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Sometimes I like to kid myself and pretend that the Bachelor of Science degree I have actually means that I'm some kind of scientist. That I didn't do a double-major in psychology and barely manage to pass, that I didn't drop out of chemistry in first-year because it was too hard, that I didn't drop out of biology the year after for the same reason, that it's not true I never even bothered with physics because I'd had so much trouble with it in the last year of high-school, that the only subjects I enjoyed or was any good at weren't Russian Language 101 (which I was allowed to do for a short time within the constraints of the B.Sc. degree) and History and Philosophy of Science (though, to be honest I wasn't particularly good at HPS, but I loved it anyway). Sometimes I like to pretend that by virtue of having that piece of paper with "B.Sc" written on it, despite the faux-arts degree that my tertiary education actually was, I'm a clever science-y kind of person. I kid myself that being a nerdy type who reads superhero comics, watches cartoons and buys action figures on eBay necessarily implies that I also am a brainy science-type person. I attempt to fan these meagre flames with an email subscription to New Scientist (which I hardly ever read) and the occasional purchase of a cosmology special edition of Scientific American. I also have a small amount of popular science books on the bookshelf in the back room, quite a few of which I have actually read, and some of which I have actually understood to the degree that if you asked me to explain something about quantum mechanics, say, or what cosmic background radiation actually is, I might be able to cobble together a convincing reply. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm not beating myself up here. I just find it hard to concentrate on science stuff long enough for it to stick in my brain. Whole Strong Bad emails or episodes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, no problem. But wave-particle duality or superstring theory? My articulations on such subjects are vague at best, wholly incorrect at worst. That's why I like Tania Ritchie. She's got those science smarts by the bucketload. She's a physicist - a rooly, truly honest fair dinkum physicist. I met her a few years ago at the National Young Writers Festival in Newcastle, which she was participating in because of her wonderful zine, Nerdling, each issue of which is filled with irreverent, user-friendly and easy-to-understand articles about science in all its myriad forms and applications, combined with a healthy dose of science-fiction geekery. An issue of Nerdling might have an essay about the Platonic solids, followed by a story where Tania and a friend borrow a Geiger counter from the Physics Department and go looking for radioactive uranium glass in Sydney's antique shops, and then you'll find an article about what would actually happen if you stepped out of an airlock.* Reading Nerdling is like having a conversation with Tania about science and that sort of thing - her enthusiasm for it is intoxicating and she manages to get it across to you, whatever it is she's talking about, in a way that you can actually understand. As if the ease with which she walks through the hallowed halls of scientific thought wasn't enough to inspire a degree of low-key "gee, I wish I could do that" in my good self, now Tania's doing a short-tem placement at Davis Base in Antarctica, installing and maintaining some kind of crazy scientific muckamuck measurement device-thingy (there's that science degree working for me) that measures the cosmic background radiation (and I lied earlier - I can't explain what the hell cosmic background radiation is). And she's blogging as she does it. I didn't realise until she told me she was doing it, but I think I want to go to Antarctica, too. I don't have any really good reason for wanting to go, it's just that, now that I actually know someone who's been there, it seems like being in Antarctica is something that could actually happen to you, instead of just something that happens to people you see in documentaries and read about in books. It's patently obvious that, being as many rungs below Ms. Ritchie on the "knows a lot about science-y things" ladder, my status as a scientist is in no way going to help me get to Antarctica. But there is another way. When the path of science is blocked by one's own incapacity, then the path of art must needs suffice. How fortunate, then, that every eighteen months the Australian Antarctic Division takes an artist-in-residence down south to soak up the environment and channel it into their art. You know, write epic poems about vast all-consuming whiteness, or take breath-stealing photos of the majestic icescapes - that sort of thing. And I say if they want deeply-felt and emotionally charged art inspired by the still, majestic and icy Australian Antarctic Territories, then I'm happy to provide them with it. As Allah and all you time-wasting office-monkeys are my witness, I hereby declare that 2005 is the year that I will attempt to use my artistic wiles to propel myself as far south as one procrastinating writery-type-guy can go before only being able to go north, no matter what direction he travels in. (And yes, I do realise that Davis Base isn't actually on the precise location of the geographical South Pole, but do allow me some poetic license, won't you? Thanks.) |
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