I found this article on Google News, and began to read with fascination:
Brightest supernova ever, discovered,
until I found this utterly idiotic (to anyone who understands even the most basic physics) statement:
Five brownie points each to the first five people who actually do understand why that statement is so ridiculous.
Stupid people shouldn’t be allowed to breed.
or write science stories
So if they see the flash, are they going to start counting until they hear the bang to verify how far it is?
Like you do when you see lightning?
So who is going to fill in the comment section below the article?
For Denny and I.D.10-t:
240 million light years in 8 months… What warp factor would that be? 
Light is getting faster these days… I blame America.
What a ridiculous statement, that guy will never live that one down. You don’t even have to understand basic physics to see a problem in that sentence, common sense was not at work here.
He’s going to blame the copy editor.
Well I’m not a physics major, but I’ve a basic understanding of math.
Usually when a statement like that is made, you at least know what the person is trying to say. Example: in the Washington Post a few years ago, in the health section I saw the sentence: “One should avoid sunbathing in the hours from 10 AM to 2 PM because that is when the sun is closest to the earth.” He meant that’s when the sunlight is the most direct (plus forgot daylight saving time).
But what is this writer trying to say? I wonder if it’s that they detected it in September 2006 and took a few months to crunch the numbers and determine that it was the brightest supernova they’d seen?
That’s what I figured.
If not, then it must be because they moved the clocks forward an hour.
[u]This CNN article[/u] is a bit better:
A graduate student using a robotic telescope that was part of the Texas Supernova Search project first detected SN 2006gy on September 18, 2006.
I try NOT to read science reports in “popular” print if at all possible. Drives me crazy. Crazier. Whatever.
AND THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ZERO AMOUNT OF A COMPOUND IN ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY!!
There, I feel better now.
The coolest thing about this particular supernova is that apparently there is some question as to whether it may involve some sort of event that we have not yet encountered in our understanding in physics.
— o — O — o —
On the subject of science / math pet peeves, my favorite has to be the “anything over 100 percent” idiocy.
“Unless you’re giving us 110% of your talents, you are part of the problem!”
There ain’t no such thing as 110% of anything. When you’re at 100%, you’ve go the whole thing.
–James
Luckily I’m too old to breed .
i once lived in beckley, wv. there was a newstory about a new 8000 foot flagpole in beckley. i’ve never known how many feet there are in a mile but i thought, “wow, that’s some flag pole.” i was too busy that day and didn’t get the opportunity to ask someone who actually new math to tell me how tall that would be. the next day, the newspaper had a follow-up story about all the people who were pleased that beckley had such a tall flagpole. it would really put us on the map, there would be jobs, tourists would come… the third day, there was a correction, it was an 80 foot flagpole.
My old roommate from graduate school, a chemical engineer, now works at GE. I went up there for a symposium once and he brought me in to get a temporary security badge.
The guards asked me, “are you carrying any chemicals?”
Um, no, I’ll just float through the door now, thanks.
Caj
Yikes! I’ve had 4 children! What do I do???
Hmm…don’t tell anyone 
.
I finally figured out what was wrong with that darn sentence. I knew that something that happened in a place millions of light years away couldn’t be detected by us a year after it happened but I didn’t notice it in that sentence—guess I won’t apply to be an editor! They have corrected the article, so that is good.
I had an answer that used to infuriate mad-dog sports coaches. But I was giving 110% coach. The problem was that my opponent was giving 230%. You didn’t warn us about effort inflation.
You are confusing real full effort with perceived full effort. Those who are unable to motivate themselves internally, but require an external source of motivaton (like a coach) to give of themselves seldom give their all. They may tell the coach they are doing all they can, but he knows (and truthfully, they know) that they are not really giving their all, so when they fail to satisfy the coach and claim they don’t understand why, the coach tells them he wants that much more of what they potentially have to give by using over the top percentages. Both the coaches and the slackers understand this concept without having to analyze it for mathematical accuracy.
djm