Cosmos - With Neil deGrasse Tyson

[gturner]

Well yeah, that's only part of it. The other part is obviously how it's said, but in the case of how gturner used it, he wasn't being disparaging towards those children, they actually do have a condition. I'm not saying I use the word in general practice (like I said, it's fallen into disuse due to it's stigma) but I don't think his intention was offensive.

It may seem strange, but the professional definition of DSM-I through DSM-IV was mental retardation, with subcategories of mild, moderate, severe, and profound retardation. Those terms held until May of 2013 when DSM-V was published. So my terminology was 11 months out of date.

Also dropped in DSM-V were Aspergers and schizophrenia. The new term for the R word is "intellectual developmental disorder", which oddly sounds like something that afflicts everyone who isn't an intellectual. So for all you people who don't have an ivy league degree in French literature studies with a minor in opera (and Duke doesn't count), yeah, you're retarded. Welcome to the short bus.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

So for all you people who don't have an ivy league degree in French literature studies with a minor in opera (and Duke doesn't count), yeah, you're retarded. Welcome to the short bus.

That is just a mean-spirited, shameful statement.

Getting back to Cosmos, it has portrayed science exactly as it should: inspiring and rigorous. It was Sagan himself who said "to find the truth we will need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact. The cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths of exquisite interrelationships of the awesome machinery of nature." In other words, you can be inspired by science, you can let it fire your imagination ... but you must also hold your thoughts to scientific rigor, so as to tease out the truth from your imagination and speculation. This is where the climate change deniers fail. Their "evidence" has not withstood scientific scrutiny - the evidence overwhelmingly supports the source and dangerous effects of climate change, just as it overwhelmingly supported the source and dangerous effects of lead.

 

[Mudd]

So for all you people who don't have an ivy league degree in French literature studies with a minor in opera (and Duke doesn't count), yeah, you're retarded. Welcome to the short bus.

I've always appreciated the briefer walk to the exits.

 

[Forbin]

We can't say retarded any more? That's so gay!

 

[JarodRussell]

It's funny how slurs are created. They start out as perfectly normal words, and because they are misused over time, they get bleeped out.

I still insist on using gay as a normal word, for example. When something is "gay", it's brighter, colorful, cheerful, happier.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

"Gay" isn't a slur.

 

[JarodRussell]

You are so gay then.


If I get an infraction for this, we've proven that it is. At the very least it is considered an insult. Most people are offended by it. And most people use it to describe things that they don't like.

 

[Hober Mallow]

"Gay" isn't a slur.

Have you been around any teenagers at all in the last twenty years?

 

[Christopher]

"Gay" isn't a slur.

Have you been around any teenagers at all in the last twenty years?

It's one of those words where the context and usage make the difference. It's become the accepted and respectable term for referring to homosexuals, particularly male ones, but there are still intolerant people who use it as an insult, and young people who have unthinkingly appropriated it as a derogatory term for anything they don't like.

 

[davejames]

Teenagers can turn anything into a derogatory term. They've always got to have their own weird little language for some reason.

 

[Christopher]

Well, the difference here is that "gay" actually was a derogatory term for a long time, but ended up being appropriated and legitimized by its targets (as was "queer").

The irony is that even before then, "gay" was used to mean promiscuously heterosexual. Literally it just meant carefree and happy (as in the closing line of the Flintstones' theme song, "We'll have a gay old time"), but it became a euphemism for lack of concern for sexual mores, for licentious and promiscuous behavior in general. And so eventually some people started using that as a sort of code word for talking about homosexual behavior, and once that association became commonly known, it overshadowed the word's other associations.

 

[beamMe]

It's funny how slurs are created. They start out as perfectly normal words, and because they are misused over time, they get bleeped out.

I still insist on using gay as a normal word, for example. When something is "gay", it's brighter, colorful, cheerful, happier.

And you gaily ignore the shifts of meaning this word went through in the 20th century alone? And you use it in a way it hasn't been used in, what, 50 years?

While insisting on the "correctness" of language may be stupid and pointless, wilful ignorance of the prime meaning of a word is just as silly.

 

[Jedi_Master]

It's funny how slurs are created. They start out as perfectly normal words, and because they are misused over time, they get bleeped out.

I still insist on using gay as a normal word, for example. When something is "gay", it's brighter, colorful, cheerful, happier.

And you gaily ignore the shifts of meaning this word went through in the 20th century alone? And you use it in a way it hasn't been used in, what, 50 years?

While insisting on the "correctness" of language may be stupid and pointless, wilful ignorance of the prime meaning of a word is just as silly.

Correct.

Despite the protestations to the contrary, the primary definition of the word "gay" is to describe a male homosexual.

Dictionaries are formed by looking at the common usage of a word in published literature. Deliberately using a word based on an obsolete definition is as useless as rubbing two wet faggots (sticks of course, I mean what else could we be referring too) together to start a fire.

 

[Hober Mallow]

This is why Cosmos needs to directly challenge idiocy.

It did not take long for the creationists to take issue with Neil DeGrasse Tyson and the latest episode of Cosmos on Fox. Why you ask? Well, because Tyson dared to declare the age of the earth to be 4.5 billion years old.

Answers in Genesis (AiG), the organization run by "young Earth" creationist Ken Ham, known for his recent debate against Bill Nye on the topic of evolution has now taken issue with episode 7 of Cosmos as the show taught us just how scientist Claire Patterson discovered the true age of this very planet.

AiG takes issue because early on Tyson declared that the true age of the earth couldn’t be found without a reliable historical record. The Bible was once believed to be this historical record, but as Tyson explains, it is no longer. Now we can look to the rocks themselves to find our answer.

 

[Mudd]

That doesn't actually clarify the necessity of it at all. Yep, there are aggressively ignorant people in the world. Film at eleven, as we used to say.

 

[Hober Mallow]

Yep, there are aggressively ignorant people in the world.

Many of them are running the world. Scientifically illiterate people vote for scientifically illiterate representatives who go on to, among other things, set environmental policy.

 

[davejames]

Well judging from this recent poll showing only 49% of Americans believing in evolution and the Big Bang, I'd say there is definitely still a need.

Unfortunately at this stage it's going to take a lot more than shows like Cosmos to fix the problem.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/americans-big-bang-evolution-ap-poll/

 

[tighr]

Recent poll that people who A) are home during normal working hours and B) answer the phone from unknown callers and take polls.

For all I know, Associated Press called me for this poll, and I let it go to voicemail.

 

[gturner]

Well judging from this recent poll showing only 49% of Americans believing in evolution and the Big Bang, I'd say there is definitely still a need.

Unfortunately at this stage it's going to take a lot more than shows like Cosmos to fix the problem.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/americans-big-bang-evolution-ap-poll/

One of the poll questions was whether the universe started 13.8 billion years ago with the big bang.

Given that the best 2013 estimates for the oldest stars in the universe was 14.6 billion years, I'd have answered the poll question with "probably not."

 

[Christopher]

Well judging from this recent poll showing only 49% of Americans believing in evolution and the Big Bang, I'd say there is definitely still a need.

That poll result has been grossly misrepresented by the media. The actual result is that 51% of respondents said they were either "not too confident" or "not at all confident" about the statement "The universe began 13.8 billion years ago with a big bang." Lack of confidence not at all the same as actual disbelief. And the statement is poorly phrased because it's offering two distinct ideas at once and not differentiating between them: Are the respondents not confident that the universe began with a big bang, or are they not confident that it was 13.8 billion years ago? It's really a badly written poll and the way its results have been reported is completely inept.

Also, you're conflating two separate results. The 49% was for the Big Bang question. The evolution question got a total of 55% either "Extremely/very confident" or "somewhat confident." And, again, "not confident" doesn't necessarily equal disbelief.