Bill Nye, The Science Guy, Says Creationism is Bad for Kids and America’s Future

in Education, K-12, Science | August 27th, 2012

Bill Nye will tell you that he’s a man on a mis­sion. He’s out there try­ing to “help fos­ter a sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly lit­er­ate soci­ety, to help peo­ple every­where under­stand and appre­ci­ate the sci­ence that makes our world work.” From 1993 to 1998, Nye host­ed Bill Nye the Sci­ence Guy, a Disney/PBS chil­dren’s sci­ence show that won 18 Emmys along the way. A grad­u­ate of Cor­nell and a stu­dent of Carl Sagan, Nye has also pre­sent­ed shows on the Sci­ence Chan­nel, the Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel and oth­er media out­lets.

If you’re famil­iar with Bill Nye, you’ll know that he’s not exact­ly an in-your-face kind of sci­en­tist. He’s no Richard Dawkins. Nye is mild-man­nered, affa­ble and wears a bow tie. But, like Dawkins, he’ll tell you that if you deny evo­lu­tion, you’re not liv­ing in the world of basic facts. And if you teach cre­ation­ism to kids, you’re not prepar­ing them to com­pete in a world where sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­cy means every­thing. That bodes ill for your kids in par­tic­u­lar, and for Amer­i­ca’s future more gen­er­al­ly.

Now you might be inclined to say that Amer­i­ca has always had cre­ation­ists, and that did­n’t stop the coun­try from becom­ing an eco­nom­ic and mil­i­tary super­pow­er. Per­haps that’s true. But you need to recall this. Amer­i­ca reached its zenith when every oth­er pow­er had blown them­selves to smithereens. We were the only game in town. And it almost did­n’t mat­ter what we thought, or how much we thought. We just need­ed to show up to work. Nowa­days, we don’t have that lux­u­ry. We face stiff com­pe­ti­tion from ambi­tious nations that take sci­ence and edu­ca­tion seri­ous­ly. A coun­try that scoffs at sci­en­tif­ic rea­son­ing, that dis­miss­es it all as “elit­ist,”  has only one way to go, and that’s down. God help us.

You can find more clips from Nye’s talk here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Presents Six Lec­tures on Earth, Mars & Our Solar Sys­tem … For Kids (1977)

Grow­ing Up in the Uni­verse: Richard Dawkins Presents Cap­ti­vat­ing Sci­ence Lec­tures for Kids (1991)

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Remembering Neil Armstrong, the First Man on the Moon, with Historic Footage and a BBC Bio Film

in Astronomy, Life | August 25th, 2012

Sev­er­al weeks ago, we watched NASA sci­en­tists explode with applause when they land­ed their rugged rover, Curios­i­ty, on Mars. Imag­ine how an ear­li­er gen­er­a­tion of sci­en­tists must have felt when, on July 20, 1969, Neil Arm­strong took his first steps on the moon and then uttered his immor­tal words: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” You can get goose­bumps think­ing about it.

Today, Amer­i­ca lost a great one. Neil Arm­strong has died at 82, after under­go­ing heart-bypass surgery ear­li­er this month. Above, we bring you leg­endary footage from the Apol­lo 11 Mis­sion. And here you can view high res­o­lu­tion images from that his­toric space flight. Below, we present an hour-long BBC doc­u­men­tary on the life and times of the pio­neer­ing astro­naut.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

“First Orbit”: Cel­e­brat­ing 50th Anniver­sary of Yuri Gagaran’s Space Flight

Dark Side of the Moon: A Mock­u­men­tary on Stan­ley Kubrick and the Moon Land­ing Hoax

125 Great Sci­ence Videos: From Astron­o­my to Physics & Psy­chol­o­gy

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When Asteroids Attack! Neil deGrasse Tyson and NASA Explain How To Stop an Armageddon

in Astronomy | August 24th, 2012

If pop cul­ture has taught us non-sci­en­tists any­thing about aster­oids, it’s that we should blow them up. From clas­sic video game Aster­oids to the Michael Bay dis­as­ter clas­sic Armaged­don, aster­oids are either ran­dom bits of float­ing debris out to destroy us, or mas­sive malig­nant space tumors hurtling our way to destroy us, which we’re told is how the dinosaurs died out. But, says super­star physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson—in Vice’s short video (above) “Blow­ing Up Aster­oids with NASA and Neil deGrasse Tyson”—“We’re clever enough that we nev­er have to go extinct by an aster­oid. We have more choic­es avail­able to us than Tyran­nosaurus Rex did.” Choic­es like turn­ing an aster­oid into space dust? Prob­a­bly not. Turns out, Armaged­don wasn’t entire­ly sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly accu­rate. In fact, NASA shows Michael Bay’s movie to its trainees to see how many sci­en­tif­ic absur­di­ties they can find. The record, as of 2007, was at 168.

So what to do! Well, it turns out that the chances of an aster­oid col­lid­ing with the earth are slim, but still a bit too close for com­fort. As Tyson explains above, there is, in fact, an aster­oid head­ed our way, called Apophis, in 2029. If Apophis goes through a region called “the key­hole,” it will impact the earth sev­en years lat­er. The prob­a­bil­i­ty of this occur­ring as of 2009 is 1 in 250,000. Yikes. Astro­naut Mike Gern­hardt, a pri­ma­ry inves­ti­ga­tor at NEEMO (NASA Extreme Envi­ron­ment Mis­sion Oper­a­tions) is on the case. His team uses under­wa­ter sim­u­la­tions in Key Largo, Flori­da to recre­ate an aster­oid-like envi­ron­ment and explore it, col­lect sam­ples, etc. in what NASA calls an “Ana­log Mis­sion.” Just how any of this might pre­vent an aster­oid from destroy­ing the plan­et escapes me, to be hon­est (and the “blow­ing up” part of the video’s title doesn’t ever get an expla­na­tion). But the NEEMO project is still pret­ty cool, as you can wit­ness in an inter­view with NEEMO Mis­sion Man­ag­er Bill Todd below.

The Vice video is part of their Moth­er­board TV series, which informs us on its site that NEEMO, like every­thing cool these days, is like­ly to be defund­ed. Let’s hope they can fig­ure out how save us from aster­oid Armaged­don before the mon­ey runs out.

via The Atlantic

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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How to Remove Egg Yolks with a Plastic Bottle, and More Strange Culinary Tips

in Random | August 24th, 2012

We’ve told you how to open wine bot­tles with your shoe.

And how to peel a head of gar­lic in less than 10 sec­onds.

Now, by way of Asia, comes our lat­est DIY tip — an easy way to extract egg yolks lick­ety-split.

via Kot­tke

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The Queen of Soul Conquers Europe: Aretha Franklin in Amsterdam, 1968

in Music | August 24th, 2012

In May of 1968 Aretha Franklin was at the top of her form. It was only a year since she had switched record com­pa­nies and explod­ed into fame with a string of top-ten hits that have since become clas­sics. Her third album with Atlantic Records, Lady Soul, had just come out and Franklin was on her first-ever tour of Europe. On the sec­ond night she per­formed at Ams­ter­dam’s his­toric Con­cert­ge­bouw, or “con­cert build­ing,” and for­tu­nate­ly for us a cam­era crew was there to record the show.

The result­ing 42-minute film is a remark­able doc­u­ment of one of pop music’s most impor­tant artists per­form­ing in her prime before a wild­ly enthu­si­as­tic audi­ence. The film opens with an awk­ward back­stage inter­view, but the real excite­ment begins at the 6:30 mark, when Franklin and her back­ing singers hit the stage to thun­der­ous applause and launch into an rhythm and blues arrange­ment of the Rolling Stones’ “Sat­is­fac­tion.” The audi­ence rush­es the stage and begins pelt­ing Franklin and the oth­er singers with flow­ers. The musi­cians man­age to fin­ish the song, but before the con­cert can con­tin­ue the mas­ter of cer­e­monies has to come back out and demand that every­one take their seats. Here’s the set list:

  1. Sat­is­fac­tion
  2. Don’t Let Me Lose This Dream
  3. Soul Ser­e­nade
  4. Groovin’
  5. A Nat­ur­al Woman
  6. Come Back Baby
  7. Dr. Feel­go­od
  8. Since You’ve Been Gone (Sweet, Sweet Baby)
  9. Good To Me As I Am To You
  10. I Nev­er Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)
  11. Chain of Fools
  12. Respect

Although the con­cert was billed as “Aretha Franklin with the Sweet Inspi­ra­tions,” Franklin’s back­ing singers in the film are her sis­ter Car­olyn Franklin, Char­nissa Jones and Wyline Ivey. It’s a fast-mov­ing, ener­getic per­for­mance. Franklin’s voice is strong and beau­ti­ful, straight through to the tri­umphant show-clos­er, “Respect.”

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Jim Henson’s Animated Film, Limbo, the Organized Mind, Presented by Johnny Carson (1974)

in Animation, Film, Television | August 24th, 2012

Not hav­ing grown up dur­ing the Mup­pets’ first and high­est wave of pop­u­lar­i­ty, I’ve always won­dered how some­thing like The Mup­pet Show could pos­si­bly have attained such main­stream cul­tur­al pri­ma­cy. A friend of mine who did spend his child­hood watch­ing pup­peteer Jim Hen­son’s array of crea­tures do their thing on nation­al tele­vi­sion offers a sim­ple expla­na­tion: “It was the sev­en­ties.” Though Hen­son began his pup­petry career twen­ty years before The Mup­pet Show’s 1974 pilot episode, his dis­tinc­tive­ly earnest yet pre­scient­ly post-psy­che­del­ic vision seemed made for that decade. Amer­i­ca respond­ed by ele­vat­ing his work into the zeit­geist, and not just the stuff prop­er­ly involv­ing Mup­pets. Above, you can watch a 1974 clip from The Tonight Show fea­tur­ing a short per­for­mance from Hen­son and fel­low Mup­peteer Dave Goelz called Lim­bo, the Orga­nized Mind.

Hen­son and Goelz treat John­ny Car­son and the Tonight Show audi­ence to a jour­ney through the brain, as an abstract­ed, hand-oper­at­ed face nar­rates the pas­sage through organ­ic struc­tures like his medul­la oblon­ga­ta, and cere­brum, and the seats of things less defin­able, like thoughts of his fam­i­ly, thoughts of his ene­mies, his “extra-spe­cial sec­tion of good thoughts,” his evil thoughts, and his fears. The score comes from elec­tron­ic com­po­si­tion pio­neer Ray­mond Scott, whose 1964 album Sooth­ing Sounds for Baby has won great respect among enthu­si­asts of ambi­ent music. Watch­ing Lim­bo, the Orga­nized Mind in 2012 brings one obvi­ous lament to mind: why don’t they make such delight­ful­ly eccen­tric and artis­tic tele­vi­sion any­more? But of course they do make it, in stranger and less pre­dictable ways than even Hen­son did, but main­ly in the count­less frag­ment­ed, com­par­a­tive­ly mar­gin­al venues of mod­ern media. Lim­bo aired on a show that half the peo­ple you knew would have seen. It was the sev­en­ties.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Jim Henson’s Vio­lent Wilkins Cof­fee Com­mer­cials (1957–1961)

Jim Henson’s Zany 1963 Robot Film Uncov­ered by AT&T: Watch Online

Jim Hen­son’s Short, Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed Film (1965)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Three Public Service Announcements by Frank Zappa: Vote, Brush Your Teeth, and Don’t Do Speed

in Life, Music | August 24th, 2012

By the 1980s, Frank Zap­pa was enter­ing the third decade of his musi­cal career. An icon of the avant-garde music scene, Zap­pa had cul­tur­al cap­i­tal to spend. And spend he did. On one occa­sion in 1986, Zap­pa appeared on CNN’s Cross­fire, where he sparred with con­ser­v­a­tives look­ing to cen­sor rock lyrics. On oth­er occa­sions, he record­ed pub­lic ser­vice announce­ments (PSAs) that encour­aged a younger gen­er­a­tion to make bet­ter life deci­sions. The PSAs dealt with the mun­dane and the dead­ly seri­ous, and things that fell some­where in between. But they were always pre­sent­ed in Zap­pa’s own dis­tinc­tive way.

Above we start you off with Zap­pa’s “Reg­is­ter to Vote” PSAs from 1984. It’s worth recall­ing that the ’84 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion pit­ted the incum­bent Ronald Rea­gan against Wal­ter Mon­dale. That’s fol­lowed by Zap­pa (now reborn as “The Den­tal Floss Tycoon”) record­ing PSAs for the Amer­i­can Den­tal Asso­ci­a­tion in 1981. And final­ly we head back to the late 1960s, when Zap­pa cut announce­ments for The Do It Now Foun­da­tion, an orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to high­light­ing the dan­gers of amphet­a­mine abuse. At its height, the cam­paign aired on 1,500 radio sta­tions across the US and beyond.

Brush Your Teeth

Don’t Do Speed

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The Famous Intro to 20th Century Fox Films … As It Ought to Be

in Comedy, Film, Random | August 24th, 2012

The world be an infi­nite­ly more cheer­ful place if every 20th Cen­tu­ry Fox Film start­ed like this, would­n’t it?

Find us on Face­book and Twit­ter, and don’t for­get to check out our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Online Movies.

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