Wulf's Pawprints

Stalking my voice.

Sunday, August 14, 2005

WET, SLOPPY, SEXY...SCIENCE

Category: Satire/Humor

Hey baby, check out the size of my xray chromospectrograph, its throbbing with the raw modulation of standing waves crashing upon your neuro-receptor cluster.
No matter how hard one tries sex up science, its HARD. Umm... God, may she protect us from bad sexual innuendos. One would think this is a formidable task, sexing up Science is as hard as... as... sexing up evidence for going to war.

To this end though the South Australian gummint is running a number of semen-ars (STOP IT) to make Science more appealing to the masses. An initiative by Baronessa Doctor Savant Science-Rock star, she of flower power couture and neuroscience who also happens to be the South Australian Thinker in Residence. Having attended this event tonight with my friend T. I have to say, it is a task worthy of any self aggrandizing ego and fundamental communications skills and having the former in excess and the latter falling somewhere in the creepy zone between the fun and the mental I take advice of Suzie baby to heart, lift my hand and freak out all the assembled in the process.

To the fun-dations of science.
All your impressions about science are wrong.
It is not a process whereupon a scantly clad female is chained to a table whilst a hunchbacked nerd with a bad bite is cackling madly as he cranks the handle of an apparatus elevating the misfortunate said female to a position where a sparky thing is going to turn her into the bride of frankenstein. An easy misconception to formulate given that in peoples minds, the closest most scientists would ever get to a scantly clad female is using some sort of bondage device. Nevertheless, scientists are quite capable of breeding as evidenced by the continution of the genus. This fact alone should give some hope to the non-sixpacked, non-muscular, non-dumb, heterosexual part of the male species. However, I digress.

Science is all about securing funding.
Secondarily, it is about securing attractive postdoc students to help you out.
Thirdly, it is about stuff.

I shall focus on the latter, least important part, stuff.
Though that comes last, tradition dictates that some heed be paid to it.
Science is a subject steeped in tradition. Tradition like wild parties in labs where ethanol flows from beakers in milliliters at a time, semi-riske high-brow jokes are told and hilarity ensues as fun is made of droll though unintentional mispronounciation of difficult latin root words by the University administrators.

Stuff happens. This on the surface of it, simple axiom and conclusion has been reached by a lengthy study of stuff. It sounds prosaic and wasteful, but such pronouncements have to be made after a careful consideration is given to the matter at hand. Naturally, the grant request did not read 'Give us wads of cash we want to know why shit happens'. It was probably entitled 'Consequential sequencing and causality of instantialisation of newtonian manifestations of macro ecleudian space organised and unorganised clusters.' However, that does not change the fundamental principles of Science.
One can only determine that Suff happens after following a rigorous process.

And so, one of the founding principles of Science is the Scientific Method.

This is a fundamental process to secure future grants and as a happy happenstance, gives credible science (ie: that bastard Singh from the subatomic Lab on the second flow can perch and rotate on his centrifuge, there are no holes in my damn theory)

There are five basic principles to the Scientific method.
1. Read the current government policy to discover the 'ideology du jour' of the current administration.
2. Think of an idea that will make the goverment bureaucrats look good.
3. Make a dinner appointment with the chair of the grants committee.
4. Whereupon the grant is secured by judicious application of tongue applied to various orfices of the said bureaucrat (I was thinking ears you filthy pig).
5. Hire an attractive postgrad assistant.

This methodology has served the Science world very well so far having brough us such wonderful, civiliation advancing boons like nerve gas, thermonuclear explosive device, and biological weapons.

However, to make this process more understood and transparent for the person on the street (known in the science language as 'the specimen' or 'subject') this complex process had to be made more understood.
Therefore, what follows is the more accessible version of the 'Scientific Method'.

1. From observation of stuff, figure out the nature of stuff that looks interesting (and can be gotten a grant for). Ie: Ask a question to identify a problem.
Eg: Can we make this bug eat the face of the enemy soldiers and civilians alike.

2. Take a guess to explain what is happening. The guess should be predicive.
Eg: The bug is eating everyons face. How can we educate it to eat the faces of evil people only. Will it work better if we paint the subjects face off-white (for it is widely recognised that most evil people have skin that is not pristine white, like the good lord intended).

3. Develop one or more hypotheses, or more guesses, to explain this phenomenon.
Eg: Clearly the bug is misguided and needs to be given an incentive to show the correct consideration for national security. Burn all the fuckers that eat the good citizens (ie:white), cultivate all the bugs that show the correct political bias and eat the evildoer faces.

4. Devise experiments to test the hypotheses.
Eg: Invite Singh from the Subatomic lab on the second floor and ask him to smell the new artificial 'flavour enhancer' just discovered.

5. Analyze the experimental results and determine to what degree do the results fit the predictions of the hypothesis. Ie: There is now a larger lab available on the second floor where the Subatomic lab used to be since Singh went missing.
Further modify and repeat the experiments. Ie: Wash, rinse, repeat.

The last step is to call the Homeworld defence tzar or whoever has funded our advancement of human ideals and inform them that our job is done.

Of course the above scenario is satirical.
In the real world, no scientist would ever consider making something that would threaten the survival of the human species itself. Not unless there was a good reason for it like the obliteration of our mortal, perpetual and irredimable enemy, the next grant, or an opportunity to hire a cute postgrad.

I am unfairly biting to the Science world. Had it not been for them, we would not have cool stuff like the Internet, iPods and recreational chemicals.
But hey, you guys, sometimes you are so smart you are st00pid.
To sex up Science, all you have to do is to make the post grads wear frilly costumes instead of those boring white coats.
DUH! [Forehead slap]

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Champagne blogging, dude. :)

6:21 PM  
Blogger Samantha Regione said...

It's very simple. Use Doctor James Bradfield Moody as your poster boy.

He's the only reason I watch The New Inventors, anyway!

7:47 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

7:57 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home