So does anyone perform an guerilla tactics to get more people around them to get it right with astronomy or trying to help those less fortunate in understanding astronomy and astrophysics?

I happen to just pick up a book called 1001 Things Everyone Should Know about the Universe by William Gutsch Phd. Neat little book. Well anyway, my computer system in my office allows me to post little tidbits each day for all to seeo n teh network. So I plan on typing in one tidbit from this neat little book each day to edcuate those less fortunate. That's my contribution in enlightening the masses.

One thing that disturbs me is that if the dawn of astronomical observation was now, instead of 5 thousand years ago, our civilization would be in big trouble. (I'm making a general statement on the current ignorance of the general public on what is up in teh sky and how to observe. I am in awe, however, of the thousands of astronomers, cosmologists, and astrophyicsts that do this day in and out. I applaud them. One thing though, WHERE'S OUR FASTER-THAN-LIGHT DRIVES ALREADY!!!!! Or do you want to blame that on the engineers. :-)

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"The big yellow one's the Sun!!!!"

Always blame the engineers and techies. :roll:

I haven't really met anyone twinkies yet so I don't have any tactics besides beating the truth into them. -Colt

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Be not afraid of any man no matter what his size; when danger threatens, call on me, and I will equalize.

Oh. I expected, you'd prefer to shoot the truth into them :-P

Harald

I once tried to talk the truth into one, only to find out that she simply didn't care. Why not? Because science is 'irrelevant'; the only thing that matters is Man's relationship with god. When I tried to point out that science had provided her clothing, her car, and her house, she said "yes, but we don't need these things!"

Okay, maybe not, but you'd be cold and wet and you wouldn't be able to go anywhere, would you?

And I'm not even talking about the religious zealots. I basically meant those that go day to day not really knowing. Most of these people are teh same that think the space program is not necessary either.

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"The big yellow one's the Sun!!!!"

Was she a HB or a part-time psuedo-scientist as well?

Maybe writing letters of complaint en masse (or emailing them) about some of the bad science on tv shows. I used to love Discovery, but many of their shows are of such questionable value that it's pathetic. And science.com is turning out some stuff that's running high on the "woowoo" meter.

SOUTH OF HEAVEN!!!!
Ah, another SLAYER fan on the board! Just ordered my Kerry King Tribal flying V from musician's friend. Remember that Slayer is an official part of US Army Psy Ops- they blasted Slayer tunes at Noriega in Panama and Republican Guards in Iraq (in '91).
Metal so brutal they soiled themselves........

Anyway, as for tactics, I went to my dear old mother, who is a die-hard "FW:" sender. I LOATHE forwards.
However, she also forwards stuff I rant about when it comes to debunking stupid conspiracies and such.
I also have a couple of links in my email signature as a subtle form of info warfare on stupidity. Like SNOPES.COM, Strait Dope, BA, and such.

Straight Dope.

There we go again. Professor Grapes. You sure you were not a English teacher? :P j/k

I was a Freedom teacher.

Just want to make sure that anyone who wants to get to the Straight Dope can find the way!

No no no no, SollyLama was talking about The Strait Dope. It's a narrow waterway inside of which all boat captains are required to wear dunce caps.

I tried once to talk with some friends about the misconception that the seasons were the effect of the distance, not the angle of the Sun. It was disastrous.

They maintained I was wrong. I questioned them about how was it winter down under when it was summer here. They went into a rationalization of beliefs mode by claiming the increased/decreased distance resulted from the length of the Earth's diameter. When the North Pole tilted toward the Sun, it was 'closer'. :roll: I had to give up.

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The real news, including science news corporations may not allow on stations they own. http://www.democracynow.org/

So that's a new wrinkle. At least, it agrees with observation, which is not true for the usual wrong explanation that the Earth as a whole is closer to the Sun in the summer (it's actually closest early in January).

In order to refute that, you have to have a stronger argument. You have to compare the effect of shining a light on a piece of paper from twenty feet away, and then from twenty one feet, with the simple tilting of the paper away from the light. Do it in the dark and I imagine it might be pretty dramatic. Not sure.

Speaking of the seasons and the slant-angle from the sun:

When I was in 6th grade (1977), I had an infuriating experience with a visiting science know-it-all. He asked the class, "How many people think the sun moves?". Practically everybody raised their hand. Then he asked the class, "How many people think the sun doesn't move?". One lone hand went up -- mine.

"Actually," he said, "The sun does move." He then drew a diagram of the Earth, with its equator at the center, and started tracing a dotted line around the Earth representing the "position" of the sun. "The sun moves northward from January to June, until it reaches the Tropic of Cancer, and then southward from July to December, until it reaches the Tropic of Capricorn."

GAH!!! This know-it-all was saying that the motion of the sun caused the seasons! No, no, you dunderhead! It's the motion of the earth orbiting around the sun, and the fact that the Earth's axis of rotation points in the same direction throughout the year, that causes the perceived motion of the sub-solar point on the Earth's surface!

But, of course, I, being a mere 6th-grade student, couldn't get a word in edgewise about this absurd claim. Later, when I raised my hand about something else, he even had the gall to say, "Yes, the guy who thinks the sun doesn't move?", thus eliciting an undeserved chortle from my classmates.





Of course, when all was said and done, I was wrong when I said the sun doesn't move. The sun moves relative to the other starts in our local open cluster, and orbits around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy in an orbit lasting hundreds of millions of years. But the sun does not move up and down between the tropic lines due to its own motion!!