Saskatchewan
Ah land of 1000.......km of straightness.
Ok so that's a little expected all the flat jokes and all. Can see you dog run away for a week and all that crap. Ya i thought that too and my first trip along the trans canaga did nothing to disuade that opinion. When we went to a camp ground reportede to be "well treed" only to find that ment there was a tree every 3 camp sites or so. Go north and there are a lot fo trees and a river. Just look at the view from my window at the university.
OK so i did not bring my camera connector to uplaoad my pics but ill do it as soon as i get home
So im at a physics conference, the physics conference. The Canadian Assosiation of Physicists Annual Congress. This is the first year I have given a talk. Very nervous going up to it. I must have practiced it 6 times the night before and 3 times just before. We I gave it, I was awesome, relaxed, all the words came out smoothly and even better than when i praceiced. When i first tried it i had 12 slides and it took 17 min. Im only allowed 12 min but with a little practice i was able to fit the time.
This year the conferenced had a special section on community outreach. Jay ingram of the discovery channel gave an invited talk and it was very good. As physicists we have a disconect with the average person. All physicists have experenced the situation at a party.
"what to do you do?"
"Oh me im doing my PhD in physics"
"Wow that must be hard, it sure is raining a lot today when do you think it will stop"
What is it about science, physics in particular that scars people off so much. People don't realize how interested they really are in physics. so many questions people ask that are actualy physics without knowing it. The session was all about communicating better, getting people intersted and trying to invoke a sense of curiosity about their world. There was anothe message too a much more inportant one now that a special "museam" has sprouted up, and if you think canada is any better think again. How do we teach people how to see the difference between real science an phudo-science or as i like to call it "bullshit". We are sorrounded by bullshit. evey time we turn on the TV, evey time we pick up the news paper, every time someone ask us our sign. It's astounding but only 15% of people can understand a scince article in the new york times, now this the the times we are talking about not Science or Nature. But, at the same time 50% of people beleive that the earth is only 10 000 years old. Now what ever your stance on religion that statement is compleat and utter bullshit. There is not a single credable scientist in the world who beleives that statement and a great many scientst do in fact beleive in god. There is countless eveidance showing the true age of the earth (around 4.5 billion years) and not a single peice of proof to the contrary but people tend to beleive what they want to beleive.
Scientists are just as guilty. we all want to see some important effect in our data no matter how remote the possability it's there. This is why we are trained to look at things objectively, to question even ourselves. This is why we have peer review, and reproducability. before somethink like evolution is accepted as FACT! it is tested, retested, reviewed and not untill everyone is in aggreeement is it made a theory. Scientists love proveing other scientists wrong so when something passes all these tests you can best beleive it's true.
anyway that's all i have to say about that for now. I took notes and I may poast some interesting facts but if your reading this then im probably already preaching to the converted. An interesting thing pointed out is that termonology is differen for a scientist and a lay person. Just read this and you may see why so many people may question the Theory of Evolution.
_________________
p.s. as i am writing this at a confernce i dont have access to my spell checker that and the fact that i just returned from a banquet with a conciderable ammount of drinking my result in the degredation of this article in relation to previous work. No growndhogs where hurt in the makeing of this blog.
Ok so that's a little expected all the flat jokes and all. Can see you dog run away for a week and all that crap. Ya i thought that too and my first trip along the trans canaga did nothing to disuade that opinion. When we went to a camp ground reportede to be "well treed" only to find that ment there was a tree every 3 camp sites or so. Go north and there are a lot fo trees and a river. Just look at the view from my window at the university.
OK so i did not bring my camera connector to uplaoad my pics but ill do it as soon as i get home
So im at a physics conference, the physics conference. The Canadian Assosiation of Physicists Annual Congress. This is the first year I have given a talk. Very nervous going up to it. I must have practiced it 6 times the night before and 3 times just before. We I gave it, I was awesome, relaxed, all the words came out smoothly and even better than when i praceiced. When i first tried it i had 12 slides and it took 17 min. Im only allowed 12 min but with a little practice i was able to fit the time.
This year the conferenced had a special section on community outreach. Jay ingram of the discovery channel gave an invited talk and it was very good. As physicists we have a disconect with the average person. All physicists have experenced the situation at a party.
"what to do you do?"
"Oh me im doing my PhD in physics"
"Wow that must be hard, it sure is raining a lot today when do you think it will stop"
What is it about science, physics in particular that scars people off so much. People don't realize how interested they really are in physics. so many questions people ask that are actualy physics without knowing it. The session was all about communicating better, getting people intersted and trying to invoke a sense of curiosity about their world. There was anothe message too a much more inportant one now that a special "museam" has sprouted up, and if you think canada is any better think again. How do we teach people how to see the difference between real science an phudo-science or as i like to call it "bullshit". We are sorrounded by bullshit. evey time we turn on the TV, evey time we pick up the news paper, every time someone ask us our sign. It's astounding but only 15% of people can understand a scince article in the new york times, now this the the times we are talking about not Science or Nature. But, at the same time 50% of people beleive that the earth is only 10 000 years old. Now what ever your stance on religion that statement is compleat and utter bullshit. There is not a single credable scientist in the world who beleives that statement and a great many scientst do in fact beleive in god. There is countless eveidance showing the true age of the earth (around 4.5 billion years) and not a single peice of proof to the contrary but people tend to beleive what they want to beleive.
Scientists are just as guilty. we all want to see some important effect in our data no matter how remote the possability it's there. This is why we are trained to look at things objectively, to question even ourselves. This is why we have peer review, and reproducability. before somethink like evolution is accepted as FACT! it is tested, retested, reviewed and not untill everyone is in aggreeement is it made a theory. Scientists love proveing other scientists wrong so when something passes all these tests you can best beleive it's true.
anyway that's all i have to say about that for now. I took notes and I may poast some interesting facts but if your reading this then im probably already preaching to the converted. An interesting thing pointed out is that termonology is differen for a scientist and a lay person. Just read this and you may see why so many people may question the Theory of Evolution.
_________________
p.s. as i am writing this at a confernce i dont have access to my spell checker that and the fact that i just returned from a banquet with a conciderable ammount of drinking my result in the degredation of this article in relation to previous work. No growndhogs where hurt in the makeing of this blog.
posted by Shawn Penson at
10:12 p.m.
3 Comments:
Congrats on a successful presentation in front of several industry leaders!
At parties, I get the same thing:
"what to do you do?"
"I work for a transportation economics firm"
"Oh. That's... interesting..."
*sigh* "I tell planes where to fly."
"Oh wow, are you a pilot?"
"No. I help airports get new services from airlines"
"So you work for the airport?"
". . . no. I work *for* airports"
"oh, ok I get it. Did you see the game last night?"
>_< "No..."
Granted, I didn't know what my company did until I started working there myself. Now I know many more things that cannot be learned in academia.
Anything academic (especially science) is seen as being scary and difficult because it is scary and difficult for a lot of people to learn. But once you learn it, you have a much better ability to understand the world around you and the world seems a little less scary because things make sense.
Then again, the world seems scarier when you see things like fossilized hats.
I must learn more of this fossilized hat evidence so I can make an objective decision whether or not to truly fear it.
Stay in school kids, and don't stop learning when you're out.
By
Anonymous, at 12:31 a.m.
Grats on owning that talk! It's always harsh to confront a big audience, but hey you showed 'em good :)
I have had as many interested as non-interested responses when I talk to people about what I do. But then there are a large number of people following things like the lifeboat foundation which plan (under other things) to stop the LHC before the world gets swallowed by a black hole we may produce. It makes for good party talk to first reason out why this would already have happened were it possible ... and then confuse them by inferring that we could accidentally destroy the universe at light speed via fun things like flase vacuum bubbles. I will then be able to inferr if they were actually paying attention when they use my first argument to debunk my second. Sadly this rarely happens and I return to staring dejectedly at my beer.
By
frank, at 2:27 a.m.
nicelink frank. The lifeboat foundation seems to have a prize for the creation of artificial life.
Im allways confused by that term. Since we are part of nature isn't by definition everything we do natural. you don go around accusing a bee hive a termite mound or a beaver dam of being artificial. but buldoze a pond to put up a wallmart and suddently eveyone is up in arms about destroying nature. Concrete is natureal, metal is natureal. the onlything not natural in a wall mart is the cheese doodles.
Oh and im watching you frank. If you end up destroying the earth by perterbing the false vaccume im gonne come over to victora and kick your ass. Assuming victoria is still in this dimention.
By
Shawn Penson, at 9:00 p.m.
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