HoodedHawk

Tonight I went to a booksigning and a panel of SF authors at Reiter’s Scientific Bookstore in DC. Among the authors present were: Dr. Catherine Asaro, Greg Bear, Bud Sparhawk, Tom Purdom, Tom Ligon, Yoji Kondo (Eric Kotani), John Hemry (Jack Campbell), Charles E. Gannon, and Dr. Arlan Andrews. The roundtable discussion topic was “How Science Fiction Changes Everything” – How Science Fiction Serves the National Interest. The Washington Science Fiction Association also sponsored the event.

Catherine Asaro

Some (all?) members of the panel are also members of SIGMA:

SIGMA is a group of science fiction writers who offer futurism consulting to the United States government and appropriate NGOs. We provide a new concept in public service “think tanks”– an association of speculative writers who have spent careers exploring the future. Many of us have earned Ph.D.s in high tech fields, and some presently hold Federal and defense industry positions. Each is an accomplished science fiction author who has postulated new technologies, new problems and new societies, explaining the possible science and speculating about the effects on the human race.

The event was mostly the panel fielding questions from the audience. I enjoyed the evening; it was quite interesting to hear the viewpoints of various SF authors, especially Bear and Asaro, as I’m a fan of both. At the signing Dr. Asaro mentioned that the cover of Alpha was her favorite. The artist was going to go with a flowing gown, but she told him, no, I’d rather look like this:

SF Authors: Bear, Asaro, etc. Roundtable at Reiter's Bookstore

Greg Bear

Greg Bear

 

Lisa Randall at Smithsonian

On Friday (April 24, 2009) I went to see Physicist Lisa Randall receive the Benjamin Franklin Creativity Laureate Award from The Smithsonian Associates and the Creativity Foundation. Professor Randall discussed the role of creativity in her life and work with University of Chicago professor Michael Turner. The talk was in the Baird Auditorium of the National Museum of Natural History – nice venue!

After the talk I was able to get Prof. Randall to sign my copy of her book, “Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions“. Great book!

From the press release:

Randall is best known for her work involving extra dimensions of space, or “warped” geometries, and her suggestion that could explain the relative weakness of gravity and that we may live in a world with an infinite extra dimension—possibly even in a three-dimensional sinkhole in a higher-dimensional universe. This has resulted in her being one of the most-cited theoretical physicists in the world. Time magazine included her in its 2007 list of the 100 most influential people, and Newsweek cited Randall as “one of the most promising theoretical physicists of her generation.” Her book “Warped Passages” was included in the New York Times’ list of the 100 most notable books of 2005.

Randall is a professor of physics at Harvard University and is tenured at Princeton and MIT. She has served on the editorial boards of several major journals and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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Lisa Randall at Smithsonian

Oh, they just don’t make science kits like they did 50 years ago. This one came with radioactive sources. It was $50.00 at the time (and can fetch more than $7000.00 if you can find one now):

The set came with four types of uranium ore, a beta-alpha source (Pb-210), a pure beta source (Ru-106), a gamma source (Zn-65?), a spinthariscope, a cloud chamber with its own short-lived alpha source (Po-210), an electroscope, a geiger counter, a manual, a comic book (Dagwood Splits the Atom) and a government manual “Prospecting for Uranium.”

Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab (1950-1951)

Preston, Dylan and I went to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History yesterday. Preston just loved the Insect Zoo. No way was Dylan going to hold a bug, but it was hard to keep Preston away. He also held a big beetle, but I couldn’t get a picture as I had to help keep Preston from squishing it.

Click any picture below for larger slideshow…

The new Ocean Hall is quite good. Even Dylan was impressed by the giant jellyfish (seen in foreground). Full-size right whale hangs from the ceiling, and videos of ocean scenes line the walls. Lots of informative exhibits about the ocean.

A lot more pictures are viewable via the Photography page (Natural History link)

 

The Vatican press office today had a presentation on an upcoming conference, “Biological Evolution: Facts and Theories. A critical appraisal 150 years after ‘The Origin of Species'”. The event is due to take place in Rome from March 3 to 7, 2009. The congress has been jointly organized by the Pontifical Gregorian
University in Rome and the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, U.S.A., under the patronage of the Pontifical Council for Culture.

Saverio Forestiero, professor of zoology at Rome’s Torvergata University and a member of the organizing committee stated (emphasis mine):

“It is my view … that this congress represents an opportunity, neither propagandistic nor apologetic, for scientists, philosophers and theologians to meet and discuss the fundamental questions raised by biological evolution – which is assumed and discussed as a fact beyond all reasonable doubt – in order to examine its manifestations and causal mechanisms, and to analyse the impact and quality of the explanatory theories thus far proposed”.

and Fr. Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti, professor of fundamental theology at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross said (again, emphasis mine):

“from the perspective of Christian theology, biological evolution and creation are by no means mutually exclusive. … None of the evolutionary mechanisms opposes the affirmation that God wanted – in other words, created – man. Neither is this opposed by the casual nature of the many events that happened during the slow development of life, as long as the recourse to chance remains a simple scientific reading of phenomena”.

From the conference website:

Thanks to recent discoveries, we can reconsider the problem of evolution within a broader perspective then traditional neo-darwinism. In particular, we refer to the role of epigenetical mechanisms in evolution as well as to new developments produced by the theory of complexity and by the study of incidence on the environment of living species, especially in regards to the value and significance of intelligent behaviour. In this context, which witnesses the intertwining of several fields of knowledge, an appropriate consideration is needed more than ever before.
…
The conference is organized into sections which will first present those facts that are known, then expand on the scientific theories that try to explain evolutionary mechanisms, on humanization, on philosophical questions and finally on the theological issues about Evolution.

I can’t make the conference, but I am definitely looking forward to the proceedings when they are published.