Non-Fictional Prose

I'm really enjoying reading The Demon Haunted World and I'm not sure if it is just because I agree with his ideas....but what I know for sure is that if I had come up with these ideas myself, I never would have found a way to convey them so well without offending the religious or the uneducated as Sagan does. I am impressed with how Sagan is able to discuss peoples' beliefs about the supernatural, for example, without insulting those who believe in things a scientist might deem outrageous. For example, on p. 30 Sagan writes "If you want to know when the next eclipse of the sun will be, you might try magicians or mystics, but you'll do much better with scientists.

 When I started reading The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan, I did not really know what to expect. Sagan invites the reader to be critical and skeptical of things we read, see, or hear about. He wants us to distinguish between what is "valid science" and "pseudoscience." As a science major, I have always accepted science as factual information that is true until proven otherwise since I was young. In my current biology class, we are studying about paleontology which involves looking at fossil records of animals to infer relationships between extinct and living species.

 Some of the continuation of our discussion on Tuesday of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks brought me back to an exercise that we did in my bio 110 course when reading the book. Our assignment was to create an informed consent for for Henrietta, attempting to explain the basic concepts behind her cancer and cells, and leave room for the potential of further research on them should her cells in fact grow in culture. So I just thought that I would share what I came up with as an informed consent for that perhaps could have been given to Henrietta Lacks:

Class Notes 10-16-2010

Review of Path to Paradise

Anne – revelations about the limitations of the method and so much individualistic literary criticism due to our conversation of it. Book seemed personable with Berko's position.

Anne Dalke– did we get caught up in images and didn't advance an argument

ckosarek – yeah I saw it in my paper. You run the risk of bringing outside things

Anne Dalke– anyone else?

"...the consequences of scientific illiteracy are far more dangerous in our time, than in any that has come before." (p6-7)

 In his book Sagan reminds us that science is of vital importance and it is perilous to forget or ignore it. On page 10 he reminds the reader that, “Abandoning science means abandoning more than air conditioning, CD players, hair dryers and fast cars.” He debunks pseudo science by pointing out that pseudo science hypotheses are framed in such a way that they cannot be proved or disproved. But then again, science is also not always about certainties.

 As I am now skeptical of all the words that I read, I looked up the word benefit in the OED and was reminded that benefit is both a noun and a verb.  I am used to benefit being used as a verb- "To do good to, to be of advantage or profit to; to improve, help forward."  

 According to the Huffington Post as of May of this year, Oprah will produce a movie about the 'Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks'. What do you think? How will a movie be different from a book? Should she make the movie? Why or why not? These are some of the questions I have been asking myself. As of now, I have no idea. 

www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/12/oprah-to-produce-immortal_n_573647.html

     One of the main things that I noticed about Rebecca's Skloot's style and structure of the book is that she spends a lot of time focusing and addressing on her own interaction with the family, perhaps in an attempt to make the story more personal, active, and immediate or perhaps because she is really trying to give a family she feels has been exploited their 'due'. But lots of the time I completely lost sight not only of Henrietta's cells--or the cells that have grown from those that she donated--but of Henrietta herself.