OT: amazing, 1/4 of Americans think sun orbits the earth

[eridanus]

http://www.livescience.com/43593-americans-ignorant-about-science.html
a fragment:
------------
It turns out 26 percent of us in America think the sun is moving around
the Earth, and we're just rooted in place here on Earth watching it
sweep across the sky, a recent public survey using the NSF science-
literacy test found. Never mind those silly scientists telling us
otherwise. A quarter of us can see the sun moving. We're not moving.
The sun is.
-----------

Another pearl
--------
About 45 percent of the public -- including, it seems, pop star Katy
Perry -- think that astrology is a science. In fact, the percentage of
the American public that believes astrology is a science (and, therefore,
real or believable) has been increasing every year for the past 10 years.
And it isn't just those who got hooked on horoscopes in daily
newspapers. A majority of younger Americans (ages 18-24) think that
astrology has some sort of scientific basis. Meanwhile, in China, 92
percent of its public doesn't believe that astrology is scientific.
----------

[Richard Norman]

Some more pearls -- we may not be very good but we are not at all
alone!

"Within Europe, Spain is among the couintries with lower [science]
knowledge scores. Since 1989 this position has improved from rank 11
to rank 9"
The Culture of Science in Modern Spain: An Analysis of Public
Attitudes Across Time, Age Cohorts and Regions
Susan Howard
Fundacion BBVA, 2013

or "Spain and Greece have relatively low levels of knowledge,
interest, and support for science in general."
EUROPEAN PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF SCIENCE
Martin Bauer, John Durant and Geoffrey Evans
Int J Public Opin Res (1994) 6 (2): 163-186.
http://ijpor.oxfordjournals.org/content/6/2/163.abstract

or "Neither Americans nor Europeans got high marks in a 2001 quiz
designed to test their knowledge of science. Both groups were asked 13
questions. On average, Americans answered 8.2 questions correctly,
compared with 7.8 for Europeans.[22] Americans scored higher than
Europeans on seven of the questions."
Citation [22] says " In Europe, residents of Sweden, the
Netherlands, Finland, and Denmark scored the highest, residents of
Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain the lowest."

Science and Technology: Public Attitudes and Understanding
Chapter 7 of the US National Science Board Report: "Science
and Engineering Indicators – 2004"
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind04/c7/c7s2.htm

[jillery]

On Sat, 22 Feb 2014 15:12:24 -0800 (PST), eridanus
<leopoldo...@gmail.com> wrote:

Without trying to sugarcoat this abysmal result, it would still be
nice to know what the survey actually asked. It's well-known that
survey replies depend very much on how survey questions are worded.
But the article doesn't cite a specific survey. It only describe "a
recent public survey using the NSF science literacy test".

[jillery]

On Sat, 22 Feb 2014 19:37:44 -0500, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
wrote:

I may have found something relevant here:

<http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/scilit/review.pdf>

If so, the question asked is "Does the Earth go around the Sun, or
does the Sun go around the Earth? That looks pretty straightforward
and clear cut to me, although it doesn't describe the method for
recording answers.

Based on the 5 countries tested on this question (it's hard to tell
from the color code which they are), U.S. citizens are about average
among them. Still, in this day and age, for a significant percentage
of any population to be ignorant of such basic knowledge is a stain on
public education.

[eridanus]

yeah. But we are the bartenders waiters and cookers of Europe. People
of southern Europe are serving food and beers to tourist of norther Europe.
In this sense, we are rather enlightened for our job. If someone had made
a degree in something is unemployed or had to emigrate in search of a job.
This not new either in the US and in some parts of Europe... I am figuring,
for each year there is a lesser need of people with technical degrees. Most
of the technical gadgets are imported from Asia since the last 20 years or
so.

When had here in Spain a saying at the start of the 20th century... in which
our intellectuals that were crashed ignorants on matters of science and
technology... "que inventen ellos" translation: "let them to invent".
At mid twentieth century it seemed that we had mended our despise for
science; but soon we had become, all southerners, the bartenders and waiters
of Europe. I cannot complain. Each year there is less and less people with
a college degree that is unemployed or had to work as waiter. This idea
I had in my brain, when I was about to take my boy to the airport, for
he would start to study in Germany. "I cannot worry if you are a bad
student in Germany. As you can speak well English and German, and even a
little French... you will surely find a good job as a waiter in any bar
or in a hotel in the tourist area of the island."

I have the perception that even in the US there is less and less jobs
for people with technical or scientific degrees as well. There must
exist something in the air... about this civilization is about to
flounder... because in the last 20 or 30 years it had surged up an
interest for medieval battles and swords and armors... even the success
of some films like the Lord of the Rings... had resurrected some visions
about a tenebrous medieval future, so far off from the technological
illusions of my childhood. It seem in the middle of the 20 century that
we had a promising future. Now it seems that we do not.

Eri








Well, we are watching the about the trash quality of television as Americans.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Are you sure the sun doesn't revolve around the Earth? Why does it rise
in the morning and set in the evening? I'm confused.

Tony Pagano, where are you? You are the center of it all. Please reset
our orbit!

[*Hemidactylus*]

Hey, I know bartenders and manager who made so much money on tips in the
right venue that pursuing a degree other than perhaps an MBA would
result in a lower paying career. Unfortunately those actually cooking
the food in the back often get the short end of the stick. They might
make more hourly, but no tips. Bartending is a serious skill, especially
when you consider the plethora of drinks out there. Captain Morgan and
grapefruit is something only an elect few can pull off correctly.
There's a magic ratio. Mojitos *usually* suck. But some bartenders "get it".

All us intellectuals tend to discount the MBA. Sure you learn economics
and other alchemical dark arts, but you might wind up actually making a
living.

[eridanus]

i do not doubt that a sound 25% of people would think the sun turns around
the earth.
You can post the question if you want to some unknown people anywhere.
The question would be easy.

Do you think the sun turns each day around the sun, or it is the earth
that is turning on itself so we can see the sun passing each day over
our heads?

If the person cannot understand the question is sure that he would
reply, the sun is turning around the earth.

Tony Pagano perhaps was joking about how credulity people can be. So
he came here to learn arguments about this question to better dupe
other people in this trick about the earth being the center of the
universe. In fact, most people cannot explain the reasons why the
earth is not the center of the universe. This concept is rarely
explained in school.
I must go to sleep. Here is now 1:30 AM
good night.
eri

[eridanus]

> >> and Engineering Indicators - 2004"

who do you think is paying tips? in which country occurs such a thing?
In some bars exist a sort of can to save some occasional tips for all the
employers. It cannot amount to 1% of the monthly pay.
People had become stingy to the unbelievable extremes.
eri

[eridanus]

Sorry. My mistake. I must be rather groggy at this hour of the night.

Do you think the sun turns each day around the "earth", or it is the earth

that is turning on itself so we can see the sun passing each day over
our heads?

Eri

[Dai monie]

Just to provide you with some more info:
http://www.iflscience.com/scientific-knoweldge-trails-support-0

PDF: Survey pdf - http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind14/content/chapter-7/c07.pdf

[*Hemidactylus*]

You know something else Sweden is good at? Hockey :-)

We kinda nosedived on that one against our friends to the north
(Canada), but at least we beat the Soviets again.

http://espn.go.com/olympics/winter/2014/icehockey/men/boxscore?gameId=1184&lang=EN

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/winter-olympics-2014-united-states-bests-russia-in-hockey/

Actually I care not who wins between Canada and Sweden (take a deep
breath DIG :-) ) as I have family ties to both great nations. May the
best win in a well played game I do not understand very well. Why are
there only 3 periods?

[*Hemidactylus*]

I know from experience that friends of mine used to make serious tips as
bartenders back in the 90s at least maybe things have changed since. A
bad economy does reduce what people are willing to pay for tips. Maybe
the US has a greater respect for the service economy than in Europe. We
choose what we tip but 10-15% is a suggestion. Do you guys have some
standard we don't?

[*Hemidactylus*]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/20/tipping-15-percent-25-30_n_1900559.html

I usually tip three to four bucks which for a 10-15 buck check is pretty
good.

And we tend to have a negative view of foreigners:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/28/foreign-tourists-restaurant-tip-vermont_n_1836288.html

[*Hemidactylus*]

Which is for food. I usually don't go to bars for drinks. If so, my tips
would go upwards of that.

[Richard Norman]

On Sat, 22 Feb 2014 17:24:24 -0800 (PST), eridanus
<leopoldo...@gmail.com> wrote:

<snip double space lunacy>

>
>who do you think is paying tips? in which country occurs such a thing?
>In some bars exist a sort of can to save some occasional tips for all the
>employers. It cannot amount to 1% of the monthly pay.
>People had become stingy to the unbelievable extremes.

Tipping varies enormously by country. In Spain, the locals generally
do not tip but places that accomodate foreign tourists generally
expect something. I have seen suggestions of 5% to 10% or so. On the
other hand, Hemi's suggestion of 10% to 15% in the US is considered
rather stingy in many places and 20% is very common especially at
nicer establishments.

Tipping forms a major part of the pay for workers in US jobs where
tips are expected. In fact, the outrageously tiny minimum wage in the
U.S. of $7.25 per hour gets reduced to a more outrageous $2.13 per
hour for people who do get tips. All sorts of service people in the
US could not live without tips. In very swanky (and expensive)
restaurants and bars, tipped servers can do extremely well but they
are exceptions.

[eridanus]

for what I know, "tips" are a very rare species in Europe. to which taxa
pertains this creature? I do not know if in restaurants and bars for
rich people exist this rara avis. That must be the reason we have minimum
wages.
Eri

[eridanus]

reading the first link I was amazed. I had vaguely remember this thing
of tips, after having read something somewhere. But here is Spain to
pay tips is rather rare. Well, I never had worked as a waiter. But
I never heard anyone tell about this. It must be a phenomenon of the
US, or perhaps the restaurants for the rich people or something. I do
not remember to even had paid any tip higher than half an Euro; this is
like 65 cents of a dollar. I am not talking about a diner, I had never
had a dinner in a restaurant in my life; but some light eating, like a
sandwich and a beer in a bar.

Eri

[eridanus]

In Spain, there is a very strong competition among bars and restaurants
for the local government of cities wanted to extract taxes for them.
As there do not exist a control on tax consumption for bars and restaurants
it exist a different tax depending on the place the bar or restaurant is
working. Depending on the site, so are the indirect taxes, more or less
high. It enters into the calculation the surface of the local where tables
are, and for terraces and outdoors services, there is a tax on the number
of chairs and tables the restaurant or bar has.
As the competence is exaggerated between the different locals, long ago
it was established a minimum wage to avoid situations of misery for waiters.
This is at least my theory. I am not an expert in this matter.

Eri

[eridanus]

El domingo, 23 de febrero de 2014 04:41:47 UTC, Richard Norman escribió:

long ago, it existed tips for people that put the gas on your car.
People used to fill the tank, and as this implied an undetermined
amount of gas... people used to pay tips. Mostly some change. But
when the automatic machines were put in place, people was telling
put in 100 Pts. or or 60 or whatever. The machine put this amount
of gas in the tank and there was not any tips any more, but in rare
cases. So, they had to raise the minimum wage for these workers.
It was a sort of a crisis.
Eri

[eridanus]

El domingo, 23 de febrero de 2014 02:13:56 UTC, *Hemidactylus* escribió:
> On 02/22/2014 09:08 PM, *Hemidactylus* wrote:

> >>> -----------------

> >>> who do you think is paying tips? in which country occurs such a thing?
> >>> In some bars exist a sort of can to save some occasional tips for all
> >>> the
> >>> employers. It cannot amount to 1% of the monthly pay.
> >>> People had become stingy to the unbelievable extremes.
>
> >> I know from experience that friends of mine used to make serious tips as
> >> bartenders back in the 90s at least maybe things have changed since. A
> >> bad economy does reduce what people are willing to pay for tips. Maybe
> >> the US has a greater respect for the service economy than in Europe. We
> >> choose what we tip but 10-15% is a suggestion. Do you guys have some
> >> standard we don't?
>
> > http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/20/tipping-15-percent-25-30_n_1900559.html
> > I usually tip three to four bucks which for a 10-15 buck check is pretty
> > good.
> > And we tend to have a negative view of foreigners:
> > <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/28/foreign-tourists-restaurant-tip-vermont_n_1836288.html>
> Which is for food. I usually don't go to bars for drinks. If so, my tips
> would go upwards of that.

Bars for drinks are rather common in Spain. It comes from the times that
we had an excess of wine and it was needed to expend it. So wine had a
favorable condition on taxes, and do not paid the taxes for distilled
alcoholic beverages like whiskey or other. Then, distilled alcohol had
a higher tax than wine. In fact it was a tax on alcohol contain mostly.
Most of the wine originally were sold directly from barrels. But this
was slowing changing at the mid 20th century, and the barrels disappeared
from bars, and the wine was them sold in bottles, that were easily
controlled by the state.

On the other hand, a lot of people were earning their life in the vineyards
for all the work was done by people. Then, serving wine in glasses from
a barrel was also loaded on human work. When I was an adolescent I
worked a year or so in a bar. But at that time, people with money used
to distinguish themselves from the common mortals for they drunk
some sort brandy or other. It was not yet the times of king Whiskey and
other beverages.

The social problems started with the industrialization of wine production.
Then, wine started to be sold in bottles.

Another economic problem of southern Europe is that we had weak
currencies. When we entered into the Euro system, our conditioned
reflexes on the value of money were smashed.

In Spain we changed to 1 Euro with an equivalence of 160 pesetas. The
Euro was compared then to the dollar 1 EURO=1$
But the Italians had to change nearly 2,000 lire to 1 Euro
And the Greeks some 340 Drahmas to an Euro. The Portuguese
Escudo was exchanged by the Euro at a rate of 200 PTE. to 1 EURO

It takes some ten years for a young man, that starts to work, to fix
the value of money in his brain, to the point that he would be able
to expend in a month a little less than he earns. After a decade or so,
he acquires a sense of what is expansive and what is cheap. What
he can afford to buy, and what not. With the entrance into the Euro
system, all these reflexes were destroyed. This was a moment for all
the things to look very cheap. We were used to buy inflation and an
unnoticed rise of prices; that almost nobody was aware of it. Now
with the new currency all things looked very cheap. This was in part
the cause of the present economic crisis, combined with the cheap
imports from Asia. This cheap imports created a false sense of
prosperity; like the new age of the fat-cows of the bible. This was
the perfect moment to smash the economies of the southern European
nations that never had felt prosperous, and depended much on a
discreet inflation to give people a psychological sense of... "things
are improving".
When I started working in the phone company I had the year
salary of 30,000 pesetas, then 31 years later, I was earning some
1,820,000 pesetas. The currency had been devalued by 91 This is
an average of 14% inflation per year. If it was only a case of inflation,
and not a real increase of purchasing power of the salary. Perhaps
all the increase in the salary was not due to inflation but to a
combination of several factors. The inflation could had been on
average a 12% a year. The rest were other economic factors.

eri

[RonO]

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind14/content/chapter-7/c07.pdf

This is the report. The questions appear to come from a 2012 survey.

Description starts on page 7-20.

Questions are in the appendix not supplied with the above pdf.

The table seems to be this one:
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/append/c7/at07-09.pdf

The whole appendix:
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/appendix.htm

Question
Physical science

1. The center of the Earth is very hot.
(True)

2. The continents on which we live have been
moving their locations for millions of years and
will continue to move in the future.
(True)

3a. Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the

Sun go around the Earth?

(Earth around Sun)

3b. How long does it take for the Earth to go
around the Sun?
(One year)

4. All radioactivity is man-made.
(False)

5. Electrons are smaller than atoms.
(True)

6. Lasers work by focusing sound waves.
(False)

7. The universe began with a huge explosion.
(True)

Biological science

1a. It is the father’s gene that decides whether the
baby is a boy or a girl.
(True)

1b. It is the mother’s gene that decides whether
the baby is a boy or a girl.
(False)

2. Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria.
(False)

3. Human beings, as we know them today,
developed from earlier species of animals.
(True)

Ron Okimoto

[jillery]

Yes, what you and I found match closely. Did you find anything on how
the answers were actually recorded, ex. multiple-choice, fill in the
blank, etc.? People sometimes misunderstand how to answer either/or
type questions.

Technically, neither option is accurate. The Sun, Earth, and the
other planets go around a common center of mass:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barycentric_coordinates_(astronomy)>

Also, the question about how the universe began isn't phrased well.
From:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang>

"The Big Bang is not an explosion of matter moving outward to fill an
empty universe. Instead, space itself expands with time everywhere and
increases the physical distance between two comoving points."

I could make other painfully pedantic criticisms (ex. "very hot"
compared to what?). But it's Sunday, and apparently some think I
should give it a rest.

[RonO]

The answers are given. They were either true or false or two
alternatives were provided. They had a 50:50 chance on all questions
and the average score was 5.8 points out of 9 with 3 of the questions
having two parts, so they could be half right or all wrong on those.

We did a little better than chance, and still beat some countries.

Ron Okimoto

[jillery]

On the specific question in question, hightlighed in the title of this
topic, chance would make 50%, and the reported outcome for the U.S.
was 74%. That's significantly better than chance, even if 26% are
still stuck on Ptolemy.

[J. J. Lodder]

eridanus <leopoldo...@gmail.com> wrote:

> http://www.livescience.com/43593-americans-ignorant-about-science.html
> a fragment:
> ------------
> It turns out 26 percent of us in America think the sun is moving around
> the Earth, and we're just rooted in place here on Earth watching it
> sweep across the sky, a recent public survey using the NSF science-
> literacy test found. Never mind those silly scientists telling us
> otherwise. A quarter of us can see the sun moving. We're not moving.
> The sun is.
> -----------

And amazing amazing,
a quarter of the Spaniards think so too,

Jan

[TomS]

"On Sun, 23 Feb 2014 21:20:30 +0100, in article
<1lhjhmd.bp...@de-ster.xs4all.nl>, J. J. Lodder stated..."

There are two major ways that the Earth is moving:

1) rotation - one per day - which makes the Sun seem to move
2) revolution - one per year - which makes the changes in the seasons
How many people know both of those?
How many evidence for both?

I'd guess that, as far as evidence, many would mention rockets which
can see the motion.


--
---Tom S.

[J. J. Lodder]

Traditionally the quarrel was about 1), based on Joshua,
and this also was the primary cause of Galileo's troubles.
Those who don't believe in the sun's motion
won't know or bother about your distinction,

Jan

[Darwin123]

On Saturday, February 22, 2014 6:43:34 PM UTC-5, Richard Norman wrote:

> Citation [22] says " In Europe, residents of Sweden, the
> Netherlands, Finland, and Denmark scored the highest, residents of
> Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain the lowest."

Would it be fair to say that the countries with Catholic majorities (Roman and Orthodox) scored lowest?

[jillery]

Nowadays such a distinction isn't justified by Joshua. Stopping the
Sun in its presumptive orbit would be just as impossible as stopping
the Earth. But all things are possible for a presumptive omnipotent
deity. So Joshua makes no difference.

[RonO]

It is only 64% for the whole test (5.8/9 = 0.64) and I do not know how
they scored the double questions. Essentially they were just one
question answer from random. For 3a and 3b they can be half right, but
for Biological 1a and 1b if they don't get both they should be all
wrong. Getting just one right means that they did not know the answer.

Ron Okimoto

[Darwin123]

On Sunday, February 23, 2014 4:06:20 PM UTC-5, TomS wrote:

> I'd guess that, as far as evidence, many would mention rockets which
> can see the motion.

The motion seen by rockets would not be convincing, since rockets
are commonly referred to as moving. They are also not tied to the surface
of the earth. However, there is a more subtle problem that antiscientists take advantage of.

You should distinguish between motion as defined by acceleration and motion as defined by velocity. Special relativity says that one can not measure absolute velocity. However, special relativity does show that absolute acceleration can be measured. So most 'proofs' of the motion of the earth are measurements of acceleration, not velocity. Although a 'velocity' is often
quoted, it turns out that this is a relative velocity.



The Coriolis effect shows that the earths surface has an absolute acceleration due to the rotation of the earth. Meteorologists calculate
the motion of air using formulas based on the Coriolis effect. The Coriolis
effect explains why cyclones in the North hemisphere go clockwise and cyclones in the South hemisphere go counter clockwise.

This is very consistent. It is very hard to explain the Coriolis effect
in terms of an earth's surface that doesn't move.

The Coriolis effect is also used to calculate trajectories in long range
artillery and rockets. Corrections for the Coriolis effect have been known for a couple of hundred years. They work.

There are also two laboratory scale experiments that show that the surface of the earth is accelerating.

The Foucault pendulum and the Sagnac effect both show that the surface of
the earth has a nonzero acceleration. These two types of experiments are
very sensitive to acceleration. They have been applied to the surface of
the earth at different locations. They show unequivocally that the earth's
surface has an 'absolute' acceleration mostly due to the rotation of the earth.

These experiments are not sensitive enough to pick up the acceleration due to the earths orbit around the sun or the sun's orbit around the center of the galaxy. However, these components of acceleration are much less than the acceleration due to the earth's rotation.



A lot of Geocentrists (unusually backward Creationists) somehow twist these experiments. They claim that the Foucault pendulum and the Sagnac effect demonstrate that the earth stands still. I don't fully understand their argument. I think it is because they don't understand the difference between velocity and acceleration.

Even Galileo's observations are best interpreted in terms of absolute acceleration, not absolute velocity. He did not determine straight line velocities for sun, earth, moon and planets. He showed that they move in
curved paths. He showed that the planets and sun rotate. Rotation implies
acceleration. Thus, the relativity of velocities doesn't invalidate his
discoveries.

The Church made a further mistake in declaring Galileo to be wrong. Taking relativity into account, the best that could be logically declared was that it was a draw. Since absolute velocities can't be measured, then the answer is AMBIGUOUS. Neither Church nor Galileo could be considered right or wrong as far as velocity was concerned. However, Galileo was threatened with torture and sentenced to life imprisonment because he was WRONG.

AMBIGUOUS and WRONG are two different things. The Church was WRONG.


One priest examining Galileo even said that the answer was ambiguous. He pointed out that according to the physics that Galileo discovered, absolute velocities can not be measured. This became known as Galilean Relativity (as opposed to Einsteinian relativity). He suggested that Galileo be let go. However, the Pope wouldn't hear of it. Galileo was abused and persecuted under the pretext that Galileo was WRONG.

This priest was very bright. He found a minor mistake in Galileo's research on the pendulum. However, he could not find any astronomical mistake that made Galileo absolutely wrong. All Galileo's work was consistent with an earth that accelerated (hence, moved).

So the Pope lied. Galileo was not wrong. He was right as concerns absolute acceleration. He is ambiguous as concerns absolute velocity. However, Galileo was never wrong. Hence, he should never have been threatened or imprisoned in any sense.

Note Kepler had been threatened through his mother not long before. Mrs. Kepler was almost burnt as a witch because Kepler said that the earth moved. Again, 'relativity' didn't matter. Religious authorities claimed that Kepler was wrong in a very absolute sense.


I think that the Pope understood that. The Pope was just a power freak. It was the Pope who could not be moved.

[jillery]

Ok, if you're going to look at 3a *and* 3b. On the one hand, it's not
quite right to ask people who believe the Sun goes around the Earth,
how long it takes the Earth to go around the Sun. On the other hand,
I would have thought the second question would have given them a clue
about the first one.

[eridanus]

El sábado, 22 de febrero de 2014 23:12:24 UTC, eridanus escribió:
> http://www.livescience.com/43593-americans-ignorant-about-science.html
>
> a fragment:
>
> ------------
>
> It turns out 26 percent of us in America think the sun is moving around
>
> the Earth, and we're just rooted in place here on Earth watching it
>
> sweep across the sky, a recent public survey using the NSF science-
>
> literacy test found. Never mind those silly scientists telling us
>
> otherwise. A quarter of us can see the sun moving. We're not moving.
>
> The sun is.
>
> -----------
>
>
>
> Another pearl
>
> --------
>
> About 45 percent of the public -- including, it seems, pop star Katy
>
> Perry -- think that astrology is a science. In fact, the percentage of
>
> the American public that believes astrology is a science (and, therefore,
>
> real or believable) has been increasing every year for the past 10 years.
>
> And it isn't just those who got hooked on horoscopes in daily
>
> newspapers. A majority of younger Americans (ages 18-24) think that
>
> astrology has some sort of scientific basis. Meanwhile, in China, 92
>
> percent of its public doesn't believe that astrology is scientific.
>
> ----------

Paranormal Beliefs Come (Super)Naturally to Some
<http://www.gallup.com/poll/19558/paranormal-beliefs-come-supernaturally-some.aspx>
More people believe in haunted houses than other mystical ideas
by Linda Lyons, Education and Youth Editor

The spirits who roamed the Earth last night on All Hallows' Eve may have
referred today to All Saints, but it nevertheless remains an appropriately
eerie time of year to examine the paranormal beliefs in the United States,
Canada, and Great Britain*.

Haunted Houses
Perhaps because most people have to search no farther than their own
hometowns to find a house that's rumored to be haunted, more people in
each country believe in haunted houses than any of the supernatural or
paranormal items tested; 37% of Americans believe, as do 28% of Canadians
and 40% of Britons.
------------
My comment: In some places there is sold some paranormal charm to tourist
and visitors, if they had not any better attraction to show. It is the
equivalent of the show of Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone. You cannot
brag of a geyser, but you can brag of having an old haunted house full of
angry spirits. This is specially a charm of some places in Great Britain
and Ireland. The last house that contained a fossil stump of a tree,
when Scotland was in tropical latitudes some 350 millions years ago, had
to be closed for lack of visitors. I think that a fossil of 350 millions
years is less thrilling than a ghost haunting an old house with not any
central or electric heating.
Eri

[J. J. Lodder]

Still conflicts with the inerrancy of the bible.
It always surprised me that the moon should stop too.
Surey stopping the sun alone should be adequate
for the purpose of completing a mass murder?

Jan

[J. J. Lodder]

Darwin123 <drose...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> On Sunday, February 23, 2014 4:06:20 PM UTC-5, TomS wrote:
>
> > I'd guess that, as far as evidence, many would mention rockets which
> > can see the motion.
>
> The motion seen by rockets would not be convincing, since rockets are
> commonly referred to as moving. They are also not tied to the surface of
> the earth. However, there is a more subtle problem that antiscientists
> take advantage of.
>
> You should distinguish between motion as defined by acceleration and
> motion as defined by velocity. Special relativity says that one can not
> measure absolute velocity. However, special relativity does show that
> absolute acceleration can be measured. So most 'proofs' of the motion of
> the earth are measurements of acceleration, not velocity. Although a
> 'velocity' is often quoted, it turns out that this is a relative velocity.
>
>
>
> The Coriolis effect shows that the earths surface has an absolute
> acceleration due to the rotation of the earth. Meteorologists calculate
> the motion of air using formulas based on the Coriolis effect. The
> Coriolis effect explains why cyclones in the North hemisphere go clockwise
> and cyclones in the South hemisphere go counter clockwise.
>
> This is very consistent. It is very hard to explain the Coriolis effect
> in terms of an earth's surface that doesn't move.

Invoke Mach,

Jan

[Paul J Gans]

jillery <69jp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Sat, 22 Feb 2014 15:12:24 -0800 (PST), eridanus

><leopoldo...@gmail.com> wrote:

>>http://www.livescience.com/43593-americans-ignorant-about-science.html
>>a fragment:
>>------------
>>It turns out 26 percent of us in America think the sun is moving around
>>the Earth, and we're just rooted in place here on Earth watching it
>>sweep across the sky, a recent public survey using the NSF science-
>>literacy test found. Never mind those silly scientists telling us
>>otherwise. A quarter of us can see the sun moving. We're not moving.
>>The sun is.
>>-----------
>>

>>Another pearl
>>--------
>>About 45 percent of the public -- including, it seems, pop star Katy
>>Perry -- think that astrology is a science. In fact, the percentage of
>>the American public that believes astrology is a science (and, therefore,
>>real or believable) has been increasing every year for the past 10 years.
>>And it isn't just those who got hooked on horoscopes in daily
>>newspapers. A majority of younger Americans (ages 18-24) think that
>>astrology has some sort of scientific basis. Meanwhile, in China, 92
>>percent of its public doesn't believe that astrology is scientific.
>>----------

>Without trying to sugarcoat this abysmal result, it would still be
>nice to know what the survey actually asked. It's well-known that
>survey replies depend very much on how survey questions are worded.

>But the article doesn't cite a specific survey. It only describe "a
>recent public survey using the NSF science literacy test".

Exactly. Were someone to ask me "Does the sun move?" I'd have to
say yes (because it does).

--
--- Paul J. Gans

[Paul J Gans]

In New York, at any sort of reasonable place, most folks tip at
around 20%. As a result I tend to tip at that rate no matter
where I am in the US.

[jillery]

On Mon, 24 Feb 2014 17:20:49 +0100, nos...@de-ster.demon.nl (J. J.

Just >poof< the bad guys out of existence and be done with it already.

[eridanus]

god do not wanted to kill those "enemies" of the Jews directly, that would
had been a lot easier. He wanted the Jews to do it with their swords (I
suppose the were using bronze or iron swords). Then, god wanted them to
tire well killing their enemies, and he made only the little miracle of
stopping the sun going on the sky. If god would had stop the earth turning
on its axis suddenly, they would all tumbled down and have a good crash.
Then, we can speculate with the how slow god made the earth stop turning
around so the Jewish warriors had a time to control their sense of the
vertical. But god would had not any problem with stopping the sun in his
turning around the earth. He needed to make simple another miracle. Once
the sun stopped turning around the earth, a while later he made another
miracle and made the earth to turn on his axis, and a while later he made
it to turn around the sun as we had deduced in our times.
The problem with make the earth to suddenly start turning on its axis
cannot be difficult for an almighty god. What god had more problems with
is to make more rational his believers. He could make them rational, but
this could cause other problems, like people ceasing to sing its praises,
for would think is a silly thing to do. If people ceases to believe in god
it would be the ruin of priesthood as a profession. Nobody would be paying
tithes to the pastors, and it would be the ruin of churches. Conservatives
would had problems to get enough votes favorable to them and a lot of
other problems.

Eri

[jillery]

Then what happened?

[Dale]

On 02/22/2014 06:12 PM, eridanus wrote:
> Another pearl
> --------
> About 45 percent of the public -- including, it seems, pop star Katy
> Perry -- think that astrology is a science. In fact, the percentage of
> the American public that believes astrology is a science (and, therefore,
> real or believable) has been increasing every year for the past 10 years.
> And it isn't just those who got hooked on horoscopes in daily
> newspapers. A majority of younger Americans (ages 18-24) think that
> astrology has some sort of scientific basis. Meanwhile, in China, 92
> percent of its public doesn't believe that astrology is scientific.
> ----------

sometimes parables and metaphors work better than the truth, notice I
said sometimes, perhaps a better is proper times

--
Dale

[eridanus]

to people who lack skepticism and that barely understand some elemental
science all the questions they ignore are equivalent to science. If
someone is writing an horoscope in a newspaper, it must mean that
astrology is a science. The same with someone reading the lines of the
hand, or invoking the souls of death relatives, etc. They do not
challenge the authority of anyone that pretends to know something.

The degree of gullibility is high, because people is tamed to be
gullible. In general, we rarely teach our children to be skeptics.
We educate them, in a similar way in the past we were teaching them
the catechism. We rarely train them in detecting different ways
of swindling and deception. The different ways to fleece people's money
and different types of Ponzi schemes to ruin you or the nation, etc.

Eri

[Darwin123]

On Monday, February 24, 2014 11:20:50 AM UTC-5, J. J. Lodder wrote:

According to Mach, absolute motion is ambiguous. Both absolute velocity and absolute acceleration are ambiguous. There is only relative motion, regardless of what time derivative one uses.

Those Geocentrist Creationists who believe the sun orbits the earth are claiming that this is a unique and accurate way to describe motion. They can't abide an 'acentric' universe.

The literal word of the Bible doesn't only have to be accurate. The literal word of the Bible has to be a unique description of physical reality. If the Bible is using metaphor, then one can trust nothing in the Bible.

Even Mach has to be wrong according to religious fanatics. Mach insisted on a physical theory that had no absolute anything. Religious fanatics like to make everything absolute. Hence, there is no room for Galileo, Einstein or even Mach.

If you can't trust Joshua, then who can you trust ?-)

[Robert Carnegie]

On Monday, 24 February 2014 00:55:38 UTC, jillery wrote:
> Ok, if you're going to look at 3a *and* 3b. On the one hand, it's not
> quite right to ask people who believe the Sun goes around the Earth,
> how long it takes the Earth to go around the Sun. On the other hand,
> I would have thought the second question would have given them a clue
> about the first one.

If this is accurate information, I assume that they ask the
questions one at a time. On the other hand, it's not a good
sign that this survey tells people the correct answers and the
results are printed in newspapers and it still isn't having
much effect.

[Dale]

On 02/24/2014 05:47 PM, eridanus wrote:
> The degree of gullibility is high, because people is tamed to be
> gullible. In general, we rarely teach our children to be skeptics.
> We educate them, in a similar way in the past we were teaching them
> the catechism. We rarely train them in detecting different ways
> of swindling and deception. The different ways to fleece people's money
> and different types of Ponzi schemes to ruin you or the nation, etc.

this leads to Ego Ideal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_ideal

some Freudians believe Ego Ideal is the sacrifice of self love somewhere
along the development of a being for ideals

ideals can be communicated with parables and metaphors, and they jive
with science if stated as such

self love can take you into parables and metaphors too

remember, before Hammurabi started secular civilization, religion built
the pyramids and stone henges etc.

where is the better solution to needs and luxury?

Revelation 6:5 And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third
beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that
sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.

Revelation 6:6 And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say,
A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a
penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.

Revelation 13:16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and
poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their
foreheads:

Revelation 13:17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the
mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

call it social Darwinism, call it social evolution, or if there IS a
world order at any time call it social engineering

you can't stop it, eventually meritocracy wins and you have to base
society on such

what meritocracy? sociology over psychology? eventually you appreciate
what others can do for you, if only pleasure

--
Dale

[jillery]

I suspect the people who answered wrong don't read much, so I don't
exect it would.

[TomS]

"On Mon, 24 Feb 2014 16:47:53 -0800 (PST), in article
<b559b4f8-bfcd-4b4c...@googlegroups.com>, Darwin123 stated..."
[...snip...]

>
>According to Mach, absolute motion is ambiguous. Both absolute velocity and
>absolute acceleration are ambiguous. There is only relative motion, regardless
>of what time derivative one uses.
>
>Those Geocentrist Creationists who believe the sun orbits the earth are claiming
>that this is a unique and accurate way to describe motion. They can't abide an
>'acentric' universe.
>
>The literal word of the Bible doesn't only have to be accurate. The literal word
>of the Bible has to be a unique description of physical reality. If the Bible is
>using metaphor, then one can trust nothing in the Bible.
>
>Even Mach has to be wrong according to religious fanatics. Mach insisted on a
>physical theory that had no absolute anything. Religious fanatics like to make
>everything absolute. Hence, there is no room for Galileo, Einstein or even Mach.
>
> If you can't trust Joshua, then who can you trust ?-)
>

IANAS, but it seems that this is the best evidence accessible to the
non-scientist:

The Earth is make up of the same kind of stuff as the Moon and
planets like the rocky Mars, and asteroids, and the same laws
of physics and chemistry are followed. And rockets launched
from Earth follow the laws of planetary motion without break.
These pieces of the Earth at first movingIANAS, but it seems that this is the
best evidence accessible to the
non-scientist:

The Earth is make up of the same kind of stuff as the Moon and
planets like the rocky Mars, and asteroids, and the same laws
of physics and chemistry are followed. Rockets launched
from Earth follow the laws of planetary motion. These pieces of
the Earth first move as the Earth moves and rest up as the planets
move, and there is no discontinuity between those motions. And
meteors start out as the planets and end up as like the Earth.


--
---Tom S.

[Walter Bushell]

In article <0rKdnUl0vuTi2pTO...@giganews.com>,
*Hemidactylus* <ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote:

> Are you sure the sun doesn't revolve around the Earth? Why does it rise
> in the morning and set in the evening? I'm confused.
>
> Tony Pagano, where are you? You are the center of it all. Please reset
> our orbit!

TP *is* the center of the Universe, and so is everyone else.

--
Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greed. Me.

[Walter Bushell]

In article <leg32d$eg3$3...@reader1.panix.com>,

Paul J Gans <gan...@panix.com> wrote:

> In New York, at any sort of reasonable place, most folks tip at
> around 20%. As a result I tend to tip at that rate no matter
> where I am in the US.

Perhaps you should tip more at unreasonable places?

[Walter Bushell]

In article <a6dd239b-b110-412a...@googlegroups.com>,

eridanus <leopoldo...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Nobody would be paying
> tithes to the pastors, and it would be the ruin of churches.

Ah, the churches could reopen as bars and the priests or ministers
could bartend. The could even take the choir, I mean the members are
already paying for music. Catholics could have little rooms where one
could have a chat with a bartender.

[RonO]

My guess is that the test designers wanted some way to determine how
many people were guessing at the answers. Questions 1a and 1b about sex
determination would tell them that. My guess is that they asked these
questions at different times (one early and one later). Half the time
that people were guessing they would get one right and the other wrong,
and 1/4 of the time they would get both wrong. They could likely get a
decent estimate of how many of the correct answers were guesses.

For 3a and 3b they either messed up or they were testing something
different. They may have asked half the people 3b first and then noted
what fraction also got 3a correct compared to if 3a was asked first.
This would give them another way to tell how many people really knew
that the earth orbits the sun, but it isn't as clear cut as 1a and 1b
because they can't mix the questions up and they depend on the people
understanding and remembering the previous questions. The two pairs
could complement if 3a and 3b could give some estimate of how many of
the 1a, 1b double wrong answers was due to remembering their previous
incorrect answer to 1a or 1b.

The problem is that none of this is discussed in the project report, so
my guess is that the people responsible for the report didn't know how
or why the questions were created and informationmay have been lost
during analysis of the data. Just another government fubar.

For example they might be able to infer that of the 26% fraction of
incorrect answers about earth orbit, 98% were guessing and got it wrong
(a few like Pagano would really believe the incorrect answer and get it
wrong). This would mean that less than half of the respondents actually
knew the correct answer with a third of the correct answers also due to
guessing. So the 74% correct answers would be an over estimate of what
Americans actually know. In reality only half of the people would have
actually known the correct answer. May be the results were too
embarassing even for the political axe grinders and they left out those
details. What would we think of our education system if only half of
the people knew that the earth orbits the sun? We probably all grew up
with planetary mobiles hanging from the ceiling of our elementary school
classrooms.

Ron Okimoto

[jillery]

20%??? No wonder Sean Hannity wants to leave NYC!

[Richard Norman]

On Tue, 25 Feb 2014 07:45:35 -0500, Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com>
wrote:

>In article <leg32d$eg3$3...@reader1.panix.com>,
> Paul J Gans <gan...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>> In New York, at any sort of reasonable place, most folks tip at
>> around 20%. As a result I tend to tip at that rate no matter
>> where I am in the US.
>
>Perhaps you should tip more at unreasonable places?

It is far more important to tip generously at small unfashionable
dives and greasy spoons where the help probably barely (if at all) eke
out a meager existence than at swanky bistros where the waiters more
likely enjoy a better income.

Of course changing the economic structure so that all workers get paid
a decent wage and we didn't tip much or at all is far more equitable.
We would pay just a bit more at stores but society as a whole
(including us) would benefit far more.

[Mitchell Coffey]

All, I believe, western European countries do this either through an
overt over-all minimum wage, statutory minimums for each category of
labor, or union contracts covering most workers. Also, more services
(notably medical care and university education) are provided universally
through the public sector than in the U.S.

Average income in all these countries is either about equal or somewhat
below that in the United States, except for Spain and Portugal, which
are significantly on average poorer. It's arguable that a greater
national reliance on markets tends to generate somewhat more wealth. Yet
in all except possibly Spain and Portugal, the income of the great
majority of people is larger than in the U.S., because of our stunning
disparities in income. I've always preferred social democracy, myself.

Mitchell Coffey

[mus...@gmail.com]

Why do we say the earth circles the sun? There is a claim, known as the Duhem-Quine thesis, that no hypothesis can be falsified since you can always adjust subsidiary assumption to keep protect the main idea. One way around this is to follow Poincare who claimed that the earth going around sun is a convention chosen for convenience. But let us look at the issue in more detail.

The Copernicus model was preferred over the Ptolemic system because it eliminated the equant. Aristotle said that heavenly motion should be circular and uniform. The only way to make that work in the Ptolemic system was to have the centre of the circle and and the centre for the uniform motion displaced from each other. The amount of the displacement was called the equant. By going to an heliocentric system Copernicus was able to eliminate the equant. The accuracy and number of parameters was comparable between the two systems.

The next piece of evidence for the Copernican system was the phases of Venus and the varying size of Mars revealed by the telescope. This was inconsistent with predictions based on the Ptolemic system but confirmed predictions made by Copernicus.

The geocentric model of Tycho Brahe solved that problem by having the earth stationary, the sun circling the earth and the other planets circling the sun. The two are equivalent for planetary motion since they are related by an canonical transformation. The main argument against Brahe was simplicity. It was was more complicated to use.

But there are other reasons. If the earth rotates the Coriolis force arises naturally. If the earth is fixed the Coriolis force (and other forces of that ilk) must be taken as fundamental like gravity. Again simplicity favours having the earth rotation.

A more compelling argument comes from the parallax of the stars. This is easily explained by the motion of the earth around the sun but if the earth is fixed the stars must perform a seasonal proper motion (or the propagation of light must vary based on the season). Again simplicity favours the heliocentric.

Finally there is the dipole moment of the microwave background radiation. This moment can be explained by the motion of the earth with respect to the microwave background. In a geocentric universe it would be hard to explain although I suspect some imaginative person could produce a reason. The dipole moment also supports the sun not being stationary but circling the centre of the galaxy.

One final twist. In a frame centred on the galactic centre the outer planets do not circle the sun but rather both the sun and Neptune circle the centre of the galactic centre with one then the other closer to the centre. It that frame it would not appear as one circling the other.

[eridanus]

I would had not changed myself, as a Spanish worker, for a worker in
the US. I had the subjective impression that I would had been a lot
poorer in the US than in Spain. Then, I never had any dreams of
emigrating to the US, for I was fearing to be a worse underdog in USA
than in Spain. I considered as well, that in Spain it was difficult
to own a car till well in 70,'s when it was relatively easy to buy a
used car. Cars were more expensive in Spain, I supposed, but we have
plenty of public transport instead. On the other hand, during all the
60's and 70's, the government was sponsoring the built of flats for
poor people and they were in the middle of a modest middle class, to
avoid the dangers of creating criminal ghettos. Even the middle class
flats were sponsored by the government that was tainted of moderate
socialism under Franco's dictatorship. Rents were affordable for all
classes them. And it was relatively easy to find jobs in big cities.
Not so easily in regions with the fastest population growth.

The problem with the main cities in Spain is that the country was breeding
too fast, and the young people was constantly emigrating to big cities in
search for work. The country was being abandoned, for they had a marginal
agricultural productivity. The cheaper prices provided by the use
of mechanized agriculture, were generating famine on those living in
marginal agricultural lands. Then, the young people had not other option
than to fled towards big cities. Let's say that modern agriculture were
ruining the old lands of marginal productivity, in a similar way that it
was ruining the old light industries everywhere.

A similar case occurred in the US with the imports of cheap goods from
Asia, that ruined the light industries in the US and middle Europe.

Some 40 or 50 years ago, I attributed the poverty of southern European
nations to faster population growth as compared to northern nations.
All the southern nations of Europe had a population growth closed to
third world countries. Then a substantial part of our economy, I mean
the economy of most families, were invested to feed and cloth that
many children. Even, when checking on different regions of Spain, I was
able to see that the poorer provinces were those with the highest
population growth.
This makes sense, as I got this feeling from how easily during the
50's and 60's central European nations, like France, Germany and UK
were importing foreign workers, from the southern nations of Europe,
including Italy, and from the North of Africa. In the case of UK
they were importing people from the Caribbean islands that were part
of the British Empire. They paid this poor people a passage to the UK
where they were to find easily a lot of work. What was not that easy
was to find a room to live, for the most of white population was rather
racist in those times. I can understand their racism, for these black
people from the Caribbean were competing with the white trash for a
slaving job. Then, the abundance of the new slave labor was pushing down
minimum wages paid to them.
The rational for those imports of people were to stop the demands for
higher salaries in the industrial nations of Europe, mostly Germany,
France and UK. By importing foreign slaves they were pushing down the
demand of higher salaries on native workers.

I had been doing some comparisons among nations using both the computed
purchasing power parity per capita, and the population growth.
The correlation of both variables were negative. More capacity to expend
corresponded with less population growth, and vice versa. I had not
studied in detail within each nations the correspondence between the
levels of poverty and the rate of breeding, for lack of data. I could
not find them. But subjectively speaking the proves of that idea was
abundantly all around me. The most poor people had a lot more
children than average families. While an average family had 3 or 4
children; the poorer families had about 6 to 8. The fast breeding
was the fertilizer of the poverty. I was not even 20 when I concluded
that to breed that fast was the sure path for our children to become
slaves.

Eri

[eridanus]

El martes, 25 de febrero de 2014 17:59:29 UTC, mus...@gmail.com escribió:
> Why do we say the earth circles the sun? There is a claim, known as the Duhem-Quine thesis, that no hypothesis can be falsified since you can always adjust subsidiary assumption to keep protect the main idea. One way around this is to follow Poincare who claimed that the earth going around sun is a convention chosen for convenience. But let us look at the issue in more detail.
> The Copernicus model was preferred over the Ptolemic system because it eliminated the equant. Aristotle said that heavenly motion should be circular and uniform. The only way to make that work in the Ptolemic system was to have the centre of the circle and and the centre for the uniform motion displaced from each other. The amount of the displacement was called the equant. By going to an heliocentric system Copernicus was able to eliminate the equant. The accuracy and number of parameters was comparable between the two systems.
> The next piece of evidence for the Copernican system was the phases of Venus and the varying size of Mars revealed by the telescope. This was inconsistent with predictions based on the Ptolemic system but confirmed predictions made by Copernicus.
> The geocentric model of Tycho Brahe solved that problem by having the earth stationary, the sun circling the earth and the other planets circling the sun. The two are equivalent for planetary motion since they are related by an canonical transformation. The main argument against Brahe was simplicity. It was was more complicated to use.
> But there are other reasons. If the earth rotates the Coriolis force arises naturally. If the earth is fixed the Coriolis force (and other forces of that ilk) must be taken as fundamental like gravity. Again simplicity favours having the earth rotation.
> A more compelling argument comes from the parallax of the stars. This is easily explained by the motion of the earth around the sun but if the earth is fixed the stars must perform a seasonal proper motion (or the propagation of light must vary based on the season). Again simplicity favours the heliocentric.
> Finally there is the dipole moment of the microwave background radiation. This moment can be explained by the motion of the earth with respect to the microwave background. In a geocentric universe it would be hard to explain although I suspect some imaginative person could produce a reason. The dipole moment also supports the sun not being stationary but circling the centre of the galaxy.
> One final twist. In a frame centred on the galactic centre the outer planets do not circle the sun but rather both the sun and Neptune circle the centre of the galactic centre with one then the other closer to the centre. It that frame it would not appear as one circling the other.

--------
My comment:
There is a trivial argument around this idea of the movement of the heavens.
Either is the earth that is turning on itself each 24 hours, or it is the
whole universe that is turning around the earth each 24 hours. In the case
it was the whole universe turning about the earth, it was needed also to
consider the sun turning on a background of stars, along a whole year,
and the planets doing their own turn also in the space, beside moving
daily around the earth.
On trivial grounds it was much easier to believe the earth was turning on
itself, but this pushed you in a confrontation course with some authority.

Eri

[jillery]

On Tue, 25 Feb 2014 09:59:29 -0800 (PST), mus...@gmail.com wrote:

>Why do we say the earth circles the sun? There is a claim, known as the Duhem-Quine thesis, that no hypothesis can be falsified since you can always adjust subsidiary assumption to keep protect the main idea. One way around this is to follow Poincare who claimed that the earth going around sun is a convention chosen for convenience. But let us look at the issue in more detail.
>
>The Copernicus model was preferred over the Ptolemic system because it eliminated the equant. Aristotle said that heavenly motion should be circular and uniform. The only way to make that work in the Ptolemic system was to have the centre of the circle and and the centre for the uniform motion displaced from each other. The amount of the displacement was called the equant. By going to an heliocentric system Copernicus was able to eliminate the equant. The accuracy and number of parameters was comparable between the two systems.
>
>The next piece of evidence for the Copernican system was the phases of Venus and the varying size of Mars revealed by the telescope. This was inconsistent with predictions based on the Ptolemic system but confirmed predictions made by Copernicus.
>
>The geocentric model of Tycho Brahe solved that problem by having the earth stationary, the sun circling the earth and the other planets circling the sun. The two are equivalent for planetary motion since they are related by an canonical transformation. The main argument against Brahe was simplicity. It was was more complicated to use.
>
>But there are other reasons. If the earth rotates the Coriolis force arises naturally. If the earth is fixed the Coriolis force (and other forces of that ilk) must be taken as fundamental like gravity. Again simplicity favours having the earth rotation.
>
>A more compelling argument comes from the parallax of the stars. This is easily explained by the motion of the earth around the sun but if the earth is fixed the stars must perform a seasonal proper motion (or the propagation of light must vary based on the season). Again simplicity favours the heliocentric.
>
>Finally there is the dipole moment of the microwave background radiation. This moment can be explained by the motion of the earth with respect to the microwave background. In a geocentric universe it would be hard to explain although I suspect some imaginative person could produce a reason. The dipole moment also supports the sun not being stationary but circling the centre of the galaxy.
>
>One final twist. In a frame centred on the galactic centre the outer planets do not circle the sun but rather both the sun and Neptune circle the centre of the galactic centre with one then the other closer to the centre. It that frame it would not appear as one circling the other.

Pretty good summary, although it skipped some things, ex. Tycho's
model makes no sense with Newton's gravity.

[mus...@gmail.com]

The canonical transformation of classical physics would take care of that
but the generated forces would be pretty weird.

[jillery]

Is that anything like Catholic transubstantiation? I can't imagine
any way to reconcile Tycho's model with f=ma.

[erik simpson]

Tycho's model predated Newton's theory by decades, so there was no perceived
problem there. But what 'canonical transformation' of any kind of physics could
'take care of that'?

[mus...@gmail.com]

Probably worse than transubstantiation. You have to use one of the more sophisticated version of classical mechanics based on the Lagrangian or Hamiltonian. For simple cases F=ma comes out of these formulations. For complicated situations the equations of motion are much more complicated. Stick with transubstantiation.

[jillery]

On Wed, 26 Feb 2014 12:20:13 -0800 (PST), mus...@gmail.com wrote:

>Probably worse than transubstantiation. You have to use one of the more sophisticated version of classical mechanics based on the Lagrangian or Hamiltonian. For simple cases F=ma comes out of these formulations. For complicated situations the equations of motion are much more complicated. Stick with transubstantiation.

Will you describe a case where it does?

[erik simpson]

There's nothing magical about Hamiltonian mechanics. You need physics in order
to construct the Hamiltonian. If the physical model is nonsensical, the equations
of motion will be nonsensical. Brahe's model wasn't constructed with reference
to any of these concepts, since they hadn't been conceived.

[mus...@gmail.com]

If the kinetic energy is proportional the velocity squared and the potential is independent of the velocity we get the normal results. Otherwise we get more complicated results. For simple problems it is best to just use F=ma but for complicated problems the other formulations are frequently easier to use.

[mus...@gmail.com]

There is certainly nothing magic about Hamilton's equations but they do have some surprising properties if you start exploiting the full range of canonical transformations. One can indeed write down valid equations of motion in a geocentric frame by doing a canonical transform from the equations in the heliocentric frame. For motion near the surface of the earth, like for satellites, they may even be useful. For the general case of planetary motion they become hideously complicated.

[jillery]

Please explain how the fact that these things hadn't been conceived
when Brahe constructed his model, applies to the question of how these
things disprove Brahe's model.

[jillery]

On Wed, 26 Feb 2014 14:44:42 -0800 (PST), mus...@gmail.com wrote:

>If the kinetic energy is proportional the velocity squared and the potential is independent of the velocity we get the normal results. Otherwise we get more complicated results. For simple problems it is best to just use F=ma but for complicated problems the other formulations are frequently easier to use.

I don't see how your answer applies to Brahe's model. Please
elaborate.

[mus...@gmail.com]

We seem to be talking past each other. The Lagrangian of a system is function of generalized coordinates and their time derivatives. Generalized is put in front of coordinates for a reason. They can indeed be more general than what we think of as the positions the objects. If we start with an inertial frame we can write down the normal expressions for the kinetic energy and potential energy in the usual form. But then we can make a coordinate change for example to one based on a geocentric frame. The Lagrangian is now more complicated and explicitly time dependant. But is can still be used to drive valid equations of motion for the objects. Thus we have two equally valid descriptions with a well defined mathematical transformation between them. You can find the math in Wikipedia under Lagrangian and Canonical transformations.

[erik simpson]

I wasn't making any deep comment about disproving Brahe's model. I was simply
saying that Brahe proposed his system long before modern analysis. Even the
notion of 'gravitational potential' as a scalar field whose derivative yields
the 'gravitational force' (a necessary part of constructing a Lagrangian) came
much later.

[jillery]

On Fri, 28 Feb 2014 09:01:43 -0800 (PST), erik simpson

But you mentioned it several times, when as best as I can tell,
there's no reason to mention it at all. It's certainly not a point in
dispute. So it came later. What's your point?

[jillery]

On Fri, 28 Feb 2014 07:39:58 -0800 (PST), mus...@gmail.com wrote:

>We seem to be talking past each other. The Lagrangian of a system is function of generalized coordinates and their time derivatives. Generalized is put in front of coordinates for a reason. They can indeed be more general than what we think of as the positions the objects. If we start with an inertial frame we can write down the normal expressions for the kinetic energy and potential energy in the usual form. But then we can make a coordinate change for example to one based on a geocentric frame. The Lagrangian is now more complicated and explicitly time dependant. But is can still be used to drive valid equations of motion for the objects. Thus we have two equally valid descriptions with a well defined mathematical transformation between them. You can find the math in Wikipedia under Lagrangian and Canonical transformations.

It's very likely that any confusion here stems from my fundamental
ignorance of the math involved. I freely admit that even the Wiki
page you mention is beyond my current abilities. If your point is
that Tycho's model is mathematically equivalent wrt positions and
motions, I understand and agree. If your point is that The Lagrangian
says the Sun can orbit the Earth in reality, I remain skeptical. IOW
the Lagrangian may say its mathematically equivalent to say that I hit
your fist with my nose, or vice versa, but the actual cause and
effects would be very different between the two cases.

[mus...@gmail.com]

The problem is the "in reality". My statement is that the heliocentric model is preferred to the geocentric model not because the geocentric model cannot be made to work, but because the heliocentric model is much (and I mean much) simpler for describing planetary motion. I leave the discussion of "in reality" to philosophers.

[erik simpson]

On Friday, February 28, 2014 11:07:18 AM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> On Fri, 28 Feb 2014 09:01:43 -0800 (PST), erik simpson
>

> >> Please explain how the fact that these things hadn't been conceived
>
> >>
>
> >> when Brahe constructed his model, applies to the question of how these
>
> >>
>
> >> things disprove Brahe's model.
>
> >
>
> >I wasn't making any deep comment about disproving Brahe's model. I was simply
>
> >saying that Brahe proposed his system long before modern analysis. Even the
>
> >notion of 'gravitational potential' as a scalar field whose derivative yields
>
> >the 'gravitational force' (a necessary part of constructing a Lagrangian) came
>
> >much later.
>
>
>
>
>
> But you mentioned it several times, when as best as I can tell,
>
> there's no reason to mention it at all. It's certainly not a point in
>
> dispute. So it came later. What's your point?

An intermediate post apparently didn't make it. To make my 'point' short:
There isn't any transformation that would justify Brahe's model. In fact,
Brahe's own observations, extended by Kepler, falsified that model. You can
transform coordinates all you want, but you can't transform reality. BTW,
Newtonian mechanics doesn't support it either. End of point.

[erik simpson]

On Friday, February 28, 2014 9:01:43 AM UTC-8, erik simpson wrote:

>
> I wasn't making any deep comment about disproving Brahe's model. I was simply
>
> saying that Brahe proposed his system long before modern analysis. Even the
>
> notion of 'gravitational potential' as a scalar field whose derivative yields
>
> the 'gravitational force' (a necessary part of constructing a Lagrangian) came
>
> much later.

Sloppy language by me. It's the divergence (not derivative) of a scalar field.
BTW, is not necessarily easy to derive the characteristics of the field from the
observed motion of a system. In other words, it's much easier to derive
Kepler's laws from the Newtonian gravitational potential than to derive the
potential from Kepler's laws. Given Brahe's bizarre model, deriving a potential
would give something very weird, if the derivation is even possible.

[jillery]

On Fri, 28 Feb 2014 12:07:20 -0800 (PST), mus...@gmail.com wrote:

>The problem is the "in reality". My statement is that the heliocentric model is preferred to the geocentric model not because the geocentric model cannot be made to work, but because the heliocentric model is much (and I mean much) simpler for describing planetary motion. I leave the discussion of "in reality" to philosophers.

When you use "geocentric model", you include Ptolemy's model as well,
and it simply doesn't fit observations, as you pointed out. Thycho's
model is consistent with observation wrt position and motion of the
planets, but not to the stars. And I still don't see how it's
consistent with Newton's model. If you say the Lagrangian says that
it is, I can't dispute you, as I already pointed out. I just don't
understand how.

[jillery]

Ok. It would have been quicker and clearer if you said you agreed
with me and disagreed with Musquod.

Thank you for your reply.

[erik simpson]

On Friday, February 28, 2014 1:25:49 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:

>
>
> Ok. It would have been quicker and clearer if you said you agreed
>
> with me and disagreed with Musquod.
>
>
>
> Thank you for your reply.

I didn't say that because I'm not sure it's true. Brahe's model isn't consistent
with observation except in grossest terms. And Musquod is correct that the
equations of motion can be expressed in whatever coordinates are convenient for
the problem being addressed. They can even be expressed in coordinates that are
profoundly inconvenient. I can't think of any coordinates that would make
Brahe's model convenient. I suspect that's why he suggested transubstantiation.

[jillery]

On Fri, 28 Feb 2014 15:11:34 -0800 (PST), erik simpson
<eastsi...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Friday, February 28, 2014 1:25:49 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Ok. It would have been quicker and clearer if you said you agreed
>>
>> with me and disagreed with Musquod.
>>
>>
>>
>> Thank you for your reply.
>
>I didn't say that because I'm not sure it's true. Brahe's model isn't consistent
>with observation except in grossest terms.

To be precise, Tycho's model is as consistentl as Copernicus's model.
Both were replaced by Kepler's model. And Newton explained why
Kepler's model works better.

>And Musquod is correct that the
>equations of motion can be expressed in whatever coordinates are convenient for
>the problem being addressed. They can even be expressed in coordinates that are
>profoundly inconvenient. I can't think of any coordinates that would make
>Brahe's model convenient.

But the question of equivalent coordinates is different from the
question of what goes around where.

> I suspect that's why he suggested transubstantiation.

Actually, that one's mine.

[mus...@gmail.com]

Ptolmeny's and Tacho's models have rather different geometries. I should have specified Tcho's approach. The changes you can make to appearances with canonical transformation is one of the reasons I am an instrumentalist not a realist. The effects of canonical transformations is strange even to people who know physics.

[erik simpson]

On Friday, February 28, 2014 4:02:08 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
> On Fri, 28 Feb 2014 15:11:34 -0800 (PST), erik simpson
>
> <eastsi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> >On Friday, February 28, 2014 1:25:49 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
>
> >
>
> >>
>
> >>
>
> >> Ok. It would have been quicker and clearer if you said you agreed
>
> >>
>
> >> with me and disagreed with Musquod.
>
> >>
>
> >>
>
> >>
>
> >> Thank you for your reply.
>
> >
>
> >I didn't say that because I'm not sure it's true. Brahe's model isn't consistent
>
> >with observation except in grossest terms.
>
>
>
>
>
> To be precise, Tycho's model is as consistentl as Copernicus's model.
>
> Both were replaced by Kepler's model. And Newton explained why
>
> Kepler's model works better.
>

Verily.

>
>
>
> >And Musquod is correct that the
>
> >equations of motion can be expressed in whatever coordinates are convenient for
>
> >the problem being addressed. They can even be expressed in coordinates that are
>
> >profoundly inconvenient. I can't think of any coordinates that would make
>
> >Brahe's model convenient.
>
>
>
>
>
> But the question of equivalent coordinates is different from the
>
> question of what goes around where.
>
>

Also true.

>
>
> > I suspect that's why he suggested transubstantiation.
>
>
>
>
>
> Actually, that one's mine.

Credit where credit is due.

[J. J. Lodder]

erik simpson <eastsi...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Friday, February 28, 2014 9:01:43 AM UTC-8, erik simpson wrote:
>
> >
> > I wasn't making any deep comment about disproving Brahe's model. I was
> > simply
> >
> > saying that Brahe proposed his system long before modern analysis. Even
> > the
> >
> > notion of 'gravitational potential' as a scalar field whose derivative
> > yields
> >
> > the 'gravitational force' (a necessary part of constructing a
> > Lagrangian) came
> >
> > much later.
>
> Sloppy language by me. It's the divergence (not derivative) of a scalar field.

Still sloppy, it is the gradient.

> BTW, is not necessarily easy to derive the characteristics of the field
> from the observed motion of a system. In other words, it's much easier to
> derive Kepler's laws from the Newtonian gravitational potential than to
> derive the potential from Kepler's laws. Given Brahe's bizarre model,
> deriving a potential would give something very weird, if the derivation is
> even possible.

Ptolemy, Copernicus and Brahe didn't think dynamics,
they talked kinematcs.
Kepler started to think in earnest about dynamics.
He had wrong ideas about the dynamics
(rays from the sun pushing the planets along)
but at least it was dynamics.

Consequently, Kepler just had to have a heliocentric model,

Jan

[J. J. Lodder]

jillery <69jp...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 28 Feb 2014 07:39:58 -0800 (PST), mus...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> >We seem to be talking past each other. The Lagrangian of a system is
> >function of generalized coordinates and their time derivatives.
> >Generalized is put in front of coordinates for a reason. They can indeed
> >be more general than what we think of as the positions the objects. If we
> >start with an inertial frame we can write down the normal expressions for
> >the kinetic energy and potential energy in the usual form. But then we
> >can make a coordinate change for example to one based on a geocentric
> >frame. The Lagrangian is now more complicated and explicitly time
> >dependant. But is can still be used to drive valid equations of motion
> >for the objects. Thus we have two equally valid descriptions with a well
> >defined mathematical transformation between them. You can find the math
> >in Wikipedia under Lagrangian and Canonical transformations.
> >
>
> It's very likely that any confusion here stems from my fundamental
> ignorance of the math involved. I freely admit that even the Wiki page
> you mention is beyond my current abilities. If your point is that Tycho's
> model is mathematically equivalent wrt positions and motions, I understand
> and agree. If your point is that The Lagrangian says the Sun can orbit
> the Earth in reality, I remain skeptical. IOW the Lagrangian may say its
> mathematically equivalent to say that I hit your fist with my nose, or
> vice versa, but the actual cause and effects would be very different
> between the two cases.

The physical point is that all -physical- results
must be coordinate-independent.
You can calculate anything you want in any coordinate system.

That said, some are really much simpler than others.
Unfortunately 'truly'or 'really'
cannot be derived from simplicity alone.
Common sense is needed,
and it remains a common sense conclusion,

Jan

[TomS]

"On Sat, 1 Mar 2014 12:49:54 +0100, in article
<1lhtxlg.177...@de-ster.xs4all.nl>, J. J. Lodder stated..."

What is the reaction to the arguments at

<http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Modern_geocentrism>


--
---Tom S.

[J. J. Lodder]

Common sense: They are utterly crazy.
(or Loki trolls)
Technically: only omphalism on an incredible scale
can save the position,

Jan

[TomS]

"On Sat, 1 Mar 2014 14:25:37 +0100, in article
<1lhu2hi.qwq...@de-ster.xs4all.nl>, J. J. Lodder stated..."

I like to compare geocentrism with creationism. And creationism is
the loser.

1) Geocentrism has a positive hypothesis. It is not merely,
"Heliocentrism can't explain such-and-such".

2) Geocentrism has a better grounding in the Bible. (The Bible never
says that species are fixed. The Bible does say that the Earth is
fixed.)

3) Creationism really does need omphalism.


--
---Tom S.

[erik simpson]

On Saturday, March 1, 2014 3:49:53 AM UTC-8, J. J. Lodder wrote:
> erik simpson <eastsi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Friday, February 28, 2014 9:01:43 AM UTC-8, erik simpson wrote:
>
>
> > Sloppy language by me. It's the divergence (not derivative) of a scalar field.
>
>
>
> Still sloppy, it is the gradient.
>

Mea culpa. I plea senility. I curl in humiliation.

[mus...@gmail.com]

Are not the geocentric and heliocentric coordinate systems related by a canonical transformation? If they do you point fails.

[mus...@gmail.com]

Science has, from the beginning, been a fight against common sense. The earth moving, twins ageing at different rates, the anti-realism of quantum mechanics have all be against common sense. Besides what one person regards as common sense another regards as absurd. It is only simplicity that picks out heliocentrism.

It is partly because of the role of simplicity that I reject the notions of "truely" and "really" in favour of instrumentalism.
.

[mus...@gmail.com]

And on what ground to you reject omphalism? That is a serious question. It is not based on empiricism since it agrees with all observations. It is Occam's razor which eliminates omphalism. That is a variant of the simplicity argument.

So I will stand by my claim that geocentrism is ruled only on the grounds of simplicity.

[erik simpson]

You can, of course choose to use geocentric coordinates, if you like. But
'truly' and 'really' raise their ugly heads again as soon as you start looking
at stars. Sometimes 'shut up and calculate' doesn't seem satisfying.

[mus...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, 1 March 2014 11:54:24 UTC-8, erik simpson wrote:
>
> You can, of course choose to use geocentric coordinates, if you like. But
>
> 'truly' and 'really' raise their ugly heads again as soon as you start looking
>
> at stars. Sometimes 'shut up and calculate' doesn't seem satisfying.

The only thing that is measured is, at best, relative motion. I find that shut up and calculate never leads one astray whereas "truly" and "really" do.

[jillery]

The Wiki article on Lagrangian mentions the Principle of Least Action.
Again I confess to crippling ignorance about these things, so please
recognize the following question is sincere if naive, but doesn't that
Principle also argue for the simplest solution being correct?

[jillery]

That's a really low bar. Just about anything looks good compared to
Creationism.

>1) Geocentrism has a positive hypothesis. It is not merely,
>"Heliocentrism can't explain such-and-such".

Will you state explicitly what you believe to be geocentrism's
positive hypothesis?

>2) Geocentrism has a better grounding in the Bible. (The Bible never
>says that species are fixed. The Bible does say that the Earth is
>fixed.)

But the Bible does say that species were created independently.

[erik simpson]

Not really. The 'action' is question has a very specific definiton. See the
Wikipedia entry. Requiring the action to be 'stationary' yields the equations
of motion. Simplicity may be only apparent.

[jillery]

On Sat, 1 Mar 2014 16:49:14 -0800 (PST), erik simpson
<eastsi...@gmail.com> wrote:

[...]

>> >It is partly because of the role of simplicity that I reject the notions of "truely" and "really" in favour of instrumentalism.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> The Wiki article on Lagrangian mentions the Principle of Least Action.
>>
>> Again I confess to crippling ignorance about these things, so please
>>
>> recognize the following question is sincere if naive, but doesn't that
>>
>> Principle also argue for the simplest solution being correct?
>
>Not really. The 'action' is question has a very specific definiton. See the
>Wikipedia entry. Requiring the action to be 'stationary' yields the equations
>of motion. Simplicity may be only apparent.

Obviously I did see the Wikipedia entry. That's how I knew to ask
about it. And just as obviously it didn't help reduce my confusion.
Sadly, it just added to it.

[erik simpson]

I meant the entry on 'The Principle of Least Action' itself. I'm afraid
you'll not find it much more informative. It's something that wasn't covered
at the undergrad level back in the previous lifetime that I had to deal with it.
I can't give a succinct description as it's been a long time since I've even
thought about it.

[jillery]

On Sat, 1 Mar 2014 22:06:32 -0800 (PST), erik simpson

<eastsi...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Saturday, March 1, 2014 6:58:23 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
>> On Sat, 1 Mar 2014 16:49:14 -0800 (PST), erik simpson
>>
>> <eastsi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>
>>
>> >> >It is partly because of the role of simplicity that I reject the notions of "truely" and "really" in favour of instrumentalism.
>>
>> >>
>>
>> >>
>>
>> >>
>>
>> >>
>>
>> >>
>>
>> >> The Wiki article on Lagrangian mentions the Principle of Least Action.
>>
>> >>
>>
>> >> Again I confess to crippling ignorance about these things, so please
>>
>> >>
>>
>> >> recognize the following question is sincere if naive, but doesn't that
>>
>> >>
>>
>> >> Principle also argue for the simplest solution being correct?
>>
>> >
>>
>> >Not really. The 'action' is question has a very specific definiton. See the
>>
>> >Wikipedia entry. Requiring the action to be 'stationary' yields the equations
>>
>> >of motion. Simplicity may be only apparent.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Obviously I did see the Wikipedia entry. That's how I knew to ask
>>
>> about it. And just as obviously it didn't help reduce my confusion.
>>
>> Sadly, it just added to it.
>
>I meant the entry on 'The Principle of Least Action' itself.

So did I.

>I'm afraid you'll not find it much more informative.

You're right.

>It's something that wasn't covered
>at the undergrad level back in the previous lifetime that I had to deal with it.
>I can't give a succinct description as it's been a long time since I've even
>thought about it.

I'm certain the problem is mine. I only went as far as Calculus. I
was just hoping somebody had a generic English version of what they
were talking about. Too many mathematical topics here turn of what
appear to be arcane terminology and what is likely clever witticisms
and puns to those who know what they're talking about. I am not one
of them, and so it looks like double-talk to me. Maybe someday, but
not today.

[TomS]

"On Sat, 01 Mar 2014 19:24:21 -0500, in article
<7hu4h9t6uk2p65r4l...@4ax.com>, jillery stated..."

You then agree with me that geocentricism is not quite as bad as
creationism?

>
>
>>1) Geocentrism has a positive hypothesis. It is not merely,
>>"Heliocentrism can't explain such-and-such".
>
>
>Will you state explicitly what you believe to be geocentrism's
>positive hypothesis?

The Sun goes around the Earth.

>
>
>>2) Geocentrism has a better grounding in the Bible. (The Bible never
>>says that species are fixed. The Bible does say that the Earth is
>>fixed.)
>
>
>But the Bible does say that species were created independently.

And that is a typical way that creationism avoids making a clear
statement as soon as one tries to pins it down. At least geocentrism
states a stand.

>
>
>>3) Creationism really does need omphalism.
>

So what is your opinion on the RationalWiki arguments for heliocentrism?


--
---Tom S.