Paradise Preoccupied

Writing the other day as I did on medical research that sounds hopeful, I was primed for sciency topics, so this post on my friend Grant’s blog … the ever-interesting and always entertaining Guild of Scientific Troubadours, where science meets music, shakes hands and dances … caught my eye and held it long enough to create no little despair.

Referring to an article from Science Daily titled American Adults Flunk Basic Science, Grant is apparently as bemused as I am over the results of a survey commissioned by the California Academy of Sciences that found that:

* Only 53% of adults know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun.

* Only 59% of adults know that the earliest humans and dinosaurs did not live at the same time.

* Only 47% of adults can roughly approximate the percent of the Earth’s surface that is covered with water.*

* Only 21% of adults answered all three questions correctly.

Also worrying is the discovery that “40% of U.S. adults say they are ‘not at all knowledgeable’ about sustainability.”

Well, of course they’re not, thinking that “The Flintstones” is a documentary series and clueless about what makes a year a year and all.

Feel free to test your science savvy here … and while you’re on the site you can launch the penguin cam and learn something about monogamy … and a species that needs ours to really grasp the concept of sustainability.