.

So when you go to graduate school in the natural sciences, you’re immediately brought into critical inquiry – and, in fact, what you’re learning is kind of a craft; you don’t really teach science, people sort of get the idea how to do it as apprentices, hopefully by working with good people. But the goal is to learn how to do creative work, and to challenge everything […] people have to be trained for creativity and disobedience – because there is no other way you can do science. But in the humanities and social sciences, and in fields like journalism and economics and so on […] people have to be trained to be managers, and controllers, and to accept things, and not to question too much.

* In Understanding Power, 2002

— Noam Chomsky

.

.

.

2010.10.20 Wednesday ACHK

The Total Perspective Vortex is allegedly the most horrible torture device to which a sentient being can be subjected.

When you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little mark, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says, “You are here.”

Located on Frogstar World B, the machine was originally invented by one Trin Tragula in order to annoy his wife. Because she was forever nagging him for having no sense of proportion, he decided to invent something that would show her what having a sense of proportion really meant. Unfortunately the shock of being placed in the Vortex destroyed her brain, but Trin Tragula’s grief was tempered by the knowledge that he had been right and she had been wrong. In Adams’s words, the Total Perspective Vortex illustrated that “In an infinite universe, the one thing sentient life cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.”

— Wikipedia on Technology in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

.

.

.

2010.10.17 Sunday ACHK

.

In the series, DON’T PANIC (always upper-case) is a phrase written on the cover of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The novel explains that this was partly because the device “looked insanely complicated” to operate, and partly to keep intergalactic travelers from panicking. It is said that despite its many glaring (and occasionally fatal) inaccuracies, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy itself has outsold the Encyclopedia Galactica because it is slightly cheaper, and because it has the words “Don’t Panic” in large, friendly letters on the cover.

Arthur C. Clarke said Douglas Adams’ use of “don’t panic” was perhaps the best advice that could be given to humanity.

— Wikipedia on Phrases from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

.

.

.

2010.10.13 Wednesday ACHK