'Serenity'
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
Heh. I'm going back and forth with the Executive VP in question. Dude, I've seen the splash page 5 times in two days. Apparently that's an error.
Still -- people barely read popups when they're important (a la error messages). And with the web, ignoring them is even more reflexive. I think it's not a useful idea at all.
How reliable is it that people even see popups? At home I've got two or three levels of blocking wihtout even trying, so I really have to want to go see it on purpose.
A thing with the whole Intelligent Design thing is that a lot of this stuff really is pretty much too hard to understand on a casual level.
Like a whole lot of stuff-- the morning after pill is just a souped-up birth control pill, not an abortifactant; global warming. Etc., etc. It's easy to convince people there are no biological precursors to eyes (even though there ARE)-- they seem to be willing to believe that if they don't know about it it must not exist.
Oh totally -- practically everything in the world is too complex for the layperson to understand. Electricity? MAGIC! Television? TINY PEOPLE IN A BOX!
Not just tiny people, Jesse. Elves in a box.
Wow, those are elves? They look just like regular people, only little. Huh.
If you get really close to the box, you can see the pointy ears.
Not just tiny people, Jesse. Elves in a box
That explains special effects, Elf Magic.
See, you learn something new every day.
ION, who refills the ice cubes in my air conditioner?
That psychological effect you're talking about, where conflicting information just makes you put your head in the sand, is a pretty common one. Public Radio this morning had a segment on people who continue to take echinacea to stop colds, despite evidence that it doesn't work any more than jumping jacks do.
People just have their little pattern of thinking, and can't bear to reorient it without a really good reason. Apparently, "a really good reason" does not mean "scientific studies say so," or anyway not at first. There's some sort of critical word-of-mouth mass before people will trust science.
My thinking on intelligent design is that it is a way of saying that science is not allowed to have unresolved questions. Whereas, the coolest scientific leaps happen when people start theorizing into the void! That is why science works -- it grows and changes its pattern of thinking (sometimes reluctantly).
Saying "the underpants gnomes did it" is not thinking; it is saying that thinking is useless. People who truly believe that thinking is useless should be required to surrender their brains forthwith. I stand a-ready with the chain saw.