Thursday, April 17, 2014

Glibness Isn't Understanding

     F'rinstance: The Very Serious Man in the TV told me yesterday, "We know more about the surface of the Moon than we do about the depths of the sea." Yes, but we also know more about the surface of the Moon than we know about Brooklyn -- because any fool with a telescope can look at half of the Moon but to look at Brooklyn, you have to go there or fly/orbit over the place! (Also, we don't really know all that much about the far side of the Moon -- a scant handful of mapping flights have yet to get a complete image of that side.)

     All too often, we -- and perhaps especially The Media -- substitute some half-baked fragment of common lore for the truth: "We only use ten percent of our brains." (Wrong)  

     Remember, it's not what you don't know that's the problem -- it's the things you think you know that aren't so.  Me, too, only more so

5 comments:

Wayne Conrad said...

LRO?

homebru said...

Perhaps only "mostly" complete, APOD posted a composite photo of lunar far side on 5 March 2014. google: "apod far side moon"

Funny at the craters on far side. So many more than near side. Almost as if Luna threw itself into the path of incoming objects headed for Earth.

homebru said...


Not March, April. Sorry.

Roberta X said...

H'mm, the last views I saw still had gaps. Goes to show, I suppose.

Stretch said...

Why would we want to know anything about Brooklyn?