The Zeitgeist

The Dragon In My Garage - Carl Sagan

Sun, 19 May 2013 18:01:27 -0400

foodncocaine:

“A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage”

Suppose (I’m following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you’d want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

“Show me,” you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle — but no dragon.

“Where’s the dragon?” you ask.

“Oh, she’s right here,” I reply, waving vaguely. “I neglected to mention that she’s an invisible dragon.”

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon’s footprints.

“Good idea,” I say, “but this dragon floats in the air.”

Then you’ll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

“Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless.”

You’ll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

“Good idea, but she’s an incorporeal dragon and the paint won’t stick.” And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won’t work.

Now, what’s the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there’s no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I’m asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you’ve really learned from my insistence that there’s a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You’d wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I’ve seriously underestimated human fallibility. Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don’t outright reject the notion that there’s a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you’re prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it’s unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative — merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of “not proved.”

Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons — to say nothing about invisible ones — you must now acknowledge that there’s something here, and that in a preliminary way it’s consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.

Now another scenario: Suppose it’s not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you’re pretty sure don’t know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages — but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we’re disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I’d rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren’t myths at all.

Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they’re never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon’s fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such “evidence” — no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it — is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.

I love Carl

ncpssm: kileyrae: The Whitehouse getting sassy on Twitter...

Sun, 19 May 2013 13:59:34 -0400

ncpssm:

kileyrae:

The Whitehouse getting sassy on Twitter today.

Read our viewpoint on the Affordable Care Act here.

Photo

Sun, 19 May 2013 13:53:38 -0400

tardisblue-alphared: im crying because did disney miss the part...

Sun, 19 May 2013 13:53:05 -0400

tardisblue-alphared:

im crying because did disney miss the part where she DIDNT WANT TO DRESS UP FOR THE CEREMONY IN THE MOVIE? NO? OK WERE GONNA IGNORE THAT.

secrethistoriesproject: 22. Mary Anning If you went down to the...

Sun, 19 May 2013 12:01:29 -0400

secrethistoriesproject:

22. Mary Anning

If you went down to the blue lias cliffs at Lyme Regis in Dorset on a freezing winter day in the 1820s or 1830s, you might have seen a thoroughly bundled-up figure scratching in the shale and examining the stones. A scientific gentleman of the Royal Society, making important discoveries about fossils that would later lead to, among other things, the development of the theory of evolution?

Well, almost.

You’d actually be looking at Mary Anning, a working-class woman from a religiously-dissenting family who wouldn’t have been allowed to scrub the front steps of the Royal Society — and a damn fine scientist nonetheless.

Anning’s family were Congregationalists, members of an unpopular religious minority. They lived in the village of Lyme, so close to the sea that their house flooded in bad weather, and they were pretty damn poor. Her father, Richard Anning, was a carpenter who supplemented his income by picking up and mining interesting stones — then called ‘curios’, later to be known as ‘fossils’ — from the beach and selling them to tourists (who initially bought them because they were weird or pretty, not for any scientific interest).

Anning and her brother Joseph (the only two of the family’s ten children to live to adulthood) helped their father at this work. After he died in 1810, 11-year-old Mary and 14-year-old Joseph (and their mother, Molly) all continued to work at fossil-collecting in order to keep their family afloat. In 1811, when Anning was twelve years old, they discovered what would later be identified as the first complete icthyosaur skeleton — Joseph dug up the skull, and a few months later, Mary found the rest of the skeleton. They sold the find to Henry Henley, a local aristocrat, who sold it on to collector William Bullock who displayed it in London — causing people to begin to ask serious questions about the Biblical account of Creation.

Anning continued to work as a fossil-hunter into adulthood, eventually opening her own shop in Lyme in 1826, ‘Anning’s Fossil Depot’. It wasn’t particularly safe or easy work, either - in 1833, Anning was caught in a landslide that nearly killed her (and did, unfortunately, kill her dog Tray, pictured in a sketch above).

Despite the fact that she had had limited access to schooling (she learned basic reading and writing at Congregationalist Sunday School), Anning was deadly serious about educating herself as a scientist. She read as many scientific journals and publications as she could get hold of. She conducted dissections of modern animals in order to better understand the fossil ones she was researching, and made careful copies of diagrams and illustrations that she found in books. Among many other discoveries, she also uncovered the first plesiosaur and the first British example of a pterosaur: her notes were also key to the discovery that coprolite stones were in fact fossilized animal dung (a discovery for which scientist William Buckland ended up getting most of the credit).

As interest in the new sciences of geology and palaeontology grew, Anning was not permitted to join the Royal Society, nor the Royal Geological Society. This effectively meant that she could not be recognised as the maker of any scientific discoveries, as she had no means to publish her work. Many of the wealthy fossil collectors who bought items from her published Society papers on their purchases: some of them appear to have ripped off her descriptions of the fossils wholesale and passed them off as their own. A friend of Anning’s, Anna Pinney, wrote:

She says the world has used her ill … these men of learning have sucked her brains, and made a great deal of publishing works, of which she furnished the contents, while she derived none of the advantages.

And damn right, too! Although those ‘in the know’ do seem to have recognised the value of Anning’s work to some extent, collecting a subscription to pay her medical bills and making her a member of the new Dorset County Museum, she still doesn’t appear to have got anything near the scientific credit she deserved. In 1847, she died of breast cancer — and the President of the Geological Society spoke at her funeral (why yes, that was the same society that wouldn’t let her join while she was alive). The eulogy was published in the Society’s quarterly transactions, an honour that no other woman would receive until the Society began accepting female members in 1904.

Anning has received much greater recognition after her death, and is a relatively famous figure nowadays — there are a number of fictional novels and kids’ books about her, and her story is even reputed to be the basis for the tongue twister ‘She sells seashells…’. The third image above is a display that now hangs in the Natural History Museum in London showing information about her life beside a plesiosaur skeleton. However, I think it’s important to remember not only her discoveries, but the sheer effort of will that it must have required for a person of her gender and class and religious background to have been taken even as seriously as she was by the scientific community during her lifetime. Surviving and thriving as an academic from a working-class background isn’t all that easy in 2012… and yet nearly 200 years earlier, Anning was doing it despite some pretty terrifying odds. It’s also, of course, important to remember how little credit she got for it, and how her findings were misappropriated by her so-called superiors — which is, of course, what happens when some people are forcibly barred from taking part in academic discourse.

Somehow, a museum plaque and a tongue-twister still don’t seem like enough to make up for that.

More:

Bio at the Natural History Museum: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/science-of-natural-history/biographies/mary-anning/index.html

Bio at Lyme Regis Museum: http://www.lymeregismuseum.co.uk/in-the-museum/mary-anning

Essay by William Sargeant, ‘The Three Mary Annings’: http://www.whaton.uwaterloo.ca/waton/s008.html

BBC primary-school kids’ page with images and a game: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/famouspeople/mary_anning/

Bio from San Diego ‘Women in Science’ series: http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/anning.html

Wikipedia biography: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Anning

Images from the ‘Literary Lyme’ walking tour: http://www.literarylyme.co.uk/maryanninggallery.html

cosmo tip #600

Sun, 19 May 2013 06:00:45 -0400

expertcosmotips:

if he thinks rape jokes are funny go on a romantic boat ride with him and leave him in the middle of the fucking ocean to die

kiranirvanna: Calling Islam on their bullshit isn’t hating...

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:01:19 -0400

kiranirvanna:

Calling Islam on their bullshit isn’t hating them. It’s not discriminating against them. It’s simply calling out their bullshit and saying “No thank you, we don’t want to follow what you follow, and it would be really awesome if you guys would treat each other like civilized human beings, and yes, that includes women and the neighbors you don’t like. Thank you.

Like I said in a post last week:

Criticizing Islam is not the same as criticizing general persons who practice Islam.

As an atheist, I don’t see any religion necessary and I’m not afraid to point out all the things wrong with Islam.

When someone believes in Jesus and the Bible, a sense of hope is given. Hope for life after death, hope that Christ will win the battle in the end time, hope that there is a great plan and we have a purpose in this life to fulfill the part of the plan that God has for us. When someone does not not believe in Christ, where does your sense of hope come from?

Sat, 18 May 2013 12:01:40 -0400

teachthemhowtothink:

Atheists have only one thing in common - they do not believe in a theistic god. So I certainly can’t speak for all atheists, but I can tell you how I feel and how most of the people I have encountered, read, watched, interacted with, etc., feel.

For an atheist, life is incredibly precious. We are utterly insignificant in terms of the size of our known universe, but the fact that we are even alive at all is extraordinary. Think of it this way… for me to be born, my parents had to be born, and their parents, and theirs, going back billions of years all the way through the evolutionary chain to simple cells. Religious or not, that fact is breathtaking.

Since we have only this one short time to be alive, every interaction and choice become more poignant. There is no “purpose” and there are no eternal consequences… but that’s why the majority of atheists are also humanists. We want life, for everyone, to be good RIGHT NOW. We want ridiculous religious sect wars to stop. We want million-dollar churches sold to provide food and shelter for those that have none. We want people to stop quoting obscure passages out of a 3000 year old book as an excuse for bigotry, racism and homophobia.

One of my favorite quotes, from Sam Harris, is, “Where faith really pays its dividends, however, is in the conviction that the future will be better than the past, or at least not worse.” Atheists don’t believe our personal future will be better… we’ll be dead. But we do hope the future will be better for our children; for those that our lives impact; for the world as a whole. ~JJ

did-you-kno: Source

Sat, 18 May 2013 06:00:48 -0400

did-you-kno:

Source

theherdier: shaunofthebread: max-of-wild-things: neverloveawil...

Sat, 18 May 2013 01:15:27 -0400

theherdier:

shaunofthebread:

max-of-wild-things:

neverloveawildling:

blua:

Unlike most of the party games you’ve played before, Cards Against Humanity is as despicable and awkward as you and your friends.The game is simple. Each round, one player asks a question from a Black Card, and everyone else answers with their funniest White Card. I highly recommend getting this game for anyone who feels bored at any point throughout the week.

550 cards (460 White cards and 90 Black cards)

0% of the proceeds will be donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation

Buy Here - $25.00

This is the best game I have ever played with my friends.

I want this

This game is the best.

This game is both politically incorrect and amazingly fun.

moniquill: jhameia: girlonaleash: thetimetravelersguidetothega...

Sat, 18 May 2013 01:10:36 -0400

moniquill:

jhameia:

girlonaleash:

thetimetravelersguidetothegalaxy:

mydollyaviana:

A crash course on non-disney films and studios (sequels not included; list is not exhaustive)

aaaaaahhh it’s so beautiful good post

THANK YOU! THIS SHIT IS NOT DISNEY!

Wow, I don’t know about a third of these…. could someone post the names? They look muchly intriguing.

The Secret of Nihm

An American Tale

The Land Before Time

All Dogs go to Heaven

Rock-a-Doodle

Thumbelina

A Troll in Central Park

The Pebble and the Penguin

Anastasia

Titan A.E.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox

We’re Back

An American Tale II: Fival Goes West

Balto

Cats Don’t Dance

Quest for Camelot

The Iron Giant

The Ant Bully

Ice Age

Robots

Horton Hears a Who

Rio

Antz

The Prince of Egypt

The Road to ElDorado

Chicken Run

Shrek

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

Sinbad, Legend of the Seven Seas

Shark Tale

Madagascar

Wallace and Gromit, Curse of the Were Rabbit

Over the Hedge

Flushed Away

Bee Movie

Kung Fu Panda

Monsters vs. Aliens

How to Tame Your Dragon

Mastermind

Rise of the Guardians

Meet the Croods

Castle in the Sky

Grave of the Fireflies

My Neighbor Totoro

Kiki’s Delivery Service

Only Yesterday

Porco Rosso

Pom Poko

Whisper of the Heart

Princess Mononoke

My Neighbors the Yamadas

Spirited Away

The Cat Returns

Howl’s Moving Castle

Ponyo

Arrietty

From Up on Poppy Hill

Open Season

Surf’s Up

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Arthur Christmas

Hotel Transylvania

The Pirates! Band of Misfits

The Last Unicorn

Fern Gully

The Swan Princess

I need this list because of reasons

Photo

Sat, 18 May 2013 01:07:35 -0400

acousticrivers: Where have all the women gone in...

Fri, 17 May 2013 23:51:54 -0400

acousticrivers:

Where have all the women gone in movies?

Despite the success of ‘Bridesmaids’ and other female-driven movies, female representation in films is at its lowest level in five years, a USC report says.

There’s one mountain in Hollywood that even “The Hunger Games’” scrappy heroine Katniss Everdeen hasn’t been able to move: the number of roles for women.

Despite the success of recent female-driven movies such as “Bridesmaids” and the “Hunger Games” and “Twilight” series, female representation in popular movies is at its lowest level in five years, according to a study being released Monday by the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

Among the 100 highest-grossing movies at the U.S. box office in 2012, the study reported, 28.4% of speaking characters were female. That’s a drop from 32.8% three years ago, and a number that has stayed relatively stagnant despite increased research attention to the topic and several high-profile box-office successes starring women.

“There is notable consistency in the number of females on-screen from year to year,” said USC researcher Marc Choueiti. “The slate of films developed and produced each year is almost formulaic — in the aggregate, female representation hardly changed at all.”

When they are on-screen, 31.6% of women are shown wearing sexually revealing clothing, the highest percentage in the five years the USC researchers have been studying the issue.

For teen girls, the number who are provocatively dressed is even higher: 56.6% of teen girl characters in 2012 movies wore sexy clothes, an increase of 20% since 2009.

The USC researchers said these trends persist because those working in Hollywood believe attracting a male audience is the key ingredient to box office success.

“Industry perceptions of the audience drive much of what we see on-screen,” said study author Stacy L. Smith. “There is a perception that movies that pull male sell. Given that females go to the movies as much as males, the lack of change is likely due to entrenched ways of thinking and doing business that perpetuate the status quo.”

Female characters are more prevalent — and less likely to be sexualized — in movies written and directed by women, according to Smith.

A study USC released in January in conjunction with the Sundance Institute and Women in Film Los Angeles found that women have made more inroads in those kinds of behind-the-camera jobs in independent film and documentaries than they have in big-budget studio movies.

But it’s typically the studio movies that drive the box office — and shape audiences.

“Some depictions of females on-screen can have unintended and negative consequences for viewers,” Smith said. “Every voice deserves a chance to be heard and every story a chance to be told. At the moment … that does not seem to be the case in popular film.”

— Rebecca Keegan, Los Angeles Times

To add onto the lack of women in films, lets not forget the lack of women of color in films.

But a good point is made here

#feminismforeveryonenotjustwhitepeople

Anyone know the cheapest option for getting a kotatsu or a kotatsu-like table? I want to buy one for...

Fri, 17 May 2013 23:49:22 -0400

Anyone know the cheapest option for getting a kotatsu or a kotatsu-like table?

I want to buy one for my spare bedroom in my next apartment!

To: The Girl I Work With

Fri, 17 May 2013 22:54:21 -0400

You should probably revise your opinion that to be Asian would be awful when you have nothing to base it on.

You sound racist as hell.

Also, you probably shouldn’t go around saying that in the workplace anyway.

Also, can’t get enough of cheezy j-rock and j-pop

Fri, 17 May 2013 22:49:26 -0400

Also, can’t get enough of cheezy j-rock and j-pop

Nighttime bike ride with the best guy ever through a deserted college campus? Why yes, yes...

Fri, 17 May 2013 22:48:26 -0400

Nighttime bike ride with the best guy ever through a deserted college campus? Why yes, yes please.

Stopping the bike ride to lay in the middle of the school lawn on the freshly mown lawn was also a plus.

thegoddamazon: djehutiarts: africa-will-unite: NO...

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:01:06 -0400

thegoddamazon:

djehutiarts:

africa-will-unite:

NO COMMENT

Accurate…

No commentary necessary.

ksfp: Elbert Hubbard

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:01:26 -0400

ksfp:

Elbert Hubbard

obesitycore: the really shitty thing about being told that youre smart your whole entire life is...

Fri, 17 May 2013 06:01:03 -0400

obesitycore:

the really shitty thing about being told that youre smart your whole entire life is that as soon as you dont understand something you just kind of completely shut down and his this big shitty crisis because maybe youre not as smart as youve always been told

oh fuck this is totally me.

All through school the only reason people would want to work with me on projects was because i was the “smart kid”. Not only did it start this complex of feeling inadequate in all areas except for being “smart”, I was devastated when I wasn’t put into accelerated Math courses in high school. All my friends who were in accelerated English courses were also in accelerated Math courses and here I was, only good at English.

It fucking sucked and I was embarrassed for so long about how I wasn’t good enough to be in those same classes as my friends.