TriNetre - Archive for January 06, 2004

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January 06, 2004
Quickie for Bush
[Humour] @ 04:31 PM

Content of an email forwarded from a friend:

At a celebration lunch enjoyed by George Bush and Dick Cheney at a fancy Washington restaurant. The waitress approaches their table to take their order. She is young and very attractive. She asks Cheney what he wants, and he replies: "I'll have the heart-healthy salad." "Very good, sir," she replies, and turning to Bush she asks, "And what do you want, Mr. President?" Bush answers: "How about a quickie?" Taken aback, the waitress slaps him and says: "I'm shocked and disappointed in you. I thought you were bringing in a new administration that was committed to high principles and morality. I'm sorry I voted for you." With that, the waitress departed in a huff.

Cheney leans over to Bush, and says: "Mr President, I believe that's pronounced quiche."

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Michael Crichton on the state of science
[Science] @ 01:55 PM

Michael Crichton's Caltech Michelin Lecture "Aliens Cause Global Warming" is a must read for anyone worried about the state of science and its influence in dictating the policy of our society.

Using a series of examples, Crichton tries to drive in the point that the spirit of quest and objectivity that is the backbone of impartial scientific pursuit is weakening.

Rather than serving as a cleansing force, science has in some instances been seduced by the more ancient lures of politics and publicity. Some of the demons that haunt our world in recent years are invented by scientists. The world has not benefited from permitting these demons to escape free.

Rather than relying on hard experimental proofs and verifiable results, some influential scientists seems to be using the power of "consensus", a powerful weapon in the area of politics, to ward off questions poking holes in their theories. Crichton says:

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant.


Later on he expresses surprise at the treatment meted out to critics and skeptics:
When did "skeptic" become a dirty word in science? When did a skeptic require quotation marks around it?


A spirited, heartfelt call for an introspection, a reality check.

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Good morning and Happy New Year
[Website] @ 11:10 AM

Welcome! TriNetre is back online, but not serving exactly the same function.

When I setup TriNetre more than a year ago, I wanted it to be my weblog, more of a daily diary. However things have changed and after my brief recluse, I realised that this regular update wish will not work. It was distracting me from a lot of things.

From now on, TriNetre section will serve a three-fold purpose on this site.

Underlying all these will be the basic assumption that TriNetre will not be updated regularly.


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