The Far Side takes on our thread

[Martin Bailey]

Ann Kilmer said:

Pretty is not to be supported at the expense of ugly. Please.
If sentiment replaces science, we're all in the soup.


Well put as always.  But to be difficult, pretty is what gets support.
Pandas as the logo for the World Wildlife Fund etcetera.  And it works
because sentimentality pays the bills.

Fortunately, in the process of saving the poster animals what else happens
to live in the same habitat is also saved.  (Better than nothing.)

I see science as the love of knowledge for its own sake.  Technology: the
application of knowledge for practical ends.

Science is sentimental.  Science, as an amateur activity, is very
sentimental.  Amateur from the Latin verb to love.  Or amateur as a French
noun to describe " someone who loves, cultivates and researches" (Micro
Robert).

Joe Sugar from somewhere U.S.A. pulled the chain of a whole lot of us.  His
view of science and nature is popular.  It does not see the harsh realities
( if you chose to see it that way) of how the natural world works according
to me.

First there are the plants that compete with each other for a place on
Earth.  Then there are the animals and bugs that eat those plants.  Next
there are other animals and bugs that eat the animals and the bugs that ate
the plants.  And finally there are US who eat each other.

We are in an unique situation.  We dominate so much of the natural world
because we turn that bio-diversity into mono-cultures.  And the majority of
us like it that way.  However, there are a few homo sapiens that just look
and appreciate the randomness of it all.  And the even fewer who
systematically gather their observations of that randomness.  It is an awe
filled thing.  Life and sudden death.

Natural science ain't pretty.  We, at best, can only hope to pursue it
responsibly without joe sugar coating it.

Martin Bailey,

greetings from:  Weyburn, SK., Canada.
                         49.39N  103.51W



 
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