Speaking of exercisin’ the ol’ B.S. detector, I have a question. Why is it that space missions seem to draw the whack jobs out of the woodwork? There’s a guy suing NASA over the upcoming Deep Impact mission because he claims that he owns it and NASA didn’t ask permission to ram a spacecraft into it. A woman in Russia (an astrologer) claims that the impact will mess up her cosmic emanations or vibes or some such rubbish.
I often wonder just exactly who failed these people? Their teachers? Their parents? The system? That would be a convenient excuse to explain why some people just cannot figure out that science is science and rubbish is rubbish, and that no matter how lovely the rubbish looks, how nice it smells, how delicious it is, it’s still rubbish. A friend of mine calls it Intellectual P*rnography and explains its appeal this way:”you know it’s naughty, you know it really doesn’t reflect real life, yet you read it anyway.”
Still, there ARE always people ascribing ownership of comets, or rewriting the laws of physics to suit their favorite religious belief, or coming up with new laws of physics based on alien invasions. They sincerely believe (or more likely are motivated by the prospects of reaping vast sums of money for idiocy) that what they believe about comets and asteroids and NASA missions is “science” or “scientific thought” when it’s really just ignorance, hucksterism, and chutzpah. Yet, their ideas are all part of the “crossroads of ideas” we live in. They serve as fine examples of illogic and unscientific methods. It’s up to us to learn which ideas merit serious consideration and which ones are best left to idiots who show us how silly they are when they are ignorant.