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profile.gif David Ng is Director of the Advanced Molecular Biology Laboratory at the University of British Columbia - this is a just a fancier way of calling himself a science teacher.

profile.gifBenjamin Cohen is an Asst. Professor of Science, Tech., and Society at the University of Virginia. He studies the place of S & T in environmental history, policy, and ethics. He also writes other stuff.

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"The world is full of light and life, and the true crime is not to be interested in it." A.S. Byatt

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« SAYING HELLO: PART II | Main | All Things Considered, I'd Like to be a Rock Star »

SAYING HELLO: PART III

Category: Knoxville '82: Where Miscellany Thrive
Posted on: June 12, 2006 6:00 AM, by David Ng

continued from part II | from the beginning

DN: ... or how's about Jake and Elwood? (maybe, we should get Fedoras after all). You know, we do both dabble in the science writing game.

BRC: This is true, though there you go bringing this back to a relevant center, keeping this sensical/as opposed to nonsensical...while I'm aching to spiral away chaotically...and you mean "science writing" like writing science? Scientists do that, I'm told. You're one of them. Or science writing like writing about science? Science journalists do that, right? Of course you do that too. Or science writing like science fiction? Kurt Vonnegut has dabbled with that, they say. And others, right? I've heard of Asimov. Or science writing like telling stories that are maybe fact-based, in part, but literary, about science? True, also true. You again? T.C Boyle has boatloads of good stuff along those lines. And Richard Powers. And that Harvard freshman girl who plagiarized. Except that has nothing to do with this, sorry. Unless you say that's just like the Korean guy with his faked cloning research. Which we won't say. And there's this whole field of science communication - studying how science is written and communicated - they even have a peer-reviewed journal. How science-ish. Plus science rhetoric, which may or may not be the same thing. I don't think I'm helping. Back to the point at hand: If we want to be high-brow, which is also maybe lame, we could say "wave and particle" with your Donnie and Marie...

DN: ...

BRC: I know, it's exciting. We're breaking new ground, Dave. Say it loud.

DN: O.K. Ben. Game on. I'm all for shouting. Maybe even sing a little, or at least hum enthusiastically. This arts plus sciences and what does it all mean sort of thing does seem like an interesting tact to follow. There's certainly a lot of potential that can be covered. And maybe we can even get the few readers we attract to participate, since it looks like they can leave comments and the like. Wouldn't it be lovely if one of the things this blog does is be proactive in starting a kind of literary science writing consortium? You know, where comments can build into an exercise of writing science, talking science, venting science, interpretative dancing science, puppeteering science... Whoa - now, I'm on a tangent.

BRC: Is it interesting, do you think, that we started into a science-like taxonomy thing here? You know, we're charting out all these variants of "science writing" like Linnaeus scoping out nomenclature for plants and animals in Sweden. Or, is it more interesting that we're doing nothing of the sort but that thought came to me anyway? Or is it interesting that people organize thoughts, and that science organizes, and so, big deal, it's nothing to waste precious precious blog space about? Or, are none of these possibilities interesting and some of those fabled and potential future "readers" you refer to below will point that out real quick-like? I'm open to any and all.

So do we edit these comments? Because I just re-read this one and I'm not sure I follow myself.

DN: I guess.

BRC: ...

DN: ...

BRC: Maybe should we get a pizza or something? I have a coupon.

DN: I could eat. They deliver?

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