9^2 years ago today, both Burroughs’ Tarzan and Philip Francis Nowlan’s Buck Rogers made their newspaper comic strip debuts. In making the jump from prose to strip, the site of Rogers’ 492-year (15-year) cryptobiotic snooze shifted from Wyoming Valley, PA to “the lower levels of an abandoned mine near Pittsburgh, in which the atmosphere had a peculiar, pungent tang, and the crumbling rock glowed strangely.”
There’s a tiny store called Copacetic Comics in Squirrel Hill. It’s on Asbury Place, just around the corner and across the street from the Northumberland police station, and it’s easy to overlook. No big sign. The name is on a flier in the front window.
Then, wow, once you’re inside, it’s a cube about 15 feet by 15 feet by 15 feet.
“Things You Can Learn in a Comic-Book Store” by Rick Sebak, Pittsburgh Magazine May 2009
In other old, but, to me, new, news:
Dyson’s son, George, a technology historian, says his father’s views have cooled friendships, while many others have concluded that time has cost Dyson something else. There is the suspicion that, at age 85, a great scientist of the 20th century is no longer just far out, he is far gone — out of his beautiful mind.
But in the considered opinion of the neurologist Oliver Sacks, Dyson’s friend and fellow English expatriate, this is far from the case. “His mind is still so open and flexible,” Sacks says. Which makes Dyson something far more formidable than just the latest peevish right-wing climate-change denier. Dyson is a scientist whose intelligence is revered by other scientists — William Press, former deputy director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and now a professor of computer science at the University of Texas, calls him “infinitely smart.” Dyson — a mathematics prodigy who came to this country at 23 and right away contributed seminal work to physics by unifying quantum and electrodynamic theory — not only did path-breaking science of his own; he also witnessed the development of modern physics, thinking alongside most of the luminous figures of the age, including Einstein, Richard Feynman, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Witten, the “high priest of string theory” whose office at the institute is just across the hall from Dyson’s. Yet instead of hewing to that fundamental field, Dyson chose to pursue broader and more unusual pursuits than most physicists — and has lived a more original life.
“The Civil Heretic” by Nicholas Dawidoff, NYT 3-25-09
As a scientist I do not have much faith in predictions. Science is organized unpredictability. The best scientists like to arrange things in an experiment to be as unpredictable as possible, and then they do the experiment to see what will happen. You might say that if something is predictable then it is not science. When I make predictions, I am not speaking as a scientist. I am speaking as a story-teller, and my predictions are science-fiction rather than science. The predictions of science-fiction writers are notoriously inaccurate. Their purpose is to imagine what might happen rather than to describe what will happen. I will be telling stories that challenge the prevailing dogmas of today. The prevailing dogmas may be right, but they still need to be challenged. I am proud to be a heretic. The world always needs heretics to challenge the prevailing orthodoxies. Since I am heretic, I am accustomed to being in the minority. If I could persuade everyone to agree with me, I would not be a heretic.
We are lucky that we can be heretics today without any danger of being burned at the stake. But unfortunately I am an old heretic. Old heretics do not cut much ice. When you hear an old heretic talking, you can always say, “Too bad he has lost his marbles”, and pass on. What the world needs is young heretics. I am hoping that one or two of the people who read this piece may fill that role.
“Heretical Thoughts About Science and Society” by Freeman Dyson, Edge 8-8-07
Long before Climategate, the author, for what it’s worth, of some of the most entertaining pop-sci books I’ve read (From Eros to Gaia, Infinite in All Directions and The Sun, the Genome and the Internet) was calling foul on the climate modelers.
Here’s another Freeman’s take on climate change
and here’s yet another’s.
Have fun and cuídate.
is a supernatural thriller dealing with 9-11 conspiracy research. I tried to restrain myself, but I couldn’t not read it, nor can I now recommend it, unless you’re already into the series. Spoilers.