Action Figure Daniel

Author: Daniel

  • “The Hedgehog, The Fox and the Magister’s Pox” by Stephen Jay Gould

    Gould discusses how the conflicts between science and the humanities (religion) are fabricated to put an illogical conflict that should not exist and only drags down both. Instead, science and the humanities should learn to work together. The humanities pride themselves on having one single tactic that works (the method of the hedgehog) while the sciences pride themselves on having a variety of tactics that work (the method of the fox) and that both should learn from each other in order to propel their respective studies into the future. The Magister’s Pox was the method of creating the conflict so that they could remain in control.

    Interesting tidbit: Gould argues an unusual point for a scientist: that the perfection of the earth and the biosphere should do more to prove that there is a God than anything short of actually seeing Him. Evolution has one of two possibilities: that nature figured out how to do things by its self or that God put things into such a perfect organization and alignment that He did not need to continually intervene.

  • 200th post!

    This is my 200th post! Not a huge bunch mark, but I like to think of my previous 199 post as a (mostly) healthy contribution to society in general.

    I was just going to leave this post at the above, but decided to post something a little extra:

  • “Time, Love, Memory” by Jonathan Weiner

    This book is a history of the fascinating evolution of the field of molecular biology, particularly the ground breaking work of Seymour Benzer. It was interesting to note that this field has been growing so quickly that few students in the field today have heard of Benzer or his fruit fly experiments.

    Interesting tidbit: all fruit flies, and most other animals, have a built in “rest” mechanism that tries to put them to sleep in the afternoon. They think this is to encourage us to survive the afternoon heat and thus be more productive in life.

  • Whale Study (twice)

    Some time ago (last year) I did a whale study:

    I planned to make a cool Escheresk graphic with it (for a wedding gift to be sure) but I stopped working on the big picture graphic before it was done (whales do not fit together as nicely as butterflies, fish or birds).

    Recently, I was listening in on a phone conference for work. The meeting was quite productive, though my contribution was minimal (literally five minutes out of the hour and a half) though I did glean tidbits of important information that made listening to the call worth the time. As I was listening, I found myself bored. I grabbed some paper and made a real life origami whale study (with magnets on them so they could live on the refrigerator):

    Yes, the narwhal is my own genius variation on the whale pattern. By the conclusion of the call I had made two blue whales and two narwhals. By the end of the night I had added two turtles and two walruses. Sometimes I think that I have the best job ever.

  • Cheap posts

    Someday, I will complete a more interesting post (one of the ones that I have in draft that are waiting to be proofed, polished and published) but until then I am enjoying going through old works. There is something liberating about finally publishing something that I had written a while ago, recently rediscovered and can now publish (because, generally, these writings were written on my phone and thus had to wait until I got to a computer to be posted).