National Stupid Month?
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former. – Albert Einstein
First off, the formula e = mc² was not a bolt out of the blue. It expresses the ratios involved in the Law of the Conservation of Energy and is obviously derivative of Leibnitz’s formula for kinetic energy from the 1680s and the general concepts put forth in the Laws of Motion published by Isaac Newton in that time frame.
If more Americans took math and science in high school, and those that did actually paid attention, then Andrew Schlafly [spawn of Phyllis] would not have attempted to claim that the Theory of Relativity was a liberal plot to push relativism while claiming that it doesn’t allow for exceptions, and Steve Bates wouldn’t get annoyed at him.
Some basic logic for Mr. Schafly – only absolutes have no exceptions, OK? If there are no exceptions, there can’t be relativity. That’s also why the formula, e = mc², is not the equivalent of the Theory of Relativity.
Aside: Steve has already encountered more than his share of stupid this month. His DSL went down and when they reconnected it, SBC decided it didn’t want to talk to Linux users. The fact that SBC is a “Baby Bell” and Unix, the grandfather of Linux. was developed at Bell Labs and the fact that Linux powers an estimated 3 out of 4 servers on the Internet, doesn’t stop SBC from demanding that you use IE or Safari to connect to their system. Maroons, just total maroons [as a certain rabbit use to say].
4 comments
There’s the whole educated ‘nuance and relativity’ thing the liberals do which frightens the religious wingnuts. The teabaggery minds need their absolutes. God is All. God is Lov… no, wait… God is mighty and will smite those who don’t believe in this specific religion right here in this church, fuck everybody else.
So taking down the icon of confusing overeducated hoity-toity superiority represented by Einstein is an accidental plus. Andrew Schlafly was going after that weird scary word: relativism….
Conservatives don’t need no stinkin’ relativism….
Of course, the other (major) problem with education today (even here), is that it’s mostly now “learning by rote”. It’s relatively easy to get an *education* today. Intelligence is the ability to make good use of that education, including the ability to know and understand the limitations of that education and figuring out how to properly educate oneself. Education without intelligence is like a reservoir full of water, with no pipeline to the city. All the water does is take up space and has no practical use for the city. 🙂
All the blowhard fundies and assorted religious wackos lack intelligence, and even in many cases, education! Learning scares them… (they might discover they are wrong!! Shhhhhh…) It’s sooooooooo much easier to simple believe in something, anything! That requires neither education, or intelligence! In fact, both simply make it harder! 😆
Elroon, if they knew Einstein’s history they would really hate him, because he wrote that paper while he was a clerk in the Swiss patent office. They surely couldn’t tolerate a brilliant government bureaucrat. 😉
It would be nice if at least a few “conservatives” owned and used a dictionary from time to time, so they would understand the difference between relativity and relativism, or the meaning of absolute.
As near as I can tell he is accusing Einstein of absolute relativism, while “conservatives” believe in relative absolutism … or some such foolishness [wanders away shaking his head…]
Well, Kryten, as the value of an education has been seriously degraded recently by all of the outsourcing that goes on, and it doesn’t take a lot to be able to say “Welcome to WalMart”, people might turn back to the apprenticeship system, as you can’t outsource plumbing.
The basic problem is that people can’t tell the difference between “knowing” and “believing”. The Christianists keep claiming that belief is knowledge which depreciates the value of both.
OT: I don’t think that Hipparchia has resolved all of her technical issues.