ideonexus

interweaving ideas

  • The Many Science Factions

    For better or worse, it is the nature of intellectuals to be independent in thought and action. Since the Enlightenment, when coffee-fueled intellectual discussions kicked off an age of accelerating advances in science and technology, academics and geeks have slowly fragmented from being united under the big tent of rationality into tribes that are less…

  • Chet Raymo’s When God is Gone, Everything is Holy

    I’ve been a longtime fan of Chet Raymo’s Science Musings blog, a rich, wonderful merging of classical literature references and modern scientific awe I discovered not long after seeing the inspiring film he wrote Frankie Starlight. I’m sorry to say that When God is Gone, Everything is Holy is the first book of his that…

  • Virginia Living Museum: Cypress Swamp Exhibit

    Eastern Snapping Turtle Swamps, like deserts, are a metaphor for awful things in life. We get bogged down in swamps, monsters come out of swamps, to “swamp” a person is to capture them in a quagmire of responsibilities. But this derision of swamps is very anthropocentric, and I like the old German proverb, “Where there…

  • Flash Fiction: Buying Out

    I missed a flash SF, 600-words or less story, I got published to 365Tomorrows. You can check it out here. Kheen stared out the window of his top-floor corner office, completely oblivious to the hustle and bustle of his city stretching off into the horizon below. Planes, spacecraft, gliders, unicorns, and more were cruising right…

  • Port Discover’s an Educational Bargain for Elizabeth City

    Beautiful Science Credit: Bonnie*B I am thrilled by City Council’s decision to fund the expansion of the Port Discover Science Center over the next five years. This is a wise and prescient use of public funds that will benefit the local community by further beautifying downtown, contributing to Elizabeth City’s growing intellectual character, and offering…

  • The Real Two Cultures Debate

    On May 7, 1959, Charles Percy Snow delivered The Two Cultures lecture, and academia has been debating it for the half-century following. A review of references to this famous lecture would lead someone who hadn’t read it to think it was purely about the differences between the people educated in the sciences and the humanities,…

  • CIS518 Advanced Software Engineering: Application Frameworks, Theory and Practice

    A PDF of this Paper is available here. Slides accompanying this paper available here. Introduction The evolution of programming languages over the last 70 years has shown a clear trend towards reducing complexity and improving efficiency of software development. From first generation machine languages that used binary strings representing programming instruction being replaced with assembly…

  • No More Kings: Iran and the Importance of Separating Church and State

    I’ve been glued to the Internet all weekend after riots broke out in Iran over the theocracy’s blatant disregard for the will of the people. The election results announced were so preposterously weighted in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s favor that one column I saw mocking it was titled Ahmadinejad Wins Stanley Cup. No modern event more clearly…

  • Virginia Living Museum: Chesapeake Bay Discovery Center and Virginia’s Coastal Plain

    Striped Burrfish The Virginia Living Museum reminds me very much of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, where the focus is on the natural world specific to the state. Like NCMNS, the VLM divides its exhibits into ecosystems found in Virginia, from the coast all the way up into the Appalachian Mountains, and the…

  • From Learners to Researchers

    The scandal of education is that every time you teach something, you deprive a child of the pleasure and benefit of discovery. – Seymour Papert I graduated from Virginia Tech with a BA in English in 1996. With that degree, I was able to qualify for a car loan, but that’s all the use I’ve…

  • Luminaries for Scientists at the Relay for Life

    Vicky introduced me to the Relay for Life this year, an all-night fundraising event where teams raise money for the American Cancer Society. We brought some of the neighborhood kids to the event, and much fun was had by one and all. The most impactful moment of the night for me was the Luminaria Ceremony,…

  • The Great Dismal Swamp

    Devil’s Walkingstick The Great Dismal swamp sits on the Virginia-North Carolina border, surrounded by miles and miles of farmland on all sides. There is some sense of wonder as to how this 111,000 acres of swampland didn’t suffer the same fate as its surroundings. It wasn’t for lack of trying, as developers, like George Washington,…