today in class we talked about whether Captain Pike is better off in captivity of the aliens or in his wheelchair. The conclusion was that he is better off in the 'wheelchair' because he would be able to keep his thoughts to himself.

But when he was in captivity, even though they could read most of his mind, he was still able to fight back and communicate verbally with whomever he chose to. However in his current state, his ability to communicate in any way is severely limited, which must be frustrating for him. In this situation, he probably wishes someone could read his mind. Personally, I think that he is better off in captivity because it seems that one of the defining traits of humans is interaction.

what do you think is better, wheelchair or confinement, explain?

A sci-fi movie came out a while back entitled The Island. It has been a while since I have seen it and my recollection is a bit sketchy, but the movie brings up interesting topics that tie in very much with this class. For those that have not seen it, here is a very brief synopsis of the plot. The movie takes place on a futuristic earth where society is obsessed with achieving immortality. In order to do this, every person has a clone of himself/herself made, and this society of clones is placed on the island - hence the movie title. When something detrimental occurs to a "real" person's body or organs, the damaged parts are removed and replaced by the corresponding parts from the clone, thus killing the clone so the "real" person can have longevity. In order to control the society of clones on the island, religion is introduced. The religion makes the clones very submissive. Before a clone is killed for its organs or body parts, a prayer is said for the clone, and the clone thinks that it is going to "heaven".

So this movie addresses many important issues, the biggest being where science draws the line on morality. What is moral and what is not? Although they may be clones, are they still not human? While society's intentions for immortality may be genuinely good, (I can't think of anyone who would not want to live longer.) is it still necessary? There can be a lot of bad in this idea too. For instance, what would happen if a man like Hitler achieved immortality?

Where does morality come from? Most people base their morality on what is good for themselves or society as a whole. If an idea seems beneficial, then it seems moral as well. It only becomes immoral when excessive avarice fuels an individual to the point where said individual encroaches on the liberties of others. Morality also depends on the circumstances at hand. For instance, it is not immoral to steal food if one is suffering from starvation. Ultimately, it seems as if morality is nothing more than what is allowed "acceptable" within society. For instance, it was not moral for a woman to wear shorts in the 1600s. Now, it is the fad, and nobody thinks it is necessarily immoral, although it would have been back then. Morality is nothing more than complying with the social norm.

An Idea can change your life

Recently I went to a competition, I forget the name, but then whats in a name. The point being it was a contest celebrating new inventions originating from the youth of today. The ideas I got to witness were probably the best I have ever seen, right out of some sci-fi novel. There were inventions pertaining to the energy crisis, medical improvements agriculture, domestic necessities and surprisingly even honey cultivation. I was completely spell-bound the entire three hours. I realised then what we needed was ideas like these, inventions that would solve the immediate problems of the world and not gizmos that made human life easier, cause in the past couple of years there has been a noticeable change in the way people work and operate. They lay more emphasis on comfort and easiness( I feel a little hypocritical here, but I have the freedom of expression so why not). Not that it is a bad thing, but our above change in lifestyle has caused some real damage to the ecosystem, mainly ecosystem degradation etc.

My point being that such ideas such as flying cars and android robots helping in our houses can take the back seat for a while and we need to pay a lot more attention to pressing issues such as nature. One invention that really made me say "genius" was an energy production system which used the wind pressure created by passing cars on freeways in substantial electrical energy, therefore less pressure on thermal power plants = less carbon emission and less use of natural resources. Another invention pertained to sustainable agriculture. An applicable drip tape with fertilizer and manure in its very fibres. Life-tape it was called if I remember. The no pressure syringe was also a marvelous invention. Put in the vaccine and the thing works with minimal human caused errors (this invention does make human work easier but then it saves more lives so it doesnt fit into the category of wasteful inventions I just condoned). The best part about these ideas were that they weren't ideas, they were solid working models so you would probably see them being used in the immediate future. I was inspired seeing these inventors who were no older than me. They will be the heroes of tomorrow and I am proud to be one of the first to witness their inventions first-hand.

Citation - Blog post title is a copyright of the Aditya Birla Group.

The Present Future

I have been an avid fan of popular science for the past 4 years now, having first picked up the journal(or should I call it a magazine) during my high school years and the first thing I noticed was the fantastic and exciting future that it presented.

Flying cars, the hadron collider, cyborgs etc and now as I look back these things don't seem to be futuristic anymore. A couple of months after I read about the cyborg robots, the first humanoid robot Honda Asimo came into existence, the case of the first human cyborg kevin Warwick also came to my attention during that time, The CERN Collider also started up in 2009, flying cars don't seem to be so far away either.

This all brings into question as to where is this future leading to. Man seems to have no bounds to both imagination and determination in terms of pushing the boundaries. I keep wondering what would the world of tomorrow look like, the world inhabited by our descendants, would it be like the stories I read in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, which to me seemed surreal then, but now so very achievable. A thought to ponder.

Fancy Old People Who were Important to Our parents.

For the last couple of days I have been reading a book called The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein. The book talks about how our generation is not capitalizing on learning with the many resources we have. It also stresses how technology is making us dumber. While I don’t agree with most of it, the book does bring up an excellent debatable question. Is technology making us dumber as a society? In our class discussions I frequently find myself clueless when Dr. Tiff asks about a famous person in history. But if she ever asked about anyone famous person in the last 30 years I could tell her something about them. Personally I don’t find many of the historical pieces appealing to read. On almost any day I would pick a magazine over a book. Not to say that the book isn’t good, but a magazine tells us about what is current and new, which makes me think more progressively instead of trying to figure out a complex plot. So my question to you is “Do you feel that technology has a negative effect on society? An also how does it affect literature?”

Archetypes and Subalterns...

In class yesterday, Dr. Tiff discussed the role of subalterns in the novel. I thought that it was interesting that throughout the novel, the main action was taken through these subalterns.

This discussion of subalterns made me think of another type of character analysis: the character archetypes. Archetypes are the "original model of a person, ideal example, or a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated; a symbol universally recognized by all." (Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archetype). In The Calcutta Chromosome, none of the characters seem to take on the complete traits of any one archetype. Why is this? Could this have anything to do with why Ghosh uses mainly subaltern characters?

In class we discussed about how in today's society, a lot of the scientists are controlled, making the controller more powerful than the scientist himself. However, when you think about it, the reason why the controller needs the scientist is because the scientist is more powerful than the controller. And since it is the scientist that actually controls the science that the controller wants, the scientist is in a more powerful position than the controller.

So in a way, it is the "controller" of the scientist that is being controlled by the scientist.
__________________________
Today, President Obama is considered as the most powerful man in America. It would seem that a regular scientist would not even be comparable to him in terms of power.

However, at some times it seems that Obama is being lead to act by science.

Let us for a moment pretend that a scientist working for the Department of Energy discovered a way to teleport. Since this would obviously be a security threat to the U.S. if the information was sold or leaked to another country, Obama would have to act in order to protect the U.S.. Although it may seem that Obama is controlling the scientist and the science through the protective measure he decides to employ, he is ultimately being controlled by the scientist because it is his science that caused Obama to act defensively.

In a way, Obama is being led by science.

Another example would be an Apple engineer creating a algorithm to improve the UI in the Ipad and then Steve Jobs would patent it and present it a a consumer electronic show. In this situation, Steve Jobs is being controlled by the flow of new technology. He isn't controlling it.
_______________________

If scientists are the ones that are actually controlling the "powerful" men and women, why are they not seen in that light in today's society? What defines power?

How True is the Truth?

A couple of days ago, I was watching the History Channel and I happened to see a film on science versus religion. I thought this was very interesting because they were basically telling stories and giving examples throughout history of how people were persecuted (mainly Catholic persecutions), for their religious or scientific beliefs. Many “scientists” (I use the term “scientist” very loose. By this, I mean a free thinker that can draw logical conclusions from concrete evidence.) were persecuted for their beliefs in a spherical earth and a heliocentric solar system. I thought this was very hypocritical first of all for religion to stress brotherly-love and tolerance and at the same time carry on with slaughters. Different religious factions even went so far as to leave their mark in history for having the bloodiest massacres – all because they could not basically agree on the concept of God. But the basic problem between religion and science is that religion, simply put, is a moral code more or less and science is a catalog of observations more or less. This being said, although religion may contain some science, it contains little to no physical evidence. Some people say that there is no mention of a flat earth or geocentric solar system in the scripture, and that the people of the time either interpreted the scripture incorrectly or just incorporated an incorrect common belief about the universe into their religion. But even if the scripture seems to affirm this view, we have to realize that the scripture is mainly a moral code and should not be treated as a scientific piece. If you put it in perspective, we have calculated paths of the trajectories of the sun and moon from earth. From earth, a person would perceive the earth as a center, with the sun and moon as satellites. Also, the earth is perceived to be flat to a person standing on the ground. This is just an example of the theory of relativity; it is analogous to using a different type of coordinate system in mathematics. On the macroscopic scale, this would be wrong, but either way it does not help to accomplish anything in the grand scheme of religion’s focus, which is to conduct moral code and to evidently massacre for not adhering to the “established” moral code. Either way, scientists should not have been persecuted for their beliefs because, first of all, it goes against brotherly-love. Secondly, since religion is a moral code, it cannot discredit science for its rational conclusions based on tangible evidence and vice versa. Therefore, it is possible to be both, a religious person and a scientist. How do religious people and scientists both know that God did not create a self-perpetuating world, governed by basic laws, and just sort of step back? Looking at the bigger picture, I couldn’t help but realize the similarity between science and religion. Both, science and religion, have one goal: to seek the truth, although the methodologies may differ. They both contain some un-testable material, such as God or the big bang. Both, science and religion, require faith in the unknown, some more than others. Mathematics requires a certain set of postulates, axioms, and lemmas (which are taken as mathematical proofs although no real proof exists) as foreground for most of the theorems. Many scientists draw on a bank of knowledge that is well established to be true. As an example, we may know the speed of light, but how many of us actually know the proof behind it? Similarly, the existence of God can be taken as a postulate. For religion, evidence does not matter at all; it is pretty much comprised of all postulates. Everything happens because of God or because God made it that way. But to the scientist, this seems like a good reason to remain ignorant of the world. So naturally, science arouses the need to logically explain events from observable phenomenon. The big assumptions with producing evidence are: that the evidence you have is the “best” evidence possible, and that everything that exists or ever existed leaves or left some sort of evidence that remains behind forever or until someone finds it. Can evidence be completely destroyed – lost forever? Quite possibly, and depicting a world that does not take this into account would be taking a leap of faith. Also, just because something is “scientific” does not make it necessarily true. Our “truths” change from one day to another. We use science as a means for describing only what we are able to see, but that does not mean that we capture the whole picture. For example, Newton’s laws of classical mechanics were scientific truths during his paramount. His “universal” laws of motion seemed to explain everything physically observable. Around 100 years ago, pioneers such as Bohr, Planck, Heisenberg, and Schrodinger actually discovered that Newton’s Laws only apply to large masses. On the subatomic level, electrons behave as both, waves and particles simultaneously, a phenomenon that Newton’s laws could not explain. And this led to the discovery of quantum mechanics. This does not nullify Newton’s laws because they still exactly describe a large system. But can they really be universal laws if he did not capture the whole picture? Would more scientists believe in God if the laws of motion were found in religious texts? Would religious figures be more accepting of evolution if it was explained in religious texts? All these questions are contingent upon a person’s faith. I believe science and religion both arose in response to societies’ needs at that specific time, and both catered to their needs and offered them some sort of complacency. Neither can claim to be “more accurate” than the other since both incorporated the “universal truths” of that time. Science has the upper hand because it can constantly modify itself whereas religion has lost that elasticity. But constant modification can only mean that previous views were either incorrect or incomplete. In the end, the universe is unique to each individual as its reality is based solely on perception, and belief perseverance is the quality that makes us so human. The main idea that should be stressed should be the quest for knowledge.

Sorry for the stream of consciousness. So many ides were rushing through my head. Now I know how William Faulkner felt!

Scientists and us: How different are we?

I have always wondered what are the key elements that differentiate the great scientists from us mediocre humans. Some of the greatest minds of the past generations have very similar stories of a simple childhood, showing no promise in their early years. Einstein was called stupid by his teachers and expelled from school for his consistently low performance. Edison lacked all theoretical knowledge of his own field of physics and yet is considered the greatest inventor of all times. While going through Einstein: The life and times by Ronald Clarke I came to realize that history tends to exaggerate if not referred to the correct sources. Einstein showed an aptitude for maths even as a primary school kid. Just to provide an amazement factor to his story this part is always neglected when his story is told. His lack of interest was only for the classical subjects of latin and social studies. The same story is true for Edison, who was dabbling with telegraph systems as a young student. This just shows that these great thinkers and inventors aren't born to be great. It is a process that involves a lot of hard-work and dedication. So that brings me back to my initial question, how are these people different, in essence they are not different at all, it is just the fact that they are willing to put in the extra effort for the field of science that they have grown to love over the years that their names show up in the annals of scientific history.

Parting thoughts: Nikola Tesla was the creator/inventor of Alternating Current, something that is essential for evryday living now, yet his discovery was shunned and belittled by the grandmaster Edison, and as a result Tesla received no recognition for his work till he was alive.

This may be helpful for your paper

I was looking for some literary reviews of The Lost World and came across the google books version of the book. Here is the link http://books.google.com/books?id=Z8IVAAAAYAAJ&dq=literary%20review%20of%20the%20lost%20world%20conan%20doyle&pg=PP7#v=thumbnail&q=&f=false. Using google books you can search from text and words from the book. This may be helpful when looking for examples to support your thesis. Also it has some pictures in it that you may find entertaining. They look like the product special effects of a 40's movie.

Life outside "The Lost World "

While reading through the past couple of chapters I couldn't help but to think about how the conflict with Professor Challenger and his skeptics is much like today with people who have seen UFO's and believe in life outside of our little world. In the novel many students and towns people thought Challenger was a lier because his idea was so radical. And today the public think that people who claim to have seen aliens or UFOs are crazy. During winter break this topic was of great interest to me. I watched numerous documentaries on life in and outside of our solar system. Many of the scientists interviewed stated that they believed in life on other planets. One of the scientists said something that really hit it home to me. He said that there are over 500 BILLION solar systems in the Milky Way and there are 100 BILLION galaxies in the universe. He said that the odds that there are no living organisms in any of these systems would be almost impossible. However we are taught in religion and by some professors that there is no life outside of our small planet sailing through the black abyss of space . But who should we trust? I think that the lesson taught in book and one we are still learning today is that you should never eliminate possibilities based on what seems to be impossible! If we close our minds we could miss important scientific discoveries that could be monumental just like Professor Challenger's discovery of the Ape People and Jurassic creatures.

Greetings group!