Next science departments are going to invite clerics to speak, to open the dialog, as UC Berkley wants to explain, between the educated and un. Climate scientists should dialog with deniers apparently. Imagine math departments sponsoring conversations with preschoolers. What a crock to think universities need entertain a diversity of IQs.
Worse than ignorant, imbecile, or batshit crazy are political ideologues already championed by the conservative establishment.
I don’t think free speech rights protect Ann Coulter’s access to an amplification system at Sproul Plaza. Let the free market determine if what she’s got to say should be licensed by the campus population. It doesn’t have to be hate speech to merit shutting down. Ignorant bigoted sociopathic blather can be shouted down, tarred, feathered, and run out of town without anyone feeling pangs of concern for the First Amendment. The corporate media and publishing houses prop her up. The grassroots have no more obligation than to make sure Coulter’s feet are burned wherever she lands her broom. The Berkley students who invited Ann Coulter to speak need to be counseled their prospects are better with vocational school.
I wonder if the climate deniers believe that zero 0 is a number? In Copernicus’ and Galileo’s day it was an invitation to a torture session and being lit on fire by the Inquisition to admit that, and thus quadratics and basic stuff like the world actually being round-ish and the wonderful world of scientific cartography. Maps which don’t have Terra Incognito and Here Be Dragons written at the edges. It would have made a lot more sense than simply running three boats westward and see if there was a place where the earth dropped away. Just use some algebra, that would be cool.
Columbus, one of my favorite targets, didn’t prove the world to be round that way, it shows he didn’t know how to place a decimal point because he didn’t have math education. He actually believed Grenada was off the coast of India. A direct sea-route from Barcelona to Mumbai, problem being two very large continents in the way. At least he wasn’t crucified upside down or burned at the stake.
There’s a neat Jewish proverb: “God never told us to be stupid”