Why Not Space?

Please don't anybody get mad at me for this, but
anecdotes from older professors about how people aren't as
smart today as they used to be aren't valuable. Again,
every generation says that. One would think that the
human race achieved its height of moral and intellectual
grandeur about the time of Lucy the Australopithecus, and
it's been all downhill ever since. I can't say that your
friend's students *haven't* declined over time; he may
have just had a string of bad students. But there's no
way to verify what his observations, even if unclouded by
nostalgia, mean for the population at large.

I can well believe that if he, or you, or I asked some
first year college students cold, "In what year did human
beings first land on the Moon, and in what year was the
most recent manned Lunar voyage," that a significant
percentage would get it wrong. But we are being asked to
believe more than that. We are being asked to believe
that a significant fraction of Murphy's first year physics
students believe that we are *still* making manned Lunar
voyages, in the Space Shuttle, even though:

1) these voyages never make the news,

2) the Shuttle is a winged vehicle which makes unpowered
landings,

3) the Moon is airless,

4) these students, though obviously not space buffs (nor,
it would appear, history buffs) do have enough interest in
science to sign up for a first year physics course.

Again, there's no way for me to know for sure that it
*didn't happen,* but I find it a little hard to swallow,
and I utterly cannot believe that this is typical. If
this did happen the way Prof. Murphy described it, he has
an unusually-confused group of students this year. He
should avoid playing the lottery; luck is not with him.

My next post will be about rainbow parties. Will contain
graphic language, so unless you are a middle-school
student, reader discretion is advised.