Monday, October 17, 2005

The North Pole

Visual stimulus :



Internet presence :
polarisoverhead.wordpress.com

Informatics :
"We are scientist rock."
The North Pole, purveyors of angular, jerky indie punk songs played in tribute to the scientific endeavors of humankind. Their first foray into recorded evidence is the CD 'Exposition Vol. 1' , A five song opus clocking in at just over 12 minutes. Recorded by the band themselves and housed in a hand-screenprinted cardboard sleeve. Banquet Records said: "Imagine Small Brown Bike mixed with 'Repeater'-era Fugazi, classic Minutemen and lyrics about things like The Large Hadron Collider. In short, this rules."

Extra incentive :
There is no magic in such a method of finding an answer to a problem. Indeed, it is so simple and logical that all of us, scientists or not, use it to some degree or other every day of our lives in solving everyday problems. It is the time-tested method of telling truth from nonsense and proving it. As such, it is the method that has been used in discovering virtually everything we know about our universe and the way in which it works. But if scientific method is so simple and logical, why was it such a staggering idea when it first appeared? Probably because it was such a complete reversal of the way ancient scientists and philosophers had done things for centuries. Before the scientific method was devised, these men started with conclusions they had come up with on the basis of meditation, casual observation, and sheer guesswork. . . . It took centuries to discover that this was a blind alley, producing more and more wrong answers all the time. . . . It was not until the scientific method became firmly established that the knowledge of science began to grow and that our understanding of the laws of nature began to expand.
--- Nourse (1969)