high on science

....creativity in science, as in the arts, cannot be organised. It arises spontaeneously from individual talent. Well-run laboratories can foster it, but hierarchical organisation, infelxible, bureaucratic rules, and mountains of futile paperwork can kill it. Discoveries cannot be planned; they pop up, like Puck, in unexpected corners.

....scientists are always wrong, yet they always go on. What makes them continue? Often it is addiction to puzzle-solving and ambition to be recognised by their peers.

....the technology needed to fill the mind with untruth, with a resistance to new learning and to anything that might conduce to improvement has been known for 5000 years or more and is known as "education."

- from 'High On Science', in I Wish I'd Made You Angry Earlier: Essays on Science, Scientists, and Humanity by Max F. Perutz

[ filed under: labrat + thewonderingstraycat + 9_lives_2002 ]

dreams

[071002] been having extremely weird dreams. last night I dreamt of thousands & thousands of big fat penguins coming ashore at East Coast Park & charging inland along a canal running next to Siglap Link near Laguna Park & building nests along Marine Parade Rd. My family & I were standing at e Bedok South Ave 1 entrance to Bayshore Park, & my sis & I crossed e road to get to e penguin nests. e first nest we reached was on e grass verge by e pavement opposite Lagoon View, & apart from brown mottled eggs that were cracked & a few small skeletons, there was what looked to me like a yellow adult-sized human brain with blue veins. there was a RMBR (Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research) guy in a blue T-shirt & jeans explaining something about that nest to another guy....

am not sure if this is e cumulative effect of: (1) reading about e WWII Normandy beach landings in one of e recent issues of National Geographic magazine, (2) seeing e big fat (almost a metre tall) stuffed toy penguin that Darwin brought to e SPS room, (3) reading about dissecting mice to obtain their brains for making primary cultures of hippocampal & cerebellar neurons, (4) celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival at Bedok Jetty along East Coast Park with my family - when we looked across e ECP highway to our old homes in Lagoon View & Bayshore Park, & (5) a recent bus ride that took me along Marine Parade Road & Bedok South Ave 1 - when I noticed e drastic changes along Siglap Link due to e new Victoria School campus construction site....

other weird dreams I had many years ago:
....of eating a single neverending strand of yellow noodle (e type used for fried Hokkien mee & prawn noodles) which flavour changed every 1 metre....flavours included chocolate, strawberry & vanilla....
....of coming across Cadbury chocolate for sale at $1.00 per 1 kilogram bar in a New Zealand Countdown supermarket, only to discover that all bars had expired some 17 years ago....

[ filed under: 9_lives_2002 + thewonderingstraycat ]