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Joe
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Funny quote

Post by Joe »

This is a quote taken from The Times in London, written by Bernard Levin, in an anti-science tirade which highlighted the worthlessness of various scientific discoveries, mocked it for not being able to explain God, and accused scientists of generally being arrogant, stubborn bastards. Here he deals with the idea of quarks, which he looks down upon as a silly pointless concept:

"Can you eat quarks? Can you spread them on your bed when the cold weather comes?"

A Cambridge scientist, Sir Alan Cottrell responded a few days later (to the Editor):

"Sir: Mr. Bernard Levin asks 'Can you eat quarks?' I estimate that he eats 500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,001 quarks a day...Yours faithfully..."

This just made me laugh, I don't know why.
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AdmiralKanos
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Post by AdmiralKanos »

By his idiotic "if it's not macroscopic, it doesn't exist" mentality, even things like blood cells and neutrons aren't real either.
For a time, I considered sparing your wretched little planet Cybertron.
But now, you shall witnesss ... its dismemberment!

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Post by Wicked Pilot »

Would it be possible to provide a link to the whole article?
The most basic assumption about the world is that it does not contradict itself.
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Post by Uraniun235 »

By that man's system of thought, people shouldn't be getting sick either. I mean, bacteria and viruses are so small. How could they possibly do anything?
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Post by Joe »

I would like to provide a link, Wicked; unfortunately, the article was written in 1996, and the quote I got of it was reprinted in the book Unweaving the Rainbow by Richard Dawkins, which I received an excerpt of in my Science & Pseudoscience class.
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Post by DPDarkPrimus »

Wicked Pilot wrote:Would it be possible to provide a link to the whole article?
Indeed. I want to give this to my chemistry teacher.
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Post by Sir Sirius »

Would this happen to be the article you are talking about?
Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder by Richard Dawkins.
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Post by Joe »

Sir Sirius wrote:Would this happen to be the article you are talking about?
Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder by Richard Dawkins.
No, the article I was referring to was taken from a book; this is a lecture, however, it appears to cover much of the same ground.
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Post by Darth Wong »

There will always be pinheads who hate science and try to attack its intellectual underpinnings, for the simple but unstated reason that they're too stupid to comprehend it and too arrogant to accept anything which doesn't intuitively "feel right" to them.
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Post by Andrew J. »

It's the 1 at the end that really made me laugh.
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Post by Johonebesus »

For some reason I just really like that.
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Post by Alferd Packer »

Andrew J. wrote:It's the 1 at the end that really made me laugh.
It's the perfect number, really.
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance--that principle is contempt prior to investigation." -Herbert Spencer

"Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain." - Schiller, Die Jungfrau von Orleans, III vi.
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