Rest Easy Carl Sagan, Cosmos to Air Again with Neil deGrasse Tyson

I agree. He was even on an episode of Stargate Atlantis.

I like Neil deGrasse Tyson. I trust him and I don't think he would try to make me feel stupid.

Nice thread.

I'm not a scientist................I'm not a dummy either. I'm fascinated with science.

I like it when a scientist takes time out to explain things to me that are obvious to him.

I think we may be finally working on a cure to the antiscience. Threads like this is where it starts.

One more ramble and signing off.

I'm not a mathematician either, but I hate pi. Pi sits there so smug................so important..................and no end? WTF? Pi is mean and contemptuous. I can accept Pi, but I will never like Pi.

Maybe Roger does have something about aversion to abstraction.

What's up?

You finally start a worthwhile thread and it gets ripped from the front page?

I wonder if we're just pawns that are supposed to be fighting each other in some twisted game that the moderators have dreamt up for their own entertainment.

You work there. Do they send you little antiscience tweaks via email, just to get you going?

Anyway, my personal battle against antiscience is teaching Emily just how many wild, cool, sciency things are happening, just in our own yard. I also own a pretty big telescope.

I took a look and it's still on the front page. It got pushed down a little but it's still there. I'm not really involved with the management of CR4 other than occasionally making suggestions for improvements. I'm ok with this, the new management doesn't need me saying stuff like "back in the old days we would have done this or that" (old days being 4 years ago).

If I had to guess, I would bet they aren't thrilled when I put up my Antiscience threads, but in fairness to them, they've never complained. The Antiscience is my own personal attempt to get people to view the problems in Science in a new way. "I have been less than successful" said Roger slightly sardonically.

Not to bring up bad memories, but you'll remember that the "Roger is a tyrant in his blog" thread that you started (we can laugh about that now, right? too soon?) was in the most popular threads for over a week. Not exactly the protective behavior you would expect out of a moderation team, right? No, Kramarat, I have no pull with the new management. I'm a user like you and everybody else, which is fine by me.

Yeah I remember that thread. I was surprised myself how long they left it up.

Nah, it's all water under the bridge..............even our latest sniping. I don't hold grudges. It's too much work.

I'll look forward to seeing this series. I'm surprised you're okay with it being on Fox.

I think that the guy that Produces Family Guy pulled strings to get the project greenlit. Plus I don't believe Fox is pure evil, just very evil. It will be funny to see Fox News commercials during Cosmos:

Neil deGrasse Tyson:"After the break we'll enter the Particle Zoo and update our search for the elusive Higgs particle.

Cut to Neil Cavuto at the Fox News news desk:

Neil Cavuto: "After Cosmos on Fox News, Is the theory of evolution a farce? Our panel of fox news contributors will discuss whether evolution is going the way of the dodo. Back to you Professor Tyson."

Cut back to Neil deGrasse Tyson sadly shaking his head in disbelief.

I don't watch Fox news, or any TV, very often. The anchor babes are pretty hot from what I've seen.

Can't argue with that. Fox news figured out long ago sex, fear and hate keep the viewers coming back.

I'll have to tune in more often. If it weren't for sex, fear and hate, life wouldn't be worth living.

"Fox news figured out long ago sex, fear and hate"

Not too hard to 'join the dots'

I think you mean MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS or NBC, didn't you? They are the ones who are fear mongerers. "We will default on the governments loans and the SS checks, veterans, Medicare checks, etc. won't get cut", so we need to sign on to spend another $2.7 Trillion.

There wouldn't have been any default if we didn't sign on to spend another $2.7 Trillion we don't have. That was simply another slush fund by the panty- waist beauracrats to buy more votes with.

If the news is going to read anyway, it may as well be read by some gal who is easy on the eyes.

I'm not sure where you get the "hate" from with FOX News. I've never seen any evidence of "hate". There is an opposing view to the standard liberal mantra, but that is about it.

Yes, you're right Facilitiesmgr, I meant the rest of the world, everybody and anybody except Fox News.

Afterall, in 2014 when the death panels are created to weed out the old people who aren't cost effective, we finally appreciate Fox News for trying to warn us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-dA9kPYKI8

"Afterall, in 2014 when the death panels are created to weed out the old people who aren't cost effective"

Are you serious with that clip? That is foundation of your statement?

What are the commentators and reporters talking about? It is the panel of beauracrats set up in Obamacare (which isn't "care" at all) to ration care to us since there won't be enough resources to go around with a government run service.

That clip is a compilation of statements made by people, who happen to be associated with FOX News, who are talking about what is part of the 1300 page Obamacare fiasco called Healthcare, or whatever. I know there isn't a specific term in the bill referring to a group of people who will decide who, what and how long someone gets care before they are no longer a beneficial member of society, but that is essentially the function of that group of beauracrats. The people at FOX News didn't invent the idea, they are simply pointing out what is there.

I don't know about you, but I think there are people much closer to the situation who will make a better decision about what level of care is given, i.e. the individual and/or the family.

"To be forewarned is to be forearmed."

You Wrote: I know there isn't a specific term in the bill referring to a group of people who will decide who, what and how long someone gets care before they are no longer a beneficial member of society, but that is essentially the function of that group of beauracrats."

I see, so you're saying that Fox News was simply pointing out that congress passed a bill that creates a panel of beauracrats that will cut off health care to those who the panel believes are no longer beneficial to society (Something FactCheck.Org labelled completely untrue and awarded as one of their "whoppers of 2009").

Fox didn't "invent" the term (though a Fox employee did (Palin)), therefore if Fox repeated it over and over again, that isn't fear mongering and the spread of misinformation, that's just fair and balanced news without the liberal bias.

Excellent point facilitiesmgr, I'm glad you're here to let us know the facts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-dA9kPYKI8

This term certainly got people's attention didn't it?

This idea of some panel in Washington deciding the level of health care, whether it results in death or not, should scare the hell out of all of us. Sometimes people don't hear the cute little niceties, but they will hear something that is more strong, hence, Death Panels.

The function of some inane panel of people deciding who gets what care is a fact! It's just not referred to as a Death Panel. But a reduced level of care will be the end result, to the detriment of all who come under it's jurisdiction.

You Wrote:"This term certainly got people's attention didn't it?"

Of course it did, fear sells, which was my original point.

The point is that they didn't come up with the idea!

They simply pointed out the fact that this is part of the plan by our highly incompetent President and his equally incompetent cronies that he has surrounded himself with.

Jim Collins says in Good to Great that "everything rises and falls on leadership." The dismal state of our country economically says it all. This applies to Congress, Senate and the Executive branch especially.

You Wrote:"The point is that they didn't come up with the idea!"

No, they just repeated something that was false over and over and over again. But they didn't invent the lie, they just reported it, so that makes it ok.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/aug/10/sarah-palin/sarah-palin-barack-obama-death-panel/

http://www.factcheck.org/2009/08/palin-vs-obama-death-panels/

You Wrote:"Jim Collins says in Good to Great that "everything rises and falls on leadership."

If the premise of these management books are "look at these examples, here's how they did it", and one of the examples goes out of business within ten years (Circuit City), another is absorbed by the government because of it's collapse due to the housing bubble (Fannie Mae), and another sells a highly addictive substance that kills millions per year (Phillip Morris), are we really expected to take anything that book says seriously? I'm saying if one isn't in management, obviously if you're in management you have to embrace these B.S. self help books to justify your position.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_to_Great

I've got to come straight down in the middle on this argument.

The plan is bad enough, the term "death panel" was fear mongering, and unnecessary. I also know that there is not enough medicare dollars to continually and artificially prolong the life and comfort of people in their 90s and 100s, through the use of pacemakers, hip replacements, etc. It sounds cold, but the money isn't there, and it never will be. That's where a very good supplemental insurance policy comes in handy.

I don't like hate and fear mongering from either side............both are guilty. The left calling fox news and the tea party racists, extremists, terrorists, bigots, stupid, etc. doesn't help either.

I do fall to the right of center, but I don't listen to Glenn Beck anymore, because of his insistence that this is a holy war, a battle between good and evil......................he is fear mongering by using those terms in my view, and again, it doesn't help. The battle is between two very different political ideologies, that's it.

To be in the shape we are in today, and knowing that we are at the tip of the iceberg with 10s of millions of baby boomers hitting retirement age, I think that drastic measures are going to have to be taken to prevent complete economic collapse. Spending doesn't seem to be working, hopefully we give saving a shot.

You Wrote:"The left calling fox news and the tea party racists, extremists, terrorists, bigots, stupid, etc. doesn't help either."

I think you're right about that. It is just different ideologies based on different living conditions. If you live in an urban setting, you're generally more to the left. There are more people, a larger wealth inequality, more crime (and therefore police), more public transportation, etc. In rural areas you have less wealth inequality, no public transportations, less crime (thus less police), more space, etc. These differences and many many more produce different desires, different ways of looking at the world, and different ideologies.

People like to evoke the founding fathers, well they understood that the Urban vs. Rural tension was a serious one. The Senate was created expressly as a check of Urban power. Each state gets two representatives no matter their population so that the more populous states (at the time the north) couldn't politically dictate policy through the Federal government over the less populous, more rural (farming, plantation) states (South).

Different ideologies based on different needs based on different locations. We are United States.

I've got plenty of left leaning friends. The vitriol that exists on the television screen and in Washington, from what I've seen, does not exist out here in the real world......................different ideas on how things should be done?.......sure. None of the terms that are used by either side on TV, are used by us.

Personally, I think the powers that be, on both sides, want us divided.

London is getting interesting.

I think equating a general ideology based upon geography (urban/rural) is faulty. There are many factors why people come to the conclusion they do, but I'm not sure their living location is a primary one. It is more fundamental than that.

Wealth inequality is based upon a person's ability to think, what his level of motivation is, work ethic, education (public and personal), opportunities, etc. not what street he lives on. The government promotes financial and social disfunction by all the welfare, taxes (which kill jobs and the inherent opportunity) and entitlement programs. This is not seen just in the urban areas, a very evident example of this is life on Reservations. My daughter's youth group went and worked at a Reservation in New Mexico this summer. The plight of the people there is terrible with a very high incidence of child abuse, about 60% unemployment, 80% alcoholism, etc. There are many factors that have contributed to this, but one of them is the dependency that partly has been forced upon them by us as interlopers in area they inhabited many years ago. "Might doesn't make right." Dependency kills a persons pride.

You also equate being poor economically with a higher level of crime and therefore more police presence. During the Great Depression the level of crime wasn't higher because people had less money. They were, for the most part, still guided by principles of honesty, hard work, self-discipline, personal responsibility. They just made do with less. We as a society don't function today with that same thinking. Now, people have the "I will take that (whatever it is), either personally or by government fiat because I deserve it and the other person has too much anyway." There is a growing lack of the character traits I listed above.

"Democracy doesn't guarantee equality of conditions, only the equality of opportunity ." Not exactly a completely true statement in some regard.

Equal opportunity is not a guaranteed thing, but each person chooses what he/she will do with whatever opportunities they are presented with or make themselves. I heard it said once that "most people never hear opportunity knocking because the TV is too loud." We are entertaining ourselves to financial death.

"We are United States" and we better learn to work things out together or we're toast!

GA. Government meddling and social experiments gone awry have led us to where we are.

Nothing is free for anyone, nor should it be. Our government entitlement/welfare programs have destroyed entire populations of people, across multiple generations.

People that otherwise would have been productive citizens. It's sick what we've done in the name of equality.

I think that's great that's what you think. What I think is that even a modicum of research into what you're saying would show that what you believe simply isn't true.

You believe that wealth inequality is based on a person's ability to think, motivation, work ethic, etc.:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/national/class/OVERVIEW-FINAL.html (this New York Times article contradicts your belief)

You believe the we aren't an urban vs. rural society:
http://stpete.usf.edu/sethmckee/10.pdf (this link contradicts your belief)

You wrote that you believe "The government promotes financial and social disfunction by all the welfare, taxes (which kill jobs and the inherent opportunity) and entitlement programs."

And yet, if we were to look at the correlation between Top Tax Rate and Unemployment, we find out there is no correlation.

I agree. I disagree. Wealth inequity is based upon one's ability to steal while making the other think it isn't happening, or even better, that being robbed was their idea in the first place.

So, the reason one has developed wealth is because they have taken it from someone else? The money available to all people is not a zero-sum-gain, i.e. if someone makes more, someone else gets less. Small and large business owners; who have risked time, effort and money, are the main people who develope products, services, jobs and therefore make the proverbial "financial pie" bigger.

The other view of a set amount of money available for all to divide is socialist thinking.

Wealth is developed by people thinking differently about; finances, priorities in life, self-discipline, work ethic, etc. The reason most people are broke is because they see something and buy it (on credit), because they NEED it NOW, whether they can afford to pay for it or not.

You Wrote:"The other view of a set amount of money available for all to divide is socialist thinking."

Actually the definition of Socialism is:

A theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc. in the community as a whole.

Now no where in that definition is there anything about "set amount of money".

There isn't just infinite wealth, though really that would be great. There is basically a pie, it grows over time, but it is limited. Nobody here is advocating that everyone have the same amount of wealth. I think it's good that some people are rich and other's are poor. We are evolved from pack animals and we crave hearchy.

On the other hand, in a pack, if the leaders (rich) are weak (or dumb) you have the right to challenge and replace them. In our society it is becoming harder and harder to become rich no matter how smart you are. That is because wealth attracts wealth, and if you don't have a progressive tax system to compensate, you end up with a society in which the wealthiest Americans become wealthier resulting in huge inequality and the eradication of the middle class.

Thus what you are advocating isn't Capitalism, it's Aristocracy. You're not for Democracy, you're for Monarchy. After all, the argument for Monarchy for centuries were that the Nobles were better bred and thus smarter than peasants. Just like now the myth is that the rich are smart and hard working. Some are I'm sure, but many are not. Just as not every poor person is dumb and lazy. But I agree believing such nonsense makes it much easier to screw them over.

"The theater's on fire! Run for your lives!" That got your attention too, didn't it?

Great news that Cosmos is returning.

Not so great that it will be on Faux network.

To quote the original host.

"I worry that, especially as the millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us -- then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls. The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.

Carl Sagan

Thank you for bringing the discussion back to the point.

This is good news!

Here is another reason that it is fitting Neil hosts Cosmos:

Link to interview