Category Archives: General Science

Sagan Memories

I was never a big fan of Cosmos, though I think that it did a lot of good in interesting people in space. I’m listening to a rerun on the SCIHD channel, and I recall why.

Sagan’s voice is too pompous, too arrogant, and the ubiquitous sonorous tone, and pauses, which lent themselves to parody (“billions and billions”) are really arrogant. I wish that he had written it, and someone else narrated.

Losing His Marbles

I have to agree with Derb:

I’ve always liked Ben’s stuff — used to read his diary in The American Spectator way back in the 1970s. Smart, funny, worldly guy, with just that endearing streak of eccentricity. I’m sorry to see he’s lost his marbles.

Me, too. Some conservatives have this very strange blind spot when it comes to evolution.

[Update a few minutes later]

Derb eviscerates Stein’s thesis. As is usually the case, his attack on evolution (or as he calls it, “Darwinism”) is founded on a profound ignorance of the subject.

[Late afternoon update]

Well, this is a heck of a way to celebrate the old man’s 199th birthday:

Florida’s department of education will vote next week on a new science curriculum that could be in jeopardy, because some conservative counties oppose it.

Nine of Florida’s 64 counties have passed resolutions over the last two months condemning the new curriculum that explicitly calls for teaching evolution. The resolutions, passed in heavily Christian counties in the state’s northern reaches, demand that evolution be “balanced” with alternative theories, mainly creationist.

That’s not really Florida. It’s more like deep southern Georgia, culturally…