The Suck Zone - Need a science forum

[AProudLefty]

 

[Cypress]

Genuine interest in science and the maths is limited to about six people here, unless there is a partisan political angle to be exploited, aka evolution and climate science.

On a tangent, I got the impression William Jefferson Clinton and Jimmy Carter were our most scientifically literate presidents.

 

[PostmodernProphet]

nobody is keeping you from starting threads about science topics.......

 

[Saint Guinefort]

Genuine interest in science and the maths is limited to about six people here, unless there is a partisan political angle to be exploited, aka evolution and climate science.

On a tangent, I got the impression William Jefferson Clinton and Jimmy Carter were our most scientifically literate presidents.

Carter was DEFINITELY among the top. He was a trained nuclear operator as I understood it.

Herbert Hoover was no slouch either. He was a mining geologist and he and his wife were the first people to translate De Re Metallica (a famous geology text from Agricola) from Latin into English.

 

[Saint Guinefort]

nobody is keeping you from starting threads about science topics.......

Correct. Most of those that are not particularly "controversial" (ie largely misunderstood by the scientific illiterates on the board) it won't get much traction, though.

I like to see the depth of scientific ignorance of many of our posters here on JPP. It is an inspiration to push for actual scientific education improvement in the US.

 

[Cypress]

Carter was DEFINITELY among the top. He was a trained nuclear operator as I understood it.

Herbert Hoover was no slouch either. He was a mining geologist and he and his wife were the first people to translate De Re Metallica (a famous geology text from Agricola) from Latin into English.

That's right, I forgot that Hoover had such a keen mind.

Clinton was just one of those whose mind was endlessly curious and able to retain encyclopedic information. He was only a lawyer by training, but he seemed genuinely capable of talking about the human genome and genetics, because the topic interested him

 

[T. A. Gardner]

Genuine interest in science and the maths is limited to about six people here, unless there is a partisan political angle to be exploited, aka evolution and climate science.

On a tangent, I got the impression William Jefferson Clinton and Jimmy Carter were our most scientifically literate presidents.

Carter was more of an engineering literate president while Clinton was not particularly scientifically literate. Others for their time that were fairly literate in science, engineering (well, STEM) included:

Herbert Hoover Mining engineer and very knowledgeable geologist
Millard Fillmore was a trained surveyor

That's about it for STEM backgrounds, three presidents. I'd say only Hoover really made the most of his STEM background becoming a millionaire in developing mines around the world.

 

[Cypress]

Carter was more of an engineering literate president while Clinton was not particularly scientifically literate. Others for their time that were fairly literate in science, engineering (well, STEM) included:

Herbert Hoover Mining engineer and very knowledgeable geologist
Millard Fillmore was a trained surveyor

That's about it for STEM backgrounds, three presidents. I'd say only Hoover really made the most of his STEM background becoming a millionaire in developing mines around the world.

You don't have to have a bachelor's degree in nuclear engineering or a masters in geology to have a layperson's literacy in science.

James Garfield invented a proof for the Pythagorean theorem. Thomas Jefferson was famously interested in natural history and applied sciences. Clinton was keenly interested and informed about the human genome project. Al Gore taught himself about climate science, and no politician knew more about the internet in the late 80s and 90s than Gore.

On the other hand, politicians like bleach man Trump and Sarah Palin never showed the slightest genuine interest in scientific knowledge.

 

[T. A. Gardner]

You don't have to have a bachelor's degree in nuclear engineering or a masters in geology to have a layperson's literacy in science.

James Garfield invented a proof for the Pythagorean theorem. Thomas Jefferson was famously interested in natural history and applied sciences. Clinton was keenly interested and informed about the human genome project. Al Gore taught himself about climate science, and no politician knew more about the internet in the late 80s and 90s than Gore.

On the other hand, politicians like bleach man Trump and Sarah Palin never showed the slightest genuine interest in scientific knowledge.

Al Gore is an idiot. I read his book. He knows only what the radical environmental Left says about climate. His movie is rubbish, and his ideas on climate are bullshit. The others I can agree on.

 

[Cypress]

Al Gore is an idiot. I read his book. He knows only what the radical environmental Left says about climate. His movie is rubbish, and his ideas on climate are bullshit. The others I can agree on.

The two guys who invented the internet acknowledged Gore as the most important politician in the 80s and 90s who grasped the internet, it's potential, and took a leading role promoting it.

Al Gore and the Internet

By Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf

Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development.

No one person or even small group of persons exclusively "invented" the Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among people in government and the university community. But as the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.

https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~fessler/misc/funny/gore,net.txt

I'm going to include Abe Lincoln as one of the more scientifically literate presidents, by the standards of his day. Lincoln was a voracious reader, had boundless curiosity, and the type of mind that could retain information in Encyclopedic quantities.

I am about 100 percent sure he is the only president to have read Euclid's Elements cover to cover

 

[T. A. Gardner]

The two guys who invented the internet acknowledged Gore as the most important politician in the 80s and 90s who grasped the internet, it's potential, and took a leading role promoting it.

The ONLY thing Gore ever did with development of the internet is vote for some--SOME--of the government funding for it. That's it. He did NOTHING towards its development. NOTHING.
He was a nothing burger in terms of development of the internet. He doesn't even deserve a footnote.

 

[Cypress]

The ONLY thing Gore ever did with development of the internet is vote for some--SOME--of the government funding for it. That's it. He did NOTHING towards its development. NOTHING.
He was a nothing burger in terms of development of the internet. He doesn't even deserve a footnote.

You are a random anonymous guy on the internet who wasn't involved in the invention of the internet.

The two guys who are considered the fathers of the Internet wrote an article praising Gore as the most important politician of the late 20th century to grasp the importance of the internet, promote it, support it.

If gore was simply cluelessly signing off on checks, I don't think Kahn and Cerf would have written that accolade of Gore and the internet

As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship. Though easily forgotten, now, at the time this was an unproven and controversial concept.

--> Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf

Gore was self educated on climate science, and has a very good layperson's grasp of it.

"The Associated Press contacted more than 100 climate researchers and questioned them about the film's veracity. All 19 climate scientists who had seen the movie (Inconvenient Truth) or had read the homonymous book said that Gore accurately conveyed the science, with few errors.[38]"

Wikipedia, An Inconvenient Truth

 

[Ross Dolan]

You are a random anonymous guy on the internet who wasn't involved in the invention of the internet.

The two guys who are considered the fathers of the Internet wrote an article praising Gore as the most important politician of the late 20th century to grasp the importance of the internet, promote it, support it.

If gore was simply cluelessly signing off on checks, I don't think Kahn and Cerf would have written that accolade of Gore and the internet


Gore was self educated on climate science, and has a very good layperson's grasp of it.

TA either IS an asshole...or plays an asshole on the Internet. Gore was FAR from an idiot.

Washington also was a trained surveyor.

And Trump. He did read...

He gave it rave reviews.

 

[Cypress]

TA either IS an asshole...or plays an asshole on the Internet. Gore was FAR from an idiot.

Washington also was a trained surveyor.

And Trump. He did read...

He gave it rave reviews.

Oh, I agree. The founding fathers came from that classical Enlightenment tradition where gentlemen (and aristocratic women) were expected to be broadly educated and intellectually curious. John Adams was something of an amateur astronomer and Thomas Jefferson was famously interested in natural history, geology, paleontology. Ben Franklin, as far as I know was completely self taught in the natural sciences.

 

[signalmankenneth]

Why don't you start an all things science thread?

 

[Dutch Uncle]

Genuine interest in science and the maths is limited to about six people here, unless there is a partisan political angle to be exploited, aka evolution and climate science.

On a tangent, I got the impression William Jefferson Clinton and Jimmy Carter were our most scientifically literate presidents.

Agreed on all except Slick Willie. He had some good advisors, but he never struck me as very scientifically minded. Carter for sure since he was a Naval Academy graduate and nuclear power officer.

 

[AProudLefty]

Why don't you start an all things science thread?

Hmm good idea.

 

[signalmankenneth]

Hmm good idea.

I'll support it!

 

[serendipity]

TA either IS an asshole...or plays an asshole on the Internet. Gore was FAR from an idiot.

Washington also was a trained surveyor.

And Trump. He did read...

He gave it rave reviews.

The political champion of the natural world received a sophomore D in Natural Sciences 6 (Man's Place in Nature) and then got a C-plus in Natural Sciences 118 his senior year. The self-proclaimed inventor of the Internet avoided all courses in mathematics and logic throughout college, despite his outstanding score on the math portion of the SAT. As was the case with many of his classmates, his high school math grades had dropped from A's to C's as he advanced from trigonometry to calculus in his senior year.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...ousness/5da4b9e3-a017-4dd5-9bb5-bfc68f0b4eb5/

 

[serendipity]

You are a random anonymous guy on the internet who wasn't involved in the invention of the internet.

The two guys who are considered the fathers of the Internet wrote an article praising Gore as the most important politician of the late 20th century to grasp the importance of the internet, promote it, support it.

If gore was simply cluelessly signing off on checks, I don't think Kahn and Cerf would have written that accolade of Gore and the internet


Gore was self educated on climate science, and has a very good layperson's grasp of it.

An Inconvenient Truth is riddled with errors, untruths and just downright lies. Just take for example his bullshit that sea levels could rise up to 20 feet in the near future due to the melting of ice in both Greenland and the Arctic. Another lie is that the Arctic would be ice free in the Summer by 2013. Yet another is Gore's assertion that the disappearance of snow on Mount Kilimanjaro in East Africa was expressly attributable to global warming. I could go on but those ought to be enough to discredit the fat bastard permanently .