My own experience is that one can't put a fence around curiosity. You
can't say that people are allowed to be curious about science, or even
about one branch of science, but not about anything else in this
universe. My experience is that there are some people who are
fundamentally curious about everything they see or feel or hear,
etc. These are the really curious people.
Some people sniff and call these people names... like "moonbats."
P.
At 09:15 AM 6/26/2006 -0700, you wrote:
(((((((((((((((((( ( ( ( ( (O) ) ) ) ) )))))))))))))))))))
William J. Beaty SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
billb at amasci com http://amasci.com
EE/programmer/sci-exhibits amateur science, hobby projects, sci fair
Seattle, WA 425-222-5066 unusual phenomena, tesla coils, weird sci
From SF Chronicle:
JON
- Jon Carroll <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Friday, June 2, 2006
I think several things are coming together. The first is the unannounced,
perhaps even unacknowledged, war on curiosity. The second is the equally
unacknowledged war on risk. The third is pervasive fear, most often
described as a fear of terrorists, but really a fear of anything surprising,
exotic or hard to understand. Since science demands both curiosity and risk,
and since a lot of science is hard to understand (particularly if you did
not try to learn about science because it seemed risky and you were not
curious), the prevailing cultural trends have combined to form an
unannounced but potent war on science.
Signs of that war are everywhere. Because people are afraid of science, they
can easily be persuaded to mock scientists or scientific theory. Evolution,
global warming, stem cell research -- they've all come under attack because
stupid or avaricious people have found it all too easy to use ignorance and
fear to advance their own agendas.
Sometimes these things can best be seen in microcosm. I direct your
attention to an article by Steve Silberman in the June issue of Wired
magazine. The opening sentences are arresting: "The first startling thing
Joy White saw out of her bedroom window was a man running toward her door
with an M16. White's husband, a physicist named Bob Lazar, was already
outside, awakened by their barking dogs. Suddenly police officers and men in
camouflage swarmed up the path, hoisting a battering ram. 'Come out with
your hands up immediately, Miss White!' one of them yelled through a
megaphone, while another handcuffed the physicist in his underwear.
Recalling that June morning in 2003, Lazar says, 'If they were expecting to
find Osama bin Laden, they brought along enough guys.' "
So who are Lazar and White? To what secret cabal do they belong? It's the
secret society of high school chemistry teachers and backyard science geeks.
Lazar and White are the co-proprietors of United Nuclear (remember when you
could use irony in naming your company? That was the 20th century, which is
over), a mail order chemical supply house. (Go to www.unitednuclear.com and
see for yourself.) They had fallen afoul of the Consumer Product Safety
Division -- you didn't know it had its own army, did you? -- for selling
sulfur, potassium perchlorate and powdered aluminum, all of which can be
used in the manufacture of (wait for it) illegal fireworks.
Are illegal fireworks a big problem? Well, no -- most fireworks-related
injuries come from commercially made and legally sold fireworks. But you
can't be too careful. Everything is dangerous. Naturally, these substances
have many other uses; they are staples of virtually any well-stocked high
school chemistry lab. Of course, there are a declining number of high school
chemistry labs, and college chemistry labs, and an even steeper drop in
hands-on experimentation by students, because it could be risky and besides
it's weird and useless, because knowing stuff just for the sake of knowing
stuff is silly. (We might add: Blowing up stuff for the sake of blowing up
stuff is even more pointless -- unless you work for the government and
intend to kill people. Then it's OK.)
Let's consider the importance of home chemistry experiments. As Silberman
writes: "After reading a book called 'The Boy Scientist' at age 10, Vint
Cerf -- who became one of the architects of the Internet -- spent months
blowing up thermite volcanoes and launching backyard rockets. Growing up in
Colorado, David Packard -- the late cofounder of Hewlett-Packard --
concocted new recipes for gunpowder. The neurologist Oliver Sacks writes
about his adolescent love affair with 'stinks and bangs' in 'Uncle Tungsten:
Memories of a Chemical Boyhood.' 'There's no question that stinks and bangs
and crystals and colors are what drew kids -- particularly boys -- to
science,' says Roald Hoffmann of Cornell University, who won the Nobel Prize
for chemistry in 1981. "Now the potential for stinks and bangs has been
legislated out."
There are malign uses for chemicals too: poisons, drugs, weird
refrigerator-eating gunky stuff. But then, there are malign uses for
automobiles, dish detergent, chicken wings. You can kill someone with a
common scarf. A household knife -- deadly. We live with risk all around us,
little germs and big bombs and crazy people. It's a wonder that the world's
population is increasing.
And a lot of what is being banned is available in other ways. A Mr. Coffee
machine has three parts -- a filter funnel, a Pyrex beaker and a heating
element -- that are listed as known components of drug labs. But keep it to
yourself, or coffeemakers might go the way of Erlenmeyer flasks, which are
already banned in Texas.
The United States is lagging in science education, and bureaucrats are
proposing various initiatives and programs and even "targeted attacks" to
help correct the problem. But curiosity does not flourish in an atmosphere
of fear, and that'll take more than a five-point plan to correct.
_____
In which we consider the utility of stinks and bangs, and try to strike a
balance between curiosity and criminality.
Here comes a stingray, there goes a manta ray, in walked a jelly fish, there
goes a dogfish chased by a catfish; in flew a sea robin, watch out for that
piranha, there goes a narwhal, here comes [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Page E - 16
URL:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/06/02/DDGS0INI811.DTL
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<http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/info/copyright/> C2006 San Francisco
Chronicle
