Science!

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Oh, and don’t miss Phil Plait’s wonderful explanation that science is imagination. Wonderful article explaining one of the oft-overlooked appeals of science.

I've said before that being able to play with a set of rules and see what you can do with them is a defining characteristic of nerds. That may be why we're so into science.

Comments

[beccastareyes]

This and a video someone made about open-mindedness and skepticism* are both awesome things that show what really goes on in scientists' heads. (Granted, some of it is idealized, since we are human beings).

* Open-minded does means 'consider all ideas', not 'blindly accept anything that crawls in your head. It points out a lot of times when a critic means 'be more open-minded', they mean 'stop disbelieving in my ideas because of lack of facts supporting it'.

Also, Cassini picspam

[shadesofmauve]

I loved Phil Plait's science/imagination article when I first read it. I like what you say about creative playing within the rules, too -- I was trying so hard to explain to my boyfriend the other night why I prefered creative modification to a few simple classes instead of being able to draw on thirty variant rulebooks.

Granted, the fact that I was having that conversation pretty much proves the whole nerd thing, regardless of which side I was arguing.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

On a related note, my mom just forwarded this to me (from the Criterion Collection newsletter):

JEAN PAINLEVÉ:
WET ’N’ WILD

“The wonders never cease in this superb anthology,” the New York Times’s Dave Kehr writes about the new Criterion three-disc set Science Is Fiction: 23 Films by Jean Painlevé. Lovers of Jacques Cousteau and, more recently, the high-tech nature docs Planet Earth and Blue Planet might not know it, but those glorious visions of marine life owe a debt to the pioneering work of Jean Painlevé. A scientist, inventor, and filmmaker with serious Dada issues, Painlevé took his camera underwater as early as the 1920s, and for six decades made daring and creative shorts about the creatures found there (and elsewhere). Hardly aloof field guides, Painlevé’s visually astonishing works find the wonder, beauty, eroticism, and savagery in such oddball beings as starfish, octopuses, sea horses, and jellyfish.

Love among the octopi: here’s one of the strangest, most tentacular images of lust Painlevé ever captured on film.

Painlevé’s films are as imaginative as they are scientific, and he continues to inspire artists today. Among his biggest fans is the band Yo La Tengo, which composed a ninety-minute soundscape for eight of his films, titled The Sounds of Science (originally commissioned by the San Francisco Film Festival and later performed live at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater). You can hear that score on the new Criterion edition of these magical films, which also includes an eight-part French TV series about Painlevé’s life and work.

[blackbyrd2.livejournal.com]

That was fun. I loved that you could tell the exact moment the fundies found the article.

There I go being mean again.