The Sounds of Sciencey
I heard a program on the radio today, and twice in the same program the inaccuracy of people explaining something specific made me cringe.
The first incident was confusing to me, a lady was talking about a toxic waste dump in california and described the things they accepted for disposal, among them liquid pcb's from "transmitters, like on telephone poles". At first I thought, what sort of transmitter needs liquid pcb's? Simultaneously I thought, what sort of transmitters would end up on telephone poles, and how many could there be?
At this point, it occurred to me that what she really meant was electrical transformers. Hey, they both start with a T right?
The second thing (transcript here) had a lady talking about "...we have 136 petrochemical plants and six refineries over an 80-mile stretch of land. We release nearly 200 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the air, water and soil."
So... 200 million pounds of toxic chemicals... over the past century? Every day? At the top of every even hour?
I understand relaxed social conversation where things don't always need proof, or evidence, or reason, logic, etc... But this woman's using very solid numbers to describe something to make a point, and it simply fails to make the level of sense one needs to form a proper opinion off of what she's saying. Might as well have an interpreter in frankenstein voice saying, "chemicals BAAAAD!"
The first incident was confusing to me, a lady was talking about a toxic waste dump in california and described the things they accepted for disposal, among them liquid pcb's from "transmitters, like on telephone poles". At first I thought, what sort of transmitter needs liquid pcb's? Simultaneously I thought, what sort of transmitters would end up on telephone poles, and how many could there be?
At this point, it occurred to me that what she really meant was electrical transformers. Hey, they both start with a T right?
The second thing (transcript here) had a lady talking about "...we have 136 petrochemical plants and six refineries over an 80-mile stretch of land. We release nearly 200 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the air, water and soil."
So... 200 million pounds of toxic chemicals... over the past century? Every day? At the top of every even hour?
I understand relaxed social conversation where things don't always need proof, or evidence, or reason, logic, etc... But this woman's using very solid numbers to describe something to make a point, and it simply fails to make the level of sense one needs to form a proper opinion off of what she's saying. Might as well have an interpreter in frankenstein voice saying, "chemicals BAAAAD!"