Month: October 2009
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National American History Museum: Science in American Life
Futurama at the New York World’s Fair Walking through this exhibit, we find a love/hate relationship between Americans and science. We love the modern conveniences of plastic, birth control, and cheap energy, but hate the chemical poisons contaminating our environment, radioactivity, cancer, and innovations in warfare that come with them. Displays that are hopeful for…
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Will James Cameron’s Avatar Escape the Uncanny Valley?
Two recent trailers have got me thinking about human progress on the Uncanny Valley dilemma, the phenomenon where, as an artificial facsimile of a human being becomes more lifelike, its flaws become more apparent and we find it disturbing. The characters in the computer animated film Beowulf suffered from this phenomenon, as did Final Fantasy,…
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Enlightenment Truths and Metaphysical Inaccuracies in Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol
Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol I strongly disagree with avid Plotz’s commentary, Dan Brown’s Washington, which argues that the real story of Washington is in the political players, not the spiritual and philosophical history which is the focus of The Lost Symbol. Dan Brown’s power as a writer is in having his characters take an…
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Living Waters Ministries’ 150th Anniversary Edition of Origin of the Species
Living Waters’Origin of the Species As was covered in Science Etcetera, the Living Waters Ministries has started a campaign to distribute copies of Darwin’s Origin of the Species on College Campuses, to which Ray Comfort, a critic of evolutionary theory, has added a 50 page introduction attempting to refute evolution. The link to a free…
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The Norfolk Botanical Gardens
Mountain Laurel This set is a work in progress, as one must visit botanical gardens at many points in the year to see all the various flowers in bloom. Check out the incomplete flickr set here.