At some point in the last two weeks I realized I’d never seen a season before.
I’ve been in warm weather (Singapore tends to tick that off the bucket list fairly quickly), and on occasion, cold weather. My epiphany, however, involved the realization I had never actually experienced the transition between these states. Each was no more than a set of adjectives, applicable at times and distant, vague memories more at home in movies than real life at others.
I find it depressingly humorous how much time I spend imagining things before they happen, and just depressing how bad I am at it. I’ll walk into a room that I’ve never been in before, for example, and be surprised because the chairs don’t look how I had visualised, or the bed is on the wrong side, or that there actually isn’t a window overlooking Niagara Falls.
At some point, all numbers become the same.
I mean, sure, technically, there’s a difference between a decillion and a undecillion, and yes, that difference is ludicrously large. But really, if I was to show you a decillion blades of grass and an undecillion blades of grass, would there actually be any difference?
In either case, you’d be overwhelmed with the unassailable scale of the scene before you, humbled beyond recognition by the sheer grandeur of the quantities you were attempting to experience. The fact that one of those numbers has three zeroes more than the other is rendered no human meaning. Blades of grass blur into one another, tessellating on every scale, overwhelming your field of view and deep down, on a level you didn’t even know you were capable of giving up at, you realised that there’s no point knowing how many there are. There’s just a whole damn lot of them.
My favourite picture of Albert Einstein depicts him from only a few inches away. He stares directly into the camera, his usually wild hair looking slightly more tame than usual and his mustache darkened by the shadow of his face. His face, in so many pictures synonymous with playful sagacity, here looks slightly mournful, his eyes trying, but not quite succeeding, to conceal a distant melancholy. Something – some burden – is weighing upon him, and if Einstein can’t overcome his burdens for a single moment and be happy, what hope do we have of doing so?
I disagree with the book. That’s not the problem. I can’t think of a single logical reason as to why I disagree with the book. That’s the problem. Hopefully, by the end of this post, I’ll have solved the problem.
The book is called The End of Science and it is by a man named John Horgan. It details, as you might expect, ‘The Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age’ and is therefore a demonstration of his fairly dire premonition of the future of science.
The book is essentially formatted as a series of interviews of famous scientists and philosophers of science in order to make a broader point about the horizons of science. I’m not going to rehash what these people have said because a) it isn’t my intention to make their point for them and b) I’m nowhere near as eminently qualified to do so as other, easily accessible sources. This post will attempt to simultaneously synthesise and address my thoughts on this book as well as try to demonstrate to you my larger (and truth be told, fairly limited) opinion on where science is going to go.
Continue reading “In which I discuss science’s identity crisis”
On the wall of my school library hangs a map which always annoys me.
It doesn’t irritate me because of its ridiculous overestimation of the size of Greenland, nor its use of the most garish coluors imaginable. No, it irritates me because it is upside down.
This isn’t because someone, somewhere, messed up spectacularly when framing and hanging nor is it because there was a printing error. All of the text is right side up and reading the map is no more complicated. than it usually would be
When I say that the map is upside down, I mean that the land is literally upside down. Antarctica is at the top and Greenland the bottom. The direction you’d typically call North becomes down and South becomes up.
There is some justification of this idiocy on the map: some nonsense about how turning a map on its head allows you to question the convention of a compass where North faces up, which somehow manages to escalate into you questioning the very idea of a convention in the same place. Another interpretation of this map is that turning the map upside down confuses us so much that we disregard the fact that we’re looking at countries and instead think about the 7.1 billion people that it ostensibly represents.
This justification is also completely, utterly, embarrassingly wrong. Continue reading “The map that made no sense”
From the lofty heights of a plane window, Switzerland looks like a third grade art project gone disastrously wrong.
A patchwork of yellow, green and all the shades in between dominates the landscape, rising and falling gently, almost as though god wasn’t quite bothered to fully stretch the terrain out. Patches of forest punctuate the unordered grid, felt stuck on haphazardly with little regard for any aesthetic function it might actually provide (or in this case, detract from). Rivers and lakes flow sinuously into each other, ensuring that they are placed as inconveniently as possible so as to ensure that no settlement can increase beyond a particular size. The glitter of human habitation is scattered sporadically around the scene as well, and the occasionally, the glint of the sun of a car’s windshield or the glass roof of a house is bright enough to blind me, 40000 feet in the air.
At some point, with no discernible transition, the ground gives way to the clouds, and I am so high up it seems as though the clouds are simply resting ethereally upon the ground. From the clouds rise the stubborn peaks of the alps, the snow-covered crown of Mont Blanc pondering its kingdom imperiously.
The border of the plane window casually frames this mess of a scene, and yet somehow, it works. All of the disparate elements combine to form a cohesive image, one that actually makes sense. You’re so high up that while you can’t actually see any humans, you can see the fruits of their effort and this lends a certain organic feel to what you see. It tells the tale of a people that seeks to control its land, but not to rule over it. It tells the tale of a peaceful coexistence between nature and man, one that benefits both and harms neither. It tells the tale of a Switzerland that you want to experience a lifetime’s worth of in mere weeks.
This is not that tale. Continue reading “The irony of Meyrin”
On the 25th of January 2014, I did the SAT.
By starting my post with that sentence, I feel I may have gained your attention, but really it’s nothing special. I’m 17 and will soon be applying to universities, some of which are in the US and therefore require me to take a standardized test like the SAT. Nevertheless, the fact that I did take the SAT on that date is of significance to this post, so I figured I would cut the crap and just tell you that outright.
That being said, the actual test itself was of little significance. I could have been in that large, curiously cold sports hall for any number of reasons: a spot of urban adventuring, an attempt to conduct the largest-ever study of school sports halls (with a sample size of two! TWO!), or being the testosterone-fueled maniac that I am, a workout session. The point is, I was in that particular sports hall on the 25th of January and as a result, was seated at the very back of the hall, in one corner that was conveniently placed so I could stare out of the window and at the tantalizing freedom that the real world waved in front of me.
To my right sat a boy who was about the same age as me, perhaps slightly shorter and rather more casually dressed than I (I was, as usual, wearing a shirt and slacks). He wore a pair of trainers which were either Converse or Vans. As we first got to our seats, we shared an awkward smile, an uncomfortable grimace that suggested that even though we were about to undergo a 3 hour exam, we would be able to covertly stare at each other whenever time allowed. I remember all of this not because I’m a creepy stalker, but because what this gentleman (gentleboy?) did during those three hours will forever be imprinted onto my mind.
Continue reading “That awkward moment when”
On the planet of Earth, on the continent of Asia, in the country of Cambodia, in the city of Siem Reap, on the road named King’s Road, there is a building named Premier Entertainment. The building in question stands out on the the dusty expanse that I came to realise was what Cambodia calls a road. During the day, it sits there, a seemingly-pristine white block decorated by diagonally-slanting white slats. Despite being rather more abstract in aesthetic sense than the shacks which abut it, it is fairly unnoticeable and indeed, rather forgettable. Pass it once at night, though, and your perception of it is irrevocably changed. It is illuminated a purplish-pink, and the slats a slightly darker shade. As you drive past it, you sneak a quick glance inside, and what meets your eyes is an alien landscape. It’s an entirely pink chamber with corridors snaking out from a central annex and columns slanting at obnoxious angles yet somehow managing to still reach the ceiling. The more astute amongst you may have realised what this building is and what purpose it serves, but those who haven’t will have to try a little harder. I don’t recommend googling it.
I once had a shoebox. Well, I still have a shoebox, but whether or not it’s that particular shoebox remains to be seen. The shoebox that I’m discussing wasn’t anything special: a blue and grey Reebok shoebox that had once held my school shoes. However, once I started wearing the shoes and the shoebox became empty, it became all the more magical.
Abzonnian Ramblings 