CompuServe Messages

Gary, >> It goes back to the age old question of "What is the meaning of life?" Well, I read a good response to this from an atheist, "There is no meaning to life, per se; however, it is up to us to pump meaning into life on a daily basis!" Now, I'm not an atheist, but I agree with that statement 100%. << Neither am I, but I agree with it too. There are dozens of ways to get involved in science, no matter what your age. We're using one right now: bulletin boards. You can look for local science clubs, geology clubs, rockhound clubs. Talk to the local natural history museum if there is one. Talk to a geology prof at the local college or university. Do your own exploring along local roads and streams (always taking care to obey the local laws). Find out if there's a group of cavers in your area. I could probably think of more ways, but those will do for starters. And none of them require that you have a degree. >> you don't need 3+ yrs of calc, chem, and physics to learn how to think critically. Some people seem to think that without hard science teaching in our school systems our nation will spawn a bunch of idiots. << No, you don't _need_ it, but it does help. <g> You can teach people to think critically without science, but teaching science (when it's done right) is a very effective way to teach critical thinking. Re: crop circles. I know some of them have been proven to be frauds. I also know that when circles and other shapes appear in fields miles apart on the same night, either they were created by non-human agencies (not necessarily anything intelligent, maybe purely natural forces), _or_ the hoaxers are part of a conspiracy. Has anybody claimed that these hoaxers are part of such a ring of conspirators? I've heard of crop circles in US farm fields too. Has anyone claimed that the ring of fakers extends across the ocean? Re: the Loch Ness animal. I can't think of any easy way to lay hands on the SI issue you refer to, but I do have some questions. Did the article deal _only_ with eyewitness sightings? Or did it also refute the Wilson photograph, the Dinsdale film, the Rines photographs, the sonar tracings, etc.? Was it the usual doubletalk about hallucinations and mass hysteria, optical illusions and drifting debris and so on? Or did it offer believable explanations for all the known evidence? Did the article only address the Loch Ness animal? Or did it also address the reports of similar animals from elsewhere in the world? Besides various other Highlands lochs, Ness-type animals have been reported from Sweden, Ireland, Iceland, Canada, Japan, Australia, Patagonia, and Siberia just to name a few. Always the basic details agree: large, deep freshwater lake (or occasionally a river that drains such a lake) as habitat; a large, highly mobile water-dwelling animal; small head on a long neck; massive body with one or more humps; flippers for limbs; and a motion on land that is very like a sea-lion. Did SI refute _all_ of these sightings? For a much better case of pseudoscience in action, I refer you to the "Bermuda Triangle" or "Devil's Triangle" brouhaha. Now *that's* pseudoscience at its worst. There is no evidence whatever of anything malignant lurking in the waters or the air of the Caribbean/Florida/Bahamas area. There have been unexplained incidents there, but no more than from any other similarly traveled part of the oceans. Most of the incidents on which the Devil's Triangle legend is based — Flight 19, the CYCLOPS, etc. — have perfectly rational explanations that have simply been overlooked or forgotten. But eight out of ten people will tell you there's Something Going On in the Devil's Triangle that we don't understand. Happy holidays to you and yours as well! Jon W.