Science, eh? See, we have other interests besides food. Yeah, I know that it was food-related science news, but my point remains the same: we are very well-rounded people. Right? In fact, while we mainly concern ourselves with our stomachs on this site, A and I have voracious appetites for ideas and learning. Dorrrrky. See, we were very into school. Probably too into it; probably to the exclusion of having lives when we were in college. I love immersing myself in reading about a subject, beginning to see all of the relations and overlaps, and crafting my own arguments about it all. Frequently, I find myself compiling website links and book lists and articles for a paper that is coalescing in my mind. Then I realize that people don't just write papers for fun and that this impulse probably puts me in a very lonely category of geeks.
The problem is that these inclinations are harder to satisfy once you've left school, so where do I turn for the reassuring embrace of fellow geeks? The internet, of course! Outside of academia, where else is there a community eager to hazard their conjectures about big ideas and future societies? Nowhere, and for good reason: they'd get beaten up.
Given the space-theme of the recent kimchi post (and in an attempt prove that there is a hipster angle to all this), I thought I'd start off with my favorite blogger for astronomy, astrology, cosmology and science fiction - UNIVERSE. Claire L. Evans writes about cults, crypto-zoology, modernism, pseudo-science, and Carl Sagan (a lot), she makes up one-half of YACHT (see? still cool.), and gives artsy power-point presentations/concerts at places like Rhizome at the New Museum.
For a good sense of the sort of mind-bending, cosmic and comic things she posts and links to, here is a run-down of some of my recent favorites:
- A bit of back-story, myth-debunking, and "remember this crazy stuff!?" on cyronic preservation
- Link to a robot zoo in Portugal
- Super-duo Charles and Ray Eames, their theory of design, the role of the quotidian, and their forays into science for IBM.
- Space smells like arc welding
- A story on tripped-out cosmological theories from the NY Times
- And this.
