https://www.google.com/search?q=neil+tyson+degrass&oq=neil+tyson+degrass&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.1954j0j7&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/22/creationists-airtime-cosmos-neil-degrasse-tyson_n_5009234.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/19/neil-degrasse-tyson_n_4990882.html
http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/03/23/291440486/the-most-powerful-nerd-in-the-universe-and-a-unicorn
https://twitter.com/neiltyson
guidoanselmi posted:fuck nld
ya fucks jocks + populares
Edited by c_man ()
peepaw posted:he's alright but it sucks popular science meant for adults has to resort to explaining everything on a level 5 year olds can understand because people are stupid and our education system is shit
it seems that throwing some names of elements makes over half of the adults cower in fear. it's some bullshit for sure
conec posted:i H*TE communism n i h*te ELMO
da fuqqq????
it's impossible to mount an effective space program without a powerful state apparatus and commercial spaceflight is gay as hell and wont accomplish anything
peepaw posted:he's alright but it sucks popular science meant for adults has to resort to explaining everything on a level 5 year olds can understand because people are stupid and our education system is shit
pretty much this. inspiring a love of science is far different from inspiring an appreciation for nature cloaked like the actual soul-crushing scientific process. couple that with irresponsibly inspiring and doctoring/tutoring a cult of personality which utterly detracts from the message itself. this is just evidenced by the dialogue surround him and his work revolves around the persona - not what's actually discussed.
naively, one might say this inspires people to entire the sciences. given the target audience and followers - that's highly unlikely. (though if someone where to find demographics on cosmos, i'd appreciate it.) actually wanting to pursue science is far removed from listening about it and more tied to blowing things up in your backyard when you're a kid and building things imho. looking at pretty pictures of spacey things with that veneer of an explanation does nothing but give the impression of knowledge to the idiot viewer.
of course i say this without having watched it. 
MindMaster posted:it's impossible to mount an effective space program without a powerful state apparatus and commercial spaceflight is gay as hell and wont accomplish anything
you should find my lf era posts on this when iwc was trolling me. it depends for what purpose. generalizing spaceflight as one monolithic concept for one goal is incorrect.
loosely, there are distinct objectives for (earth, (inter)planetary, astrophysical, in situ low gravity) science, (telecom, manned (lol)), commercial, (various) military, and manned exploratory missions. the level of coordination required to foster and develop such programs requires significant industrial and organization capability to manage the complexity. i've mulled over decentralized project concepts - it'd be an interesting experiment inevitably doomed for failure and/but still built upon the foundation of existing institutions.
Edited by guidoanselmi ()
but i dislike the basically liberal, sentimental argument that typically goes "we must improve things here on earth before we go out into space", it's misleading since it suggests a homogeneity of resources that does not in actuality exist. the scientists of the people's republic must be applied to wherever they are most useful to the common, which might sometimes be in space.
guidoanselmi posted:you should find my lf era posts on this when iwc was trolling me. it depends for what purpose. generalizing spaceflight as one monolithic concept for one goal is incorrect.
loosely, there are distinct objectives for (earth, (inter)planetary, astrophysical, in situ low gravity) science, (telecom, manned (lol)), commercial, (various) military, and manned exploratory missions. the level of coordination required to foster and develop such programs requires significant industrial and organization capability to manage the complexity. i've mulled over decentralized project concepts - it'd be an interesting experiment inevitably doomed for failure and/but still built upon the foundation of existing institutions.
yeah i agree and is partly what i meant to say above
if anyone's interested in reading like ~4000 words on dark matter you can pm me. or ask me whatever space questions. it's (planetary science, aerospace systems engineering, astrophysics, and to a minor extent operations) has been my life for the past decade. i kinda wanted to do this in SA but everytime i see a space thread there i vomit reflexively.
guidoanselmi posted:i was supposed to be paid to write science/space shit by a publication...i wrote up three posts and sent em in but the site hasn't been updated since i submitted em. have no idea wtf is going on.
if anyone's interested in reading like ~4000 words on dark matter you can pm me. or ask me whatever space questions. it's (planetary science, aerospace systems engineering, astrophysics, and to a minor extent operations) has been my life for the past decade. i kinda wanted to do this in SA but everytime i see a space thread there i vomit reflexively.
i really like the idea of a leftist take on science and technology and how they should be used, especially because of how horrible most of the discourse on it is today
littlegreenpills posted:part of what brought the SU down was acquiescing and aping bourgeois material priorities and desires instead of actively fighting them. (why were there home televisions and VCRs coming out of state factories ffs??!?!). although the industrial base geared towards production of such nonsense as rockets and consumer electronics of course came from the need to develop a robust defense against capitalist military power.
so you're saying the soviet union had state capitalism and tony cliff was right
guidoanselmi posted:i was supposed to be paid to write science/space shit by a publication...i wrote up three posts and sent em in but the site hasn't been updated since i submitted em. have no idea wtf is going on.
if anyone's interested in reading like ~4000 words on dark matter you can pm me. or ask me whatever space questions. it's (planetary science, aerospace systems engineering, astrophysics, and to a minor extent operations) has been my life for the past decade. i kinda wanted to do this in SA but everytime i see a space thread there i vomit reflexively.
please make a science thread, the spongelike brains of communists will be much better suited to your knowledge
MindMaster posted:but i dislike the basically liberal, sentimental argument that typically goes "we must improve things here on earth before we go out into space", it's misleading since it suggests a homogeneity of resources that does not in actuality exist. the scientists of the people's republic must be applied to wherever they are most useful to the common, which might sometimes be in space.
im being rather hyperbolic i admit, mainly because i hate everything in the whole world and the main reason i have a yen for leftism is because of the vast numbers of people who will likely die in the transition including me. but i think you're sort of misreading me - resources and talent aren't fungible and homogenous, sure, but human will sort of is? ie the problem lies in the discourse, it's not so much we have to stay on earth (or on dry land or out of Antarctica or away from the particle accelerators) until we've improved everything on earth (if only because R+D doesn't have to consume much in the way of resources proportionately with output), but the eventual good of the average human needs to be paramount i.e. a more reasoned consideration of what that "good" actually is. (not PS4's or wifi crockpots)
MindMaster posted:i really like the idea of a leftist take on science and technology and how they should be used, especially because of how horrible most of the discourse on it is today
Panopticon posted:please make a science thread, the spongelike brains of communists will be much better suited to your knowledge
it'd be fun to make a thread but i dont have the time or wherewithal to keep up or maintain it, let alone respond to inevitable trolls.
just like anything leftist, it's a hopeless endeavor. the scientist/engineer class - possibly some of the best group of folks to solve existing structural issues in society - are practically enslaved to those who control the funding. there's some fun pie in the sky stuff, taking a marxist bent, with economic control & automation - but even more pragmatically.
take systems engineering for example. currently you can imagine policy making in the status quo, where it is if anything ad hoc, reactive, and compartmentalized with no concerted effort to note externalizes of a policy in a complex, highly interactive world. certainly mission and systems design operates on reduced complexity and has issues*, but it provides the best current tools to understand interdependancies of events and systems and rationalize complex systems. it'd be great to have much of MIC work out complex problems related to national strategic. eg interfacing government agencies to find redundancies, optimizing routes to deliver food to those unable to get it, develop mechanisms that would house the homeless using existing infrastructure, better understand the impact of gun control legislation in presence of a black market, etc (and to some extent you have some folks doing that at rand). and these may be done in a method such that relevant groups would be working and sharing data as it impacts each other (for instance, people on a telecom subsystem team share their data with teams developing spacecraft structure, power, and command & data handling. they dont actually work with each other but share the same model).
anyway a big block of poorly explained words because im in a rush. its not really defensible the way its written, if you get what i mean great but i didnt do a good job of conveying it atm
the big thing i've been pondering are ways of restructuring the bane of my existence - the proposal structure for fundamental research. how do you set research priorities in a democratic way and have funds go to the theories/concepts that have a high ratio of return for investment. is this the right metric? should personal/career growth be a metric(personally effects me)? how should theories be reviewed? right now the system is pretty corrupt and as it's been getting worse as it's become increasingly resource constrained at the federal level. there's a bit of elitism that's unavoidable which iwc notes in academia, but it's dead on. processes like grants, tenure (and the whole march up) just reinforce it. it's bad, really bad, the way it is, but i'm struggling to think of a more productive alternative given group psych issues.
a few thoughts.
*people are still working on the theory, but something like the f-22 is a good example of a public failure. more notably, a descriptive model for society would have to be developed rather than one built from grassroots in aerospace engineering. this gets into issues where incorrect description may lead to worse problems. of course you can try to characterize systems with some margin and fail safe. i guess this is covered by the guy who wrote black swan theory stuff, but i haven't read it.
elemennop posted:claiming consumer electronics like PS4s or wifi crockpots are using up some significant portion of human labour is a bit disingenuous, when AMD only has like 10k employees and graphics cards do have practical and scientific utility, while Goldman Sachs employs 3 times as many people to suck the life blood of the economy
its not the labor so much as 1) the raw materials and energy and 2) the amount of money that has to be extracted from the populace to keep those factory lines churning when they dont appreciably improve people's lives...you are of course even more right about the finance industry but i think its more or less a truth universally acknowledged
ooh, i wonder how many twinkies and such are thrown away each year and how many people they cd theoretically feed
littlegreenpills posted:how many twinkies and such are thrown away each year and how many people they cd theoretically feed
im pretty sure you can't actually feed people with twinkies
littlegreenpills posted:elemennop posted:claiming consumer electronics like PS4s or wifi crockpots are using up some significant portion of human labour is a bit disingenuous, when AMD only has like 10k employees and graphics cards do have practical and scientific utility, while Goldman Sachs employs 3 times as many people to suck the life blood of the economy
its not the labor so much as 1) the raw materials and energy and 2) the amount of money that has to be extracted from the populace to keep those factory lines churning when they dont appreciably improve people's lives...you are of course even more right about the finance industry but i think its more or less a truth universally acknowledged
ooh, i wonder how many twinkies and such are thrown away each year and how many people they cd theoretically feed
I would say just all the rent-seeking industries and "guard" positions in capitalism are much bigger drain of resources. We invest huge portions of labour and resources into finding ways to monetize and privatize everything. Insurance companies and health payment processors could be pretty much immediately killed off tomorrow with no real repercussions to the economy besides unemployment.
I mean consumer electronics can be ridiculous wastes sure, but smart phones would probably be developed eventually even in a communist utopia. But say, moderately better public transportation infrastructure would do more to save resources than banning x-boxes or whatever.
The real problem isn't that consumer electronics exist, it's that they aren't expensive enough to reflect their real cost. If we had to pay for all the externalities of say cobalt blue extraction, as well as pay chinese factory workers fair wages, then I don't think there would be much of an issue. I mean, looking at my parents' lives in Yugoslavia, they had consumer electronics, but it was always a big purchase. A record player and radio was something you bought once or maybe twice in your life. Anyways, my point here is just that moralizing about iphones may be a fun source indignation, but it's not some failing of society that they exist.
elemennop posted:The real problem isn't that consumer electronics exist, it's that they aren't expensive enough to reflect their real cost.
this is the real problem with much of the shit we spend our money on day in day out, and leads directly to overproduction
awakened by dreams of bread,
ketosis sets in