Catching up…

Posted by Tara C. Smith on January 29, 2006
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I meant to get online yesterday, but hubby had to work all day so it was just me and the kiddos–so we just played all day and I didn’t bother to get to a computer. Anyhoo, I’ve missed a few things. I know this was linked on a few other of my virtual neighbor’s websites, but in case you didn’t see it, DarkSyde over at DailyKos has an interview with Welsey Elsberry of the NCSE (and a founder of Panda’s Thumb). Like Ken Miller, Wesley is a Christian and a staunch defender of keeping nonsense like Intelligent Design out of our classrooms.

Second, the Challenger disaster. Seed asked for some recollections of it, but since I’ve not logged in since then, I’m too late. You can read their article here. Personally, I was 9 years old. While we’d discussed the mission at school, we weren’t watching it live that day. In fact, nothing was said about the disaster that day at school–I’m not sure if they didn’t know, or if they just didn’t know how to tell us. When I got home after school, I remember piling into the car to go somewhere–maybe grocery shopping, or to get haircuts or something–so the first footage I saw of it wasn’t until that evening. Though I was upset, I don’t remember crying–I think, like many people, I was just shocked and numb over the incident.

Finally, for those of you out there who may have your own science blogs, I also received the survey John Lynch discusses here (and the aforementioned Wesley Elsberry blogs about here). If you received one, check out their comments before sending your answer back.

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  1. #1 Rob Knop
    January 29, 2006

    I remember the Challenger– I had a free period at school that day. It was my junior year (I think– maybe my senior year, I’d have to look at the date), and I was walking down the main hallway of my (small) high school. The library door opened, and the assistant librarian came out. She said that the space shuttle had just blown up. I thought she was kidding; my first thought was, “the Space Shuttle doesn’t blow up.”

    I went into the library, learned to my surprise that they had a TV there hidden in cabinets in the main desk, and watched the news coverage right away.

    I had just thought a few months previously about how routine the Space Shuttle flights had come to be. I remembered years previously when my parents got me out of bed so that we could watch the first Space Shuttle launch live on TV. It was exciting the first few times. But by the time of Challenger, I never knew if it was up or not; we no longer paid so much immediate attention to it.

    (I’m told I also saw the first moon landing on TV, but I was 1 at the time, so I don’t remember it.)

    Challenger rocked my world, in a sense. Columbia, more recently; when that one happened, I sighed and thought something like “Oh, no, not again.” What really made me sad about Columbia was what I read about it weeks or months after the event; the kind of bull-headed, ignore-the-engineers thinking that went on was *just* like what we heard about for Challenger. And the we-need-a-culture-change-at-NASA lines that came out afterwards sounded *just* like what we heard after the Challenger.

    -Rob

  2. #2 lt.kizhe
    January 29, 2006

    Geez, will you people please quit making me feel old? ;-)
    When I heard about Challenger, I think I was driving my wife to a pre-natal doctor’s appt.

    I worked with a bunch of techies — so of course we were all recording the news footage on our VCRs, then single-framing through it to try to figure out for ourselves what went wrong. And when the inquiry announced its findings, of course we all said: “Typical friggin’ management, ignoring the engineers. Morons”.

  3. #3 Krauze
    January 30, 2006

    Manual trackback:

    “Activism and the problem with blog polls” at Telic Thoughts

  4. #4 Dave S.
    January 30, 2006

    Finally, for those of you out there who may have your own science blogs, I also received the survey John Lynch discusses here (and the aforementioned Wesley Elsberry blogs about here). If you received one, check out their comments before sending your answer back.

    I saw the poll too, but as a lurker/commenter was not sent it. It pretty much has all the hallmarks of an intellectual sucker-punch. Start with a highly restricted definition of “creationism”, add the fact that “intellegent design” was left undefined, and finally completly ignore the correct choice that ID as practiced by members of the Discovery Insitute (but don’t forget it wasn’t defined in the survey so we can’t be exactly sure this is what the author refers to when he says ‘intelligent design’) is simply repackaged creationism using the same arguments. That the author might disagree with such an option is hardly the point. After all, isn’t the object to determine what those pro-science bloggers think? Then why ignore this option and subsume it under choice “G” (none of the above)?

    The author writes, “A well-known problem with on-line polls is when special interest groups attempt to sway the outcome.”, apparently without the slightest inkling that he himself appears to be doing exactly this. The irony is not lost. And his response thus far confirms the view that this was simply a PR stunt. Understandable since the ID community has nothing to offer as far as science is concerned.

  5. #5 blackgrup
    June 6, 2008

    Finally, for those of you out there who may have your own science blogs, I also received the survey John Lynch discusses here (and the aforementioned Wesley Elsberry blogs about here). If you received one, check out their comments before sending your answer back.