He’s WAY down the list. Brits care about him about as much as they do about creationism. Perhaps when all the Pythons are dead they’d be in with a shout, likewise the Beatles (yawn).
Certainly artistic fields have had a raw deal so far, compared to the scientists.
Benny Hill came from Eastleigh - a stone’s throw from where I live. When they knocked down the old Pirelli works in Eastleigh to build apartments, one of the roads was named Benny Hill Close - Every time I walk past it, I feel like setting my glasses crooked, sticking out my tongue sideways and saluting.
They should put Keeley Hazell on the money. It would cause an economic boom as men worked harder to attain more of the notes.
Keeley who?
I’d really, really like to know more about this, so I have started the thread in MPSIMS - I guess if it turns into a debate, it can be moved…
http://boardstest.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=482078
Near where I used to live, there was for some reason a street called “Ayrton Senna Road”. Whenever I drove past it I always felt like slamming into the sign at full speed.
I’m not making this up, there really is an Ayrton Senna Road in the outskirts of Reading. Look it up on Google Maps.
http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?G2M?X=466166&Y=173098&A=Y&Z=1
It looks to me that it could perhaps be a private road, in which case they could name it whatever they want with ease?
Edit: it has speed bumps!!! I do like the sound of the Ayrton Senna Play Area, mind…
It’s not exactly a major thoroughfare, no, but if memory serves it was a proper street and had the Reading Borough Council logo on the sign and all that. Maybe there was some connection to the McLaren racing team in Reading? But I thought they were based in Woking? Did they get the wrong -ing? Maybe there’s a Kimi Raikkonen Close in Dorking, too.
Good point.
When he dies live on TV, maybe. We can only hope. (Ouch, that was really bitchy, wasn’t it?)
Keely Hazell. (Not entirely safe for work.)
Use Google Images, man!
Never heard of her.
In a very formal sense that might be true, but they are noisy and organized enough to make the teaching of biology fraught. But there is a deeper issue. One of the two political parties in the US is infested with creationists. While that fact per se has little effect on policy, what it conceals is contempt for evidence and that permeates their policies.
While it is doubtless true that most people haven’t given evolution much thought, polls regularly show that maybe 50% of Americans claim not to believe in evolution. I think that the fact that biology is taught purely descriptively and the other sciences are not generally required means that most US schools have basically given up teaching science as a serious subject. And fewer and fewer study science in college. There are no doubt other reasons, but I think it starts with objections to evolution. Does anyone know what percentage of US HS students are actually taught serious biology (as I was in 1951-52).
I don’t think that it really has to do with evolution though. The problem is not an American disdain for evolution or even for science. It’s an American disdain for knowledge for its own sake. In the past forty years, although the number of college graduates has gone up quite a bit, the number of graduates who majored in any liberal arts field has stayed the same or gone down, with only a couple of exceptions. This is true of any liberal arts subject - mathematics, physics, chemistry, history, sociology, anthropology, English, all foreign languages, philosophy, etc. The growth in college graduates has all been in non-liberal arts subjects - education, engineering, nursing, business, etc. The point of college for most people is to prepare for a career, not to develop an interest in learning. The only two liberal arts subjects with any growth in graduates are psychology and some biological sciences, which are fields that feed people into career-oriented graduate programs in psychology or medicine.
The problem with people who believe in creationism is the same as the problem with the people who believe in astrology, parapsychology, U.F.O.'s, or elaborate conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination, 9/11, or whatever - the contempt for evidence. I don’t think that courses in biology have gotten any worse in the past forty or fifty years. I suspect that they have gotten better. (Does anyone have any statistics about this?) People who believe ridiculous things don’t care about what they learned in high school courses. It’s often like they choose the ridiculous things they believe in at random. The idea for them is to annoy other people, not to have a consistent set of beliefs.
I agree that the American attitude of “what’s it worth?”, that is, looking at everything from a cost perspective, is very bad for science and education. Fundamental research (as opposed to applied research) has a harder and harder time getting funding. This also cripples NASA - too many people say “why should we spend money going to the stars” without knowing the elementary astrophysics to understand the benefits and chances.
However, the bigger problem in today’s society is that science and technology are so much more important, because of the problems they cause, and the necessary solutions. If the majority of the people in a country have never been even exposed to the scientific method or who don’t understand the most basics of the basic sciences like physics and biology, then they will make bad decisions based on false information, half-truths, populistic propaganda about important topics like stem-cell research and cloning, Global warming and energy consumption and production, organic agriculture vs Genetic modification, etc.
Here I disagree. Creationism is different because of the loud support it gets from the bible-thumping ignorant ignorants. (People who preach about the bible without having taken a basic theology course, who’ve never read the original hebrew and koine, because they believe that KJV is the only proper version of God’s word would not be taken seriously as Church here, but regarded as crazy sect.)
Moreover, the religious right breeds a whole attitude towards life of obeying authority because it says so, not asking for evidence. People who aren’t able to keep this seperate from normal life and apply critical thinking and scientifc method where it’s necessary, but instead accept the Word from Above in all areas are a serious danger to democracy, because they enable dictatorship. Democracies need well-informed, critical citizens, not Pledge-reciting, flag-revering, unquestioning believers.
Astrology is rampant everywhere, but does not do as much harm. As for conspiracy theories: you do know that the problem in that case is that there have been quite a number of real conspiracies by the US Govt. in the past? (Tuskegee experiment, Watergate, Iran-Contra, Operation Paperclip et al., the secret experiments by CIA and Army about drugs in the 70s on non-consenting people etc. all real).
While I don’t have statistics, either, the posts on this board* about how aggressivly ID proponents challenge local school boards and PTAs about the teaching of evolution in the last two decades seem to indicate a definite trend. This one organisation of scientists (forgot the name, sorry) that fights to keep ID nonsense out of the science classrooms say so (as do some of the IDs themselves, apparently, admitting that it’s all a front to get religion in the schools.)
Plus, there’s been quite a lot of increase in home-schooling in the last ten or so years, a certain segment of which (no idea how large) cites two main reasons for keeping their kids out of normal schools: evolution and sex ed. So quite a number of kids are never even exposed to biology in the first place, except in a strawman way like Jack Chick.
The problem is that many kids aren’t exposed to proper biology, apparently. Anecdotally, how many newbies have asked basic strawmen questions about biology because all they know about evolution are the Jack Chick or similar pamphlets? How many dopers have reported about discussions on local school boards that evolution should not be taught? And how many teachers self-censor because they are afraid of the controversy, by pushing it into another year, instead of teaching the basics anyway?
And I don’t think most of them do it to annoy people. They choose creationism esp. out of religious reasons - that is, their pastor or a book told them, and that convinced them - and then we come into the psychological reasons for people holding simplistic views of life and submitting to authority instead of critical thinking for themselves: because it’s so much easier. You’re no longer responsible for everything, and there’s no uncertainty, because there’s an answer for every question. No shades of grey with their unease that sometimes, each choice is wrong and we just have to live with that, or that all people carry good and bad. No, it’s good people here, and everybody else are sinners. Much more satisfying.
The best bit is the other side, with the space shuttle 
Neither had I, but the information provided by postcards was, em, uplifting.
I suppose this is a related GQ - what actually is the science taught in US schools these days? When I was at high school in Scotland, a relatively intelligent person like me would be expected to study science for all of the 5 or 6 years I was there. Science education was separated into physics, chemistry and biology.
It would be unusual for someone like me (basically, folks intending to go on to university) not to study at least one and possibly two of those subjects until leaving school.
And the reason you don’t is…?
PaulParkhead writes:
> It would be unusual for someone like me (basically, folks intending to go on to
> university) not to study at least one and possibly two of those subjects until
> leaving school.
The same is true in the U.S. People who are going to college will generally take one year of biology, one year of chemistry, and one year of physics. In some schools these will be extremely good courses, and in some they will be mediocre ones, but they will nearly always take those courses if they plan to go to college. A year-long course in one of those sciences would be more detailed than an O-level course in the subject but not as detailed as an A-level course (or whatever terms are used in the U.K. at the moment).
constanze writes:
> If the majority of the people in a country have never been even exposed to the
> scientific method or who don’t understand the most basics of the basic sciences
> like physics and biology, then they will make bad decisions based on false
> information, half-truths, populistic propaganda about important topics like stem-
> cell research and cloning, Global warming and energy consumption and
> production, organic agriculture vs Genetic modification, etc.
A lot of people take good science courses and still make stupid decisions about such things. They don’t care what scientists think, even if they took good science courses in high school. They would say, “Oh, who cares what those pointy-headed pseudo-intellectuals think. My favorite radio commentator says that they don’t know what they’re talking about, and I trust him.” Indeed, they like it better when they disagree with the experts. They like annoying people who they consider to be in power.
Furthermore, they frequently know almost nothing about the Bible. They don’t believe in creationism because it comes from the Bible. They often couldn’t even find the Adam and Eve story in the Bible if you asked them to do so. They will say they like creationism because it annoys intellectuals, who (they claim) are in power. The same is true of astrology, U.F.O.'s, parapsychology, or conspiracy theories. They know very little about the evidence for or against these theories. They aren’t interested in finding evidence one way or another. (The fact that some conspiracies did happen is irrelevant. They don’t distinguish between different conspiracy theories based on evidence.) They want to annoy the people that they think are in power because they want someone to lash out against. The fact that the people that they’re lashing out against aren’t really in power doesn’t occur to them. Intellectuals don’t control anything in government policies. The government that they’re complaining about isn’t really in power, since they aren’t complaining about the politicians they elect but some vague bureaucracy that doesn’t control policy. They will agree with their favorite radio commentator who tells them that the government or the intellectuals are wrong and evil not because they’ve thought about the evidence but because it gives them someone to blame. They don’t want to blame the politicians they elected.
> While I don’t have statistics, either, the posts on this board* about how
> aggressivly ID proponents challenge local school boards and PTAs about the
> teaching of evolution in the last two decades seem to indicate a definite trend.
ID proponents challenge local school boards and consistently lose in courts. This doesn’t affect the content of biology textbooks. The treatment of evolution in high school textbooks varies between negligible and moderately detailed. The extent to which evolution gets mentioned in high school biology course varies between nonexistent and moderately extensive. At worse, evolution becomes just one more scientific subject that some people never learn much about in school.
