Problems
cevans | April 26, 2006This is going to get deep.
I heard recently on BBC World Service that the Malaysian space program, itself a weird offshot of a 900 million dollar defense deal Malaysia recently struck with the Russians, is beginning to take shape. The 854 applicants to the program have been narrowed down to four, two of which will start training for a journey to the Internation Space Station in Russia's Star City this summer.
A subject of debate is how these new cosmonauts, three of which are Muslims, will manage the daily rituals of Islam while in orbit. Worship, quite simple on Earth, is a huge…
cevans | January 7, 2006I am interested in the way scientific language changes with the passing of time. A sincere science* text, which is by nature written towards objectivity, has no more purpose when its objective ideals are proven to be incorrect. In its way, it becomes a kind of language poetry. Its uselessness becomes like the "uselessness" of literature.
You know what I mean: crazy 17th century biology books earnestly featuring seven-headed hydra, or charmingly innacurate old maps with dragon faces at their edges. Those are almost art pieces, or cultural monuments. âPopular Scienceâ books from the 1950âs and…
cevans | December 19, 2005Upon my father's recommendation, I have recently picked up C.P. Snow's essay "The Two Cultures," a mild-mannered examination of the growing chasm between scientific and literary intellectual communities. Despite the fact that Snow's evident bias towards the sciences betrays his claims of existing in the two spheres himself, and despite the unenlightened connections he makes between the Modernist movement's emphasis on alienation and the advent of 'imbecile expressions of non-social feeling," i.e. Nazism, (I find this very unfair considering the scientific community's involvement in say, the…
cevans | December 14, 2005In one of the most important scenes of the original Godzilla movie, the old Professor character, a moral force throughout the film, becomes clearly upset about Godzilla's egg being sold to a corporation. Misunderstanding the older man's sadness, a cadet reporter asks the token girl character what the problem is. With all the forlorn sympathy in the world, the girl responds, "Oh, can't you see? The Professor is a Scientist." Her pithy statement completely elucidates to us, the viewership, that the ethical quandary faced by the Professor is deeply informed by his schooling in the objective and…