A non theological case of ridiculous assumptions...

Let's not forget that our general entertainment has a lot to do with this.How many times have we watched a movie where a guy gets shot and the force of the bullet is so much that the guy goes flying.Now, think about it. Newton's law applies: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. If the bullet is packing enough of a wallop to knock a 180 pound man flying backwards, what about the poor schmoe who was firing the gun? Why didn't he get tossed back, too? Why does he have a just a little flick in his wrist?But, just to check, the guys at Mythbusters decided to check this out. They hung a pig from a hair drop. Any significant pressure on the corpus would make it fall off the hook.No matter what, though, that pig stayed on the hook. Nine millimeter, .22, .357, .44, rifles, nothing could get that pig to fall off. Only when they started getting into machine guns could they get the pig to budge...and then it did only that: It budged. It fell off the hook straight down, no dramatic blast back.With so many people not doing any sort of practical physics and with movie physics so horrendously bad, I'm not that surprised that people manage to have absolutely no idea what is considered reasonable for a physical action.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Citizzzen writes:

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I am disturbed about the rise in people pursuing tech degrees with only core classes, and bypassing humanities, and other "liberal arts" courses.

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Where does this happen? While I realize that Harvey Mudd is an anomaly in the world of education, my experience with my colleagues from places like CalTech and MIT and Rose-Hullman seem to indicate that there is no lack of emphasis on humanities courses by science majors. And note, this is at schools dedicated to the teaching of science as opposed to typical liberal arts colleges that include science, engineering, and mathematics departments.It is my experience that the humanities requirements of science majors are usually more stringent than the science requirements of humanities majors. That is, you can get your BA taking "College Algebra" and never being exposed to anything complicated in Mathematics. However, you can't get your BS without having to take the Literature course where you're reading and analysing the great authors. You can get a Philosophy degree without having to take any sort of real Physics course. You'll have to read Plato and Socrates and Moore and all the rest of the great philosophers in order to get a Physics degree, however.The big barriers are calculus and the ability to read. We as a society are much more concerned with teaching our children how to read than we are with teaching them calculus. Now, I handily agree that learning to read is something that can be acquired and developed much earlier than learning calculus. But we don't expect our children to eventually learn calculus. We do expect them to learn how to read. We don't find the inability to do calculus to be a failing the way we do the inability to read.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Asgara responds to me:

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No literature, no philosophy.

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And I notice no real math, either.That said, "Contemporary American Society" sounds like a history class to me...Humanities department.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Asgara responds to me:

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Either way it is a tech degree with the bare minimum of gen ed classes to make it an associates instead of a certificate.

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True, but notice that even to get a technical degree, you are required to take more non-technical classes than for a non-technical degree is required to take technical classes.For example, to get the AA in Accounting, you take 15 credits in what would be considered "Humanities" or "Social Sciences" courses. But to get the AA in Culinary Arts, you only take 3 credits of Math and no other science courses.Our society places a higher value upon the citizenry knowing about culture than about math or science. Again, I think part of the reason this is is because the do-or-die point is quite different for the two. There is a do-or-die point in every field where you need to be able to understand this particular thing or you won't be able to progress much further.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!