a wondrous creation. Vast expanses of cheese, molecularly bound to its companions. Pepperoni, mushrooms, onions, even the occasional jalapeno or green pepper. These things together form a structure magnificent in their complexity, yet simple in their presentation.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 18:24
|
|
|
If you want to roll your own blunt from scratch, you must first create the universe.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 18:25
|
|
|
nimh posted:graphics making it unclear as to the point he's trying to make etc. It's way better than the original in this regard. Often times Sagan would be talking about poo poo and you had no idea if he meant it to be relevant to what was on screen
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 18:40
|
|
|
MeLKoR posted:I'm going to stop batting for the church now, not only am I afraid of being responsible for a huge derail but it's making the "man will never be free until the last king is hanged in the entrails of the last priest" in me feel dirty. Wait, I want to hear your defense of the history and mishandling of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church!  Steve Yun posted:It's way better than the original in this regard. Often times Sagan would be talking about poo poo and you had no idea if he meant it to be relevant to what was on screen This episode might have been graphic-heavy, but I agree that the visuals were superior. I'd expect that thanks to our CGI advancements and junk. I just hope that they don't err on the side of eye-candy continuing on.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 19:13
|
|
|
Broadcasting this show on Fox proved interesting in my household, as I had to explain that the Fox network wasn't associated with Fox News in any way that would put a conservative bent on the information provided. It was finally pointing back to the president's introduction that put that worry to rest for her.Perpetual Ascent posted:Alright so now that NdTs validity as a scientist has been called into question, can someone please say whether or not the next day broadcasts on Nat Geo contain additional footage? I'll second this!
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 20:21
|
|
|
WoodrowSkillson posted:Truly, this pizza is a wondrous creation. Vast expanses of cheese, molecularly bound to its companions. Pepperoni, mushrooms, onions, even the occasional jalapeno or green pepper. These things together form a structure magnificent in their complexity, yet simple in their presentation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP7K9SycELA
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 20:38
|
|
|
Mr. Horyd posted:Broadcasting this show on Fox proved interesting in my household, as I had to explain that the Fox network wasn't associated with Fox News in any way that would put a conservative bent on the information provided. It was finally pointing back to the president's introduction that put that worry to rest for her. How does she feel about noted GOP soapboxes like Family Guy and The Simpsons?
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 20:52
|
|
|
Drunkboxer posted:How does she feel about noted GOP soapboxes like Family Guy and The Simpsons? She doesn't watch them, nor does she seek out discussion of them.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 20:55
|
|
|
Drunkboxer posted:How does she feel about noted GOP soapboxes like Family Guy and The Simpsons? Mr. Horyd posted:She doesn't watch them, nor does she seek out discussion of them. http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?v=wshh7L5FpKhB2a7LGK2x 
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 21:05
|
|
|
LeJackal posted:This episode might have been graphic-heavy, but I agree that the visuals were superior. I'd expect that thanks to our CGI advancements and junk. I just hope that they don't err on the side of eye-candy continuing on. Yo all the poo poo with the calendar was cool as gently caress
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 21:11
|
|
|
Macaluso posted:Yo all the poo poo with the calendar was cool as gently caress That would've been megarad in stereoscopic 3D.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 21:18
|
|
|
Macaluso posted:Yo all the poo poo with the calendar was cool as gently caress It was pretty kickin' rad.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 21:31
|
|
|
Oklahoma Fox station "accidentally" cut evolution scene from the episode. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/12/oklahoma-fox-station-removes-evolution-from-cosmos-by-cutting-only-15-seconds/
|
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 22:04
|
|
|
Drunkboxer posted:Is it really excellent? Or just comparatively better. I've heard mixed things from people who left. Not that I'm keen on leaving anyway, since I have a family and what-not. Also I don't want to contribute to the brain drain or whatever. Well it depends on what you mean. The faculty job market is lovely everywhere, but life as an academic scientist is much better in a lot of places than it is in the USA. I moved from the USA to Australia a couple of years ago. Postdoc salaries here are double what they are in the US, even accounting for currency conversion. To put some hard numbers to it: I was just awarded a national postdoc fellowship in Australia. My salary as a postdoc will be $85,500 with another $15,000 a year in retirement and $48,000 a year in research money (those figures are US dollars converted from AUD at today's rate). There is no postdoc in my field in the USA that even gets close to that. Australia is also much more generous with respect to paid leave and retirement, and there's also national health care. Plus kangaroos and parrots and stuff. For contrast, I had one of the most competitive postdocs in the US in my field (NSF postdoc fellow in bioinformatics). The salary on that one was $45k, $10k per year research money, no retirement, no paid leave, and the allowance for health insurance wasn't even enough to cover my premiums. And by US standards in my field, that was actually way out to the high end of what you could get. Nominal rate for postdocs at my last institution was $34k. In my field (evolution and ecology), grants in Oz tend to be a bit smaller than the US, but the funding rates are about five times as high. There are some funding schemes where the funding rates are as high as 50%, and one university I interviewed at had a 100% funding rate for one of those schemes. Trig Discipline fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Mar 12, 2014 |
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 22:29
|
|
|
The messed up thing about Australia's system is that they have the highest paid postdocs in the world, but Ph.D. here only takes 3.5 years. That sounds great on the surface of it, but the end result is that postdoc applicants from the USA and other places that have 5-7 year Ph.D. programs typically have a lot more papers and a lot more experience, so international postdoc applicants almost always outcompete Aussies. Maybe 10% of the postdocs in my current department here are Australians, everyone else is from the US or Europe. That means Australia is putting a lot of money into training scientists that aren't competitive in their own job market, which is kind of hosed up. Obviously I benefit from that, so I'm not complaining, but it does seem like they need to do something to bring their doctoral programs up to the point where they're producing competitive scientists.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 22:39
|
|
|
All of that stuff sounds like a bribe and them banking on the fact that some random piece of wildlife will kill you before their investment in you puts them into the red.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 23:24
|
|
|
The funny thing is that whenever you mention Australia to an American, the first concern they bring up is all the horrible venomous animals. When you mention America to an Australian, the first concern they bring up is being gunned down in the street by a maniac with a private arsenal. Looking at the statistics...
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 23:37
|
|
|
At the end of the day spiders are more threatening than dangerous minorities.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 23:43
|
|
|
http://www.dailyjournal.net/view/story/b584edc61d7b439cad4d006d9255f52f/OK--Australian-Player-Random-Slaying/#.UyDjhOeSyvQ :-/ At least we can all agree that venomous minority spiders with guns are pretty scary though. Trig Discipline fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Mar 12, 2014 |
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 23:45
|
|
|
Trig Discipline posted:http://www.dailyjournal.net/view/story/b584edc61d7b439cad4d006d9255f52f/OK--Australian-Player-Random-Slaying/#.UyDjhOeSyvQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=sHzdsFiBbFc#t=70 Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Mar 13, 2014 |
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2014 23:59
|
|
|
Trig Discipline posted:http://www.dailyjournal.net/view/story/b584edc61d7b439cad4d006d9255f52f/OK--Australian-Player-Random-Slaying/#.UyDjhOeSyvQ if only that Australian kid had a gun... ...that shot Australian snakes and spiders.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2014 00:11
|
|
|
Perpetual Ascent posted:Alright so now that NdTs validity as a scientist has been called into question, can someone please say whether or not the next day broadcasts on Nat Geo contain additional footage? Did anyone even watch the re-broadcast? I can't find a lick of information about what it may or may not have added.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2014 03:57
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 10, 2024 18:53 |
|
|
I don't understand why anyone would think there would be additional footage.
|
|
#
?
Mar 13, 2014 04:11
|
|