Here are some interesting science articles I came across recently. This one is funny in an also-makes-me-want-to-cry sort of way. It relates the profound loneliness experienced by members of Congress who are scientifically literate:
“Problems arise not just in obviously science-related issues, but also, as Mr. Holt put it, in ‘those countless issues, and it really is countless, that have scientific and technological components but the issues are not seen as science issues.’
He cited the debates over electronic voting machines that caused problems ‘that would be obvious to any computer scientist but went right past some people here in Congress.’
Mr. Foster mentioned the debates over electronic border fences, which he said lacked ‘fundamental concepts of what radar can or cannot do.’
What is needed is not more advanced degrees, the physicists said (they all have Ph.D.’s), but a capacity to take the long view, what Mr. Ehlers called the scientists’ ability to see from the pre-Cambrian era to the space age.
But sometimes, he said, the problem is just old-fashioned ignorance. Several times he has found himself ‘rushing to the floor’ to head off colleagues ready to eliminate financing for endeavors whose importance they did not understand.
Once it was game theory. The person seeking the cut did not seem to realize that game theory had to do with interactions in economics, behavior and other social sciences, not sports, Mr. Ehlers recounted.
Then there was the time he rose to defend A.T.M. research against a colleague who thought it should be left to the banking industry. In this case the initials stood for asynchronous transfer mode, a protocol for fiber-optic data transfer.”
There’s also this article, about a controversial cosmologist who suggests that the universe is at its most basic level made out of math. But amidst all the speculation about quantum mechanics, relativity, the Schrodinger equation, infinite parallel universes, and the idea that time is just an illusion, the thing that really blew my mind was this:
“A friend gave me a book, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! by the physicist Richard Feynman. It was all about picking locks and picking up women. It had nothing to do with physics, but it struck me how between the lines it said loud and clear, ‘I love physics!’ I couldn’t understand how this could be the same boring stuff from high school. It really piqued my curiosity.
Q: So then you changed your major?
Umm, no. You don’t pay for college in Sweden, so I was able to do this kind of scam where I enrolled in a different university to do physics without telling them I was already in college for economics.
Q: You were in two colleges at the same time?
Yeah. You can see I was confused. It got complicated at times. I would have exams in both places on the same day, and I’d have to bike really fast between them.”
That’s right. In Sweden, not only do you not have to bankrupt your parents or burden yourself with decades of debt (or both) just to get an education, it’s actually possible to get two free educations.
That reminds me of a guy I met at SC who was trying to start up a literary society and who was kind of a character. (He had flasks of liquor stashed all over campus so he would never run out.) This guy had been born in Sweden but had lived most of his life in the U.S. When it came time to go to college, he decided to return to Sweden and partake of the free education. When he was just about to graduate, and had already been accepted to grad school in the U.S., the Swedish government came to him and said, “Whoops, we made a mistake. Actually you don’t qualify for free college after all because you’ve spent so little time living in Sweden, so we’re going to need you to go ahead and pay for that college education after all.” This guy was like, “Sure, I’ll send you a check,” and then he hopped on a plane to U.S. So he ended up getting a free education after all, except now I guess he can never go back to Sweden.
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