Category Archives: critical thinking

Work on Common Sense, First

Then We can Talk about Science Literacy

With a hat tip to Blog of Hilarity, I present this letter to the editor in all its glory:

I suppose this letter writer also cuts the end off a towel and sews it on the other end to make it longer.
I suppose this letter writer also cuts the end off a towel and sews it on the other end to make it longer.

Reminds me of a letter to the editor I saw some years ago discussing the problems with airborne plutonium (on dust particle) that could be expected as the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons plant (near Denver) was shutting down.  The letter-writer said that she couldn’t figure out what the fuss was all about — after all, she said that plutonium is a “heavy” element and due to its great weight, it would just sink to the bottoms of nearby lakes under its own weight.

I think we have a LOT of work to do in educating people in both common sense AND science literacy.

Chemicals…. ewww??? Not So Much!

Ad Copy Run Amuck

I was watching TV the other night and the following statement about a product caught my ear:  “It’s natural, not chemical!”

Oh really?

I wondered about the ad copywriters and executives and folks who actually came up with that slogan in some focus-grouped meeting. I wondered if any of them actually listened to what they were saying.  Probably not. They were so taken with the idea of getting across an organic, safe, down-to-earth, whole-grain, new-agey vision for their product that it probably didn’t even occur to them that EVERYTHING is chemical. Of course, what they want you to think is that you’re not putting harmful chemicals or elements on your face or in your belly or wherever.  That’s okay to say — nobody wants to think they’re smearing acid on their skin or drinking melamine. That’s completely understandable.  What the manufacturers should be saying are “Eat the right kind of chemicals.” But even I will admit that that would sound weird. It would be true, though.

Even products that are advertised as being derived from plants — which are, themselves, collections of chemicals bound up in molecules and protein chains and sugar chains and so on — are chemical. Then a company goes and chemically alters and twists and turns them so that they can advertise that they come from nature — and are NOT chemical.  Huh?  They’re still chemicals, no matter where they came from.

Folks, I have news for you — if it exists — it’s chemical.  You’re chemical. I’m chemical. The stuff you eat for breakfast is chemical. The goop you smear on your face is chemical (no matter how many times the manufacturer writes the word “natural” on the bottle).  That’s because we’re all bundles of chemicals strung together in proteins and sugars and all that. Everything is chemical. In fact, it’s natural to be chemical.