Letters: 60 minutes to win; Fortunate for science museum

60 minutes to win

Penn State’s lost to Indiana was very upsetting, but, as Bum Philips said, after a controversial lost to the Steelers, “We had 60 minutes to beat the Steelers and couldn’t get it done, so don’t get hung up on one play.” We had the same 60 minutes to beat Indiana and couldn’t get it done.

Fortunate for science museum

Science impacts our daily lives in many ways. With the application of science we now have air travel, automobiles, computers, air conditioning, microwaves, television and robotics, just to mention a few modern advances. We live with these scientifically created marvels and others every day.

In today’s world, science is everywhere. No doubt in our future we will see incredible advances that will impact our daily lives. Being science literate will be an absolute necessity in the coming years. That is why being taught to think critically and learning to analyze and test a problem is so critical at an early age. The importance of this concept was eloquently stated by Carl Sagan, “Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.”

We in State College are fortunate to have the Discovery Space helping to make the science we need to understand in the modern world readily available to the current generation.

Cyclists and their new rights

I’m a motorist who is frequently shocked by the behavior of cyclists since the 4-foot passing law was passed. Take a ride on Whitehall Road or Route 45 west on a nice Saturday and what you will see will probably both annoy you and scare you at the same time. Almost every day I encounter side-by-side and over the white line cyclists who are enraged at the fact that they are not getting their 4 feet. They are either over, or almost over the white line on a double yellow lined road and oncoming traffic or geography does not allow the time or the distance to slow down and give 4 feet safely. Some of these cyclists are working out hard and intensely and take very seriously the fact that you have violated “their” space. They have no regard for people hauling horse trailers or farm equipment — the road belongs to them now — you will comply, or maybe you will be chased down to the next light where you will be verbally attacked by a thin man resembling a large angry yellow jacket. Seriously though, someone is going to get killed because of the new rights to the road that Pennsylvania has enacted. It is giving cyclists a false sense of security on the road, and they are both letting their guard down, and practicing a foolish exercise in righteous indignation over their unchangeable position in the hierarchy of the road.