o.O
July 21, 2015 6:41 AM   Subscribe

 
Mama always said stupid is as stupid does.
posted by wabbittwax at 6:46 AM on July 21, 2015


That look on his face at :34.
posted by phunniemee at 6:47 AM on July 21, 2015 [11 favorites]


sigh.
posted by Foosnark at 6:52 AM on July 21, 2015


ಠ_ಠ
posted by nevercalm at 6:58 AM on July 21, 2015


Well, it's a beautiful planet.
posted by pokermonk at 6:58 AM on July 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


If this was the Senate, Jon Scott would be getting a nomination for the science committee.
posted by lmfsilva at 7:01 AM on July 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


"Tides come in, Tides go out... You can't explain that" -- Bill 'Falafel' O'Reilly.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 7:03 AM on July 21, 2015 [5 favorites]


You can see him pivot in just a few seconds from "I am talking to an adult" mode into "I am talking to a 4 year old" mode...

Well, he did a little more than that, and as the parent of a 3 year old and a 5 year old I'm a little insulted. My 5 year old has understood concepts of conservation for quite some time now. It's not a 4 year old he's talking to, it's a f'ng idiot tool of the right with a good teeth whitener.

In any case by now he's intimately familiar with the talking points and he had his smackdown ready at hand.
posted by jimmythefish at 7:04 AM on July 21, 2015 [7 favorites]


It's not just that the anchor has less than a junior-high level of science understanding, it's that he tried to nonsensically pivot a conversation about volcanoes on the effing moon into an editorial comment about climate science. He didn't bring that up on his own, it's obviously a note given to him by network management: "If you talk about anything related to science, make sure to mention that it refutes climate change." It reveals how Fox News isn't just dumb and wrong, but insistently and perfidiously so.
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:05 AM on July 21, 2015 [79 favorites]


I love the anchor segment at the end, too, where they're like 'This guy knows what algebra is! We should send him to Washington because budgets'
posted by shakespeherian at 7:11 AM on July 21, 2015 [21 favorites]


Ouch. It hurts.
posted by Sophie1 at 7:12 AM on July 21, 2015


Can any of us truly claim they understand the unknowable moon?
posted by griphus at 7:16 AM on July 21, 2015 [22 favorites]


To be generous, maybe the anchor had some jumbled up filtered-through-the-conservative-blogosphere idea related to the hypothesis about terrestrial volcanism igniting coal beds and leading to the Permian–Triassic extinction event?
In January 2011, a team led by Stephen Grasby of the Geological Survey of Canada—Calgary, reported evidence that volcanism caused massive coal beds to ignite, possibly releasing more than 3 trillion tons of carbon. The team found ash deposits in deep rock layers near what is now Buchanan Lake. According to their article, "... coal ash dispersed by the explosive Siberian Trap eruption would be expected to have an associated release of toxic elements in impacted water bodies where fly ash slurries developed ...", and "Mafic megascale eruptions are long-lived events that would allow significant build-up of global ash clouds". In a statement, Grasby said, "In addition to these volcanoes causing fires through coal, the ash it spewed was highly toxic and was released in the land and water, potentially contributing to the worst extinction event in earth history."
This was mentioned in the recent remake of Cosmos.

In any case, I'm now imagining a Dr.-Evil-slash-Newt-Gingrich character ranting about "Volcanoes on the frickin' Moon! Build my Moon base!"
posted by XMLicious at 7:18 AM on July 21, 2015 [4 favorites]


You have to hand it to Fox...They really know their audience.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:19 AM on July 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


That's no moon.
posted by Naberius at 7:19 AM on July 21, 2015 [5 favorites]


CHA
posted by shakespeherian at 7:20 AM on July 21, 2015 [37 favorites]


It's not a 4 year old he's talking to, it's a f'ng idiot tool of the right with a good teeth whitener.

I can't bear to watch this - has the right declared war on the moon now?
posted by ryanshepard at 7:21 AM on July 21, 2015 [5 favorites]


As a side note, I do wonder why the only time I ever hear from Bill Nye these days is when he debates right-wing ideologues like Ken Ham or the intellectual murderer's row over at Fox News. I get the value of engaging the other side in reasoned discussion, and I certainly don't think he's there to play the hissable liberal "heel" in the way that certain frequent Fox guests/contributors from the left(ish) seem to be willing to do (Bob Beckel, Juan Williams, and Charlie Rangel come to mind), but I really wish the guy still had a regular forum where he didn't have to shush the stupid.
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:23 AM on July 21, 2015 [6 favorites]


If it'd been Fox's Lauren Green doing the interview the question would presumably have been what gives an atheist the right to talk about whether God put volcanos on the moon?
posted by George_Spiggott at 7:23 AM on July 21, 2015 [3 favorites]


I with XMLicious. In addition to being anchorman stupid, Scott was working with some right-wing idea about volcanoes and global climate change and so the Moon's volcanoes must confirm the idea that climate science is a hoax, but he dropped the ball because gravity is stronger here on Earth than on the Moon because molten nickel is denser than cheese.
posted by notyou at 7:24 AM on July 21, 2015 [15 favorites]


intellectual murderer's row

this is a fantastic turn of phrase
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:25 AM on July 21, 2015 [8 favorites]


I hate that we've arrived at the point where physical laws constitute a "side" in a debate. Every time I watch shit like this I think of Asimov's Nightfall and want to crawl in a hole and not come out.
posted by echocollate at 7:28 AM on July 21, 2015 [31 favorites]


HA {
posted by sotonohito at 7:30 AM on July 21, 2015


Bill Nye is so...... tiny! I just want to feed him a donut.
posted by latkes at 7:33 AM on July 21, 2015 [12 favorites]


Volcanoes, Grommit!
posted by maryr at 7:34 AM on July 21, 2015 [10 favorites]


I hate that we've arrived at the point where physical laws constitute a "side" in a debate.

"Fair and balanced." "We report, you decide." It's how they work: they reduce fact to opinion, then pitch whatever their stakeholders would like you to believe against it as being of at least equal weight, and then against the background of this faux balance, frame the facts to look and sound like stuff the unpopular kid says in class.
posted by George_Spiggott at 7:34 AM on July 21, 2015 [20 favorites]


And yeah, it does illustrate how consistent they are about messaging even when it is stupid. I noticed the same thing on NPR yesterday when they had the director of the AEI on as a guest, and he kept going 8n about running government like a business and replacing the ACA with a "free market" solution. As if the ACA wasn't the right wing, market/corporate alternative already.

So of course everything that relates to science in any way must be tied to climate denial. No matter how stupid it makes the host seem, the most important part is getting climate denial everywhere. Throw enough shit and some of it will stick.
posted by sotonohito at 7:34 AM on July 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


Eh, this is link to a story from four years ago. Surely we can either find something more modern to when picking our low hanging fruit or show something awesome that Bill Nye is doing, instead of slumming.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:44 AM on July 21, 2015 [13 favorites]


Wait... there's volcanoes on the moon! That lava could fall straight down on top of us! We must build a dome!
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:46 AM on July 21, 2015 [6 favorites]


Neither low hanging fruit nor slumming; I just found this funny. However, in the future I will be careful to only ever link things that are less than 24 hours old.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:46 AM on July 21, 2015 [20 favorites]


We love the mooooooon!
posted by stevil at 7:47 AM on July 21, 2015 [7 favorites]


We have always been at war with the Moon.
posted by ursus_comiter at 7:49 AM on July 21, 2015 [6 favorites]


In January, QVC host Shawn Killinger and designer Isaac Mizrahi debated whether the Moon is a planet or a star.
posted by Ian A.T. at 7:50 AM on July 21, 2015 [7 favorites]




The real question is, does this go, in any way, toward proving that Rupert Murdoch was personally behind the phone hacking scandal?
posted by PlusDistance at 7:54 AM on July 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


In January, QVC host Shawn Killinger and designer Isaac Mizrahi debated whether the Moon is a planet or a star.

o.O
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:02 AM on July 21, 2015 [5 favorites]


I can't bear to watch this - has the right declared war on the moon now?

Well, it was, after all, Obama who bombed the moon.
posted by maxsparber at 8:03 AM on July 21, 2015




intellectual murderer's row

this is a fantastic turn of phrase


Except it either doesn't mean what I think it means (or doesn't mean what Strange Interlude thinks it means) or Stranger Interlude has enormous respect for the talking heads at Fox News.

According to Wikipedia, The term was eternally associated with the beginning of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig Yankee teams in the mid-1920s, and is commonly recognized to refer specifically to the core of the 1927 Yankee hitting lineup.

And it's a tribute to that line-up's success against the pitchers that had to face them. If you characterize the Fox New's lineup as an intellectual murderer's row, you are saying they are consistently smarter than their opposition.

Is that what you meant?
posted by layceepee at 8:43 AM on July 21, 2015 [3 favorites]


I interpreted it as a row of people who murder intellectuals.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:48 AM on July 21, 2015 [4 favorites]


Yeah, a "murderer's row" means an unbeatable lineup, all the best players together on one team.
posted by LobsterMitten at 8:50 AM on July 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


(And I assumed Strange Interlude was being sarcastic? Like, those geniuses over at Fox News.)
posted by LobsterMitten at 8:51 AM on July 21, 2015 [8 favorites]


I have never heard the phrase used as anything other than praise.

However, since Fox employees are the subject, I inferred the other meaning because intellectual is not the descriptor I would use for them.
posted by Dark Messiah at 8:52 AM on July 21, 2015


I have never heard the phrase before and took it as feckless did, a row of people "murdering" intellectuals.

Language, why you so crazy?!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:06 AM on July 21, 2015 [6 favorites]


I think "rogue's gallery" is what is meant here.
posted by maxsparber at 9:11 AM on July 21, 2015 [3 favorites]




We like the moon but not as much as cheese.
posted by Rumple at 9:22 AM on July 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


I'm wondering that when Nye says that "science is true" whether he is deliberately misstating what science is, to cater to his idea of the Fox audience.
posted by storybored at 9:47 AM on July 21, 2015


If you characterize the Fox New's lineup as an intellectual murderer's row, you are saying they are consistently smarter than their opposition.
---
(And I assumed Strange Interlude was being sarcastic? Like, those geniuses over at Fox News.)

Sarcastic? Moi?
HAMBURGER{/}
posted by Strange Interlude at 9:51 AM on July 21, 2015


(But yes, I was jokingly referring to Fox's on-air personalities as a first-rate brain trust.)
posted by Strange Interlude at 9:55 AM on July 21, 2015 [5 favorites]


I read "intellectual murderer's row" ironically (these folks are the opposite of the Greatest Minds Assembled), and enjoyed its turn as well.
posted by notyou at 9:57 AM on July 21, 2015


I think it's amazing (/wonderful) that Bill Nye seems to have un-jumped the shark, after 2010's Ionator.
posted by dylanjames at 9:59 AM on July 21, 2015


> I will be using this GIF everywhere.
posted by maudlin


You might also like this.

You can also make your own.
posted by benito.strauss at 10:10 AM on July 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


I was scrolling through the Netflix documentary list and almost laughed myself into the hospital when I came across this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00yb5jp
"Do We Really Need the Moon?"

Uh . . . yes? Seriously.
posted by theredpen at 10:14 AM on July 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


@ Strange Interlude: As a side note, I do wonder why the only time I ever hear from Bill Nye these days is when he debates right-wing ideologues like Ken Ham or the intellectual murderer's row over at Fox News ... but I really wish the guy still had a regular forum where he didn't have to shush the stupid.

I actually think that Bill Nye's engaging with those cultures on their platforms can be justified as absolutely amongst the best uses of his time. He is exposing Fox's viewers who are open to it to an alternate worldview, and even if he doesn't convince anyone or plant any seeds of doubt, he is teaching science well to those who would otherwise not be exposed to it. That can only be a good thing.
posted by JKevinKing at 10:16 AM on July 21, 2015 [3 favorites]


Volcanos, yeah. Fondue, no?
posted by mule98J at 10:20 AM on July 21, 2015


I hate that we've arrived at the point where physical laws constitute a "side" in a debate.

"Fair and balanced." "We report, you decide." It's how they work: they reduce fact to opinion, then pitch whatever their stakeholders would like you to believe against it as being of at least equal weight, and then against the background of this faux balance, frame the facts to look and sound like stuff the unpopular kid says in class.


I'm just choking on the irony of the professed Conservatives as the relativists in modern (postmodern?) political discourse.
posted by JKevinKing at 10:20 AM on July 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


This clip depressed me. I'm watching the anchor's face after he made that (really quite odd and random) quip about volcanoes and fossil fuels, and I felt like I could see the exact moment that he just completely disengaged from giving Bill Nye's explanation any real thought...and it was as soon as Nye said "the big thing for us, on my side of this thing, is the science is true."

Respectfully to Mr. Nye, I think that this was a bit clumsy and it came off as a broad partisan assertion that "Team Science Proved that Science Is True, Period. Game-Set-Match." before he got into the point that think he was attempting to make, which I believe was more like "this adds important evidence to certain scientific theories, and validates some of our methods of formulating scientific theories about earth based on the behavior of other moons and planets in our solar system."
posted by desuetude at 10:21 AM on July 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm just choking on the irony of the professed Conservatives as the relativists in modern (postmodern?) political discourse.

There was a thread on that semirecently. It did not go well.
posted by echocollate at 10:42 AM on July 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


This frustrated me somewhat, because Bill Nye didn't call out the difference between the core temperature of a planet, which is what they were discussing (and is pretty invariable within human time scales), and climate change, which refers to changes in a planet's atmosphere, which is something that the moon doesn't have.




Can any of us truly claim they understand the unknowable moon?

Yes.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 10:42 AM on July 21, 2015


Muderer's Row
"Murderers’ Row was the nickname given to the New York Yankees baseball team of the late 1920s, widely considered one of the best teams in history...."

"The term was originally coined in 1918 by a sportswriter to describe the pre-Babe Ruth Yankee lineup of 1918. A 1918 newspaper article described it: "New York fans have come to know a section of the Yankees' batting order as 'murderers' row.' It is composed of the first six players in the batting order—Gilhooley, Peckinpaugh, Baker, Pratt, Pipp, and Bodie. This sextet has been hammering the offerings of all comers.""
posted by tzikeh at 11:01 AM on July 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


What's really awful is that people seem to think this is a serious argument:

1) It is conceivable that something other than CO2 emissions has caused climate change in another place or time
2) CO2 emissions are not causing climate change.
posted by thelonius at 11:30 AM on July 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


echocollate,

Missed that one. Was it deleted?
posted by JKevinKing at 11:42 AM on July 21, 2015


What is the argument supposed to be? That the moon has volcanoes and no climate change, therefore there is no climate change here? I can't even begin to reconstruct the argument.
posted by persona au gratin at 11:43 AM on July 21, 2015 [5 favorites]


I think mayyyyybe the argument he was reaching for was that volcanoes can cause climate change, which in the very short term can be true: volcanoes dump a whole bunch of ash and carbon into the air, and can cool things down for a time (Mt. Pinatubo was an example of this). Of course, what's another thing that puts a whole lot of carbon in the atmosphere, and has been doing so in great volumes for an extended period of time? Oh, right- human consumption of fossil fuels.

Of course, this entire issue is completely irrelevant to the discussion of volcanoes on the moon, because the moon doesn't have a fucking atmosphere.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 11:54 AM on July 21, 2015 [8 favorites]


Of course, this entire issue is completely irrelevant to the discussion of volcanoes on the moon, because the moon doesn't have a fucking atmosphere.

This is all Nye really had to say.
posted by dirigibleman at 12:02 PM on July 21, 2015


I actually think that Bill Nye's engaging with those cultures on their platforms can be justified as absolutely amongst the best uses of his time.

I just wish it wasn't the primary thing that I saw him doing. Being a gadfly to the willfully ignorant is well and good, but I feel as though actual scientific literacy is suffering across the board, even among groups who might be receptive to his message. I'm not necessarily clamoring for Bill Nye to reboot his Science Guy show as a cure-all for low science scores, but I think there is a relative void in solid science programming and media for kids and young adults that cultural figures like Nye could help fill. Lord knows, Neil Degrasse Tyson can't do it all by himself.
posted by Strange Interlude at 12:31 PM on July 21, 2015


He kind of did reboot it, back in 2005.
posted by LogicalDash at 12:37 PM on July 21, 2015


I actually think that Bill Nye's engaging with those cultures on their platforms can be justified as absolutely amongst the best uses of his time.

I just wish it wasn't the primary thing that I saw him doing.


I wish he would go back to fighting crime. He's doing good work but I can't see that tie without thinking schtick which goes back a long way with him.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 4:09 PM on July 21, 2015


(And I assumed Strange Interlude was being sarcastic? Like, those geniuses over at Fox News.)

THOSE CLOWNS AT FOX NEWS DID IT AGAIN! WHAT A BUNCH OF CLOWNS!
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:51 PM on July 21, 2015 [2 favorites]


As far as my friends and I go, we still like the moon.
posted by Joey Michaels at 6:04 PM on July 21, 2015




Well, he did a little more than that, and as the parent of a 3 year old and a 5 year old I'm a little insulted. My 5 year old has understood concepts of conservation for quite some time now. It's not a 4 year old he's talking to, it's a f'ng idiot tool of the right with a good teeth whitener.

In Bill Nye's defense, when he is talking to actual four-year olds he treats them like adults.
posted by Room 641-A at 12:01 PM on July 22, 2015




Bill Nye is a true professional. You can see him pivot in just a few seconds from "I am talking to an adult" mode into "I am talking to a 4 year old" mode, which is exactly the right response.

This is a gift I do not have. I usually go with the WTF face, an eye roll, and a smart-ass comment. I'm sorry but stupidity needs to be called out.
posted by stormpooper at 8:22 AM on July 28, 2015


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