GATTACA

"Consider God's handiwork; who can straighten what He hath made crooked?" - Ecclesiastes 7:13

I think I enjoy Gattaca 100x more than my students do, and not just because it means extra grading time in class for me.

Great is our sin

"If the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin."

- Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle, 1839

Thoughts are Critical

"It is quite possible and, unfortunately, quite "natural" to live an unexamined life; to live in a more or less automated, uncritical way. It is possible to live, in other words, without really taking charge of the persons we are becoming; without developing or acting upon the skills and insights we are capable of. However, if we allow ourselves to become unreflective persons — or rather, to the extent that we do — we are likely to do injury to ourselves and others, and to miss many opportunities to make our own lives, and the lives of others, fuller, happier, and more productive."

-CriticalThinking.org (teacher homework)

I need to promulgate the importance of critical thinking, lest my kids become more uninformed citizens with voting rights. Shoot, this will be tough.

Typical Conversation

Estudiante: Teacher! Teacher! *waves hand around*

Me: *approaches from the other end of the room* Yes?

Estudiante: ¿Por qué usted nos está enseñando biología cuando usted incluso no habla español? ¿Cómo nos suponen comunicarnos? ¿Cómo nos suponen sostenerle en alto como nuestro modelo del papel cuando no tenemos ninguna idea qué usted está diciendo mitad del tiempo? ¿Por qué nuestro sistema educativo nos está fallando?

Me: ...

Estudiante: Ahh!! *gives up*

What Another Sub Told Me

"PERIOD 2: Terrible, terrible class. The worst that I have ever subbed for."

- Angry note from the substitute

I like to save these notes. They're kinda cute, in their own depressing way.

Inspired.

"Give me a place to stand and I will move the Earth."

- Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287 BC – c. 212 BC)

What the Sub Told Me

"Don't ever call me again for these classes."

- Angry note from the substitute

My mentors jokingly call this "job security".

Not losing hope. I can do this. I can do this.

Do your worst

"Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout as you did in Rome. Do your worst, for I will do mine!"

-The Count of Monte Cristo

Silliness

I've heard this response way too many times in just the first month of teaching here:

Me: Alrighty class, I'd like you to please _____(insert any command involving work, school, biology, life, personal hygiene, etc.)______.

Students: R U SERIUS????

Well of COURSE I'm joking students! After all, all we teachers do is lie to you! That's the whole point of education!

Oh, Mr. Smyr, you silly, silly bitch.

Human Nature

"Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human nature ."

- Charles Dickens

"You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty."

-Mahatma Gandhi

Quotation #3

Franklin M. Harold is Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and author of a book in which he connects the power and mystique of life to its many uniquely individual and underlying interactive facets. Simply stated, he argues that the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. This quote is from his book's preface:

“The quest for an answer to the riddle, “What is Life?” is one of the grand themes that resonate through the scientific conversation of this century—a period whose science is also its singular glory. That riddle embraces and transcends the subject matter of all the biological sciences, and much of physical science as well. A physics that has no place for life is as impoverished as would be a biology not informed by chemistry. The study of life as a natural phenomenon, a fundamental feature of the universe, must not be allowed to slip into the black hole of departmental tribalism.”
-Franklin M. Harold, The Way of the Cell: Molecules, Organisms and the Order of Life, 2001

Quotation #2

Claude Bernard's main drive was to establish the scientific method in medicine, and to insist upon the use of experimentation and existing scientific laws--and not assumptions--to derive truths. We can see that through one such line of his below:

"If an idea presents itself to us, we must not reject it simply because it does not agree with the logical deductions of a reigning theory."
-Claude Bernard, An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, 1813

Quotation #1

Let's try something new. Every now and then I will be posting a famous quotation from a famous scientist for the single purpose of exposing readers to some scientific history and culture. There's a ton of inspiring writing that is otherwise lost on the science crowd, and I hope to channel some of that here.

"We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities... still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin." -Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1871