I've experienced this first hand. I gave my estimate for a new feature. Over the course of the remaining meeting, I literally watched my estimate get cut in half by the client and management as they shuffled dates around.

I then chimed back in with my original estimate of how long it would actually take in the real world, and somehow everyone was upset that I had moved the deadline. Unreal.

Most software requests seem to be more like "I want to drive across the Aleutian islands, make it happen".

Shortly followed by "We now need to support walking as well, but they need to get there as quickly as the people who drive. This should still fit in the 'get to Russia' spec, so we won't be adjusting your budget."

>You have to know certain facts, you could also ask for what it is good to know where Europe is (the continent), if you don't know anything about the movement of the tectonic plates

We spend 12 years at basic grade school and you don't think there's some time there to learn about basic geology? Most people aren't "interested" in maths and yet have a deeper understanding of it than to know that numbers could be added up if required.

If you're going to have a population that can understand facts and interpret them in such a way that empowers democracy you need to have a population that understands the basis of these facts. Facts taken at face value are not empowering for democracies, they are propaganda for dictatorships and tyrannies. At face value fact "A" can always be replaced with fact "B" for political motives, especially when people have no understanding of either one. If people do not understand the basis of these theories then more intuitive but wrong theories like creation will end up replacing more counter intuitive and complex but correct theories.

Not so long ago it was a "fact" that God sat on the heavenly throne and that dynasties of kings ruled over the population supported by the churches, in what was seen to be a part of perfect heavenly order. It was a fact that Adam and Eve were the first people on Earth and it was a fact that we had eternal souls and it was a fact that you needed the Church to save it. What good does it do to replace one of these facts with any other if the people have no mechanism with which to discriminate between them? The capacity to understand current scientific thought, and indeed to be an active participant in the scientific method is much more important than the capacity to remember facts.

In any case, returning to the theme of the article, having people state "facts" that they have in their head and the certainties to which they believe these facts has more to do with their acceptance of authority than their acceptance and understanding of scientific knowledge. It is a way to measure a populations acceptance of authority though.

By excusing people, the general population, from scientific discourse and a deeper understanding you are effectively moving scientific knowledge from being a process we all have access to and making it a series of facts to be believed. People that beleive that the world is flat will be laughed at, because we can show in a number of ways the Earth is not flat. However not all scientific theories have been verified to the same extent, and people need to retain a little bit of critical thought.

>Not everyone have an interest in science and how theories are formed. But like the ability to read and write,

Not everyone has an interest in reading or writing either, yet we still teach them.

>if you know that the Sun is the centre and not the Earth, you are more likely to support funding for NASA's space exploration,

Is that a fact, theory or hypothesis? Have you tested this?

> Yes, that is what the Big Bang theory is about. That if you go back in time everything did start from a singular point. Then if you go even more back in time you need the Inflation theory and then later the quantum fluctuation theory.

These are mathematical constructs that explain differences between our hypothetical starting at a unified point and the differences from the hypothesis that we observe in reality. Inflation is a way to reconcile theory with observation. You only "need" these things to make the Big Bang theory work. That you "need" inflation to make the Big Bang possible is putting the horse before the cart. Normally theory follows observation, not vice versa as in the case with Inflation.

Indeed the Big Bang theory may still be correct even if the Inflationary theory is proven to be incorrect. Inflation theory is not a fact in the same way that we accept gravity or evolution as a fact, and really still stands to be verified. There are several competing theories to Inflation that aim to address the complications that Inflation introduces, which may in time be proven to provide a better explanation.

Side theories like Inflation seem quite reminiscent of the epicycles used in Ptolemaic astronomy to maintain the theory at the time that the planets moved through the heavens in perfect circles, which seemed so important to believe at the time. It's a complication that was solved with the acknowledgement that the planets actually move in ellipses.

> because we can observe the Big Bang right now (the expansion),

The Big Bang is theory based on the fact of universal expansion. The only fact here is the universal expansion, because universal expansion is something that we can test scientifically and most importantly we can devise tests which would disprove it as a fact. The Big Bang is a theory built on the fact of expansion, and supported by the CMBR. We can observe the remants of the Big Bang, and its effects but we cannot observe the Big Bang directly. It was something that happened a long time ago. You also have to bear in mind that the Big Bang is not the only possible explanation for these facts (expansion, CMBR etc).

>biological evolution is a theory and a fact

Biological evolution is a much stronger theory and indeed a fact. We can say that we have definitively proven through empirical research and the scientific method that evolution is a process that really is occurring. We can see it in all of its states and we can show the mechanism. The Big Bang is nowhere near as established as a fact. We have never seen a Big Bang as we have seen the process of Evolution.

> observe the Big Bang right now (the expansion), like we can observe the evolution of species right now.

No we can't. Evolution is something that we're really in the middle of. We can see it all around us happening right now. The Big Bang happened once, all we can see are the remnants of that process, the CMBR has been proposed to be a very old remnant of the Big Bang, and fits with the theory, but it is not the Big Bang.

>Once again, the Big Bang explosion is a metaphor.

>The term Big Bang is a good metaphor, because if you were an observer outside the universe you would It's a terrible metaphor because you can't be an observer outside the universe. It is also a terrible metaphor because the Big Bang expansion would be not really an expansion at all because everything that exists and that will ever exist is already inside the big bang, and nothing can exist on the outside, so nothing is actually getting bigger relative to starting conditions.

This is not an explosion that is blossoming and losing force and cooling through radiation or conduction, because there is nothing for it to radiate or conduct into. The Big Bang is a conceptually difficult idea to grasp, and calling it the Big Bang does not help. This is not at all like an explosion as we might observe on Earth.

>The most obvious evidence of the Big Bang is the cosmic microwave radiation.

Cosmic microwave radiation is there and it also fits with the Big Bang theory, but it also fits with other theories. In any case I am not actually disputing the Big Bang theory, I am suggesting that our certainty of it having happened is much less than 100%, and much less certain than other scientific facts.

> The second evidence is the expanding universe. Well if you knew much about the Big Bang theory you'd know that this was the first evidence for the theory. The fact that if you have an expanding universe that if you back track everything then you will arrive at a point. If everything started as a point then well it must have expanded from a point. The cosmic microwave radiation background was supporting evidence that came about much later. The evidence being if the background radiation is uniform then perhaps everything did start from a unified point.

However there are still plenty of things that the Big Bang does not explain, like why did gravity suddenly become lumpy? To shelve this theory as complete rather than a work in progress is very very premature. It's also very dismissive of the scientific process and the amount of effort that people put into this topic. And of course there are also other interpretations of universal expansion that do not result in a Big Bang.

>Big Bang theory was proposed by Georges Lemaître in 1927 and is based on the observation of the expanding universe and Einstein's equations and is currently accepted as fact.

No I think you are confused. The expanding universe is an accepted fact, the Big Bang theory is one of the best proposed solutions to explain what might have happened as a consequence of back tracking this expansion. Certainly Inflation theory does not make the Big Bang easier to accept, it is indeed an anomaly, indeed you might say it's a patch over a problem with the Big Bang theory, and if Inflation turns out to be true it might indeed lead to explanations of the expanding universe that have a non- Big Bang origin.

If you were to say that evolution or the age of the Earth were accepted as a clear fact I would be much more likely to agree with you.

>You can't expect from everyone to have a scientific education, but you can expect from everyone to know agreed upon facts.

I completely disagree with this sentiment. What good is it for someone to know that the Earth is round of flat if they don't know what that means? Who cares if you "know" that the Big Bang explains the first infinitesimally small units of time in the Universe's existence if you don't know anything else about it? To have people parrot back scientific facts is almost as useless as them parroting back religious truths.

A far greater gauge of a populations disposition towards science and indeed truth would be their understanding of said theories and the complications and alternatives. > Should we also teach flat Earth and Geocentric cosmology? You're being ridiculous now... We should teach articles as defined by good peer driven research, we should not teach science as a series of factoids to be parroted back during surveys so that we can feel smug about our achievements. Simply knowing that there is a theory called the Big Bang because someone in authority told you once that it is the truth and what actually happened is not a good measure of scientific literacy.

The age of the Earth is a lot more solid in terms of a proposition that other theories that the general public were tested for. The thing that bothers me is that the theories that are less certain are presented as fact where there is probably still a lot we don't know about them.

Of particular note is the Big Bang, and this is problematic for two reasons:

1) There is no conclusive and difinitive evidence that the Big Bang actually happened, it's generally accepted to be our best guess at the moment, but it's nowhere near as agreed upon as say the age of the Earth is. Even theories that support the Big Bang go beyond it to multiple bangs or multiple universes which in a way actually undermines the point of the Big Bang proposal in its effort to describe creation.

2) There never was a "Big Bang". In fact the term was coined by Fred Hoyle to ridicule the notion that the universe was created in an instant from a single point. There can't be a bang or explosion without space to explode into and at the point of creation there was no space except for the point that contained everything. So it should be called something more like the Big Expansion or something like that.

When you have the public dogmatically adhering to either arguing for or against something like the Big Bang we end up in a place which is far away from the inquisitive scientific mind and process that we should be aiming for.

What these surveys should be testing for, rather than a dogmatic belief in theories is to see if the general public is able to describe main scientific theories and perhaps even give some reasonable alternatives. That would give us a much better understanding of the general population's understanding of science than just measuring their ability to parrot factoids that they may have heard once, and have chosen to believe based not on science but their own bias and upbringing.

My biggest problem with surveys like these is that they public are being asked to reply with certainties that are far greater in clarity and definition than any scientist working on these fields would ever propose. And then the ignorant public are laughed at for doubting scientific truth. No cosmologist would ever state they were 100% certain that the big bang happened, and yet we laugh at the public for not being certain either. True ignorance shows itself as certainty, either for or against supposed "scientific" principles. Being uncertain is okay, as long as you are aware of some of the options.

A scientist, even a proponent of the Big Bang theory should never say "Yep, that's what happened".

I thought going to the pub was a Scottish martial art.

What might make golf more accessible is building smaller 9-hole courses heavy on par-threes with more forgiving hazards and flatter greens. Less of a time commitment, cheaper due to faster turnover... Change the name somewhat (Golf-lite? Softgolf?) so as to defuse objections from people who want to maintain âoepure golfâ(TM)sâ identity as is.

They have those already, generally called executive courses. The one in my neighborhood has 18 holes for $15 (or 9 for $9), will rent you clubs for $3 and a cart for $3.50. It's dead flat and has minimal hazards - just enough so you know what a hazard is.

If you are going to play with other people you know, you can share clubs while trying things out.

Most courses - even municipal public courses - won't allow you to do that as it slows your group down considerably. If you've got a rookie in your group, you're already going to be a bottleneck. Don't make it worse by having to chase back and forth sharing clubs.

Most places are more than happy to rent you clubs for the round at pretty reasonable rates. The nearby executive course is $3 for clubs and $9 for 9 holes.

I take all interested newbies there for an introduction to the sport. It's dead flat, nothing but par 3, no reservations, and chock full of duffers so nobody feels bad. For $20, you get a round in the sun plus a couple of beers.

I'm sure there's someplace similar to this in every city. Not everything is Bushwood Country Club.

>you build one time that takes an hour or so What madness is this?? You build the set one time following the instructions because that's what's on the box. Then you destroy it and use its parts in whatever else fantasy mashup constructions you want. That's the true genius of Lego, and it's capacity to educate and inspire kids - giving them a system in which they can build their own ideas.

The Sumerians had tablets and writing a thousand years before Moses wrote his do's and don'ts.

>The latter does not seem to happen in Egnlish. Yeah because it is a) written and b) has no central authority on what the language can contain, or has the power to update the language. The written aspect means that it's frozen it its current state apart from the addition of new words which are added more than any other language on the globe and (b) means that nothing can be revised.

I remember the SX-64. Even back then the screen was just too small to actually be useful. Oh and it was so big and heavy!

By definition if a program is downloaded by a million people and it serves their use case then it's not a shit program. Even if the way it is designed its totally shit awful code spaghetti if the program can do the thing that its users want at the speed they want to do it and it doesn't affect the battery to the point where they stop using it then it's a viable product. Of course there is a ecstatic pinnacle where best practices in coding meet a use case, but the underlying is not as important as meeting the users requirements. Even if I do agree with you that every programmer should at least attempt to write code following best practices.