In which I ramble and minorly bash sciency types
An evil ugly fat girl just nudged me off the computer I was previously using (and yes, reading blogs on) in order to use the scanner. So now I am sinking to a whole new low... pissily blogging from the Science Centre.
I ran into my friend Natasha a couple times in the past week, a miracle because she lives offcampus and does sciency things, whereas I live in my little den and lurk in the Barker Centre, and as we were discussing our summer, and the boytalk that naturally comes upwhen two likeminded girls get together, she commented that it was interesting sitting on the steps of Lamont Library. She hadn't gotten much people watching of the non-science centre variety in a while.
I've made my little trek here to drop off my Magic of Numbers homework, and I agree. Firstly there is the scariness of the upper floors. Who ever knew there were upper floors? In the elevator, you're suddenly faced with rows and rows of buttons to places you never knew existed. It borders on the Great Glass Elevator, without all the excitement. The lounge for the Mathematics department (where I wandered in to drop off my homework) is blue. Very blue. I think I would go mad. I like my little department. It's rather endearing in its smallness. I just realised that Thanos, my Greek mathematician ex, has to actually spend time there. He actively chooses to cavort among all that blue. Perhaps that accounts for... many things.
Also, there are more ugly people in here. I'm sorry. There are also some seriously pretty people, but the acne quotient seems to correspond to the amount of time spent hunched over in labs. Not that humanities grad students see any more daylight.
Whatever, I have a weakness for guys who can do math and science. The first thing that actually attracted me to the Greek, back in the day in the Cabot Science Library where we met late at night, was the way he scribbled away at his equations and then crumpled them up. It fit into some sort of romanticised notion. Also, he's cute.
And I'm officially rambling now. There is a really deeply beautiful girl in the computer cubicle on the other side of me. Korean, I think. Funky hairstyle that only Asian hair can really pull off, and cool glasses. Beauty mark on her cheekbone. Also great clothing. Gorgeous. I sometimes wish I could just go up to people and congratulate them on how good they look, without seeming creepy. It was bordering on hilarious in Milan. Beautiful girls swarming around, well-dressed in the way that only Milanese women can be, and I just was so happy to see them all being so happy and pretty.
Anyway, must go do research on acquiring a new computer now. My piece of crap laptop now only stays on for 20 minutes before overheating and dying. Anyone actually know anything about technology? Cheap, good technology?
posted by Alex @ 17:01
4 Comments:
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Alex - Just checking out your site. Thanks for commenting on my blog. Man, I'd give anything to be a student again. I think the whole acne/awkwardness thing is directly proportional to brain power or disregard to hygene.
Keep up the blogging!
Concerning the romanticisation of scientists and mathematicians: I have always considered this a peculiar practice. The temptation of conjuring up a Whig history of science is great, but conceptually perilous. The beauty of science lies in the fact that it is (almost) unique among specialised human enterprises in that the contributions - and a fortiori the quirks - of individual actors are irrelevant to the overall edifice, and are washed out, and made smooth, through the co-ordinated action of many over time. The key is really not that scientific progress proceeds from one Newton - a mind forever voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone - to the next. The key is that although scientists are personally as uninspiring, limited, petty, even outrightly blinkered as the next person, science presses along the many roads to Knowledge, the content of its discoveries reflecting the elegance of the universe we inhabit, untarnished by human interference. The scientist-figure should, therefore, make a poor candidate for a romantic hero (or even anti-hero), his or her deeds relieved of the onus of special historical significance we find in the deeds of creative artists and, on a more limited scale, political figures.
I have personally never harboured any weakness towards my fellow scientists. If anything, when they fail to be duly humble, they bother me more than other people do.
As for purely aesthetic considerations: if you control your experiment for the relevant variables, you will not observe a significant difference between the college science and college humanities populations. Probably, even just eliminating reporting bias would lead you to the same conclusion (because one is more likely to notice ugly people where one is looking for them). And that there is a proportionality relation between intellectual ability ("brain power") and social graces is an assertion grounded in stereotype alone, and not actual data.
*looks at the above comment* Uh huh.
Thought I'd mention that I did find myself a copy of 'Ender's Game' and managed to consume it quite rapdily during a slow day at work. I'm hooked. So, ah, just how many books in the series?
I too have a weakness for math/science guys, my previous guy was a computer science whiz and I'm now living with a PHD Molecula Biologist. *shrug* Maybe they act as a balance to our lit/humanity tendencies?
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