Tagged: education
It’s Like Movie Stars Complaining About Discrimination
As I keep reading essays and books essentially on “the definition of science”, I can’t help asking, “Where does the conflict with religion come in?” I can readily admit that I feel the conflict, but after spending any time in contemplation on the supposed conflict, I resolve everything to, “It’s comparing apples and oranges”. The only conflict is between bad religion and bad science. The real deal of either each stands alone and never the twain shall meet.
This new thought (in the post’s title ⤴️) about the conflict occurred to me just now.
So let me get this straight. The authors of all the mainstream science textbooks that are endlessly promoted and in use (or their conclusions are—which is the same) by all major educational institutions, these authors uniformly decry religion as, in general, something that holds humans back. Or that it stunts the development of knowledge and civilization etc.
Yeah. Okay. I believe you. Just like I believe the claims of millionaire celebrities that they’re victims of discrimination.
Gimme a break.
Just Finished a Book By Einstein; Christopher Nolan is Wrong
The title of the book is The Evolution of Physics.
Given there is still plenty of daylight, but my brain could use a break, I decided to revisit Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Why not, right?
In it, the woman asks, “Can you explain quantum mechanics to me? It seems baffling.”
Nolan has Oppie answer, “It is.”
He continues, “This glass— This drink— Our bodies— are mostly empty space, groupings of tiny energy waves bound together-”
She interrupts, attention laser focused, “By what?”
“Forces of attraction strong enough to convince us ‘matter is solid’.”
I do not know where Nolan got his material. I can imagine that he read Oppenheimer’s own writing and deduced this or—cringe—Oppenheimer even said this. I can imagine it, but I don’t believe it.
The problem with that definition is it neglectfully forgets a key point—or two, to be precise.
First, and this is directly from Einstein, it isn’t merely “tiny energy waves” but should say, “empty space, groupings of invisible energy waves.” And second, add “and energy particles”.
In full, and I hope to bring out for us lay folks the full sense of what I read in the clearest possible manner, if defined by Einstein, according the format Nolan introduced, the answer to “What is quantum mechanics?” when asked by a thin woman as a come-on (sapiosexual) at a bar is, “This glass, this drink, our bodies are mostly empty space—groupings of invisible energy waves and energy particles bound together by forces of attraction strong enough to convince us ‘matter is solid’.”
Put shorter—for illustrative purposes because I know this is uncommon—“Our bodies are invisible.”
Paraphrasing Einstein, for this claim to be true and/or accurate (the claim that “‘our bodies are invisible’ is quantum mechanics”) this claim must be tempered with, “when moving near the speed of light and observed indirectly.”
Now. You. Know.
Two Ideas For Books
Whether all experience it, or just certain personalities out of those who get the idea to write, I have learned that in the beginning of the career of unsuccessful writers there is a strong desire to not “let the cat out of the bag” too early. There is a belief that “I have a good idea and it is so good that someone else might profit if I share it before it’s for sale by me.”
But I have been blogging for over a decade now, and helped a few others with their books, and I am convinced that all that is hogwash. Life is just too complicated for a single idea, unaccompanied by the innumerable trappings of fate, to succeed.
To prove this, I share that recently I have had two ideas for books. These are prompted by a desire to somehow manifest that reading the classics has tangible results at a level somewhere below “advance of our civilization”. (Implied- civilization definitionally cannot advance if it is built on lies or ignorance of itself—so read the classics! It’s all at stake!)
Firstly, I want to write a book called “Union” that has a chapter for each, of what I have to believe would be at least twenty, type of artificial union between materials that man has developed. Knots, screws, nails, velcro, glue, epoxy etc. When I write it, the descriptions would be quick reads and informative. But the result would be the perfect contemplative admixture of “so what?” with “if we can figure out mating materials, why can’t we figure out relationships?” I have to believe—contrary to all evidence in my life—that we can figure out human relationship/union.
Secondly, I want to write a book—which may be uber short—which highlights a theme which I have seen in the bios of all the authors in my Great Books of the Western World and companion set Gateway to the Great Books. The theme being, the fact that the authors spent the entirety of their lives learning (as opposed to our deeply unreflective “go to college” mindset) coupled with often epic intellectually-based struggles well into old age. Each chapter may just be one page, often only one sentence. IE Hobbes – Forbid from publishing in his mother country from 70 yrs old to 91 yrs old when he died (don’t quote me, this is from memory and may be wrong on all points). The trick to this book is creating knockout punch sentences without getting repetitive.
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“Go to college.” Ha. What a joke.
If you want to run with this, do it. I dare ya.
On the Ol’ “Horse Running Beside the Train in which a Horse Moves to the Front” Thought Experiment
I can’t quite remember his name with certainty, but he lived in the house with the green shutters at the tip-top of the hill. He was right across the street from the bus stop.
One day he says “If nothing can move faster than the speed of light, explain this…” Then he gives the supposedly Einstein-derived thought experiment in which you imagine a train moving at the speed of light, inside which is a horse who moves from the back of the train to the front, and then add to this scene a horse beside the train who is pacing the horse in the train.
I took his point to be the classic midwestern point of “Einstein is wrong” sentiment (falling within the broader category of “bein’ smart ain’t nuttin’”), because the horse beside the train is obviously going faster than the speed-of-light train.
But I am working through Einstein’s own The Evolution of Physics and the truth is far different. Whether the kid knew it or not (it is possible I totally misread the moment), the thought experiment is not the one Einstein proposes (at least in this book) but does capture the concept—being relativity. In short, the speed of light is the limit. The horse beside the train is not going faster than the speed of light. This is Einstein’s discovery or theory or whatever you want to call it.
As with all knowledge, it is the presuppositions that matter and the thought experiment is based on the presuppositions of mechanical physics, whereas—it would seem—reality is not. (Reality is not based on mechanical physics—at least not entirely.)
And, yes, like you, I do have a bit of “so what, Albert?” in me. But then I remind myself that the point of my reading is not to “learn to care”, but to learn so that I can call out BS when I see it.
Been Reading Some Einstein (and Infeld)
Until you do too, or until you read Newton himself, you just need to trust me. Any chance you get, any time you hear someone associate Newton with an apple falling from a tree, stamp it out—fiercely, ferociously if necessary, but effectively in any case. Newton should be forever tied to a David-esque slingshot. In all honesty, Newton’s influence on life on Earth is probably more profound than the “man after God’s own heart.” But however your rank order of the two concludes, they are both whirling a rock around on a rope—no apples in sight. Just stop it!
Teachers Receive Stricter Judgment
Do not, many of you, become teachers, my brothers, knowing that we will receive a stricter judgment.
For all the experimentally-derived information not found in the books of the Bible, it sure does contain many easily deduced sentiments.
For my part, I have been elbow deep in Natural Science essays of late, essays whose subject matter has ranged from stars to candles, from chalk to mountains, and from monkeys to conservation of energy. Essays, I say. Maybe 20 total. About 450 pages worth. And these by the actual discoverers of the subject. I have not been reading a textbook written by some no-account hack with bought-and-paid-for letters after their name, just essays written by the men whose genius advanced material life on this planet so rapidly in the last 400+ years.
After the last two essays which covered such basic topics as the “law of periodicity” and the “law of conservation of force”, of which such simple words like “period” and “foot-pound” were defined—words which none of you (or I) could define upon request, but which we employ at our leisure—I started to get angry.
I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself—I am certain that I have now read more than most ever have or will on from the field of Natural Science. And that thrills me. Instead, I was thinking of my kids and all other kids. They are sitting in schools right now, staring at the periodic table and completely unaware why it is so-named. They are, if lucky, in an auto-tech class turning wrenches, and applying torque, without being able to define what it means that the limit for that bolt is 120 foot-pounds—or from where the expended 120 foot-pounds of energy get replenished.
Before you get all “Well, Pete, you’re forgetting that not everyone…” on me, I want to re-iterate these are kids who are in school! What else are they doing if not learning? And, keep in mind I have already suggested a mere 500 pages would advance their knowledge to within reach of the current peaks of human knowledge of natural science.
Also to be clear, I am suggesting these essays would be the course. Have a teacher lead the kids through them and then see what the kids want to do. I cannot be persuaded that they would choose to stop there. It is a sure bet that their curiosity would be piqued and each would willingly follow the most interesting path they saw available to continue down.
As it stands, “hydrogen will bond with…” inspires hardly anyone and we act little different than the uneducated nations and “emerging” cultures which leave a child to himself as we declare, “Oh look at that! He’s gonna be a football player for sure!”
Since obtaining a step-son from another culture, worlds away, I have seen nothing but the distribution of participation trophies which the adults and kids assign as symbolic displays of new expertise in subjects of which they both are ignorant and of abilities of which they are both wanting.
My step-son’s skin is dark, so this was to be expected as the whites in education are utterly brainwashed into thinking BIPOC folks are genetically inferior.
But I have unfortunately watched this occur all across the spectrum. The entire field of education is one big gold star for trying. The underlying sentiment has become, “You are too stupid to understand the hard stuff, so let’s just stay in the shallow end.” The obvious trouble with this idea is the people doing the hard stuff disagree.
Education, hear me clearly, is directly opposed to the priesthood. If you believe there is some special class of human that children cannot generally achieve, you cannot also believe in education. You might as well burn books. This is no different than how you cannot believe both in a geocentric and heliocentric model of the universe, or girls can become boys and boys can become girls.
In the end, in all my “this is wrong”, I found myself reminded of the scripture I opened with. Most Christians would limit James’ warning to spiritual matters. I disagree. Teachers will be more strictly judged. Teachers are being judged. We are all being judged by their failure.
Knowledge Is Irresistible; It Defies Rebellion
Come close, ya stiff-necked supercargo. This one is important. This is a story about laundry. It is a story about power. It is the story of knowledge.
It may come as a surprise that pilots, especially military pilots or their veteran counterparts like me, spend many nights of each year in sleeping bags. As an Eagle Scout who knows the true value of a quality sleeping bag, I remember being very proud when I heard that our deployed commander used one instead of sheets while in Iraq. You see, I was no longer alone. To this day, I spend about 1/4 of the year’s nights in a sleeping bag—not including camping trips.
Naturally, this level of commitment leads to the need to wash a sleeping bag, and wash it with more regularity than your own sleeping bag laundering habits have ever included. In fact, you’re likely thinking this very moment, “Where is my sleeping bag?”
Washing a sleeping bag is an adventure of its own. Not just the washing, but the drying as well. For any ground-pounding, civilian pukes who never have spent a night under the stars (let’s not forget the boldly illiterate hippie camping community), there is a tag right on the bag that says, “Only dry in commercial dryers” or some similar wording that forbids the pilot from his perfect dream of living as an island.
(I have laundered my sleeping bag(s) many times at home and never had a problem. This post is not about rule-following.)
So the other day, despite both cars revealing mechanical issues almost simultaneously, I learned at night that the dryer stopped heating. (LORD? You watchin’?) It made the same noises and tumbled as surely as any other day—even longer when on the “automatic” setting; but the clothes wouldn’t dry. I tracked down that they weren’t getting warm either.
Enter YouTube.
There were two probable issues. One was that a thermal fuse on the heating element had tripped/blown. The other was the heating element itself had broken.
I tracked down an appliance parts guru in town who loved to chat on the phone and he assured me it was the fuse. But I forced him to concede it was worth ordering both just in case his foresight proved dim. During this back-and-forth, he said something like, “It’s all about airflow. The air has to blow the heat from the heating element into the dryer and then that air has to find its way past the clothes, past the lint trap, and through the vent all the way to the outside world. If any part of that path is blocked, the heat will remain and eventually blow the fuse. You may never know why the path got blocked. Could be stray article of clothes got caught in the wrong spot or maybe someone washed too big a comforter. But it’s all about the air.”
Fasten your seatbelts.
“Only dry in a commercial dryer,” the tag reads. Any warm-blooded human says, “Huh?” And we proceed to rebel and possibly damage the dryer.
But…
“It’s all about airflow. If the sleeping bag blocks the incoming heat, the fuse will blow—which is annoying. If the fuse doesn’t blow, the heating element could potentially overheat and cause a fire—lots of variables in that one,” the facts are. And any warm-blooded human says, “Okay.” And then assesses the risks and gets on with their decision.
The passive, uninformed warning fosters rebellion, and well it should. Instinct informs us to demand respect! “Don’t boss me! You have my attention. Now treat me like a man!”
But the knowledge is irresistible and fosters sound judgment and good decision making. “Hmm. Good to know. I’ve dried many things of similar size in this machine and so I’ll risk it.” Or whatever.
What is knowledge? Knowledge is irresistible. It defies rebellion.
Go get some.
PS – It was the heating element. And Speed Queen dryers are super easy to work on—should they not live up to their name.
PPS – Yes, I have gone back to the original name of my blog. I do want to use the fact that I stare down death for a living to get your attention. Whether I can keep it is the thrill.
New Conversational Vocabulary for Resisting the Next Vaccine (Approved and Inspired by Claude Bernard)
While the RFK Jr. news is provocative, I am not persuaded that the lessons the Left learned from COVID and power available during pandemics will ever be forgotten.
I got vaccinated, but not for medical reasons. Like many, I had it at least once.
I am not an “anti-vaxxer”.
Yet, it should not surprise anyone that my sympathies will always lie with people who resist acts of compulsion—notably by the government. Additionally, my own instinct instructs me to recognize that my fellow humans’ instinct which tells them to resist vaccines should be allowed to prevail. In short, “you do you”. But I can’t help but notice the resistance lacked rhetorical skill.
Given my status as exceedingly well-read and becoming more-so daily, I want to lend a hand. I wouldn’t spend so much time in the books if I didn’t believe there is practical value inherent.
In this post, then, I want to give any “instinctive” anti-vaxxer the language, the vocabulary as it were, to successfully repel any future mandates, and their inherent conversational societal pressures. In other words, I encourage you to adopt the following as your script when your own family members make outrageous claims to “trust the science”.
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Smug Relative: “Just trust the science! It’s harmless.”
You: “First, ‘No, thank you.’ First Part B, what you mean by science, and what we both agree is its prime definition, is ‘same conditions, same result—every time’. In short, science is certainty. Anything less than certainty is not science. If I may, you don’t trust the science, because one cannot trust the science, because the vaccine—unless you claim it is certain—is not science.
“To conclude, say what you mean. You’re trusting something—but it ain’t the science.”
“Second, harmless? What is the difference between harmless and failed? Because when you say harmless, you seem to be implying that no one put any effort or investment into the attempt to develop a compound that will teach my body to defend itself from the virus. But I believe people most definitely put effort and investment into developing a material that will teach my body to defend itself from the virus. (And I believe you, here again, actually agree with me.)
“Therefore until they are certain, harmless must mean “they failed.” And I am not interested in putting failure into my body from the outside; I have enough trouble keeping it from being generated in the inside.”
Smug Relative: “There is never going to be certainty in medicine.”
You: “Again, we find ourselves in agreement.”
Smug Relative: “I see. So what? You need me to explain the statistics?”
You: “Nope. I don’t require anything more of you. Thanks for hearing me out. I’m glad we chatted.”
The Image of a Microscope which Accompanied the Science Article—That’s What Bothered Me Today
The Sunday paper had an interesting article about the current war with China. Interesting as it was, there was no call to action. Or at least not a memorable one. There certainly was nothing for citizens to do. I think what I’m suggesting about the op/ed was that the scale wasn’t appropriate.
On the other hand, there was an article suggesting two “Life Science” bills be voted down. One of the two stock “science-y” images the paper used was of a microscope. Of all the articles and opinions in today’s paper, this irked me the most. Why? Because unlike the other author’s claim that China is an existential threat to America (the sky is a-falling!), this image is one which an individual—likely an editor—can do something about.
“Science” is not merely tool use. If anything, science is to tool (science:tool) as man is to wheel (science:tool::man:wheel). Science invents tools; science is never the process of using tools.
And an editor should know this—could know this. And that editor would be doing a service to truth, and his bottom line, if they put a bit more reason into their product.
What image should the editor use to capture science?
There are many that would work. But an easy one would be of someone writing an excellently organized paper, with a title which sufficiently describes the paper’s purpose.
Schools: Please Stop Sending Emails
Stop sending parents emails of every little thing you do. This request is especially for high schools. Who has time? And they’re boring. They only satisfy your need to feel whatever it is you want to feel. No one cares. And they do not influence life on earth. The kids care or don’t.
Please stop sending emails.
Instead, use the newfound free time to…teach!!!
Captain’s Log 