January 17, 2005 I received the syllabus for my Humanities course. A humanities course should not be required for my B.Sc degree in Physics. To add insult to injury, we are supposed to do an analysis of Well’s The Time Machine. We are to focus on the historical context when the topic is time travel? Who reads a book on a time machine for social insights? I would do anything to get out of this essay. At dinner, my friends complained about this assignment. I tell them a way out: I will build a time machine. They mocked me, but…
The Science Creative Quarterly
From archive
A COLLECTION OF POEMS
Untitled (ice cap) If you went to a polar ice cap as an explorer or whatever and found a woman encased in ice looking up, mouth open, yellow robe maybe she even has a shield would you, tired and itchy, think of her as an Ideal, fall to fighting your companions to the death over the hard cool promise of fidelity, or, sticking to your guns, circle the ice shard watch her staid lips and say it’s only science? — Untitled (humans) When humans are a simple glance in a museum they shine — Untitled (whalebone) Slices of whalebone gently…
ON STRING THEORY
My coworker helped her grandmother move out of her home recently. She was 94, she’d broken her hip and now had to move from a small house in the mountains to a residential care facility in the city. The whole family helped pack up her things and prepare the house to be rented. Like almost everyone who lived during the Depression, she had saved everything. In the attic they found a medium-sized box that was labeled: pieces of string too short to use. (Originally published on October 9th, 2005)
TRASH TALKIN’ AT THE AQUARIUM
Wut up, tortoise? You think you’re all that ’cause you can swim really well and stuff? Well, sorry to disappoint you, son, but I can swim really well, too. Sucka. I need to wear water wings, on account I’m scared of deep water, but that’s still swimming. So bite me, fool. Ooo, shark, what big sharp teeth you have! Too bad four out of five dentists think you’re a doophis. Boo-ya! “Arf! Arf! Look at me: I’m a big fat sea lion! I can wave hello with my big fat flipper and spin a beach ball on my big fat…
A COUPLE OF EVOLUTION/BIOLOGY-RELATED HAIKUS
I had no idea Wikipedia reveals strange platypus truth. It is venemous Charles throws up his hands This freak of nature gave Darwin conniption fits. Sighs. “Oh for fuck’s sake.”
LEAKED DEPARTMENT OF INTERIOR MEMO THAT REMOVES AMERICAN SCIENTIST FROM ENDANGERED SPECIES LIST
Department of the Interior Internal Report (Committee Level) Date: Feb. 16, 2009 Subject: Determination of Endangered/Threatened Status Species: The American Scientist (Homo Scientius Americanus) Recommendation: Upgrade from Endangered to Threatened Background/History: For the past eight years, the noble American Scientist has teetered on the brink of total extinction. Over-hunted by religious groups and faced with continued encroachment upon their natural habitat from local school boards, American Scientists retreated to a last few protected ecosystems at a handful of research universities. Although it was long thought that large endowments and the tenure system would preserve these habitats indefinitely, the introduction of…
EVOLUTION AND THE INDIVIDUAL TALENT
“Hiccups, hernias and hemorrhoids are all caused by an imperfect transfer of anatomical technology from our fish ancestors.”–biology professor Marlene Zuk in The New York Times (1/20/09) Don’t let’s go there. We all have our instinctual phobias and obsessions, a fear of sharp-beaked shadows, or a scarcely controllable urge to upgrade that in-home lap pool, again. Maybe I should have paid more attention before clicking “accept,” but I can never remember whether to stream downloads sequentially or fluvially. No excuses, but I was a botany major. And anyway, anatomical transfer was not part of the core curriculum at my school.…
STEM CELL RESEARCH (AS IMAGINED BY ITS OPPONENTS)
I. THE HEADQUARTERS OF SCIENCE (EUROPE) – Hand me the abortion elixir. – But – but Master, it has yet to finish bubbling. – What in the Darwin?! Here, hold another burning Bible below it. It usually takes three or four. – But why can’t we use these perfectly suitable adult stem cells? I have an entire briefcase right here. – Because if we cure these diseases, then we’ll be out of business for good! That’s why! – I’m so glad you have no common sense. – Yes, I am extremely arrogant. I refuse to accept anything not in a…
YOU MAKE ME SICK: DOES MALADAPTIVE PSYCHOLOGY CAUSE AUTOIMMUNITY
One of the most prominent environmental risk factors described for numerous diseases is chronic exposure to stressful situations. – “Chronic stress and individual vulnerability,” Schmidt MV, Sterlemann V, Müller MB, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, December 2008, 1148, 174-183. Is it really true that autoimmune diseases become more active in response to stress? There are a handful of related but distinct faulty causal inferences about stress and illness in much of the literature on autoimmune disorders. From work on stressful life events and multiple sclerosis relapse (footnote 1), to reports of stress-related onset and exacerbations of Graves…