Al Gore, Dean Kamen, Sally Ride, and MythBusters' Jamie and Adam in global online town hall for math/science education on Wed. Nov 17

Interesting internet person Jeff Simmermon, who by day works for Time Warner Cable and also does other stuff we've blogged about here on Boing Boing, alerts us to an event Time Warner Cable's "Connect a Million Minds" project is hosting this Wednesday, November 17:

"A global online town hall hosted by Al Gore; Dean Kamen, Sally Ride and now Discovery Channel's MythBusters Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage will explore attitudes among American youth toward math and science, and discuss how to inspire and motivate them so they will be successful in a competitive global marketplace."

Details on how you can watch and/or participate here. (Via the Boing Boing Submitterator)

• [Anonymous]

  @chgoliz: Video of the event, as well as photo coverage, will be available on connectamillionminds.com November 18. We invite you to check back then!

  • [chgoliz]

    Thanks for the info. We will check it out.

• [Parfume]

  They might not be the best scientists but they are quite funny to watch. It’s one of my favorite shows.

• [Anonymous]

  Interesting group to have moderate a talk on promoting science and math education. Two college dropouts(Dean and Adam), a Russian Linguist BA(Jamie), a Government BA/Lawyer (Al Gore) and the only scientist Sally Ride with a BS, MS and PhD.

  First it should be noted that science and engineering grads make up the same percentage of bachelors degrees as they did 30 years ago according to a Nation Science Foundation report(NSF 07-307). Secondly the number of people employed as scientists and engineers makes up less than 5% of US workers according to another NSF report(Chapter 3, Science and Engineering Indicators 2010).

  While it is true that these folks suffer from a weak treatment in the press and generally disparaged as geeks/nerds that has not affected their numbers as these folks contend. The real problem is that this education is held out as something that will not only save the country but provide jobs for everyone if they only get the education.

  Someday I would like to see an honest discussion of education and its benefits to society and not another piece on Facebook or Twitter engineers saving the world+dog.

  Signed,

  Another lowly engineer

• [chgoliz]

  Hopefully they’ll have a podcast available after the fact (website doesn’t indicate this). 12pm ET on a school day is not the best time for school-aged children to watch.

• [chouette]

  On the merits of “Mythbusters” as science, I yield the floor to Zombie Feynman: http://xkcd.com/397/

• [IamInnocent]

  They’re looking more and more alike ! :)

• [blorgggg]

  Those mythbusters guys are terrible scientists.