Software designer and blogging pioneer Dave Winer:
Then something great happened. Gates read my email, and responded with a total Bill Gates rant, and of course I sent it back to my readers. I would say that's roughly when blogging was born. I know some people disagree. But from that point on, no one questioned the power of an individual with a net connection and a scripting language.
From Clifford Geertz' 1965 essay, "The impact of the concept of culture on the concept of man" [1]:
The notion that unless a cultural phenomenon is empirically universal it cannot reflect anything about the nature of man is about as logical as the notion that because sickle-cell anemia is, fortunately, not universal it cannot tell us anything about human genetic processes. It is not whether phenomena are empirically common that is critical in science - else why should Becquerel have been so interested in the peculiar behavior of uranium? - but whether they can be made to reveal the enduring natural processes that underlie them. Seeing heaven in a grain of sand is not a trick only poets can accomplish.
This is maybe as good a definition of science as one could hope for, from the journals of early Canadian fur trader David Thompson:
Both Canadians and Indians often inquired of me why I observed the sun, and sometimes the moon, in the daytime, and passed whole nights with my instruments looking at the moon and stars. I told them it was to determine the distance and direction from the place I observed to other places. Neither the Canadians or the Indians believed me, for both argued that if what I said was truth, I ought to look to the ground, and over it, and not to the stars.
Don Johanson and Tim White, writing in their 1979 paper on the phylogeny of early hominins (and introducing Australopithecus afarensis as an ancestor of later hominins) [1]. They faced the problem of showing that similarities between the Laetoli and Hadar samples are indicative of a single species, while similarities among other samples may not be so:
Of course, morphological and metrical comparisons should not be expected to unerringly place every single individual along an evolving lineage. Our interpretation of the South African gracile australopithecines is based on a consideration of the available sample characteristics for the fossil hominids. We are fully aware that individual traits and even single specimens can be matched in samples that we consider to represent different evolutionary entities and ultimately taxa. For example, the matching of individual specimens and demonstration of overlap between the samples from Sterkfontein and Swartkrans serve to point out the general similarities of these groups, but at the same time conceal real and biologically meaningful differences which we consider to have phylogenetic significance.
Hunter R. Rawlings, in Inside HIgher Ed: "Why Research Universities Must Change".
The professionalization of the professoriate has been crucially beneficial for research and graduate training at many institutions, but at most large universities, it has been problematic for undergraduate education. Several recent studies, some flawed but still indicative, have revealed that a significant percentage of students do not improve their critical thinking and writing much at all in the first two years of college. This should come as no surprise, given the dearth of small classes requiring active participation and intellectual interaction.
Too many students are adrift in a sea of courses having little to do with one another. Many courses, even at the upper division level, have no prerequisites, and many require no debate or public speaking or the writing of papers that receive close attention and correction. A student’s curriculum is a mélange of courses drawn almost haphazardly from dozens of discrete academic departments. And there is substantial evidence that students are fleeing demanding majors in favor of easier ones that have the added lure of appearing to promise immediate access to jobs.
From the conclusion of [1]:
Moreover, a significant number of people still hold to the view that early australopithecine bipedalism was fully human-like. I have often felt there is a bias in favor of viewing early hominid bipedalism as characterized by completely extended lower limbs because it is difficult for modern humans to walk with bent knees and hips. It seems inconceivable that such a manner of progression could last for more than the briefest of geologic times before evolving into our superior way of doing things. Returning to my simplistic analogy to cetacean evolution, I think if we were whales we would have great difficulty understanding how an ancestor could survive a million years while being such a poor swimmer. I have tried to overcome this bias. Along with others, I believe the bipedal adaptation first arose to improve access to food sources close to the ground, movement between such sources, or both. Bipedalism probably persisted in this nascent but effective state for a million years, with no indication that it would be anything other than an evolutionary sidelight. Only later did some unknown event impel one of the creatures with this adaptation to abandon the trees more completely than any of its predecessors had done and become a tool-making hunter or tuber-gatherer.
Stephen Hawking, quoted in Wired ("Stephen Hawking's best quotes")
“A model is a good model if first it interprets a wide range of observations in terms of a simple and elegant model, and second if the model makes definite predictions that can be tested, and possibly falsified, by observation.”
Nero Wolfe, in Fer-de-Lance:
Must I again demonstrate that while it is permissible to request the scientist to lead you back over his footprints, a similar request of the artist is nonsense, since he, like the lark or the eagle, has made none?
The Guardian writes about the amazing comeback of Zahi Hawass ("Egypt's man from the past who insists he has a future"). Whether it's a comeback or just an unusually slow slide into prison is not yet clear (Hawass was sentenced to "a year hard labor" last month, but the sentence is not being carried out, yet). Whichever, the story is certainly interesting.
These quotes from the story contradicted each other in a revealingly humorous way:
"This is one of the most significant episodes in Egypt's history," says Hawass, who resigned his cabinet position three weeks after Mubarak's downfall, only to be reappointed a month later. "For the past 5,000 years we have been ruled by pharaohs, and on January 25 [the day the revolution erupted] we finally broke that chain."
...later...
"We have always needed a strongman; without one you have chaos. Look at what's happening at the moment. Times are troubled but I'm optimistic that the unpleasantness will end and success is around the corner." Whether he is referring to Egypt or himself is not clear.
From an article about exploring Saturn's moon, Titan, I have never in my life seen a scientist quote that sounds more like something Professor Frink would say:
"Waves on Titan's seas will be far larger, but much slower, than on earthly oceans, according to our calculations," said Professor John Zarnecki, of the Open University. "That suggests Titan is the best spot in the solar system for surfing. The only trouble is that the temperature there is -180C (-290F). Either way you look at it, it is clear the place is pretty cool."
HOYVIN-GLAVIN!
