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Christopher Paul's Professional Writing Papers Christopher Paul's Professional Writing Papers

My Professional Writing Papers

Technical Writing ·  Exposition & Argumentation ·  Non-fiction Creative Essays ·  Grammar and Usage of Standard English ·  The Structure of English ·  Analysis of Shakespeare

Analysis of Literary Language ·  Advanced Professional Papers ·  The History of the English Language ·  First Internship: Tutoring in a Writing Workshop ·  Second Internship: Advanced Instruction: Tutoring Writing

Visual Literacy Seminar (A First Course in Methodology) ·  Language in Society (A Third Course in Methodology) ·  The Writer's Guild

Journalism

UMBC'S Conservative Newspaper: "The Retriever's Right Eye" ·  UMBC'S University Newspaper: "The Retriever Weekly" ·  Introduction to Journalism ·  Feature Writing

3D Mapping 3D Mapping

Weekly Responses to Reading Assignments and Rebuttal to Peer Responses

Science Writing Paper 1 ·  Science Writing Paper 2 ·  Science Writing Paper 3 ·  Science Writing Paper 4

Gender Language in Science Writing ·  Observation Journal

The Status Quo of Science: A Presentation



Table of Contents

Week 1  ·   Week 2  ·   Week 3  ·   Week 4  ·   Week 5  ·   Week 6  ·   Week 7  ·   Week 8  ·   Week 9

Week 1/Journal 1:

P. C. Paul's journal entry response to Cynthia Ozick's essay Science and Letters: God's Work-And Ours, George Orwell's essay What is Science?, Thomas Henry Huxley's essay How a Scientist Thinks, and C.P. Snow's essay The Moment:

Last update: September 5, 2003

         Science is the unraveling of God's work. God is the ultimate scientist. It's not that science does not have all the answers, but moreover that we do not have all the science. Science exists in separate islands within a huge ocean, but unfortunately because science exists in so many minute islands, there are very few who have found bridges connecting the islands. Here is the problem. Most scientists operate within a vacuum, on an island without being aware of the other islands and neglect to seek out bridges from one discipline to another. It is the unity of the entire system that is lost.

         Science is the observance of a result and then working backwards unraveling the result to determine its cause. Science is the acceptance that after pure repetition of a series of procedures, when followed correctly, the result will always be the same. As an example, if I stand an eraser so it stands as a long rectangle at the end of a chalkboard and roll a tennis ball at the eraser, the end result will be that the eraser will be knocked over by the ball. Science will then repeat this action thousands of times the exact same way until the scientist finally concludes that this is a law. The law science creates is based on a priori knowledge, that when I roll the ball towards the eraser, the ball will hit it thereby knocking over the eraser. By doing this, science has proved HOW something happens, but it does not explain WHAT it is nor WHY it is.

         Another example would be electricity. Using a copper wire we know that when we put a current at one end, a current will come out the other end. This is the excitation of each atom within the wire which gets them excited enough that the first bangs into the second, the second bangs into the third and so on until electricity comes out the other end. Similar to having a tube filled with bowling balls from end to end. If we take one more bowling ball and shove it into the tube at the right end, the last bowling ball on the left end will come out of the tube. If we were to do this super quickly the end result would be the similar phenomenon of electricity traveling down a wire. Ohm's law tells us that electrical Voltage is equal to the Resistance of the wire times an electrical Current. With this equation, given two things of the three things we can solve for the third unknown. Great! But it does not explain what electricity is, or why it is.

         In our time, science has actually become a whore to the federal government. Unfortunately, many scientists all too often falsify results in order to show productivity guaranteeing them that when they apply for the next grant they will be looked at favorably. If researchers are not producing and publishing results their positions at the universities become questionable because the universities rely on the money provided by federal grants. Universities that produce the most results receive the most funding regardless of whether it is true science that is being practiced versus being "junk science." Also many scientists are driven by the need to know without forethought of the implications and the consequences that may occur from the knowledge learned. Case in point; the atom bomb and cloning. The scientist were more concerned with determining if the impossible is improbable, if the improbable, probable, and that the probable can in fact be done, versus how the new knowledge may be applied.

         I too, have had the experience bordering on the verge of obsession when my mind becomes focused on the resolution of a problem. Most people I have known personally in the scientific community have experienced the same entrenched thought. This very well may be a personality trait in the sense that we are driven by our need to know. It's a very weary experience, but when enlightenment does arrive I understand what is meant by the experience bordering on the edge of spiritual enlightenment. I still remember the story Professor LaDante shared with us. When he was an Industrial Mathematician, he was obsessed with solving a problem he was working on for two weeks. He was driving down the Long Island Expressway, a highway similar to Rt. 95, in the left hand lane late one night. All of a sudden the solution occurred to him. Also at that moment he realized he was about to miss his exit. He veered across three lanes, got his Cadillac into the exit, but over corrected trying to straighten the vehicle out within the exit lane. The end result was that he wrapped the Cadillac around a pole. Of course he never forgot the solution to the problem. That's what I call obsession.

B. Broccolino's journal entry response to the same readings:

         I have to admit, I was unaware that so many differing opinions existed regarding the definition of science. I thought that the definition of science would simply be Webster's version, no more, no less. However, after reading the first selections in MacKenzie, I realize it is in fact the opposite.

         Each person holds their own view of what science truly is. I happen to agree with much of what Cynthia Ozick defines as science. She spends much of her essay discussing an essay from the 50's about the two cultures of science and literature and how they are different. It is very true in my case, where as I am a writer but I find it difficult to write about science subjects and make it something worth reading. I also appreciate her viewing science as God's work, and what God has put on this earth and science is the study of it. I think all too often people use the findings of science to further disprove the existence of God, and I understand that a lot of science disproves that the world was made in seven days and so on, but sometimes science attempts to make it impossible to have religion and be intelligent at the same time; I am intelligent, and I have religion.

         I also enjoyed George Orwell's point of view when he said that a scientist is no more objective than those in the humanities because again, people use science to their advantage and then say, "well it's science so it is right."

         My definition of science is this: A study of the aspects of life that can be proven by formulas and theories, separate from the liberal arts that is more subjective, but at the same time something that is open for debate.

P. C. Paul's journal entry response to B. Broccolino's journal entry:

         In response to your definition of science, I agree that it is a great deal more than what Webster's dictionary has to offer as a definition.

         I am in agreement with you and Cynthia Ozick in that science is God's work and that we as human being are attempting to unravel it all to figure out what makes it tick. I disagree with you on your claim that the scientific community attempts to separate God and science. This was a view that was held by scientists primarily in the 19th century where most scientists declared themselves either atheists or agnostics. In the later half of the 20th and now in the 21 century, many scientists will admit that as scientists and in their understanding of science they are more likely to admit that there is an omnipotent creator somewhere because what they observe is all too magnificent, awe inspiring, and all too elegant for one not to exist. On the other hand, religion, moreover organized religion, is a creation of man, but secularism is closer to what most scientists do believe. Henceforth, scientists, a good deal of them do believe in a supreme being, but have trouble accepting the descriptions depicted in many scriptures such as the Torah, the Holy Bible (Old and New Testament), the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita of Hinduism, and all the various explanations in the various Buddhist sects. It seems the opinion is that none of the books have it quite correct to them.

         George Orwell's points I had difficulty understanding where he was coming from but reading your post I get it now. You're both quite right in that science doesn't have all the answers, but also that may only be because we don't have all the science and we definitely lack all the cross-over's or bridges, if you will, that allow us to connect one scientific disciple to another thereby creating one unified system as a whole. Unfortunately we go through objective reasoning and begin slicing away at things and breaking them down to their components. Take a dog for instance, we break it down to a nervous system and a gastrointestinal system, so on and so forth, then we break it down further to molecules, then cells, then atoms, then electrons, protons, neutrons, then quarks and dark matter, until the components are so small we have completely forgotten that we are looking at a dog.

         On the other hand, when looking at Orwell, I do believe he is correct in that scientists should not be put on a pedestal as being the most intelligent as it does depend on how intelligence is defined or what really is the correct definition of intelligence.

         What is also being currently learned with the advent of computers, that Poincare was correct in that a great deal of what we see in nature behaves much more complex formulas than what was thought and explained through Newtonian Physics and the rigors of the calculus. Newtoian physics is just a little too neat and tidy and at a point does being to break down in its explanations. Poincare is as close to being the father of Chaos Theory as we can get. His mathematics was terribly sloppy, but his conjectures are being proven through the use of computers as they become larger and faster. The limitation with computers today which may always remain the limitation is that they are finite machines, in other words there are only so many calculations they can perform and that there is a point to where they can no longer retain all the numbers in order to complete the computations. So far only the human mind has this ability. Computers are known as discrete machines and follow the rules of discrete mathematics therefore they will never be able to perform the continuous functions, only the discrete ones. The point is that they can only retain so many zero's and one's until they have a memory overflow or overrun.

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Week 2/Journal 2:

P. C. Paul's journal entry response to Evelyn Fox Keller's essay Gender and Science: An Update, Shirley M. Tilghman's essay Science versus the Female Scientist, Alexander Calandra's essay Angels on a Pin, and Hajime Karatsu's essay Improving the Quality of Life through Technology:

Last update: September 12, 2003

Respond to the following questions and statements:

To what extent does technology impact the quality of life? Support or refute Karatsu's claim that technology produces affluence which provides a better quality of life.

         Technology has a vast influence on the impact on the quality of life. Look at the Western Culture versus Third World Culture. Death rates explain it very clearly as do infant mortality rates. With the technology better quality medicines can be manufactured, more effective means of transporting water and food occur, the growing of crops becomes more efficient, better health care and diet becomes available. In full support of his claim and that it is quite obvious that the two are yin and yang. With technology there is the advent of affluence and with increased affluence there is newer more advanced technology.

         Technology and Affluence drive each other pretty much in the same way that we get an electric motor to do work for us. One turns the other. If you reduce the affluence you will also reduce the technology. The funds will no longer be available slowing down the progress made by technologies. As the advent of new technology drops so does the flow of money therefore reducing the affluence of a nation.

         The two are not in perfect proportion to each other, but they certainly do feed fuel to each other so to speak.

A. Taury's journal entry response to the same readings:

         The question of technology and affluence is rather ambiguous. One Could argue that technology produces affluence, or, perhaps the presence of affluence creates an environment that nourishes technological advancements. Karatsu states that when statistics are analyzed, a country's high economic figures are a direct indicator of advanced industrialization (p.66). The entire world is constantly progressing, an looking for new and more efficient technology. Therefore the nation that possesses the latest and most advanced industrial achievements will achieve affluence. But to be able to fund the research and hire the work force to keep technology progressing, it takes money. Once a new achievement has been discovered, other countries can take that information and perhaps improve on it. The object is to be the world leader in that industry, so as to create a booming economy for the citizens of the country.

         "Quality of life" is a term that can be interpreted in many different ways, depending on what part of the world you are from. Of course, there are the basic necessities such as food, water and shelter, but where is the line drawn? I would also consider running water a necessity, but there are many parts of the world that do not have that luxury. Another example is brought up by Karatsu in his text. He talks about pollution in Japan, and the measures they have had to take to make their environment clean again(p.67). The monetary cost of this process was high ($15 billion), but what about the quality of life factor? I would much rather live in an environment with clean water and air than ride around on superhighways sucking in all kinds of carcinogens. But the views of the American and Japanese qualities of life are very different. The Japanese appear to place a high value on their environment, whereas Americans seem rather apathetic about the environment around them, placing more value on possessions rather than air quality. Karatsu states that these advanced anti-pollution technologies that started in the 1970's are now being picked up by other countries (p.67). Hopefully the rest of the world can work to improve the quality of life for it's citizens, if not just the quality of the air and water surrounding them.

P. C. Paul's journal entry response to A. Taury's journal entry:

         In response to A. Taury's journal, "Once a new achievement has been discovered, other countries can take that information and perhaps improve on it." This happens to be what the Japanese have done with our technologies. That is not to say that Japanese scientists and engineers are not also brilliant in their achievements as I would venture to stick my neck out on this and say that the Japanese are still quite accomplished at building a better quality small car than the rest of the world, but in a great many cases they have also been very clever re-engineers to a strong degree. The idea of Total Quality Management is purely a creation of the Japanese and stems from core beliefs ingrained within their social culture.

         "Of course, there are the basic necessities such as food, water and shelter..." we are both in full agreement with this because third world countries have these basic problems which in part stem from a lack of funding and technology to improve people's life styles. I n response to your question, "but where is the line drawn?" It seems in this country the line is drawn at one's personal demise, or in other words, "he dies with the most toys wins!" This in itself is a rather sad pseudo-philosophy which only fans the flames of materialism and egoism. That if you own a good deal that owning more is better, while the Japanese subscribe to a different philosophy which is inherent in how they view the world and their place in it. Their belief is that man is a part of nature and because of this man must remain in balance with nature or be at one with nature. Western society maybe because of male dominance takes on the role of dominance and controlling nature. These are two completely opposing philosophies.

         The American Indian also believed in this way of existence. It is questionable whether if their population numbers had been much higher than they were, would they too have run into the same problems we are having with being in harmony with the environment. The only way to ascertain the answer I assume would be to create a computer simulation modeling American Indian's lifestyle, increasing the population numbers to what we currently have in the United States, clicking run and see what happens.

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Week 3/Journal 3:

P. C. Paul's journal entry response to Alvin M. Weinberg's essay Can Technology Replace Social Engineering?, Sally L. Hacker's essay Technology and Eroticism, and Witold Rybczynski's essay Controlling Technology Means Controlling Ourselves:

Last update: September 19, 2003

Respond to the following questions and statements:

Discuss your attitude toward writing-related technological fixes. For example, the computer is a large-scale technological fix, with spell-checkers, word finds, editing functions, and on-line dictionaries serving as small-scale examples. Do you rely on any of these fixes? How did they affect your writing?

         This brings to my mind an old Dilbert cartoon that I have taped to my computer printer. In the picture is a dinosaur walking to his desk carrying a typewriter. He casually says he's going to send off a letter to his friends. that computers are not for everyone. As he sits at his deck he continues speaking saying that computers are not for everyone and that he prefers his good old typewriter. In the next frame gasps and says, "Oooops!. In the last frame he says, "I hope I can correct that before all my friends evolve into birds!"

         Even though this was written as a funny, it does have some validity to it. Before the advent of computers we had to do everything on a typewriter. Yes you could make corrections, but you couldn't insert images, graphs, colorize a document, perform word searches, spelling checks, perform elaborate page layouts, change fonts, or manipulate the position of entire paragraphs.

         Today, we can actually do our own desktop publishing and in many cases, pre-press layout. Now of course as it always is with human nature, once we have the technology to do a group of things and have learned how to use them we find that this is no longer satisfactory and have then have the desire and need to do more.

         We should keep in mind that the computer and the entire industry are still in their infancy. Let's compare the computer industry to the automobile industry. The computer was developed in someone's garage in about the late 1970's. The automobile was developed in someone's garage somewhere around 1895. The numbers probably are not exact, but it's the premise I'm going to make that is important. As of today, computers have been around for the sake of argument twenty four years (2003 minus 1979). The Automobile has been around for 119 years! (2004 - 1895) Technologically speaking this may not be a fair comparison. Considering that in 1979, most technologies including manufacturing had significantly evolved in such a way that the evolution of the computer may be significantly faster (a much shorter time line) than the automobile. My point is that when the automobile was evolving, most other technology and manufacturing was also evolving so progress may have been slower. This is probably true, but for the sake of reducing the research element, let's say that the time line is the same. Therefore, the computer of today is basically in the same position of technological evolution as a 1919 Mercedes. (Also for sake of argument let's choose probably the most advanced automaker at the time.) Obviously the point is that the computer industry is in its infancy.

         Most of us weren't even alive then and have to rely on historical account, but these automobiles as are our computers were extremely unreliable. Both have inconsistencies, incompatibilities. With computers the hardware for the most part is unreliable, communication cables, storage methods, software, firmware, communication services are all unreliable. The only thing at a computer desk that IS in fact reliable is the operator (with the exception of teenage boys.) So when an anti-technologist looks at this their argument is that the machines are not working for us, but that we are working for the machines. This was also true when automobiles were in their infancy. Now most of us don't think twice of taking a new automobile cross-country because we feel that the automobile is reliable enough to make a round trip without any mechanical breakdowns.

         With computers, most of us have all of our work in duplicate and triplicate form whether the work is stored on magnetic media (i.e., hard drive, floppy, zip, jaz, etc.), hard copy form (a paper printout), or on optical storage (CD, CDRW, Bernoulli drive, etc.). We can't trust the information to be saved in just one place because of the failure rate of all these devices. The greatest strength of a computer, the fact that all data is stored magnetically is also it's Achilles heal.

         Computer systems like a great deal of the technology around us, are built from sub-systems and the more complex the system, the more sub-systems there are. With the creation of more sub-systems and components the more likely there is to be a point of failure. This is just a statistically inherent problem. Case in point would be the space shuttle. It's impossible to expect the system to perform flawlessly all the time. It's an inevitable technological problem.

         As far as relying on the fixes that have come with the advent of computers, I would have to say that my writing style has vastly improved. I can now safely type out my entire thoughts while sitting at the keyboard, save them and reread them on another day. It has vastly improved my papers because I can now manipulate entire documents several times and even save multiple copies with different thoughts within them.

Respond to one or more of the questions Hacker poses in the "Contradictions and Questions" section of her essay.

         In response to "Does the Buddha rest as easily in the transistors of a computer as in the petals of the lotus?" posed by Robert Pirsig in his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a very bizarre look at Buddha himself. I remember reading the book and just recently have read a great deal of Asian Philosophy. This statement by Pirsig is really quite ignorant when I look at it now. Actually it is a very poor attempt at satori, or sudden enlightenment.

         Siddhartha Gautama Shakyamuni was the first Buddha. Buddha simply means, "the enlightened one." Siddhartha was actually a Hindu who one day was determined to break through in his meditation to become enlightened. Form there he began to lecture on his envisionment of enlightenment to anyone who would listen. He developed a few disciples along the way. What he had started was a heterodox darshana or a split away from the beliefs of Hinduism. One of his thoughts was that only sentient beings could posses the Buddhist nature. This is why Buddhists and Hindu's do not eat animals. Animals all poses the ability to think and have awareness while insentient beings do not. Insentient beings would be things like plants, rocks, earth, transistors computers, etc. The lotus flower is a creation of nature and man is also a creation of nature. This places man in a position of having to be as one with nature. Technology is not as one with nature. Technology is the complete inverse of nature and a creation of man. This would be true of most nature until we cross over into Biology, medical science, genetic engineering as some examples. Here we being to cross the bounds and manipulate nature. I believe there Pirsig might stand a better argument.

         What do we do with the knowledge that both computer and transistor, but not lotus were designed and shaped by military needs? Is this knowledge really that important that it should be placed on a pedestal and glorified or condemned as most of us do. It's really neither here nor there. In as much peace is what we all wish for, it is hardly obtainable because humans have an ego. As such it is the human ego that creates all the suffering in the world. If all of man could eliminate the ego through meditation and discipline then we would not need to have armies. Considering that at this point there are almost 4 billion people on the Earth, that is an immense number of egos. Also considering that some people's lives revolve around rudimentary need still such as the need for food, shelter, comfort warmth, water, and light, I don't think it will be anytime soon that the problem of the human ego will be resolved. Therefore, we will continue to have a need to defend ourselves. I don't think this is necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, it's just a thing.

         Considering that the military is here to stay, it is from here that most of our resources are spent. But also from here is where technology trickles down because it's the military that is of a primary concern if you enjoy the life you lead, That is a life of freedom and there is always someone out there who is jealous of your freedom and would like noting better than to take it away from you. The technology that most of us enjoy today in a great many cases has trickled down from military applications. Also, a great deal of it has worked its way into law enforcement. I'm sure that most people would agree that even if they don't like police per say they do appreciate their neighborhoods being safe. One way to keep them safe is through the use of technology that has trickled down through military applications.

         In answer to if artifacts of technology contain politics what about the technologies and practices of eroticism, technology is a male oriented realm as is eroticism. It is only since the advent of the sixties and seventies that both have began to loosen slightly, but again both are still tremendously male dominated and with a larger female influence in technology, the eroticism of technology and the face of technology would be vastly different.

D. Mercado's journal entry response to the same readings:

         Personally, I believe that these technological fixes only make man more dependent on computers and less capable of working independently. Computers have facilitated the most mundane of tasks--among them, writing essays--to the point where one can type up an essay riddled with errors, "correct" them and submit it to a professor. Dependence on technological fixes goes hand in hand with the easy environment of instant messaging and chat rooms. For starters, I can easily say that I never was really taught the dynamics of certain punctuation marks until I was in my last year of high school. Before that, semi-colons were like an exotic dish: something to prod at and sample with caution. Once I learned how to use them, I put a few of them through my work since then. It wasn't until this spring that I was lauded by a teacher who told me that while I use these semi-colons correctly, I use them a little too frequently. She also told me that finding a student who knows how to use semicolons is quite a rarity.

         Based on my learning experiences in grammar class and with that one teacher in high school who taught me how to use these punctuation devices, I condemn writing related technology fixes such as spell check, grammar check and online dictionaries. Put simply, children aren't being taught the proper way to use punctuation and Microsoft Word's inaccurate grammar check only helps the user destroy his work. Despite being taught the right way to use semicolons, I still have green wavy lines under all of my sentences that utilize this sort of punctuation when I'm using Word. Word's spell check isn't a terrific help either, as it tends to incorrectly label words that are spelled the right way. Online dictionaries are a good source of information, but the user doesn't even have to have any idea as to how the word is spelled--a good dictionary, like the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, will give a list of words that closely match the incorrectly spelled word. However, these dictionaries aren't much good for interesting information like word etymology. Put simply, unless the user is properly educated in the correct way to spell words and write a paper, he will inevitably continue getting things wrong should he depend on these technology fixes.

P. C. Paul's journal entry response to D. Mercado's journal entry:

         In rebuttal to D. Merdaco's commentary, I agree that computers have made us all more dependent upon computers. Case in point, is it unacceptable to claim that you do not have access to a computer, crashed computers are not an excuse, lost or deleted files are unacceptable, lack of email functioning is inexcusable. Henceforth, for every possible technological problem one must have a backup of some sort or pay the price.

         In addition, the reliance upon MS Word spelling correction and grammar check are more of a crutch than a time saver. Case in point, MS Word cannot distinguish between the correct usage of the two words, "which" and "that" and in most cases MS Word balks either way the words are used. Also if a word is spelt incorrectly but happens to be the spelling of a different word which makes no sense in the sentence, MS Word simply ignores it and never picks it up as an error.

         The dependence of the spelling correction and grammar check in MS Word is similar to the problem of using high powered calculators throughout the sciences. Scientific calculators have reduced the operations to the point that a highly trained two year old Reese's monkey can plug in data and produce an answer. At times, all too often, students fail to see that the answer they have makes absolutely no sense because the idea of common sense has been lost. Case in point was an exam given by a physics teacher who wanted us to report how high an old fashioned coil heater, otherwise known as a radiator, rose off the ground with the given data. Students reported answers in feet versus inches which when utilizing common sense, considering the temperature difference that existed, common sense dictated that for the coil to have risen in a measurement of feet, so much heat would have to have been dumped into the devise that the radiator would have exploded before ever rising that much off the floor.

         I am in agreement with D. Merdaco's claims, there is no substitute for a careful proofread and a grammatical handbook at one's side.

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Week 4/Journal 4:

P. C. Paul's journal entry response to Marjorie Dorner's essay Pulling Contest, Robert J. Samuelson's essay Technology in Reverse, Neil Postman's Invisible Technologies, and Loren Eiseley's essay Science and the Sense of the Holy:

Last update: September 26, 2003

Respond to the following questions and statements:

Define "Hubris," then discuss in relation to reading Lewis Thomas's "The Hazards of Science."

         Overbearing pride or presumption; arrogance: "There is no safety in unlimited technological hubris" (McGeorge Bundy). Arrogance in the sense that one person believes that they are the one and only one who can disseminate what is in the best interest of all to the point of being God, having the absolutes, when none exist and above question or reproach. The one person who out of the whole of humanity, is the first human being who has been given birth to that is infallible; a work of absolute perfection where nothing is perfect.

         Thomas's view and support of his argument are quite interesting. What I have thought about many times is the indisputable fact that the "biological sciences" or the "Sciences of Carbon Based Life Forms" is the one science that has received the least attention as far as exploration. I often wonder why this is which I think becomes more of a social/political exploration through the history of mankind. Within this exploration, the role of dominance by the male species in the sciences will definitely profoundly have had an influence as will politics of societies throughout the history of mankind, as will the influences of religion and religious leaders who are no less political than politicians. Bear in mind that even in these fields, the predominant force is the thinking of men. As you can see I think you can understand where this exploration will lead which is what if women had been more involved in the sciences from the beginning, had religion played less of a role in the dominance of social politics and some other various aspects and influences that we are now only beginning to consider.

         My thought on this is that it may have lead to science and technology not based on the chemistry of the basic elements, but science and technology based on organic chemistry and more based on living organisms than inanimate objects.

         This is not the focus of Thomas's essay though. I believe that he is correct and that there once again, as there has been in the past, a notion or an exercise in human control to bring a halt to exploration before it actually begins. The notion being that from the pessimistic view and also from the view that man is essentially evil and must be controlled at all costs lest he may go amuck without thought of the consequences and that because of this someone or some legislative body must come in and decide for all what is best.

         It's all very simple and we've seen it time and time again throughout our history. Man should not muck about with that because he just shouldn't. Why? Because he shouldn't. It's absolute. There is no disputing the word "shouldn't." It's like saying "there is a God." Why? "Because I said so.", or how about, "If man were meant to fly, he would have been born with wings." I guess that means the wheel should have never been invented or discovered either because we don't have those either." Man has a natural inclination towards curiosity and that which separates him form the rest of the animal kingdom which is the ability to imagine. "To ask maybe the two most powerful questions of all or even the simple notion of being able to question. The two powerful questions which have so few letters in them; Why? and what if?

         The question of whether we should continue with genetic research is really no longer of importance, as was say medical doctors grave robbing in the 19th century to perform research into the human body. Hell at high tide isn't going to stop scientists at this point because the technologies exist to perform the research and it will be done regardless of funding or laws or any other type of political interference whether by people with good intentions or evil intentions. It will be done and it will be done after hours in places where they can't be interfered with.

         Tragic accidents will occur as they always have. The more complex the systems become, the more likely there will be a failure along the way. I think what is more important is not to allow ambition and ego to lead the way for this is where safety and precautions become of little concern. This is where hubris rears its ugly head in the asking of the question of "Can we do it first?" takes precedence over the question "Can we do it?"

R. Desai's journal entry response to the same readings:

         Before I answer any of the above mentioned questions, let me provide my reaction to Thomas' excerpt from "The Hazards of Science." My response may cover some of the questions asked and if not, I shall answer them in the second paragraph. Thomas points out his difficulty in defining hubris and how it can be tamed, so to speak. He notes that, in his opinion, it is unacceptable to stop short of learning about certain things because people are fearful of what kind of action that knowledge can spawn. I wholeheartedly agree with Thomas and everything else he says with regards to scientific hubris. And if that so called "hubris" is what has enabled us as a society to progress so much, then by all means I hope more scientists are indeed "guilty" of hubris.

         Essentially, I am defining hubris as the drive to uncover uncharted islands (so to speak) and gain more knowledge (about anything and everything.) However, I am not extending that definition to imply that a negation of ethics is also acceptable. Obviously, any professional, be they a scientist or economist, has to draw a line between wanting to advance their cause and wanting to advance their cause at the cost of violating certain fundamental ethics. Allow me to quote Thomas' last two lines which I think are very true: "This is the greatest danger for our species, to try to pretend that we are another kind of animal, that we do not need to satisfy our curiosity, that we can get along somehow without inquiry and exploration and experimentation, and that the human mind can rise above its ignorance by simply asserting that there are things it has no need to know. This, to my way of thinking, is the real hubris, and it carries danger for us all."

         In response to whether I have ever been guilty of hubris, I must say That I have not. I enjoy debating with other people over different points of view. Nor have I ever been unjustly accused of exaggerated self-confidence of pride. There really is no distinction between hubris and egoism. Both terms define man's inflated arrogance. And both can lead to great accomplishments. Whether or not those accomplishments were conceived wrongly is a wholly different matter.

P. C. Paul's journal entry response to R. Desai's journal entry:

         In response to R. Desai's journal entry #4 maybe the distinction between egoism and hubris is that hubris-ism doesn't work very well as a spelling in the English language. All kidding aside, ego and egoism I believe is more an internal thing if you will and that it is a concept describing a self survival mechanism in all of us, but that hubris is not a concept, but an action that is applied eternally. Therefore it is ego this is within a person such as myself, and hubris is a action or method that I may use in order to satisfy what my ego sees as beneficial to my want of satisfying pleasure.

         From reading R. Desai's response to Thomas's statement that real hubris is the assertion by some individuals that "there are things that humans need not know." This in my thinking is that same ego rearing its ugly head and instead of admitting and voicing a real sense of fear of what might happen for protecting the self and mankind uses hubris as a defense mechanism striking with anger driven by fear. Case in point a good defense is sometimes a better offense. If I take a good hard strike I just might kill my opponent with one strike and live to fight another day. It's also attempting to exercise control born out of fear that mankind in general is bad, dumb, and without self-control and that because I cannot exercise control over my ego that means that others may have the same problem but do not admit to themselves that that can't exercise control.

         As far as hubris, I don't think I could be accused of the aforementioned crime unless you consult with my ex-wife who would jump at the chance to recite endless stories of such counts while sipping tea and enjoying sympathy. Haha. (Yes, it was meant as a joke.)

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Week 5/Journal 5:

P. C. Paul's journal entry response to Mary Shelley's excerpt (Chapt. 4) from her novel Frankenstein, Thomas S. Kuhn's essay The Route to Normal Science, Jane Goodall's essay The Mind of the Chimpanzee, Stephen Jay Gould's essay Blacks and Indians Treated as Separate, Inferior Species, and O. B. Hardison, Jr.'s essay Charles Darwin's Tree of Life:

Last update: October 3, 2003

Respond to the following questions and statements:

Postman says, “A question, even of the simplest kind, is not and can never be unbiased.” What does he mean? Do you agree? Give examples to support your view?

         The way in which a question is formulated baits the answer. Look at a sentence in the physical sense for a moment. It’s kind of like a boat on a lake. The sentence rides on top of a lake full of answers. If we take the question mark and turn it 180 degrees, it looks like a fishing hook. So the questioning sentence is a boat floating on top of a lake full of answers and we cast our fishing hook into the water to see what we can fish out as answers.

         Where the bias comes in is in what kind of bait we place on the hook. Place a bloodworm on the hook; you’ll get a fish or answer that likes bloodworms. Put a fly on the hook and you’ll get a fish or answer that likes flies. The fish are the answers. Depending on how we bait the question will influence what kind of answers we’ll receive.

         Specifically, Postman asks the question, “Thomas Jefferson died in the year_____________ .” This question is more difficult because we’re really not sure what is expected as a typical answer. The answer could be alphabetic or it could be numeric. It could be one word or several words. One could argue that because there is only one dash line that only one word or number is expected. Counter to that argument one could say, well that may not be what the person who designed the test meant. Maybe they don’t want a number, maybe they are implying the use of the Chinese calendar and the expected answer is “in the year of the cat.” Even if it is not a series of words, it still implies that there are two possible ways of answering the question; either alphabetic or numeric.

         When Postman asks the question “Thomas Jefferson died in the year, a)1788, b) 1826, c)1926, d)1809. Now we know the tester had a numeric answer in mind. This has severely limited our choices if you’re pessimistic and if you’re optimistic it has made things easier. If you we an American, and weren’t particularly dim, you immediately could rule out c)1926, because you know Jefferson was one of those guys dressing up in wigs running around about the same time a George Washington and if Jefferson did die in 1926, he was at least 200 years old. Right away that seems ridiculous; unless you’re not from America then you might have a legitimate excuse. Now we’re left with three possible answers. If we think hard about this, 1788 doesn’t make sense either if one can remember who the first president was or that he was in office till about 1788 and that Jefferson was also President but maybe we can’t remember if he was the second or third. So now we’re down to two possible answers. As you can see the question is biased in the sense that it leads us down a particular path of thought that one cannot deviate from if one is to truly attempt to answer the question correctly.

         As with the fishing analogy, basically that is what the question is doing. It’s fishing for an answer, but not just any answer. It’s fishing for the answer that will take the bait. So in essence we’ve “baited” the question.

         I do agree with Postman especially when he talks about questions and statistics. I am currently working towards my degree in statistics, but I have not studied Methodology yet. I did work with a post graduate PhD and had found that Statistics takes a world of grays and turns it into black and white by the way the questions are structured. Mathematics cannot measure shades of grey, but it can measure black and white logic. Black equals zero and white equals one. By formulating closed ended questions, we are forced to respond with yes or no answers. Close ended questions leave no room for longer answers or responses. Open ended questions lead to open ended answers which lead to tones of grey which mathematics cannot answer. On many a questionnaire we sent out, some questions had to be removed sometimes because the question was worded in such a way that it created ambiguous answers which would give us neither 0 nor 1 and would be thrown out.

R. Desai's journal entry response to the same readings:

         The first thought that entered my mind when I read the question above Was this: everything is relative. Thus, any question that one asks is bound to have a foundation that is also relative. However, I do not quite agree with Postman’s accusation that even the simplest question is biased. Granted, if you consider a question regarding statistics of some sort, your answer is going to be based on statistics which were created and manipulated to illustrate a certain point. Still, that “bias” is inevitable and will always be present. After all, it is human nature to have an opinion.

         Postman brings up an example of a question about when Thomas Jefferson died. He words the question in two different ways and says that the multiple-choice version is easier to understand. I have no intention of arguing which version is more comprehensible. My only point is that such a question as that is not biased.

         Consider a mathematical word problem, even one as simple as this: If Jenny had four apples & she gives two to her best friend, how many Apples does she have left? The question is obviously based on a number system created by man, but that does not imply that the question is biased in any sense. It is not asking for any opinionated answer, but rather a number.

         Essentially, it seems to me that it would be more appropriate to say that a question is relative to something else rather than saying that all questions are biased.

P. C. Paul's journal entry response to R. Desai's journal entry:

         In response to Reshma Desai’s journal entry I am going to have to say I 100% disagree with your statement that a question is not biased and that it is relative.

         I agree with you that everything here in the physical world is relative and that it is devoid of absolutes other than death and taxes. If I ask the question “Do you believe in God?” your response will be 1 of 3 choices. Either yes I do believe, regardless of anything else involved, or No I don’t believe, or the 3rd... I don’t know. There’s nothing relative with this question. Another absolute question “Is it wrong to murder?” Note I did not say kill, because kill has a different meaning. I think you are going to have to look high and low to turn up a society on this planet that does not believe absolutely that murder is wrong, regardless of religious belief or lack of belief. The reason being is that society could possibly hope to exist if it were not for this one check of sanity regardless of who’s law it is. Otherwise a society would exterminate itself.

         I think the word, “manipulated” in referring to statistics is a poor choice of words. Those who are attempting to fulfill an agenda or have no morals at all will manipulate the questions, not the statistics in order to generate the answer that they want. In other words, it’s not the statistics that manipulate the answers, rather the questions asked in order to collect the neat little answers of zero’s and one’s to create an answer that meets their design. If the question doesn’t give you the answer you wanted, simply claim that the question was ambiguous and throw it out of the analysis.

         The Jefferson question is certainly biased, because in giving you 4 answers to choose from it has now been narrowed down for you that the answer that is expected or required from us is a numerical answer and not a alphabetic answer. By giving you four possible answers the question is baiting the person answering. It’s already telling you that out of these four possible answers only one of these is right. So by probabilities, you have a 1 in 4 chance of picking the right answer. With the fill in the blank, you have as many choices as there are words in the English language, because I an assuming because the question is in English the reply is expected in English, but with a fill in the blank, I can’t even be sure that it true.

         The problem with the Mathematical word problem is just this. It is a mathematical problem translated into English. You are translating from one language to another and as we all know when we translate languages sometimes meanings get lost. If we write this in the language of mathematics and not the language of English it is perfectly clear what the answer is because it is not in fact a question, but a statement. It is a statement in mathematics stating the equivalency of two things.

         4 – 2 = 2

         Not only that but it doesn’t matter what labels man assigns to this statement. An animal which has no comprehensible language that we know of knows full well that,

         4 – 2 = 2

         It’s very simple. Animals can count. They can distinguish between 1, 2, 3, 4 sometimes even higher. Ask any animal mother who has given birth. Take one baby away without her seeing you take the baby away and almost in a second she is fully aware that she has one less than she had before.

         Plus let me state that 4 – 2 = 2 is a mathematical statement, a sentence, an equivalency. “This equals this.” It is not a question. It does not say “this equals what?”

         In addition, you could also ask a question and get back an answer that is so obscure and biased that you have to go back and determine what the original question was. Say as in the question “What is the meaning of life, the universe and everything in it?”

         The answer is 42.

         Now the problem is we now have the answer but have to figure out what the question was.

         What do you get when you multiply 6 x 7?

         As you see the answer is biased based on the question you ask and the question is biased on the answer you give.

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Week 6/Journal 6:

P. C. Paul's journal entry response to Stephen Jay Gould's Blacks and Indians Treated as Separate, Inferior Species, O. B. Hardison, Jr.'s essay Charles Darwin's Tree of Life, and Jay David Bolter's essay The Network Culture:

Last update: October 10, 2003

Respond to the following questions and statements:

Many consider Goodall to be among the greatest scientists of our time, yet her style frequently causes members of the science community to question her work. Discuss Goodall’s style, the similarities among critical reviewers of both Goodall and Williams’ styles, and offer your thoughts on whether their styles invalidate their science. Be very specific; use details.

         Goodall and Williams styles to not negate the scientific facts that they present. Both write in what is a creative non-fiction style. In Non-creative writing genre the author is allowed a certain amount of latitude to use adjectives and draw parallelisms to what might be considered analogies which border on unorthodox observations. But is this not what is expected of science? To take the status quo and say, “Now wait a second, that’s wonderful that you arrive at this particular conclusion which supports your hypotheses, but in order to maintain validity of the experiment, only two alternatives may be considered, therefore is it not an extension of human curiosity to derive a third, fourth, ..., nth hypotheses in order to uncover what is the truth? Is not science the relentless pursuit of what is the truth?

         The subject matter and the type of science that they are conducting is subjective by nature. They are both working with living things which is completely different from working with inanimate things. In animate things because of their lack of individual will and intelligence negates them from being analyzed subjectively. They are objective things and are better suited for analysis by objective means.

         These woman are analyzing animate beings possessing qualities much like our own. Science believes that humans are the top of the evolutionary chain, therefore does it not make sense to draw parallelisms with creatures lower in capabilities to ourselves? Yes this is a subjective science, which in itself negates itself from science because science is objective. Or does it? Their observations of birds and chimpanzees are clearly objective in that they have recorded their observations in an objective manner as all sciences claim. Or do they? Because we call our observations objective is this not in some way false? We by nature are subjective creatures, our senses only tell us part of a story and the information that we are receiving is also subject to mood, style, personality, and health at the time of the observation. When two subjects are used in the collecting of data, no matter how subjectively they attempt to collect the data is there not some subjectivity built into the observations based on the fact that no matter how we try, two individuals will record slightly different information? Either will be exactly the same as the other due to perceptual differences from one human being to the next. So as individualism is built into the equation of analyzing the subjects so too there is individualism built into the scientists themselves due to the inherent nature of being creatures of the same species which does draw us together as having similar characteristics and some similar responses to stimuli, but no single observation will be exactly the same from one identity to another.

         The author seems to be hardcore scientific writers, and both use data that other scientists might consider subjective in content. Each writer presents accurate details and facts, but more so in a narrative tone, which helps non-science creatures like me understand the nature of their work.

         Goodall personalizes her subjects much more than Williams, calling them by name (Fifi, for example) and attributing human characteristics to each chimpanzee. She spends much time with her subjects in the wild, and gets quite emotionally attached to each one, calling them by name and exchanging hugs with many. Goodall wants the reader to believe in the chimpanzees’ ability to have emotion and think through situations.

         Williams, on the other hand, calls her birds by proper names, although she does tend to share her emotions about many of them. For instance, when she found a dead swan, she treated it in the same respectful manner as she would someone special, such as her mom. Williams cleaned the beak of the swan with her saliva, and gently re-positioned it so that the body was in perfect death form. From her writing, I believe Williams equates respect for the dead swan with the same respect for another human (her mom). Throughout “Refuge”, Williams uses many references to the Great Salt Lake when telling the readers about her mother’s good times and bad. As the lake rises and falls, so does her mother’s physical condition and moods.

         I believe both Williams and Goodall are criticized because of their style but, thankfully, each shares the world of science to readers in a way that is understandable and interesting.

         Williams and Goodall’s drawing comparisons between the birds and chimpanzees in comparison to humans is objective. We are all biological creatures that are carbon based which is probably why it makes sense to draw parallelisms between us and them. If we had some other type of life form to observe, say methane based life form, we would find it impossible to draw comparisons because of the inherent nature of the very chemical difference that would make the two creatures substantially different.

         Goodall assigns human names to all of her subjects which makes sense because now we are recognizing the chimps as individuals with specific differences in how they (the chimps) observe and interact with their world.

         Williams names her birds by their species names which is easy for me to follow because in observing birds, there are so many of them and because of their spend it is difficult to catch physical differences in them that would allow us to specifically identify one unique individual from another. If you could somehow adorn them with little “thingy’s” on top of their heads that would help distinguish one from another, then I guess you could begin to analyze behavior form individual to individual. With birds they have to be analyzed as a flock or say a communal mentality. This is not much different than pairing off humans into nationality groups. So we have a class which is humans and we have a class which is birds. Subdividing this we then break humans down into categories of nationality and birds into species. To subdivide further, we could subdivide humans by say the towns or cities in which they live because their surroundings will change their lifestyles. So with birds we subdivide them into subspecies.

         I do not observe a problem with Goddall’s or Williams’s rhetoric or poetic style for it also draws parallelisms to Darwin’s recording of his data in works such as, “The Origin of Species” and The Voyage of the Beagle.” During Darwin’s time scientists were in a clash over the theories that Darwin was drawing from his data and not his rhetoric. Darwin also wrote in a poetic style which I think when dealing with nature it becomes inherently difficult to write in an objective sense.

         1) Our own direct connection to nature and the oneness that cannot be removed or nullified.

         2) Our own spiritualism that also cannot be removed or nullified.

N. C. Malson's journal entry response to the same readings:

         I don’t believe the writing styles of either Goodall or Williams invalidate their science. Neither author seems to be hardcore scientific writers, and both use data that other scientists might consider subjective in content. Each writer presents accurate details and facts, but more so in a narrative tone, which helps non-science creatures like me understand the nature of their work.

         Goodall personalizes her subjects much more than Williams, calling them by name (Fifi, for example) and attributing human characteristics to each chimpanzee. She spends much time with her subjects in the wild, and gets quite emotionally attached to each one, calling them by name and exchanging hugs with many. Goodall wants the reader to believe in the chimpanzees’ ability to have emotion and think through situations.

         Williams, on the other hand, calls her birds by proper names, although she does tend to share her emotions about many of them. For instance, when she found a dead swan, she treated it in the same respectful manner as she would someone special, such as her mom. Williams cleaned the beak of the swan with her saliva, and gently re-positioned it so that the body was in perfect form in death. From her writing, I believe Williams equates respect for the dead swan with the same respect for another human (her mom). Throughout “Refuge”, Williams uses many references to the Great Salt Lake when telling the readers about her mother’s good times and bad. As the lake rises and falls, so does her mother’s physical condition and moods.

         I believe both Williams and Goodall are criticized because of their style but, thankfully, each shares the world of science to readers in a way that is understandable and interesting.

P. C. Paul's journal entry response to N. C. Malson's journal entry:

         In response to Malson’s journal entry I can understand and agree with her claims to the fact that Goodall and Williams’s writings are not hardcore scientific writing, but they are not intended to be. I disagree that their data is subjective. In my response I addressed this very point. To consider Goodall’s and Williams’s observations would mean that all scientific observation would have to be considered subjective.

         As I had also mentioned in my journal entry, Goodard’s subjects lend themselves to being identified as individual subjects, yet Williams subjects cannot be individualized just because of the inherent nature of the physical numerical count of her subjects.

         Malson’s conjecture that Goodard wants us to believe that her chimpanzees have emotion and think through situations is erroneous. Goodard does not want us to believe, she is telling us straight out that she knows they have emotions and are thinking creatures which is a great deal different than believing. Knowing says that we are 100% sure that our hypothesis is correct. Believing is the same as saying that we are 95% confident that this is true but there is a 5% chance of error. Here I think Goodard is 100% sure the chimps possess these qualities and that either you accept this claim or refute it.

         Williams on the other hand shares the emotions of the birds and draws parallelisms between her mother and herself because inherently they are all living creatures and we all bear the same similarities of birth and death. I don’t find her treatment of say the swan or the bird caught in the wire as peculiar. I myself have stopped on the highway from time to time for road kill in the middle of the highway, probably for respect for the creature and once having been a living thing that its demise should not be that of road pulp in the end.

         As Malson said, Williams and Goodard’s writing styles make science more palatable to the general public presenting it in a poetic prose and also introducing a humanism into it which allows non-scientist the ability to feel connected to the information rendered.

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Week 7/Journal 7:

P. C. Paul's journal entry response to Dorothy Nelkin's essay The Press on the Technological Frontier, Langston Hughes' essay Radioactive Red Caps, Sammuel C. Florman's essay The Feminist Face of Anti-technology, and Ruth Schwartz Cowan's essay From Virginia Dare to Virginia Slims: Women and Technology in American Life:

Last update: October 16, 2003

Respond to the following questions and statements:

Is Nelkin on target in thinking "the press does not report on technology as much as it promotes it, deeming it the new frontier?" How does she support her argument? What do you think of her conclusions? [Note also her use of figures of speech.]

         Nelkin is on track in thinking the press does not report on technology as much as it promotes it. She cites such statements as “a pioneer in the midst of the high-technology prairie…blazing the trail for the educated around the world.” This statement obviously is meant to conjure images of covered wagon teams crossing the prairies of the mid-west. Reflections of the old pioneer days of the mid 1800’s. Nelkin also cites headlines such as “Join Us in Charting New Frontiers”; “Technology That Knows No Limits”; “Our Sights Are Trained Just Over the Next Horizon at the Elusive Borderline Where Imagination and Technology Intermingle.” Headlines such as these clearly manipulate the senses and create images of blazing the great frontier and pushing forward into the great beyond. In some ways I wish science was as exciting as the headlines claim. A good deal of science is dry, boring, grunt work, data collecting and sheer routine.

         With operations such as Dr. Christiaan Barnard’s heart transplant surgery back in 1968, the press was absolutely enthralled with the reporting of this revolutionary surgery. Once the patient died shortly after the surgery, the articles written were extremely short possibly because of having to report failure or maybe the failure is not quite as exciting as venturing to do something that hasn’t been done before. In terms of a scientist, the failure actually is just as exciting because it leads to more questions and investigation on why something failed. We learn more from mistakes, errors and failures than we do in successes.

         Nelkin supports her argument by quoting various headlines and text from articles that clearly point to her observations. In 1982, Dr. Barney Clark undertook the procedure of putting the first mechanically driven artificial heart into a human subject. “Journalist accounts of the operation were flamboyant and optimistic,” according to Nelkin. Text and headlines read, “dazzling technical achievement,” “an astounding medical advance,” “the blazing of a new path,” and a medical milestone.” Nelkin’s research of headlines and text support her claim very well.

         Nelkin concludes that “this style of reporting often reflects the activities of aggressive sources of information, as well as press perceptions of what readers want to hear.” The press all too often reports in such a way instead of reporting the news, they put a twist into it creating a bias in order to push a particular agenda. By doing this it assists others who are weak minded to create a position for them on which to stand and argue from. Her choice of the word “polarizing” is very well applied here describing how the press reports science news. There are only two positions; a success or a failure. It’s just too black and white. Successes in the eyes of the press do lead to pushing hopes and beliefs and the failures the press publishes as disillusionment. Unfortunately, the press does not report on what was learned from failures. This is probably due to the fact that at the time of failure, scientists know very little as to why something failed. As our technology expands so does its complexity which makes it more difficult to click your fingers on the spot and say, “It failed because of this…” Our science has become a complex mixture of systems which are dependent upon each other so failure is now more a chain of unsuccessful events which lead to a catastrophic failure. To determine the cause of failure now takes months or years to determine and the cause is usually not just one particular event.

R. Krauth's journal entry response to the same readings:

         Well, is this the same as asking if the press is honest, truthful and unbiased? While those are the IDEALS of journalism, they may not 100% be reachable. Is there anyone who thinks that ‘what the readers want’ is of any less concern than ‘all the news that’s fit to print’? A quick glance at the papers shows a Sun story today reporting on China’s first astronaut as a “hero”. In her nine page essay, Nelkin has 36 references to magazines and articles that bear out her position. Yes, she is on target but is her point based on an assumption that the press is neutral on other topics? MacKenzie says Nelkin wants the press to cover technology and science in a more balanced manner. Over the 23 years since the publishing of this piece the press has certainly covered and even exposed many sci/tech scandals and problems. But often the reporter is quoting proponents of the discovery, technological advance, or new product in their articles.

         It would be really interesting to compare science and technology reporting with business reporting. For instance, today’s Carroll County Times has a long article on the closing of an Oklahoma Wrangler Jeans plant. One Economist is quoted as saying: “…more employers are seeing the downturn in demand as an opportunity… to position themselves to be competitive when demand comes back”, in other words to relieve themselves of the burden of a large payroll. How beautifully neutral and un-strident the phraseology used. Further in that article another economist comments: “In this recession and recovery, we had layoffs but no recalls and I blame that on structural problems, which means we shouldn’t expect a rebound in employment any time soon”. The coolly objective and emotionally distant language used in describing the destruction of careers and livelihoods through business decisions never ceases to amaze me. I’d say the press often sensationalizes science and technology, both the pro and con, and downplays the human element on the business pages. I wonder why.

         Again today in the Sun, there is a long article on the FDA recommendation to allow silicone breast implants to be marketed again after an eleven year hiatus. This is a well balanced article that tells both sides of the story. I think there is a predominance of this kind of reporting in the fields of science and technology. While Dorothy Nelkin’s criticisms are substantiated, the origin of the problem may not be the press, but our society and the values which rule it.

Sun. “China’s first astronaut returns; flight ‘a success’”. P12A Carroll County Times.

“Temporary cutbacks shift jarringly toward permanence”. PD4 Sun.

“FDA panel would allow silicone breast implants”. P3A

P. C. Paul's journal entry response to R. Krauth's journal entry:

         In response to Krauth’s comments, it is true that journalism is no longer in the position of “just the facts, ma’am.” but is continually pushing an agenda. This is a new occurrence that has taken place since the 1960’s and a holdover form the Viet Na era. Before this journalism was a great deal more objective in its reporting. Now you find that there are publishing houses that either lean to the right or to the left in their reporting or slant their style of reporting to meeting the objective of either group. Newspapers such as the Baltimore Sun lean to the left in their reporting and someone like the Washington Times leans towards the right in reporting.

         In your observation of science reporting versus business reporting, science is something that affects our lives in many ways today creating divisions of ideology, ethics, morality and divisions of religious thought. Business on the other hand is projected as more objective and being without these particular biases which is simply not the case. Business writing and reporting attempts to divorce itself from the human element by using the banner, “It’s nothing personal, it’s just business.” This in itself is a falsehood, because it is rarely just a matter of business but more of a political struggle. Remember wherever there are people there are politics. This covers all institutions and disciplines, whether business or science.

         Krauth states, “While Dorothy Nelkin’s criticisms are substantiated, the origin of the problem may not be the press, but our society and the values which rule it.” Here, my impression is not that society and its values decide on the reporting, but moreover that the press decides what society should think and what values it should have according to a particularly small group of people who have the power to report what they think society should be thinking.

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Week 8/Journal 8:

P. C. Paul's journal entry response to Ray Bradbury's essay The Veldt, George E. Brown, Jr.'s essay Technology's Dark Side, and Amy Hempel' essay In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried:

Last update: October 24, 2003

The next series of journal entries be especially aware of changes you note in the ways we communicate, gather, socialize, and write. This week's selections in MacKenzie look at gender, specifically women and technology.

             ·  Summarize the positions represented on women in technical fields and in use of technology.

             ·  Form a reaction, pro or con, one of the author's positions.

             ·  Discuss the author's support of the viewpoint you select.

             ·  Is it valid?

             ·  Is it current?

         I found the essays by Samuel C. Florman and Ruth Schwarts Cowan particularly fascinating, but I will concentrate more on Samuel C. Florman’s more. My reasoning is I was once intended to train as a mechanical engineer and knew a woman in school who was being trained as a civil engineer. The outcome was quite interesting.

         Samuel C. Florman takes the position that most women are anti-technologists (borrowing from Robert Persing, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”) for the most part and to this day avoid the “Hard Sciences” for the most part. His point is still valid and still current. There are more women mechanical, electrical, civil and chemical engineers than when I first began attending college back in 1975. The numbers of practicing women engineers are still very small and these fields tend to remain small.

         I am going to ignore the statistics Florman cites because they are from 1984 which are quite old in my mind. Interestingly enough, this is exactly the period of time I was beginning the first of my studies in engineering taking the base science classes required for all engineering disciplines; Calculus, Physics, and Chemistry. Within these courses there are still many different disciplines that are going in completely different directions other than engineering, such as BS’s in Mathematics, Physics, Biochemistry, Computer Science and Biotechnical engineering. Within these courses there were a few female students, but for the most part there was a slight male dominance. For instance, in a class of 35, there would be 20 males to 15 females. This citing may be highly inaccurate, but the point I’m making is out of these women as an example that were in chemistry class, 99% were going to take organic chemistry after Chemistry II, because they were going into either the biological science, vetinary science, pharmacology, or into medicine. Women who were in differential equations were either going into engineering, computer science or mathematics. Here out of a class of 35 there would be at most 2 women. Hence, there was a dramatic change. When one attended Statics and Dynamics courses (God know’s why electrical engineers have to take this), again the most women you would see in such a course was 2. Case in point is that few women were going into the field of engineering in the eighties even with the women libers having had children, hence the first generation of female children having been skillfully trained in women’s liberation from birth were now entering college making known to the world their career choices as liberated women. They were still avoiding the male dominated field of hard core engineering. That being civil, mechanical and chemical.

         What struck me in his essay was the citing of the fact that for the most part the field of engineering is a field that is dominated by young men from low income to low middle income class families. At the time I hadn’t thought about this but it struck me when I read this that this was quite true for the most part. Most of my friends in engineering school came from such families and my friends and for the most part, most of their fathers were men who worked with their hands. My own father was an exception because he was a commercial artist, but when one thinks about it, he too worked with his hands and wore a white shirt to work so in a sense he was an anti-technologist who worked with his hands. Funny but on weekends he’d be home working on the house and all kinds of projects working with wood and power tools. Later on in life he switched over to hand tools similar to what the Amish used. His philosophy was that wood is still a living material and as such each piece of wood is different from the next because it is fro a tree and each piece of wood is not necessarily from the same tree. Each piece had it’s own characteristics and grains even if it was from the same type of tree because each tree went through its own experiences in living and growing. What he meant here is that each tree was subject to different temperatures, soil types, winds, light water and nutrients causing it to have different life experiences. Therefore working with wood is more challenging because it is made by nature, or if you wish, by the hand of God. Metal on the other hand is predictable in it’s grains and textures and is made by man. Therefore a piece of steel which is cited as having 10% carbon is going to be similar if made in a Pittsburgh steel mill or whether made in a Detroit steel mill. The carbon content is going to vary by such a small amount because engineers carefully monitored it and saw to make sure this fact remained true.

         I have strayed somewhat so allow me to bring this back into focus once again. Women have the natural ability and purpose to give birth. Men do not. I know, like I’m telling you something new, but because of this biological difference the act of creation is the same as giving birth in the sense there is the feeling of having breathed life into something. A woman breaths life into another human being an animate thing, a man by nature cannot do this and for the sake of augment let’s just for the hell of it say this is the answer to the male frustration of not being able to procreate. Now if we just consider for a moment that it was a man who came up with the notion that women have “penis envy”, which most women refute as being ridiculous, then similarly, in the same argument a woman could very easily say that a man has “womb envy” and that the very act of building an automobile, a high performance engine, a robot, whatever a man builds that is inanimate but seems to exhibit characteristics of being animate, is his frustration coming out based on the fact that he cannot have a baby and instead takes inanimate things and makes them, breaths life into them making them animate. Philosophically and psychologically I think this argument does work. Now, having said that considering women, they don’t have or feel this need to create something that is inanimate because they can create something which is animate. It’s called motherhood.

         Going back to the economic aspects, I’d have to say that most women from low and middle income families who still have fathers in the family and were blue collar workers just having seen what he does for a living and what it has done to him as a human being I think is also enough for most women to say, “That is not something that I admire and it is something that my father did out of necessity for me. I am expected to aspire to something better than that.” For the most part, in this country, most parents wish for their children to have a better life than they did which usually means a completely different field of employment than their fathers.

         Now even though Florman did not talk about this connection, I will. There is an interesting association with civil and mechanical engineering that most people in the field will say that they like the smell of fossil fuels. Considering that you’re quite often in some capacity working with gasoline, oil, grease, kerosene, and diesel fuel. Women in our classes for the most part, if you asked them either had a parent in the field which made then accustomed to the smells or they had at attraction to them. People who these smells do not appeal to tend to stay out of these fields. It’s the same way with people who like the smell of soil. They usually go into fields that they can be close to soil. This in some way may also be a reason why women to not go into the fields of engineering because they don’t like the smell of fossil fuels except for maybe gasoline. This is quite speculative on my part but intuitively I think there may be some validity to this.

         Returning to my female friend who studied to be a civil engineer. Not surprisingly, within 5 years of having been in the field as a professional, she went into teaching the subject and began to follow other pursuits. Her outward response to me for this change was that she found engineering to be spectacularly boring at the bachelor’s level. All you do is non-creative 2 year old Recess monkey work for the master’s level and PhD employees. You do grunt work like plugging numbers into a calculator or computer because you’re not trusted with any higher level math or thinking beyond algebra. She also said the only ones in the field that got the design work, the real thinking and creative stuff was the PhD’s say the entire airplane for instance who would hand down the work to the master’s level who did a great deal of the system stuff say the landing gear and then the bachelor would get the nut that held the wheel onto the axle of the landing gear. Hence, in a large company, the grunt engineer most times hadn’t a clue as to how what he or she was working on fit into the “Big Picture.”

         Inside, maybe what she wasn’t saying was that she had finally become detested of men in general and found that they would not allow here to play with them on a level playing field. I.e., when it came down to it she was seen as a serious competitor now not as an attractive women in college looking for a husband who was going out to get a good paying job if you came from a middle income family. Hence, now she was just another shark in the pool and a weaker one at that psychologically compared to men who had been trained in sports how to compete without having to think about it. Before going into the working world, she enjoyed the company of men more so than women because she could not find other women like herself, she claimed that were not shallow. Please keep in mind that I am deliberately focusing on a great deal of the typical stereotypes because in as much as we would like to think that they are not true, they are still true. Some social conditioning has changed much since the sixties, no matter how hard you work towards change.

N. Malson's journal entry response to the same readings:

         Samuel Florman writes an interesting essay of how women make up a low percentage of engineers, but his statistics are somewhat outdated and his viewpoints more appropriate to the year in which the essay is written. However, I do agree with some of his comments regarding the lack of encouragement to women wishing to enter technology fields, such as engineering.

         He even admits to thinking “these girls are not going to become engineers, it’s simply not their style… They will not become engineers because it is beneath them to do so. It is a question of social class.” He, like others, formed an opinion regarding the ability and interest of “upper class” women. He goes on to admit that “it may not be realistic to expect women to break down class barriers that were created mostly by men,” and “For, in a man-made world, how can women achieve the equality they seek?”

         In that regard, I agree with Florman that the world has been directed more by men than women, simply because of the evolving roles of women. Only recently have women entered the work force in larger numbers, seeking positions previously held by men.

         Although there have been strong successful women throughout history, their numbers have been small until recently. I believe women are making great strides in technology related fields. For example, the UMB Assistant Dean for Information Technology is female and several of her upper level staff are also women. This year’s entering class of medical students is comprised of 65% females, which is an encouraging sign that women are entering traditionally male-oriented fields.

         Ruth Cowan’s essay raised the question “was the female experience of technological change significantly different from the male experience?” In answering the question, she referred to women as bearers and rearers of children, workers, homemakers, and anti-technocrats. Her comments regarding technology created for women not being recognized as much as other technology was fascinating, as I had never considered the inventions of the baby bottle and carriages as technology.

         I agree with her when she stated “we do not usually think of women as bearers of technology change, nor do we think of the home as a technology locale (in part because women reside there.)” When she addresses the topic of women as workers, I believe she is absolutely on target regarding the gap between male and female salaries, as well as job classifications. Women still tend to earn less than their male counterparts in many technological jobs. Female scientists are typically given less laboratory space, and can earn thousands less than male scientists. Although the gap is getting smaller as more women enter science and technology related fields, it still exists, even on the UMB campus. Cowan commented on the statistics proving that job classifications shifted from being male dominated to being female dominated between 1900 and 1960. One example of a job classification which shifted from male to female was the clerk position. In the 1800’s most clerks were men. In the early 1900’s and with the invention of the typewriter, these positions shifted towards women, and lower pay.

         The technology that created the typewriter also created a disparity in pay for the same position. I agree wholeheartedly with Cowan when she states “thus, technology change has been, at best, a mixed blessing for women. More jobs are open to them that they are fit to perform, but many of those jobs are at the very lowest skill and salary levels...”

         Women are making strides in the technological and science-related fields, and I have great hope that the trend will continue for generations to come. Stereotyping that now exists, as detailed in Cowan’s section on women as anti-technocrats, is alive and well, but hopefully will diminish as more females earn top positions in technology fields.

P. C. Paul's journal entry response to N. Malson's journal entry:

         In rebuttal to Malson’s journal entry, I agree with some of this but not all of this. We here at UMBC are providing strong encouragement for women to go into Information Systems and also go out to the middle schools to explain what they do. I graduated from this curriculum here at UMBC and selected it because of its outstanding reputation in the Baltimore/Washington area. The point I’m going to make is that it is not Computer Science which is more math intense and also Computer Scientists are more concerned with the software and the computer hardware itself. They are less inept dealing with people. On the other hand, IFSM is all about working, managing people and computer systems. We are the buffer between the bits and bytes. We can speak both languages human and computer so it is for us to act as a buffer between the hard core programmers and the users. We try to determine what the users want and then get the programmers to make it for the users, in such a way that the users feel comfortable with it. We are the people who are humanizing computers. Not the Computer Science people. If they still had it their way, only they and mathematicians would still be using computers.

         The point I’m making is that this a field well suited for men and women on an even playing field. There’s no doubt that from birth we train women differently, so they become more fluent speakers and can think, process and speak much more quickly than men and usually have better social skills with people than most men. So in my mind, Information Systems is the “Soft Science,” similar to sociology, but combining people and machines, and Computer Science is the “hard science” with little room for humanism.

         65% of medical school students are women is what Malson said. This points to exactly the point that Florman is making. Medicine again in my mind is a “Soft Science,” dealing with living things, people who are not exactly predictable. Things of the “Hard Sciences” are quite predictable and when they are not, it’s usually either something is wrong or something very exciting and new is happening. The point being 65% women only supports Florman’s accusation and observation that women are going into more prestigious fields, especially if they have to spend that much time and money on an education. So you might go for the gusto and go where the compensation is. Engineering doesn’t pay well enough considering how many years of study you have to put in (usually 5 years now), how hard you have to study, because the teachers expect their students to be able to think their way through a brick wall, and how little compensation you get in the end. It’s just not worth it.

         As far as comments on baby bottles and carriages as being inventions, well the bra was too and so are sex toys. Strange I know, we really don’t think of them as “inventions”, but they are. Even rubber nipples for the baby bottle are inventions. I think it’s easy to forget because we’re just so accustomed to them. It’s easier for us to think of microwave ovens as inventions in this day and age and DVD players and plasma TV as inventions. If we go back, way back, the fork, bobby pins, safety pins for that matter are all inventions. Some are just so wholly useful and commonplace that we forget that there had to be a time when the didn’t exist and either it was done differently or it was done without it or not at all. Even tampons had to have been a great leap forward.

         Again, I do agree with Malson that no, we usually don’t think of women in association with technological change and yes, Cowan’s observation of kitchens as still being the point of slavery to women is a fascinating observation. Malson and I I’m sure can remember from the fifties the visions of the future and how the kitchen and the house in general was going to be fully automated and practically self sustainable without human intervention. 40 years later culturally, there are more men and women living alone and if not the spouses are working at even harder paces than before, so in effect we are all still enslaved by that stupid kitchen even n the age of industrial robots. It’s still difficult to understand why we haven’t still made that leap forward. I know some people like to cook which is good for them, but we all hate to clean. So where’s the freedom?

         Even as much as we try to change the Status Quo, it still remains the same. In jobs that men do, white women are still paid less than men and black women are still paid less than white women. As so on and on it still goes. The thinking of the men who are above and make the hiring choices is still the same. An ex-friend of mine said it to me and I couldn’t believe my ears, but considering he was a scotch and water, cigar smoking, Anglo-Saxon beefeater it really didn’t come as a surprise. It was a surprise to hear that this reasoning still goes on. At the time he was dying to be an entrepreneur and was going out of his way to practice the part in all aspects of his life. He said to me, “Of course I’m not going to pay the same salary to a woman as a man. Even if she’s not married today, eventually she will get married, get pregnant and disappear for a bit. I need someone who’s going to be on the job everyday and 40 to 60 hours a week. That’s why I need a man doing the job and he’s worth more pay, also because he doesn’t get sick once a month.” As I said I didn’t expect anything less, vulgar, derogatory, or chauvinistic to come out of his mouth. He was just stating his true thoughts and his true bigotry, and ignorance. From him, I wouldn’t expect anything less.

         Malson, mentions that she hopes women will continue to make great strides and they will. All races and colors will eventually, because you can only keep people down for so long until they rise up to be accepted as equals. It’s still going to take a long time. My prediction is about 300 years according to what we’ve historically seen. It’s going to take quite a few generations of retraining for it to happen, but it will happen.

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Week 9/Journal 9:

P. C. Paul's journal entry response to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's essay On the Fear of Death, Ruth Hubbard's essay Test-Tube Babies: Solution or Problem, Carol Tavris' essay The Manufacture of "PMS", David L. Wheeler's essay Scientists Worry about the Implications of Genetic Testing for Inherited Disease, and Randy Shilts' essay Reunion:

Last update: October 24, 2003

Bradbury is always a wonderful read. In this section of MacKenzie you consider technology's impact on culture. Does technology play an important role in child rearing today? How do Bradbury's choices of settings, images and conflicts in "The Veldt" speak to this topic?

         I remember seeing this on the SciFi channel very late at night a while ago. I couldn’t stand it. It was a little to extreme to have any possibilities.

         My answer is going to sound rather wishy-washy because I’m going to say yes and no.

         Technology does currently play a big role in child rearing. Please excuse my ignorance as I’ve never been a father nor will I and it’s been a very long time since anyone around me has had babies. In addition it’s been about three years now since I’ve been around any children. Some things I may say may be antiquated, ignorant, or just outright wrong. I’m out of my league on this one.

         We have electronic room monitors which allow us to monitor sounds in the nursery. This I think is quite useful and based on pure speculation without having done some research; I would think it would aid the reduction of infant crib death. Rubber nipples, baby bottles and formula, even rather old technology at this point have eased the mother’s burdens in some ways. So has prepared baby foods. Cribs have changed dramatically when it was discovered that the cribs of say thirty years ago were considerably more dangerous considering today, many things that are engineered are being designed ergonomically. I’m sure that high chairs are probably designed with safety factors built in. Car seats would be an excellent example. They have dramatically changed in the past thirty years and so have baby strollers. All of these are very highly designed with both users in mind, that being the child and the adult. Improvements such as wheels that swivel in all directions the size of the wheels and ease of transport, i.e. simplifying the procedure to collapse their size. In my day wheels were fixed to either roll forward or backward creating immense hardship for the parent in attempting to navigate a stroller in restricted space. They also fold much more easily for storage in an automobile trunk. A very significant change is the size of the wheels. The wheels are much larger than before which makes them easier to roll over rough surfaces and negotiate over curbs, the best being the ones joggers use which almost have 20” bicycle wheels. This has been a vast improvement. What is peculiar about the size of the wheels is wasn’t this obvious to engineers thirty years ago? The larger the wheels, the greater the maneuverability of the stroller.

         On the other hand, I did also say that my other answer was no, technology does not play a big role in child rearing. Case in point, video games, VCR’s televisions, and a great deal of the technology around children is used as a substitute for parenting. In my time it was the television. The television was a substitute baby sitter. By placing the child in front of the television and leaving programming that would command their attention a parent could be in the household doing other things. There are many aspects to this such as information from the television that children absorb, but without adequate processing. I’m addressing things that are of an adult nature, violent nature or that are ignorant stereotypes which a great deal of adult comedy is comprised of. Even things that seem benign such as “The Flintstones” or “The Honeymooners” are filled with antiquate visions of husband and wife role models and what is the ideal nucleus family.

         A great deal of toys that are manufactured, especially high tech either reduce or eliminate the elements of adolescent creativity and imagination. Most video games rely on noting more that hand eye coordination and lack any stimulus towards the development of creativity. No matter how high tech toys become, I have trouble imagining a substitute for such things as blank paper and crayons, small toys such as basic dolls and toy cars. Toys that are still simple in nature but rely on creativity and imagination of the child to make them come to life.

         My point here is that technology can be used by parents to avoid their obligations in performing their parental duties, such as nurturing, educating, reprimanding, engaging children physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually. All too often technology is seen as being the panacea for things that only the human element of a parent can provide.

         The panacea that I have mentioned is the exact point I believe that Bradbury is trying to get across to us. The children constantly go off into the nursery by themselves, more than likely not to be seen for hours. The parents rely on this machine or technology so they can continue to lead their adult lives to the fullest capacity ignoring the responsibilities of parenting. I believe this is exactly why Bradbury gives us that unexpected twist in the closing moments of the story with the parents locked into the veldt with the hungry lion approaching and the children safely on the other side of the entrance to the nursery. It is this very twist that in a very horrible way gives the parents their just deserts. It’s also the nonchalant behavior of the children that is also very striking. The parents were never around for them to begin with so for the children the absence of the parents is no different to them than any other time in their lives and so the children carry on without the parents as they always have.

hi3's journal entry response to the same readings:

         I feel that technology does play an important role in child rearing today, but does have some negative aspects as well. Technology makes humans tasks so much easier than the past, including raising children. The web has thousands of web sites with educational advice on raising children. Every year there are new educational games and toys for children to play with. The interned allows children to explore, however, it does have negative outcomes as well. The interned exposes children and makes them vulnerable. It allows child predators to make contact with the children.

         Children are may also be able to log into x-rated sites. I feel that Bradbury's view on this topic is very similar to mine, however I do believe that his example is at the extreme. He wrote that children depend on technology and therefore are unable to do the simple every day tasks such as brush their teeth and comb their hair. Bradbury feels that parents abuse the technology and spoil their children. This results in the children getting caught up in technology and relying on it every minute of every day. By that time the parents realize what they had done but it is too late. Technology becomes apart of the childrens' everyday lives and they are unable to live without it.

P. C. Paul's journal entry response to hi3's journal entry:

         Great minds think alike. I see that we are in agreement that the role of technology in child rearing is a double edged sword. Technology in some cases has made life easier than in the past creating more leisure time for us, but in the same token it has also enslaved us. In my mind our technology is still in its infancy because instead of the machines working for us, it seems most of our time is spent in working for the machines.

         Great minds think alike. I see that we are in agreement that the role of technology in child rearing is a double edged sword. Technology in some cases has made life easier than in the past creating more leisure time for us, but in the same token it has also enslaved us. In my mind our technology is still in its infancy because instead of the machines working for us, it seems most of our time is spent in working for the machines.

         This is more of an aside. In many cases the old tried and true method is sometimes the best method. Case in point; during an exam your mechanical pencil jambs. The ignorant thing to do is to struggle with the mechanical pencil and clearing the jamb. The smart thing to do is bring a pocket full of sharpened god old fashion wooden pencils.

         I agree that the Internet is an extremely useful tool in terms of sharing information. But as with all technologies they can also be used for evil and perverse means. This is not to say that technology itself is perverse or evil, but as long there are people who are predominantly good then those people will create and use technology for good purposes. Those who are predominantly evil and perverse will create and use technology for evil and perverse means.

         Wherever there are people, there is politics.

         Yes the web provide a more efficient method for pedophiles (the perverse) finding their victims. But why is that? The reason is a lack of parental supervision. Computer time, just as television time, down time or any other children’s time should be monitored. This doesn’t have to be as a police state method, but can be done in such a way that it can be fun. It’s called responsible parenting and parental/child engagement. The computer should not be in their bedroom or any other closed room. The computer should be in the place where the family spends the most time regardless of the room’s name (i.e. the den, the living room, the play room, I’ve seen kitchen/dining rooms that were so large, the computer and television were in that room. Also the computer should be password restricted with a parental password. When the parent is available or should make themselves available, then the child is allowed on the computer and for a limited time.

         Yes it is very easy for children to find porn sites because many are free, you just click “I’m over 18” and they’re in. Most children have their own email accounts. Spammers don’t know how old the person is who has the email address, all they care is that they have a valid email address to sell at $0.25 for each address. So if they’re promoting porn sites they just do a mass email to every valid email address they have. Three years ago, I knew a nine year old, who of course as with most kids today was computer savvy, online and had her own email address. As we were doing things on the computer she innocently told me that she receives porno in her email on a regular basis. She then completed the thought by next saying, “I delete it.” And as with most nine year olds, her thoughts were off to the next thing whatever that was at the time. For her, it was like telling me that she had pizza for lunch today, and then going on to something else. It didn’t mean anything to her.

         Bradbury’s vision was deliberately extreme. You will find most times the only way you can get people to think for themselves or motivate them to action, or get them to sit up and take notice is to be extreme, over the top, or ridiculous. The point is, as a writer he got you to stop and take notice. So he succeeded in what view he wanted to express. Bradbury does have a strong view, but also a strong point. How many people working in retail on their first job cannot make change without the register telling them how much change to return to their customer.

         With the advent of calculators many young people cannot add or subtract long hand, remember their times tables or how to work with percents. You can’t tell me it’s just grade school or high school. In University level physics, we had a question on exam which was to compute how much a baseboard heater would rise off the floor if the wall rheostat was adjusted from 68 degrees to 98 degrees Fahrenheit. Some students were reporting 9ft. 9ft? This exhibits the lack of understanding of what is sensible and what is erroneous. If one uses their brain, there is no conceivable way that a baseboard heater in a house is going to rise 9 ft. We also had engineering students that would come up with statements in their equations such as the sine of 60 equals the cosine of 60. Believe me, with ignorant carelessness like that it wouldn’t be long before they built a bridge that would fall down and a machine that would tear itself apart or kill a test engineer on it’s first test. Bradbury is may appear to be being extreme, but after seeing some of the things young people do relying on the machine to do their thinking, God help us, we’re all in trouble.

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References

N. R. MacKenzie (Ed.) Science and Technology Today: Readings for Writers. St. Martin’s Press.

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