This previous Saturday, I received a telephone call from a woman, MaryAnne (not her real name), who lives in Greenwich Village and whose pet parrots I care for. After I answered her call, she paused for a long moment and then, very unexpectedly, she offered to give me her pet African grey parrot. I was stunned. Nearly all of my life, I have wanted a so-called “Congo” African grey parrot, Psittacus erithacus erithacus, but I never got one for a variety of reasons (“my life is not stable enough” or “I can’t afford one” were my typical reasons). But really,…
The Science Creative Quarterly
From commentary
IN WHICH OUR PROTAGONIST LEARNS THE IMPORTANCE OF THE BASE CASE
I was three years old. By this point in my life, the residents of Sesame Street had educated me about as well as any community of puppets could reasonably be expected to educate any small child. Family legend has my father holding me, age fifteen months, as he selected an ice cream treat from the Dickie Dee vendor outside our Virginia home. I don’t know if I recognized the varieties of snacks, but apparently I could make some sense of their names. “I,” I enunciated, pointing. “C. E. C…” Incredulous, my father informed my mother, “She knows letters.” Since neither…
INTELLIGENT DESIGN: SINISTER CREATIONISM, COMMON SENSE OR JUST PLAIN CRAPPY SCIENCE
Intelligent Design or ID, has been getting a lot of press these days. Just this past month Time magazine (the Canadian publication) featured a cover story titled “The Evolution Wars”, pitting Darwin against, well, a bunch of people who really believe in Intelligent Design (1). Even President Bush has declared the need to “teach both sides” of the biological “debate”. In contrast, high-profile biologists such as Oxford professor Dr. Richard Dawkins, author of the bestselling book The Selfish Gene, flatly deny the mere existence of this so-called debate (1). To the average newspaper reader, Bush seems almost progressive, while the…
THE SCIENCE/ARTS DIVIDE STANDS BETWEEN US: A LOVE STORY
“Tell me something interesting,” he says to me as we sit side by side on the bus. He looks so cold and calculated and I wonder if he feels anything towards me at all. He takes up room in his seat. I barely fit next to him. He is an overachiever, overeducated and impeccably self-reliant, with what most would call a bright future ahead of him. He is the science student. Is this what I want? Is this who I am? I feel torn within myself. He looks me over, bored, unsatisfied, and I feel an old familiar pain come…