tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5106243389695628804.post5695050418359827069..comments2023-05-08T04:26:41.949-04:00Comments on My Little Po-Mo: Got cable, started watching Cosmos...Froborrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08782366056731381450noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5106243389695628804.post-65695614689589829122014-04-14T14:36:53.456-04:002014-04-14T14:36:53.456-04:00A friend of mine is an antiques dealer, and one of...A friend of mine is an antiques dealer, and one of the prizes of his personal collection is a 17th-century text reprinting some books of the Christian Bible (I forgot which ones), with a long section at the end giving instructions on how to construct and use your own telescope, so that readers interested in the controversy over Galileo could see his findings for themselves.<br /><br />If you'll pardon an only tangentially related question: do you, by chance, listen to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01543133662906033247noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5106243389695628804.post-70334270970273106052014-04-14T14:35:15.453-04:002014-04-14T14:35:15.453-04:00I was pleasantly surprised when they started talki...I was pleasantly surprised when they started talking about Newton. Instead of lionizing him, as most popular science outlets are wont to do, they freely admitted that he spent a lot of time on... shall we say "discredited" ideas like alchemy and numerology, and spent most of his later years looking for messages from God hidden in the Bible.<br /><br />As for the inaccuracies, it is meant to be basic. Would a high-school general science textbook spend paragraphs explaining a small exception to the general rule of "The sun is pretty important guys"? Admittedly, though, the problem could have been fixed by saying "The sun powers <i>nearly</i> all life on Earth".TheWonkohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09681198950892422938noreply@blogger.com