@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @@@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
Club Notice - 02/20/98 -- Vol. 16, No. 34
Table of Contents
MT Chair/Librarian:
Mark Leeper MT 3E-433 732-957-5619 mleeper@lucent.com
HO Chair: John Jetzt MT 2E-530 732-957-5087 jetzt@lucent.com
HO Librarian: Nick Sauer HO 4F-427 732-949-7076 njs@lucent.com
Distinguished Heinlein Apologist:
Rob Mitchell MT 2D-536 732-957-6330 rlmitchell1@lucent.com
Factotum: Evelyn Leeper MT 3E-433 732-957-2070 eleeper@lucent.com
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/~ecl.
All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted.
URL of the week: http://www.omniway.sm/aasfn/ef5e.htm. Contributed by Charlie Harris.
Physics:
I am willing to bet you never gave it a whole lot of thought,
but Physics is not a very nice science. It has a really good
reputation, that that is where all the really smart people go, but
that is because other sciences like Chemistry do not get their due.
Physics and Chemistry sit next to each other like New York and New
Jersey. All the really interesting cutting edge stuff seems to go
on in Physics. Chemistry has a bad reputation, in large part
because, like New Jersey, it smells bad. I mean, most of us have
had the experience of walking by a chemical lab in school and
smelling something that has seemed to us, well..., not quite right.
It is kind of like driving down the Jersey Turnpike. You know
there is something that smells really bad. You know that it is a
smell that would not come out of Mother Nature unless you were
torturing her in some really unnatural way. I mean, Heaven knows
there are some really bad smells that ARE natural, but not so bad
as some of the stuff on the Jersey Turnpike. You only get smells
like that by taking dead dinosaur remains, and pumping them up from
their graves, and subjecting them to extreme heat, and sending the
gasses through pipes. This sort of thing would rarely happen by
chance in nature. You and I both know that it takes humans to do
something this unnatural and perverse. And you walk by the
Chemistry Lab at any university you get that same feeling of
something unnatural going on in there. I am sure not all Chemistry
smelled bad. But in general in Chemistry the feeling is that
nothing productive or cutting edge can ever come from something
that does not smell bad. I suspect somebody is selling aerosol
cans of bad smell to spray around Chemistry labs to make sure
people know that something impressive and cutting edge and
hopefully carcinogenic is going on.
Mark Leeper
MT 3E-433 732-957-5619
mleeper@lucent.com