Topic 143: Earth Bound

Carol:

Star Gazing

My favorite scenes of Huckleberry Finn are those where Huck and Jim left the high adventures of land for the river and the raft.  They hid on shore during daylight  while steamboats and smaller vessels carried passengers and freight along the Mississippi between the North and the South.
 

When dark began to fall and the river traffic subsided, Huck and Jim would set out again on their water journey. As midnight approached and the world nodded off to sleep, Jim and Huck relaxed their vigilance, looked upward at the infinity of stars, and began to philosophize:

We had the sky, up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made, or only just happened- Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many. (Ch. 19)

As the two runaways allowed the raft to drift quietly in the current, they must have come as close as one can get, while still earth-bound, to the sensation of floating through space.
 

This scene captures a moment when we look up at the night sky, wonder at the immensity of it all, and consider our tiny part in the pattern of the universe. Such moments often lead to “what if” discussions—what if there is life on those stars, what if they are looking back at us, what if we could travel to the back side of the moon?
 

The great astronomers of the Renaissance, Kepler and Copernicus, must have looked up to the skies in wonder long before they shifted from the philosophy of  “what if” to the science of “what, when and how.” Even before Galileo’s telescope brought the stars closer to earth, people were imagining what it would be like to leave behind the boundaries of earth and fly up to the heavens. In the early 17th century, probably around 1600, an English bishop named Francis Godwin wrote the earliest science fiction book in English, The Man in the Moone, published under the name “Domingo Gonsales.” (source: Wikipedia).
 

About two hundred years later, a young Jules Verne spent summers with his family in a house by the Loire River.  He would later attribute those idyllic summers to awakening in his imagination dreams of voyages to inner and outer worlds. Did he too lie awake at night, gazing up at the starry sky and write stories in his head, the seeds of 54 novels, including From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Around the Moon (1870) and Off on a Comet (1877)?
 

What about Mark Twain?  The man who liked to tell the world he was born in the year of Halley’s Comet made fun of his older brother Orion Clemens for reading the fantastical works of Verne.  Did Samuel Clemens lie awake on the river, gazing up at the stars and imagining far-away worlds and drifting silently  in space?
 

The science and imagination of the 20th century finally made space travel a reality, and the first men to walk on the moon were probably childhood star-gazers themselves. When Apollo 11 landed on the moon in July 1969, Commander Neil Armstrong shared the reflections of his crew on their moon walk by beginning with a reference to Jules Verne.  Their historic mission completed, the men of Apollo 11 boarded their space raft and lay back in wonder as, earth bound, they saw above them the water-blue planet Earth hanging in the sky.  

From the Moon to the Earth

 

Sources: 
The Man in the Moone. Wikipedia. 

Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  1885.              

Verne, Jules. Wikipedia.

Megan:

Bound to the Earth

Yesterday, I went to a presentation at the Prescott Public Library by Carolyn O’Bagy Davis, about her book Hopi Summer: Letters from Ethel to Maud, which is this year’s selection for the OneBookAZ project (every year in April, Arizonans are encouraged to read the same book and then talk about it with each other).  

The book is about a Depression-era Massachusetts family who took a 9-month road trip around the country.  In the course of their travels, they spent some time at Hopiland , which sparked a lengthy correspondence between the matriarch of the family and a Hopi potter. It is a true story and the author uses excerpts from a journal and photographs taken on the trip, as well as the letters themselves.  The book, which I have not yet finished, isn’t particularly uplifting, but it’s clear that both the author and her subject share a deep fascination with the Hopi culture.

In the book, Ms. Davis details some of the ceremonies and rituals undertaken by the traditional Hopi to appease the spirits, in particular the sacrifice of an Eagle who they believed acted as a messenger to the spirit world. The eagle would report that the Hopi were living in the proper way, and then the spirits would send rain for their crops. Ms. Davis assured the audience that although tourism and modern technology have altered much about the daily lives of the Hopi, there are still many who adhere to the traditional ways.

Ms. Davis’s presentation made me think about how a dependence on the earth and the weather for survival once led to polytheistic worship of these elements. I wonder if the shift to monotheistic religions which worship a deity “not of this world” has aided the divorce of  people from the land. It used to be that one appeased the gods by showing respect to the earth. I know there are people within the Christian, Jewish and Islamic faiths who consider stewardship of the Earth part of their responsibility to their god, but for the most part modern religion emphasize that life on earth is a temporary test of an individual, rather than a cyclical rhythm of a collective.

Setting aside religion, science and technology have also created a rift between humanity and the land. Now that we understand the science behind farming and cultivation, it seems that our humility and respect for the earth has been stripped away along with the mystery.

I’m really only musing about this idea and I’m not offering any real solutions. Sometimes I feel like it is too late – we (in the US, at least) are too accustomed to our artificial comforts to be able to return to the earth. And then I see evidence all around me, within my own family, of proof to the contrary. I’m no farmer, but maybe I could be.

Yesterday, when I was too busy to write, I asked Mom if we could delay because I was intrigued by the topic – mostly because it seemed ambiguous. Earth can mean the planet we live on, or the soil below our feet. Bound can mean tied or destined.  But after thinking about the Hopi and the “old ways”, I realize there is no difference between the planet we live on and the soil below, and bound, tied and destined all mean the same thing – inescapable dependence.

Topic 137: Intellectual Pioneers

Carol:

Curiosity Did Not Kill This Cat           

I love the inventiveness of the designers who can stylize the word “Google” to pay tribute to a special event or person. Thursday’s tribute showed  a science lab table set up with glass vials, a flame, even a coffee pot, and a maze of tubes configured to spell out G-O-O-G-L-E. Aha, it was Robert Bunsen’s 200th birthday.
 

Name  recognition.  We throw around  lots of names without having any idea what they signify. I haven’t been in a science lab for many years, but I recognize a Bunsen burner or a Petri dish. Just as I know what Apgar score, Morse Code, Richter Scale and Braille system refer to. Significant inventions, but what do we know about the inventors and scientists whose names have been branded into our memory banks?
 

I’m probably typical of many Americans who accumulate trivial “factoids” about popular culture and celebrities but can’t name a pioneer in mathematics, astrophysics, biochemistry, or macroeconomics. Well, maybe I can name somebody, a man whose creative and intellectual interests span so many fields that, according to Wikipedia, his books are found in 8 of the 10 major Dewey Decimal System categories, the man who made robotics famous, Isaac Asimov (1920-1992).
 

Rowena Morril's painting of Asimov.

I never really thought much about the science—or the scientist—behind my favorite science fiction: the Foundation Series, Nightfall, and the Robot Series.  Out of respect for the subject, I will head to the Isaac Asimov Homepage, a site that is short on glitz and long on substance. It  lists all of the books and essays this prolific author has written, including 1600 essays from science fiction magazines and other sources such as Science World, Chemical and Engineering News, The Humanist, and Space World. The topics touch on just about every “logy”: psycho, geo, zoo, bio.  According to homepage authors Seiler and Hatcher, Asimov’s genius  was not just in the breadth of his intellectual curiosity and his depth of knowledge but in his ability to explain complex information in a simple way.
 

In 1982, the 2nd  Revised Edition was published of Asimov’s Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. The book contains 1510 names, some of which would surprise no one (Newton, Kepler, Faraday) and a few who might seem out of place (Alexander Pope and William Wordsworth). In a 2009 review of the book, Robert Wilfred Franson comments: “Asimov's scope is the vast range of human science and technology. He seems equally at home in discussing theory and experiment and invention, medicine and chemistry and rocketry.” Just as Seiler and Hatcher noted, Franson emphasizes Asimov’s ability to make complex material accessible to a general audience.
 

Dr. Asimov collected numerous awards  over the years, including 14 honorary doctorates.  He has been recognized by such diverse groups as the Thomas Alva Edison Foundation, the American Heart Association, and of course the science fiction community.   An asteroid is named after him, and in 2009 a crater on Mars. Behind all the scientific accolades and writing accomplishments was a man with a personality, humanity and sense of humor: “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.”
 

It looks like I missed the Isaac Asimov Memorial Panel Debate at New York’s Hayden Planetarium again this year. The topic was “The Theory of Everything… Still Searching.” Quite an impressive group of credentials although, of course, I didn’t recognize any  of their names. They are mostly Physics professors working on string theory, superstring theory, loop quantum gravity, and the detection of dark matter. Asimov would have loved it.

Sources:
Franson, Robert Wilfred.  Review.
Johns Hopkins University. Bio of Edward Seiler.  
Isaac Asimov Home Page.
Isaac Asimov Biography. Wikipedia.
Rowena Morrill  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Isaac_Asimov_on_Throne.png

Megan:

So, this is one of those topics that gets Mom all excited because it means research. When I moaned about it, she suggested I write about the president of the college I went to because she was the first female president of a college west of the Mississippi. I find that difficult to believe because the school, first a seminary then a college,  is 158 years old, and has always been west of the Mississippi. Also, it has always been a woman’s college except for two weeks in 1990, which resulted in the college needing a new president.  Anyway, I know there was a female president before this one. But I’m not going to prove it because I’m not in the mood for research right now.

I was talking to my Dad on the way home tonight about how I completely forgot to mention this website in the interview I had last week – didn’t conceal it on purpose, but actually forgot to mention how I’m spending half my days. And he said that if they find it (and they will) they’ll probably want to hire my mom instead because her essays are researched and mine are silly. And I was like, thanks a lot jerk. But I didn’t actually say that, because I don’t speak that way to my father.

Look. I like this project. I didn’t think we’d make it this long, but I’m glad we’re still doing it. But this is not a job for me. I write this stuff mostly to be funny, or at least entertaining. Occasionally a topic really interests me and then I do the research, but not everything excites my curiosity. If this were my job, it would be different. I’d be answering questions, or hopefully, helping people learn how to answer their own questions. But I’m only willing to put a certain amount of time into these essays – like a maximum of an hour – because I have a lot of research and reading to do that is unrelated.

Getting my master’s degree and starting out my career in England has handicapped me. I am not saying I am unqualified to work in this country because that is absolutely not true. But librarianship is practical career and it involves a lot of different skills, most of which are honed on the job. So, while I don’t have a job, I’m spending a lot of time trying to figure out the American way – the American vocabulary, the American resources. I’ve taken classes since I got back, and spent a lot of time reading professional literature.  I’m not trying to hint that I am an intellectual pioneer, self-training for the job I eventually hope to land. I wouldn’t be getting anywhere at all without the wealth of information and advice available to unemployed librarians concerned with keeping their skills up-to-date. There are a lot of us, working while unemployed. This website is the thing I do when I’m either reflecting on it, or I want a break from it.

Especially when I realize that the thing that would help me the most, I haven’t done. I should be volunteering in a library. But I really thought that at any moment I might find a job and I didn’t want to let anyone down by suddenly quitting. Which was not a concern I had when starting this project – although it is now.

Anyway, another reason writing this essay isn’t like a job: I’m actually writing this in the middle of the night, in the middle of my bed, wearing the nightgown I tried to dress Milo in earlier today. I wish I had been able to video him running up the stairs while the little dress slid further down with each step. By the time he reached the top, it was just hanging off his tail. You probably had to be there.  

Milo wishes he wasn't there.

PS: Mills College is named after its founders, Cyrus and Susan Mills. Susan became as president of the college in 1890 and served for 19 years.  I knew this already. I’m guessing what my mom actually meant to say was that Mills was the first women’s college established west of the Rockies, and is the second oldest women’s college still in existence.

PPS: Mom has clarified to say that she meant Aureilia Henry Reinhardt (Mills President 1916 – 1943) was the first female president.  But as we’ve already established, that is wrong too.

www.mills.edu

Topic 82: The Triumph of the Machine

Carol:

I Sing the Body Mechanical

 One of our recent guilty pleasures has been the daily ritual of watching 2-3 episodes of Battlestar Galactica.  Marc likes the show because of the strong acting and the West Wing-like political and diplomatic intrigue, but frankly I get a little chill thrill whenever those Cylon “Toasters,” not the humanoidish ones but the big metal ones, come clanking Terminator-style into a scene. They are just the latest of a long line of robotic villains (and heroes) that have fascinated me since I began reading Isaac Asimov and watching science fiction as a kid. 

I just want to get it over with right now. Science fiction titles.  I think titles are important, the punchy or punny ones that pull me right in.  My two favorites are: Philip K Dick ‘s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” which was adapted into a pretty good movie Blade Runner; and, Ray Bradbury’s “I Sing the Body Electric,” which he cleverly stole from Walt Whitman and which was made into a movie with the blah title The Electric Grandmother. For simplicity, Asimov wins with I, Robot, which has the slightest hint of un-ease in the idea that a robot could develop the ego to consider itself an “I” even though the reader knows it was programmed to follow Asimov’s 3 Laws: don’t harm a human, obey a human unless it contradicts the first rule, protect your robotic self unless it contradicts the first two rules. (source: Wikipedia) A book titled We, Robot would be even scarier because of its whiff of collective, connected ego…legions of Toasters marching goose-step to annhiliate their Creators. See, titles are important, Megan.

Since the annual Oscar buzz has started, here are my favorite robot movies. They are old,   i.e. no high tech shimshammery, no digital manipulations, just clever photography. Both films have been re-made with modern special effects and inferior artistry.

The first is the 1927 Metropolis directed by Fritz Lang. The only literal robot in the movie is the evil Maria, created in the likeness of the human, good Maria.  But, underneath the city of Metropolis is the hidden world of gigantic machines tended by shifts of automaton-like workers. Robots who look like people may be scary, but people who act like robots are a nightmare. (See Night of the Living Dead.)

The other is the 1950’s The Day the Earth Stood Still. The robot here is a primitive-looking tin can giant, and the film is built around shadows and camera angles that elongate the alien Michael Rennie and his robot sidekick Gort. No  fancy computer enhancements, just great cinematography enhanced by our own imaginations.

Who or what is evil?  Can we really trust the Cylons? Will machine triumph over man? So say we all,

  Klaatu Barada Nikto 

 

Sources:

Isaac Asimov’s 3 Laws. Wikipedia.  

Metropolis. IMDB.  

The Day the Earth Stood Still. IMDB.

 Megan:

The "Triumph" of Machines

The book from which we draw the titles for these essays was published long before computers became a daily part of our lives, but at the time of its initial publication (1917) the Industrial Revolution was more than 100 years old: the assembly line, sewing machines, trains, tractors and automobiles had already changed forever the way people lived. And for better or worse, many of us wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for some machine somewhere – whether it was a threshing machine that allowed a farmer ancestor to feed his family, or a steamship that brought immigrant relations to this country, or the incubators and oxygen tanks that kept me alive after a difficult birth. Some people argue that these mechanical and electronic advances work against nature, and I certainly have said the same from time to time. But I know I’m lucky to be alive to say it.

D.H. Lawrence wrote a poem by the same name (again, after our book was published) in 1930, in which he laments the ruination of the countryside brought about by the machine:

    for one sad century
    machines have triumphed, rolled us hither and thither,
    shaking the lark's nest till the eggs have broken.

I’m not going to use this space to criticize life saving technology, but perhaps it is appropriate to question the value of machines that are used not as tools, but as toys. Televisions, game systems like Nintendo, X-Box and Playstation, and computers (used outside of work) serve only to keep us still and passive on our beds or couches, entertained perhaps, but spending hours, days and eventually years inactive in our bodies and minds.

I believe the triumph of the machine has been to convince (Western) humanity that it is indispensible, essential to our survival. The computer has certainly done that. I have lived without television, and without game systems, but how can I live without a computer? I need it to stay informed, to stay connected, to apply for jobs. Five years ago when I was searching for jobs, although most postings were online, half the applications still had to be mailed (this was in England). That is no longer the case.  If I chose to distance myself from this machine, I fall behind, might miss a new development, miss an opportunity. How did I come to believe this?
   

    And at last
    all these creatures that cannot die, driven back
    into the uttermost corners of the soul,
    will send up the wild cry of despair.

Source:

Lawrence, D.H. "The Triumph of the Machine." 1930.