education

Brian Greene in the June 1, 2008 NYTimes makes some very important points about science education. Those in turn have some important implications for thinking about science and how scientists present it to the world, some of which Greene makes explicit and others of which warrant some amplification.

I'm in UR Internetz, Revolutionizin' UR Genres

“How many telegrams did you send when you had to dictate them over the phone to a  

   Western Union operator? How many emails do you send now that you can clatter them      

I have always had a great passion for literature, progressing throughout my life from my childhood when I was captivated by picture books to my more matured love of reading that persists to this day. When I came to college and found myself faced with choosing a major, mylifelong love of books provided me with the obvious answer of an English major.  Unfortunately I found out too late that the major was not what I thought it would be.  I had imagined myself sprawled for daysat a time amidst heaps of novels, which, upon having read, I would dissect and debate in classes filled with my peer English majors.  I had pictured myself in classes filled with

I am a self-proclaimed convert. Not only did I come into college with a plan to avoid technology, but I also came supplied with an over active fear of computers and all the things that go along with them. In the eyes of academia I was the perfect student to continue the tradition of clinging to my ignorance of all things new, while memorizing dead languages I would probably never use once I received my diaploma. I lacked a facebook account and had a talent for avoiding communication through email, preferring instead to correspond with my high school friends the old-fashioned way, using paper and ink. This semester, two of my classes somehow found a way to change everything.

Autism: A New Look at Consciousness

Aside from the beautiful and charismatic style which makes the procession through The Diving Bell and the Butterfly absolutely enthralling, complete appreciation of this book requires an acknowledgement of the implausible efforts of its creator. It is rare that a book can be inspiring based not only on the content of the writing but also on the process of its creation. Jean-Dominique Bauby does not explicitly give details about his condition, nor about how he went about writing this book. This seems to be the main theme of the book: it is not why, but how. He does not want the reader to know much about his accident or the painstaking method of communication he has been forced to resort to, but

The study of morality has historically been relegated to disciplines such as philosophy, history, and literature. However, emerging trends in research suggest that the field of neurobiology would be a valuable addition to this list. Neurobiology research may offer needed insights into the biological underpinnings of social cognition, and particularly of morality. Precisely because the study is firmly grounded in a wide spread philosophical tradition, discussions about the neurobiology of morality shed light on many other aspects of the interconnectedness between cultural knowledge and scientific knowledge.