A Call to the Scientist Amongst the readers of this article, there are many who are science lovers. Although, there are also interesting, intelligent, passionate people who don’t like science at all, a few of us exist who absolutely love science. The science lovers among us speak quietly and subtly to the rest of humanity of our passion. We are a strange mysterious folk and usually a little defensive, because honesty must reveal that for most people, our world is really dull. Most will agree that science is useful; people like their electronic music and laptops and asthma inhalers but…
The Science Creative Quarterly
From commentary
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG SAPLING: TREES AS ARTISTS AND MOBILE ENTITIES
Image resulting from tree “painting” by Douglas-fir for two minutes. Trees epitomize immobility and passivity. They are rooted in one place, have extremely long lives relative to humans, and react slowly to most environmental stimuli, so both practically and symbolically, trees are closely linked with the related characteristics of stability, constancy, and permanence. The word “tree” is derived from the Sanskrit word “deru”, which shares its roots with the words endure, hard, and continue. Spiritual practitioners often relate sitting silently in one place – like a tree — to religious leaders such as the Buddha, who achieved enlightenment under the…
NO OTHER ILLNESS
I am mentally ill. I have clinical depression. CD is a thoroughly miserable illness. I’m incredibly lucky to live at a time when CD like mine is easily treated by medication. Two pills every morning, and I’m myself again. The point of writing this isn’t to tell the world that I’ve got clinical depression, or to say “Gosh I like my drugs”. The reason that I’m writing this is gripe about how people react when they hear that I take psychiatric medication. For some reason, the fact that my brain has a problem that’s easy to fix using medication is…
WEATHER IS NOT A PEST
With summer past, I remember the flies and other assorted citizens of bugdom at my house. Some were silent like models of mathematical motion, and some buzzed loudly, almost as if you could see their pursed lips – air forced through their invertebrate skeletons. All seemed pervasive, as if to target my children endlessly whilst they play. And I remember my paternal instinct kicking in, deciding that I must do something about these flies. Nasty flies. So in my efforts to learn more, I came across images of my enemy. Images like this one below: And looking closely, even as…
TO TALK OF THE WORLD OF BODIES
(BodyWorlds 3 is currently in Vancouver at Science World, until January 14, 2007) I had a train-wreck experience about Gunther von Hagens’ Body Worlds. I had previously heard nothing about the man, his work, or the show before we headed out to see it at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, but one of my sources inside the museum world had mentioned that there had been a fair amount of controversy surrounding both von Hagens and the exhibit. The exhibit was divided into anatomical systems: locomotive, nervous, cardiovascular, and digestive, plus a kind of gallery of awe—bodies in motion, human…
HOW EVOLUTION NATURALLY SELECTED ME
If you’re anything like me you think Radiohead is the greatest band on the planet; that the Rolling Stones are important, but overrated; Natalie Portman is the greatest actress of her generation (and hot, even with short hair); the most disgusting noise is the noise of someone eating with their mouth open; and you read—a lot. But no fiction, only non-fiction. Not even James Frey non-fiction. A lot of it is news, some of it is commentary, and sometimes life experience. I read a lot about Intelligent Design (ID) these days. It’s not something that I’m particularly proud of, it’s…
THE RNA TIE CLUB AND LESSONS TO BE LEARNED IN HOW TO WIN A NOBEL PRIZE
As of November 2005, 776 Nobel Prizes have been awarded (758 to individuals, 18 to organizations) in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, peace, and economics. In that same month, according to the U.S. Bureau of Census, there were an estimated 6,469,818,677 people alive in the world. Consequently, the average person (or even the average scientist) has a very small chance of winning a Nobel Prize or even ever knowing anyone who has done so. However, there is a very small group of people whose odds of winning this estute award are exponentially increased. These people were the members of an elite…
ON GLOBAL WARMING
(This article was reprinted with permission from the edition of that finest of fine publications, n+1) Over the course of the past century, mean global temperatures increased by .6 degrees C. This change seems slight but isn’t: in the winter of 1905 my great-grandfather, a coppersmith, installed the roof on a new reef-point lighthouse two miles from Lake Michigan’s shore. Each morning he drove out across the open ice in a horse and buggy laden with his copperworking tools; today the water that far from shore never freezes, much less to a depth that could support a horse’s weight. Well…
BE VERY AFRAID
A few months before he died, a Nobel Prize winner wandered into my office, sat down, and proceeded to talk about science and ethics. He did this for about an hour. In fact, most of it boiled down to something like this. “Science is in a very interesting predicament these days. It has accelerated so much, in so little time, and has led to a glut of information. It has progressed beyond our wildest dreams, such that we can do amazing things, exciting things, even frightening things.” Of course, he said this stuff in a much less verbose way. The…