Deep in the night before last, I find myself infused with the impulse to leave my room and gather myself outside to gaze upon the welkin. Perhaps it was the full moon with a rare and rusty Martian counterpart beaming down upon me through my window as if sanctioning my departure to its ethereal sanctum. Either that or, well, that. There's just something so out of this world about the starlit sky, maybe it's because stars are literally out of this world — whatever it is, it's of a fathomless texture and significance to me and it moves me like music.

Of course, there's really nothing all that starlit about a major city's night sky (and so goes my freedom of religion). I don't have all that much to gaze at, unless you count the moon — which I admit can suffice it for me: I think too many people dismiss ol' Luna far too hastily, it would be parallel to, say, taking the sight of the Grand Canyon for granted. So I don't really have many "eye-grazing" nights unless I find myself somewhere rural (a rarity), or there's a meteor shower, or a planet happens to be closer to Earth than it has been, oh, ever since about 57,617 BC.

If you're not in the know, on August 26th (night) / 27th (morning) at 5:51 a.m. (EST) Mars will be less than 34.65 million miles away for us. The only time it has ever come closer is when the Neanderthals were still in a good run for it (that is, before early modern humans). We're talking once in tens of thousands of lifetimes chance here. In any case, Mars has been so bright in the night sky, as it's approaching us at 93 miles a minute or so, that it remains visible after sun rise. Also next week Saturn will be visible off the tip of an enchanting crescent moon. I hope the weather has heart.

So not to go off track — as I did that other night, catching wretched poison ivy in the process — I'll get to the story I intended on imparting. I could see Mars' canescent red abreast the moon's hoary white improvising in counterpoint, tripping the light fantastic, a tip of the iceberg surely — but much else, I couldn't make out. Alas, my apartment complex is contaminated with street lamps. How amiss to have to squint mid a night's bliss! Well, after my deviated journey into the wooded hill, I laggingly headed back along the sidewalk, mentally muttering at the lamps that immure my euphoric right. I soon approached one such odious lamp, which met my passing stride with — I could not have thought better an outcome — a sudden death. A pause overpowered my legs and focus, my eyes. I was to be found staring at the beheaded lamppost with a crescendo of victory swelling up my neck as I took it in. Suddenly though, a hush! — no, a shutting up! A shooting star streaks in the rawest resplendence across the sky ...the very portion that would have been smothered by the lamp. I gobsmacked, the lamp casually lit back.


[Update - 3/29/04: This very same thing has happened to me twice more — with the very same lamp. It'll take a bit more to convince me, though.]

Well, I got back from New York last night. I would go into details but I'm far too winded at the moment...

So yesterday, a group called "Friends of Israel" held a protest outside the studio of my local NPR affiliate, WBUR. They did this with 32 other NPR affiliate stations around the country as well. Their press release read:</p>

"Friends of Israel will be holding "NPR: Tell the Truth" demonstrations of protest outside National Public Radio (NPR) affiliate stations from coast to coast on Wednesday, May 14, 2003, to express outrage over NPR's biased coverage of the Middle East.

Each "NPR: Tell the Truth" demonstration is being organized locally by Jews and Christians who believe that NPR's reporting on the Middle East is so inaccurate and biased that it poses a threat to Israel's security. The idea originated with the Boston Israel Action Committee (BIAC), a group that draws its membership from several Boston-area synagogues.

In addition to the protests, the groups are urging concerned citizens to withhold their financial support from NPR stations. "We call on friends of Israel not to make contributions to NPR affiliates until the network begins to cover news from Israel in an unbiased fashion," said Diana Muir, the demonstration's national organizer. "We are also asking businesses and foundations that underwrite programming on NPR to cease contributions to the network until it begins to cover the Middle East fairly and impartially." The organizers also question why federal funds should be used to support NPR programming given their biased reporting."

Now being one, a Jew; two, a Zionist; and three, an NPR junkie, I have to say that's one doozy of baseless rhetorical psychosis right there. Seems to me they determine biasedness simply as opposition to their views. Oh well, at least the media isn't run by...oh wait...

The week before last was the 50 year anniversary of the discovery of DNA's structure; to this week, reflection and observation in the media and the science community is still ongoing. So in light of this I thought I would do my part to commemorate this epochal breakthrough in not only science but humanity as a whole, by exclaiming how much I detest James Watson.

Watson and his partner, Francis Crick, had weak knowledge of chemistry to begin with, a lot of their work was situated on other peoples' experimentations, observations, theorizations, and conclusions. (That's not to say that it was illegitimate, a lot of the information they took was already published.) They employed the strategy of model building to try and solve the structure but their process was excessively based on guess-work. This accumulated to a lot of failure and they quickly burned out for over a year to follow. The catalyst came when Rosalind Franklin's disgruntled colleague Maurice Wilkins divulged her most critical (and yet to be published) piece of data, without her permission or knowledge, to rivaling Watson. However this wasn't enough, Watson didn't know how to interpret most of the data, so he took Wilkins out to dinner and successfully pressed him for an explanation. Only in following were Watson and Crick able to put it all together.

When they published their historical finding, they made no mention of the vital role Franklin's data played in their discovery. Franklin died of ovarian cancer just a few years later at the age of 37. Watson, Crick, and Wilkins went on to win the Nobel Prize in 1962 with only a sentence of a mention to Franklin in their speech. (It's not known if Franklin would have been included in the award, only the living can be awarded.) Six years later Watson's book, The Double Helix, goes on to grossly degrade Franklin and the truth so much to the point that even Wilkins and Crick themselves end up protesting its publishing. Watson has defended himself with the book's preface, "Here is my version of how the structure of DNA was discovered. . . . I am aware that other participants in this story would tell parts of it in other ways." No where in the book does he mention that Franklin had died years earlier and is thus unable to represent and defend herself.

Granted the man was still relatively young, it could be pardoned if over the years he matured and finally acknowledged Franklin's contributions and his youthful mistakes. Unfortunately, in a recent interview with Robert Krulwich of ABC News; Watson, at age 75, speaking of Franklin goes on to say, "I like pretty girls, she did not go out of her way to make herself attractive." Krulwich followed up, “Why mention that at all?” Watson replied, "It's important, of personal appearance in general." I feel no need to elaborate. In an even more recent interview, last week, on NPR's Science Friday, Watson was confronted with the question of how much of a role Franklin's data played. He stuttered to find evasive excuses, mentioning that the structure was so much simpler than they imagined at the time, that it was possible for other people in the field to come up with the same conclusions they did without Franklin's data, and so on. Basically arguing that if Franklin's work didn't exist somebody would have come up with the structure anyway based on other data. I'm sure you can see the fallacy and even contradiction in his reasoning. In a similar question, he settled on backing himself up solely and squarely by the fact that somebody once gave him the nickname of "Honest Jim" when he was younger, essentially arguing that this in itself makes it so. I exaggerate not.

This is one of the most highly revered icons of modern science; and yet he is much the antithesis of scientific values and ethics. In following science and general media, one finds a lot of downplaying, excuse making, and convenient overlooking--driving Franklin into a footnote. Similar conclusions are reached in science classrooms and the general belief system. In effect the science community seems to act very characteristically that of organized religion. Relenting to question, criticize, and acknowledge evident truth for the sake of ideals and intuition. This is of grave significance. Just how truly accurate are certain aspects of accepted science and its corresponding history? Moreover, where is the future of science and critical thinking headed to?


(For further information, the best article I've thus far come across: click here.)

So yesterday was my first rowing class and I'm still sore. Though it wasn't the class that was strenuous but rather the 2 hours of commuting by foot and train each way. We went over the different techniques, positions, and motions of rowing as well as how to handle the boat, basically beginner stuff. It was interesting and I'm anxious to actually get out off the dock. My peers are mostly in their 30-40s (a number looking out of place) so that's a bit odd for me, the two coaches who run the program are closer to my age in their mid to late 20s. The beginners coach, Al, is real nice and seems to be especially enthusiastic about me; this is a good relationship as it motivates me.

Though at times I feel a little self-conscious because there are 8 people aside from me in my course and I end up taking somebody's spot as the boat only holds 8 people at a time. Misha talked the coaches into giving me a free scholarship because he's been rowing with them for quite some years now and runs and maintains the program's website and mailing list. So the person who actually pays a $100 a month ends up sitting out because of freebie me, and I end up feeling a little troubled about the whole deal. But Mish tells me it's legit and not to worry about it. Logically I agree as I'm committed and want to be there and it's the only way I can afford it.

That aside, I find it real engrossing and would like to become a proficient rower by the end of summer, maybe even reaching advanced level (there's only two levels: beginner and advanced; hence two coaches). If that happens Misha beware, I'm a 3rd seater, as is he, and I'm vying for his spot! Heh...

So Misha and I got a lot of talking done yesterday and I feel my pain more wide spread now that I know he too has the same sleep cycle and "the wanting to do so many things that nothing gets done in the end" battles and problems shared by me as well as fellow Sara. Misha was also having a really good garbage day, he snagged himself a large vintage 1960's European crate and spotted a computer flight yoke in a trashcan for me (I'm really into flight sims). It works great, people throw away stuff too readily...but I can't complain if it's to my benefit.

The train back home took 15-20 minutes just to arrive. And when it did I was surprised it could still roll as it was fully packed with fat, sweaty, and smelly redsox fans (that I had to hug to fit) returning to their suburban hideaways. When I got home I went to check the mail and noticed my package (guitar strings) had arrived and been placed at the front entrance...not realizing in the excitement that the keys in my hand were only for the mailbox and therefore locking myself out. I spent the next good 10 minutes ringing random neighbors and trying to convince them that I really wasn't a terrorist...

In other news, I finally bought my first guitar pedal. It arrived today but I missed the delivery because the ringer is soft and now I have to wait till Monday for another attempt...This spoiled my otherwise good day.

It's almost astonishing how many mindsets, ideals, and sheer isms I have gone through in just the last four years. Since I was about 12-13 I slowly developed a broad enthusiasm for pseudoscience (of course I would have termed it otherwise). Through age 15, I rested a lot of my beliefs comfortably on quite incredible subjects: aliens built the Egyptian pyramids, Nostradamus was genuine, psychic powers had to be real, evidence of human civilizations on mars was credible, various so-called "mysteries" such as the Bermuda Triangle--the list just goes on. Granted I soon became just as interested in substantial science but of course with limited knowledge I couldn't tell the two apart. Curiously though, with pseudoscience came alongside conspiracy theories which successively meant stressed mistrust and questioning of the government.

So now I was a radical leftwing fundamentalist. Well I wouldn't be so overcritical as that; I was a 16 year old idealist aware of and outraged by injustices in the world, credibly practicing the activism I preached. This was a very new thing for me, you must understand, all my previous life I had arduously strived to conform and fit in to the mainstream (failing to ever reach the humble popularity I sought after). Questioning my reasons and positions until then had never dawned on me. This was a very key stage in my life: I had started thinking for myself. (Well of course the truth to that is only so accurate; in reality I was still conforming to something, but it was the empowering philosophy of such a new, open mindset that was critical.) I developed a ravenous hunger to learn, whereas before my interests didn't go much beyond sports and videogames.

Unfortunately that very drive to learn effectively exposed me to a lot of propaganda, promptly turning me into a plump extremist. I grew militant, angry, and worst of all a bit stubborn. I came as close as to becoming an anarchist, luckily my lifelong inability to fit in came at one of its greatest deliverances. Before long, I matured and grew more sophisticated, realizing acting on intellect was more advantageous than on emotions. I embraced more strategic and less indoctrinating philosophies and strategies, such as that of Gandhi and Ralph Nader (though that could be argued, I'm sure).

More recently, politics have become just another facet of my personality rather than comprising a flat wide surface of it.

Well, I think there was an underlying point I was trying to get at, if so it has slipped my mind. For now take comfort in the fact that I just acknowledged a significant portion of things that could be used against me...