Just saw an interesting post on The Feminist SF Blog that draws attention to one of those little cultural blind spots that are really useful in worldbuilding. You know, the kind of thing everyone takes for granted, so when they read about another culture (real or fictional) that does it differently they're all like "whoa."In this particular case, it starts off by noting that female reproductive parts et al. tend to be named after male doctors, scientists and so on. It got me thinking less about the patriarchy of it all (since, one presumes, as gender becomes more equitably represented in the sciences, the number of female eponyms will likewise increase) but about the narcissism of it all. The fact that science is rife with terms originating with individual people seems an interesting quirk, and it would imply something very "other" about a society that doesn't do so.
You may have heard about the move Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed which apparently exposes the vast conspiracy of the scientific establishment to keep "Intelligent Design" from being taught in science classes alongside Evolution. This is sort of like the Yankees making a movie bemoaning the NFL's conspiracy to keep them out of the Superbowl. They're playing different games, and Ben Stein really should know better. But then, even Fox News thinks he's gone a little loopy for co-writing this thing.A lot of the other contributors to the film at least have the excuse of having been lied to by the producers, producers who then banned some (but not all) of those same people from a pre-screening of the film. (Come on, you filmed the guy and didn't expect him to try and see the movie? WTF you smoking?)Worse for ID proponents, the film commits a classic blunder and wastes little time in invoking Godwin's Law. . .From Fox News:
The whole idea of Stein, a Jew, jumping on the intelligent design bandwagon of the theory of evolution begetting the Nazis is so distasteful you wonder what in — sorry — God’s name — he was thinking when he got into this.
The alleged association between Darwinism and Nazism is harped on for what seems like hours, and it is quite simply an outrage [...] Stein has no talent for comedy [but] his attempt to do tragedy is even worse. He visits Dachau and, when informed by the guide that lots of Jews had been killed there, he buries his face in his hands as though this is the first time he has heard of it. Obviously it was not his intention, but I thought his rotten acting was an insult to the memory of the victims.
Or a third of a trilogy. Final verbiage until editorial revisions kick in: 95,859. Since rewrites for me always go long, Prophets will probably be 100K words when it hits the shelves. I've retired the counter, and adjusted the word count for the trilogy as a whole so that Prophets is actually 1/3 of the total.Yea me!I now have a long weekend ahead filled with a buttload of SF movies and office furniture assembly.
Now, some breaking news from those wacky Korean scientists:
Wo hoo! I won Scalzi’s LOLCreation contest with the following entry:
L. E. Modesitt, Jr. wrote a long post on his blog on why he believes the singularity won't happen. [via SF Signal]According to Modesitt, it won't happen because such visions are based on technology, not on humanity and they're based on a western European/North American cultural chauvinism.He goes on to explain:
One of the simplest rules involved in implementing technology is that the speed and breadth of such implementation is inversely proportional to the cost and capital required to implement that technology. That's why we don't have personal helicopters, technically feasible as they are. It's also why, like it or not, there's no supersonic aircraft follow-on to the Concorde. It's also why iPods and cellphones are ubiquitous, as well as why there are many places in the third world where cellphones are usable, but where landlines are limited or non-existent.
Ok, this BBC Story is scary and funny at the same time.
Thousands of the amphibians have died in recent days in a pond in Hamburg's Altona district, with their bodies swelling to bursting point. The toads' entrails are propelled for up to a metre (3.2ft), in scenes that have been likened to science fiction. Scientists are baffled. Possible explanations include a unknown virus or a fungus in the pond.
The Union of Concerned Scientists has published a guide that serves as a good counterpoint to an earlier post of mine about the ugly interaction between politics and science. The only problem is that the examples are U.S.-centric and post-2001 so it's a little lopsided (i.e. the current American bureaucracy is not the only one to ever push an agenda off on its varied scientific regulatory agencies, and the U.S. doesn't have the market on perverting science for political ends.)Anyway, it provides an ugly glimpse into the way the world works.
I just got an e-mail from fellow Hamster Astrid remarking on my clipmarked post from Meme Therapy that I mentioned earlier. She brought up Immanuel Kant and the Categorical Imperative which is, in fact, a pretty good way of building a moral philosophy without recourse to God or religion. . .But, I thought I'd mention, it still ain't science. . . Kant's imperative is a philosophical first principle, like the Libertarian Non-Aggression Axiom, the Axioms of Euclid's Geometry, or the Ten Commandments. In other words, it is something that must be accepted as revealed truth because there's no objective way to determine its validity. All you can do is evaluate its consistency.
Ok, I just heard the phrase “debate on global warming/climate change” one too many times. You have three guesses on exactly what pisses me off about that phrase. If you want a hint about what’s ticking me off, I’ll quote myself from my Science<>Religion post:“Science is observable fact. Period. End of sentence.”The only thing I can think of that’s more pernicious and dangerous to science as a whole than making religion and science philosophically equivalent, is allowing science to be corrupted by political bias. The absolute only legitimate form of scientific argument is a) Does your hypothesis explain the facts as we know them? b) Is there a verifiable and repeatable means of testing your hypothesis?The Scientific Method is Not A Debate!Once the scientific method devolves from “who has a verifiable explanation of the facts?” to “who can make the best argument?” we’re royally screwed. Anyone can make a good argument, a skilled debater can argue anything given the right premises. Once we lose sight of the idea that facts must be tested, and tested repeatedly, science becomes dogma. Those who’ve “chosen sides” on the “debate” over climate change have abdicated their responsibility as scientists. And when scientists become more interested in political “truths” than facts, you get things like Lysenkoism.
Jose, over at Meme Therapy just quizzed me for one of their "Brain Parades". One of the questions he asked me, and subsequent browsing of the site, ignited a pet peeve of mine:
When you write science fiction, you often find yourself in the position of thinking about the sciences in general. And it came home to me recently how strangely out of sync progress in medicine is in comparison with— for instance— physics or chemistry. While it’s easy to point out the massive progress medicine has made over the past ten, twenty, or fifty years, we have to face the fact that a large part of medical science is still limited to doing something to someone and noting the results. Pharmaceutical companies can’t even predict how well a medication might work, or what side effects it might have, until it’s actually used in trials. This would be like an car company having to build several full-scale model vehicles in order to figure out not only which design might actually run, but which ones wouldn’t blow up or fall apart.
The sad fact is that medicine wasn’t really a science until around World War I. To put that another way, a Chinese herbalist is only about 80 years behind your local neurosurgeon technology-wise. For the SF writer, that means that if you want to place a bet on where your next major world-shaking scientific discovery is going to come from, medical science is a good bet. There’s just a lot more uncharted territory. While it's unlikely that any future work in physics will upend the premises set down by Newton or Einstein, we can be certain that some of the current fundamental “truths” of accepted medical science will be overturned.
An example; the accepted fact that nerve tissue does not regenerate and brain damage is permanent and irreversible. 19 years ago, a man named Terry Wallis was in an auto accident and suffered severe brain damage. He entered a coma from which he was never expected to awake. However, three years ago he did wake up. Not only that, his condition has been improving since, and he has been regaining some motor functions. While still profoundly disabled, he is fully conscious and able to communicate. Most exciting, his doctors have found evidence of his brain rebuilding itself.
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