A construction project on our campus has bought the folks from History into our building. We see each other in the common areas and in a big faculty lounge.It's cold here today, teeth chattering cold.
And this begins:
History Guy: Boy, this cold is ridiculous. Hope those global warming nuts are paying attention.
Hiram: What do you mean?
HG: Well, it can't be this cold if the planet is heating up like they say.
Hiram: Well, actually one of the chief elements of climate change is extreme weather, you know, like what we've been having.
HG: Where do you get that from?
Hiram: Uh, I don't know, just reading things, I guess.
HG: You'll never convince me. Just look at it out there!
Hiram: Didn't you see in the paper that 2013 was the 4th hottest year on the planet?
HG: Whose statistics are that?
Hiram: I guess the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).
HG: Yeah, but all of those think tanks are biased, all liberals. They get all their funding from Obama.
[scene]
Q: What concept that you understand and believe is commonly misunderstood by your students, colleagues, neighbors? Do you ever try to correct these misunderstandings? Do you ever just want to move where Yaro is and be with the trees?
Today I am wearing shorts and a t-shirt and I am hot in shorts and a t-shirt. Yes, I'm on the West Coast.
ReplyDeletejesus h, there are about twenty billion CM posts today.
ReplyDeletegood reason to get drunk.
@Hiram: There are just too many of them. I start crying just thinking about it. Besides, the Cynic didn't answer the Thirsty, so neither will I. But it's a good one. I hope you get some good answers so I can have something to read while I get drunk.
Just wait. There won't be any for the next few days. The RGM apparently doesn't know how to schedule posts, dribbling them out.
DeleteOh, sorry: I didn't realize there was a thirsty because my brain is too hot to function. Why is it summer in January in California?
DeleteCC: Yeah, I recently hosted an OCD sibling here after scrubbing down my house. Inside. But sibling wanted to experience California Outdoor Living and headed straight for the deck, which we hadn't cleaned, it being January and all. Grrr.
DeleteI AM the OCD sibling, and seriously: no one should be expected to experience summer in January!
DeleteMedieval people were fundamentally stupid and believed the Earth was flat. As a corollary to that belief, Columbus discovered the Earth was round. (I've actually vehemently lectured a freshman composition class on this when it came up once. They were all stunned and I think a little afraid of me after that.)
ReplyDeleteYes, Snarky! I've had that, too. I'm a poor writing proffie, too, so I get concepts butchered of all sorts. I had an assassination paper last year that attributed such a crazy patchwork of "real" reasons assassinations have happened through the years. It started with JFK, of course, but included a flood of theories that were mindboggling. I should have kept the paper.
DeleteI thought the ancient Greeks knew the earth was round. Why wouldn't Columbus know that?
DeleteMaybe because the Bible says it's flat?
DeleteEratosthenes knew the earth was round. Shit, he came within 200 miles of calculating its circumference using shadow angles and geometry. Every Ptolemaic model depicts a round earth. A colleague o'mine blames Washington Irving for the entrenched flat-Earth bullshit. Also, as far as I know, the Bible doesn't say it's flat; the 93rd Psalm, if you read it like a literal dumass, says that the earth is "fixed" and "does not move".
DeleteColumbus knew the Earth was round; anybody who was anybody and had any sort of education in Columbus' day knew the Earth was round. You can find out the Earth is round by observing the shape of its shadow on the Moon during a lunar eclipse, or by watching ships go over the horizon.
DeleteThe thing Eratosthenes did, as Surly pointed out, was to calculate the Earth's circumference accurately. Columbus' critics knew that it was too far to Asia traveling west, for any ship of the day to make it, and they were right (Magellan's crew darn near starved crossing the Pacific, and they were able to reprovision on the west coast of the Americas).
Columbus, though, was a Forward Thinker, and put his trust in a radical under-estimate of the Earth's size -- not to mention a drastic over-estimate of the land distance to the far coast of Asia.
If the Americas hadn't been there, he'd have been just another failed crackpot.
Thanks, introvert.prof. I think we were mostly being tongue-in-cheek here, and I was being sarcastic about the fact that if ancient Greeks realized the earth wasn't flat, why people would expect that Columbus wouldn't know that. But thanks for the history lesson.
DeleteI remember when Erich von Daniken's books got a lot of attention. According to him, there wasn't anything that the ancient peoples did unless they were assisted by aliens.
DeleteBecause, of course, nobody can do anything technically demanding without extensive hand-holding. Von Däniken was just another 'flake.
DeleteHe wasn't even a scientist and had no background in archaeology or history. However, one needs to consider when those books were written. It was the time of the counter-culture and just about anything scientific or technical was portrayed as being bad. Anything which flew in the face of conventional wisdom, like his books, was welcomed.
DeleteI read his first 2 books in high school shortly after the feature-length documentary based on them was shown on TV. I found the idea intriguing and, in fact, the concept was the basis of a number of science fiction stories (e. g., Arthur C. Clarke's short story "Encounter at Dawn" and, of course, the novel and movie "2001: a space odyssey"). I didn't take it seriously, however, and lost interest after I started university. von Daniken, however, continued writing but he soon faded from the public spotlight.
It's amazing how little some people understand the way their income taxes work.
ReplyDeleteI've met quite a few people who don't understand marginal tax brackets. They think that if they earn a little less and drop down into a lower tax bracket (from, say, 25% to 15%), it will result in more money in their pockets.
I've also met people who think that a tax deduction on a $100 donation means that they don't pay anything out of pocket. They don't understand that a deduction just means that they reduce their taxable income by the amount of the donation. If their income reaches, for example, the 28% bracket, they end up paying $72 out of their own pocket on a $100 donation.
On the other hand, how many people can fill out their tax returns?
DeleteI used to take my stuff to an accountant. Unfortunately, I'd often get them back with mistakes and, one year, I stopped doing that because I had enough of paying a lot of money for lousy work.
The next year, I went through the previous return, figured out what was done, and started doing my returns on my own. I had fewer mistakes that way than I did when I had someone else do them for me.
Major misconception: that you need eight glasses of water a day. I drink a lot of water at work. Someone invariably comments on that fact by saying something like, "Oh, you're getting your eight glasses in, I see." My office is situated above the heating unit for our building. It is usually a toasty 88-degrees in my office. I drink a lot of water because I'm hot; and the body doesn't NEED 8 glasses of water a day.
ReplyDeleteThe Age of Earth/Age of Universe: "But how do scientists really KNOW the age of Earth?"
ReplyDeleteSo I explain a few lines of evidence... Sometimes I just link to pertinent information, or share video. Sometimes I give them an interesting paper to read. It's good to question. I have some answers.
"But, see," they interrupt - they always interrupt, always just as I'm putting the final touches on a marvelously crafted explanation - "You still haven't answered my question!"
Yes, I did. That's exactly what I did. I think the language you are listening with must be different than the language I'm explaining with.
Oh, and personal responsibility. I think a lot of people misunderstand that concept.
Oh - the interrupting - it's triumphant. Always triumphant.
DeleteSo you're saying the Earth is 6,000 years old, right? That's what I heard. ;)
DeleteOften, those people fall back on the "studies have shown...." argument to support their opinion.
DeleteThis is a misconception Hollywood perpetuates (for all the obvious reasons) that bugs me because it affects my students' perceptions of the evolution of the English language: that the when the Vikings or Romans marauded any land, the natives spoke their languages (or American English).
ReplyDeleteAnd the Vikings and Romans had British accents.
DeleteAnd they all had perfect teeth, perfect complexions, and perfect hair.
DeleteAnd Vikings wore those horned helmets, too.
DeleteI want a horned hat!
DeleteVikings fought Romans! Don't believe me? Then watch the movie "The Viking Queen", produced by Hammer Films and which shows up on TCM from time to time. The only catch about that flick is that there weren't any Norse anywhere in sight. The "Vikings" were Druids.
DeleteWhile I'm at it, King Arthur and his knights all wore shining armour, at least according to the early 1980s movie "Excalibur". However, any film that uses as its soundtrack Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" and excerpts from Richard Wagner's operas "Tristan und Isolde" and "Die Götterdämmerung" can't be all bad. Watch for Patrick Stewart, Liam Neeson, and Helen Mirren in early film roles.
Then there's the theory that King Arthur was really a leftover Roman if that movie from nearly 10 years ago is to be believed.
Personally, I think the best King Arthur film was the one made by Monty Python :-)
And then they lost to the Packers in overtime.
DeleteThat microwave ovens somehow operate with nuclear energy. Or that microwaves or cell phones cause cancer. Or cause food to be poisonous. That scientists are insane, or motivated by greed or lust for power or dominion over nature. I hate when I meet "educated" people who are shamefully ignorant about basic science facts or concepts.
ReplyDeleteBut it's all "radiation," isn't it? And radiation is bad, right? /sarcasm
DeleteThe thing I've noticed is the people who practically brag about their ignorance of science, or their inability to do "math" by which they mean "arithmetic," but if you bragged about ignorance of, say, the latest Great Novel to drop off the NY Time list without a trace, you'd be a philistine. The Two Cultures, indeed.
I had an even worse experience while I was teaching. I was completely clueless about whoever the latest warbler of pop ditties was and which TV show on the commercial channels that anybody who was anybody just had to watch. I wasn't just a philistine--I was defective.
DeleteA. That we use only 10% of our brains.
ReplyDeleteB. That creativity exists only on the right side of the brain.
C. That homeopathic remedies work.
D. That the U.S. health care system is broken because of Obamacare.
When I get A (and sometimes B) from students in class, I do take a few minutes to explain the facts. When I get B from fellow artists or an art teacher, I bite my tongue because it's just a belief that's doing no harm to them.
I hear C from younger relatives and D from older ones and respond according to my mood. My previous, more pedantic self would explain the so-called reasoning behind homeopathy. My current, more resigned self just says, "Huh. Your realize it's just water, right? Well, at least there are no side effects."
As for Obamacare, no words I say will ever convince my parents that the U.S. health care system was broken for years before Obamacare. Neither will they ever accept that the long wait on hold to get an medical appointment has nothing to do with a federal law. My response is to flip through a stale magazine and change the subject.
I always want to follow Yaro into retirement and commune with the trees.
I grew up with homeopathic remedies that actually DO work for most of my ailments, but one of my parents actually studied it for 15 years and knows what to use and what not to use and how to best prepare ingredients. I'd never touch anything in pill form sold online or at stores here in the U.S.
DeleteI always want to follow Yaro into retirement and commune with the trees.
DeleteIndeed. This feeling is completely independent of whether I feel I am surrounded by idiots or not (actually, I very rarely feel I am surrounded by idiots, and, when I do, it's usually because I'm behaving like an idiot, or at least feeling grouchy. I do occasionally have to bit my tongue when non-teachers wax rhapsodic about how they'd enjoy teaching, or offer to take a class if I need a substitute).
What concept that you think you understand and believe is commonly misunderstood by your students, colleagues, neighbors, while in fact you don't understand and they do? Oh, wait.
ReplyDeleteThat the FBI has a massive department of "profilers" for which they actively recruit undergraduates with no law enforcement experience.
ReplyDeleteOr that the said profilers also do things like swab for DNA and analyze blood spatter.
I have to challenge said misinformation but in true ffakey goodness, I am regularly told I do not know what I am talking about because ... wait for it ... what has been seen on TV!
You mean science isn't conducted like it's shown on Discovery?
DeleteA while back, PBS's "Frontline" had a documentary about that. I think the title was "The Real CSI" and it nicely debunked the notion that each and every piece of evidence is distinct and clear-cut.
We have a lot of students with these ambitions, too. As far as I can tell, a lot of them end up working for the TSA (in fact, some of them already work for the TSA, which may explain some recent airport experiences, not to mention the TSA's enthusiasm for gadgetry).
DeleteQWV, what truly saddens me is that channels like Discovery, TLC (The Learning Channel) or A&E (Arts & Entertainment) began with a focus on high quality documentary-style programming that, prior to the 500 channel explosion, was usually relegated to PBS or Sunday mornings on the Big Three networks.
DeleteBut, also in the beginning, there was dearth of such content and advertisers were skittish so large blocks were filled with infomercials. I fear the basic cable channels soon discovered that the infomercials were more popular than their core programming.
So now we get heavily hyped "events" like Shark Week (Discovery) or truly brain draining "reality" shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo (TLC!).
A & S:
DeleteI'm old enough to remember when PBS's "Nova" used to broadcast documentaries which had substance rather than the science "rock videos" with their headache-inducing camera techniques it now shows.
The early programs assumed that the audience either had some knowledge of science and/or technology or were willing to learn something about them. They depended upon the imagination of the viewers rather than dazzling graphics and they weren't afraid to show that research sometimes was a frustrating activity in which failures often occurred.
I suspect it was this downward slide into intellectual mediocrity that contributed to making my job as a tech school instructor horrendously difficult.
Every year that I teach he basics of Underwater Basket Weaving, I teach the same industry-standard techniques. Students don't believe me. I tell them - prove me wrong. They can't, of course, because if they Google the techniques, it supports the principles I teach. And still they insist on doing things their way, even though it reduces their grade. Go figure.
ReplyDeleteThat's because they always think they're smarter than you.
DeleteThat "eat your cake and have it, too" makes much more sense than "have your cake and eat it, too."
ReplyDeleteIt does, indeed, but I've always heard the latter (even from people of earlier generations not inclined to mangle the language).
DeleteHumans are animals. More specifically, humans are primates. The father of modern taxonomy, Linnaeus, classified us as primates long before Lamarck or Darwin even broached the subject of evolution, let alone anyone suggested the Big Bang or whatever else that suggested anything other than Special Creation for life and the universe, so for the love of all things holy its got nothing to do with a conspiracy by Darwin, or Dawkins, or Hitchens, or any combination of "evolutionists", atheists, liberals or Obama, that humans are classified as primates.
ReplyDeleteHOMER: Gee, Lisa, looks like tomorrow, I’ll be shoveling 10 feet of global warming.
ReplyDeleteLISA: Global warming can cause weather at both extremes, hot and cold.
HOMER: I see. So you’re saying warming makes it colder. Well, aren’t you the queen of crazy land! Everything’s the opposite of everything!
(Homer dances, twirling and waving his arms.)
HOMER (singing): La de da de da. I’m Lisa Simpson! La de da de da!
LISA (muttering): Really? Really?