E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

Eyewear loves astronauts, and Sally Ride was one of the greatest - as well as a fine scientist, and, it turns out, gay - though that was private until her obituary.  She will now become an important icon for the LGBT community.  She was an inspiration to us all and a giant leap for women. Astronaut Ride

Sad news.  America's greatest speculative prose writer since Edgar Poe , the genius of uncanny and strange stories, short and long, Ray Bradbury , has died, at the age of 91, just as the rare transit of Venus began.  Any reader of Playboy knows his stories, which added lustre to those steamy pages.  The Martian Chronicles was much-watch TV in my childhood.   Something Wicked This Way Comes and The Illustrated Man classics.  And then, of course, there is Fahrenheit 451 .  If Bradbury never quite became as big as Orwell or Burgess , he is certainly the equal or master of any science fiction/ horror writer of the last century, including Asimov, Clarke, Herbert , King and Heinlein . Perhaps his books were turned into weird, or schlocky screenworks.  Perhaps he wrote too much.  I never minded.

A genius of mathematics - the literal visionary who allowed us all to see the world anew - Mandelbrot has died.  Fractals inspired countless writers, artists, as well as scientists.  Here is a link to Alice Fulton 's essay on Fractals in poetry . The Death of Mandelbrot Within shape the shape in-widens its own owning of imagination the slice of ginger gingerly slid off a knife as each blade is the lawn, as fern informs infernal logic, fanning out sloughing green.  Lightning makes its mark marking sky-light. Snow flakes off snow to make and break ice small and right, hot at heart with the thump of delight – each jag and messy turn or spin a boomerang that bangs back the yin.  I think I cannot understand how all spreads: peacock's flamboyance, shell's hard-luck contours, a brilliant argument of whorls – contains its own brand making as the hand made fingertip's twirling private name speaking breaking into bigger complications that turn small and smaller...

I am a Catholic, yet am concerned by the Vatican's statement tonight that the awarding of t he Nobel Prize for a "father" of "test tube" conception is "unacceptable" .  Theologically, it may well be - but surely, the jury in selecting its winners should be guided by scientific criteria alone.  Ironically, there is a sense that the "Literature" Nobel often goes to persons for extra-literary reasons, reasons of moral or socio-political nuance.  So perhaps the Church feels that the same moral conditions should be considered when deciding on the scientific and medical awards.  Yet, it seems the Church is making a cardinal error  - it should continue to feel able to express its own position on IVF treatment (which could change in time, and under renewed leadership later in the 21st century) - yet not propose to question the secular authority of a body like the Nobel committee.  In another paradox, Dr. Edwards has brought four more million souls i...

The news that American researchers, in the 1940s, infected the mentally ill and confined in Guatemala with syphilis (that was later treated though not necessarily cured) demanded a high-level apology , such as Clinton and Obama have since proffered.  So far so good - except very troubling thoughts linger: how, after the atrocities of Nazi and Japanese WW2 medical research, could Americans involve themselves in such cold-blooded work?  More to the point, does such untrammeled science still operate?  Whenever scientists like Dawkins wax lyrical about the pure rational spirit of the scientist, it is right to recall such crimes against humanity; for science, unmoored from morality, even (say it!) faith, can grow monstrous very easily; for the human mind's forensic curiosity, still in its moral infancy, will pull wings from a fly to see it struggle.  And call that knowledge.

Stephen Hawking , one of the world's smartest scientists, now tells us he believes "the Big Bang" - the moment when the universe was "created" - does not require a God or prime mover - but could have been self-ignited, due to the laws of nature themselves.  Hawking's extraordinary intelligence and life are themselves more proof for a God than against, but even deists must weigh his words with care.  The media has used his words as more evidence of the non-existence of a God, though there is nothing in his new claims that disprove an ultimate being or supernatural (divine) power. Indeed, the very idea of a super-nature - a being above the laws of nature - must by definition rule out a thoroughly rational foundation.  The existence of God is an irrational idea.  But God - if existing - would have of course been able to set the touch paper going - having made the laws that brought that moment to its crisis.  The question is - is there a meta-universe - some t...

I am going through one of my periodic struggles with faith and doubt.  Call it end of summer blues, or something more profound.  I have found recent actions by Church leaders testing and trying - my belief in tolerance rubbing against my tendency to become impatient with unkindness and worse.  Then comes news, via the BBC, that the universe will expand "forever" and end up stretched out as a dead, cold, lifeless "wasteland" .  If this doesn't sound like a vision of a godless hell (hell being the absence of God), then what is?  Humanists, nihilists, atheists, existentialists - call them what you want - but they are humans - we're all in this strange and frankly disconcerting universe together.  At times its size and complexity inspires (look at the stars etc) - but the ultimate scientific truth is more ghastly and sublime - the sum of everything adds up to an endless nothing, a total nullity.  Of course, the years ahead will first see much else, love, s...

Sad news.  Bloodaxe poet, and scientist, GF Dutton , has died.

What to make of the news that Venter has created artificial life, as reported in Science ?  Will these little promethei run wild?  Good to see Joyce quoted in the manmade DNA text.

Richard Dawkins must be pleased with the emerging revelations that Michael Jackson appears to have been a cocktail-drunk drug addict, hopped up on numerous meds to keep the anxiety and despair at bay. After all - that's another myth gone - a genuine hero that people could love. Or maybe, Jackson was tarnished as long ago as 1995, anyway, and had no more to lose. Still, it rankles that Britain's top atheist has set up a summer camp for kids, where - I kid you not - there will be a prize for the best proof of the non-existence of unicorns. No doubt, they will also be taught (incorrectly) that there is no Father Christmas, too. Now, it may be okay for Dawkins to peddle his sad and empty sophistry to adults, but surely he should resist the urge to hang with the kids, and steal what little wonder and innocence they have left. When adults do that to children, we have a name for it. Now, some may think taking a child's imagination is not a sin, so long as their parents hav...

Andrew Motion has been a poet laureate that Eyewear could deal with - in the way that Pound had commerce with Whitman . Motion has been good - more or less - for poetry in Britain, 1999-2009. His most important work may have been his poetry about bullying, and the Iraq War (related themes), but for most people, the Poetry Archive will seem the lasting monument. I personally regret never having been asked to record for that Archive, but then again, nothing about the poetry establishment in the UK will ever surprise me - I have lived here for over 6 years, and am still treated like an arriviste every day. Anyway, back to Motion, whose support of my work with Oxfam and those poetry CDs was instrumental. His agreement to read at the first-ever Oxfam event way back in 2004 (five years ago now) meant that Wendy Cope also came onboard , as well as Agbabi and Dark . After that event, all the other great and talented poets were more willing to appear. I think Motion is a very fine, ser...

Sad news. The major popular, controversial novelist and entertainment writer Michael Crichton has died - at the young age of 66. He was astonishingly prolific and succesful in tapping in to the zeitgeist, creating the TV series ER , and the Jurassic Park franchise. This alone would make him a key cultural figure of the 90s. His greatest novels were The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man - icily-procedural and strangely prescient thrillers about the collision between humanity and science, or the unknown aspects connected to science (bacteria, brain surgery). I still think the original The Andromeda Strain one of the most disturbing films ever made, and can still recall the underground labs, monkey autopsies and the epileptic fit as if it was yesterday. Crichton lost many fans (including me) when he became a sort of Dawkins of the anti-global warming set, though. His finger usually on the pulse, this pro-Bush perspective was oddly out of step with the times, and his death, timed...

Ever notice how some things just suddenly become part of the zeitgeist? Like Palin , of late, Helium 3 has been making the news - expect more in future. India has just started its own space race to the moon. It turns out the rare isotope Helium 3 (scientists, correct me if I am wrong) is less rare on the moon than here on terra firm, and can be used in sec-gen fusion reactions to generate extraordinary amounts of energy. Moon-mining may soon leap back into our lives, and off the ragged pages of Asimov 's mouldering paperbacks.

The big bang you're hearing is the noise of science and religion colliding, in the UK. The resignation , today, of a respected scientist, who also happens to be a Christian, from an important scientific post, because he suggested that creationism too could be taught in schools, alongside the theory of evolution, is a shame. Dogmatic anything is bad news: whether that be theism, atheism, or Darwinism. Clearly, evolution, a highly-robust theory, is assumed to be true, though unverified - but does not rule out the value of appreciation of alternate views on how the universe and sentient life in it came into being. There are versions of creationism (intelligent design, for instance) that are complex enough to dovetail with science, and surely some aspects of creationism are symbolically, if not philosophically, intriguing - for instance, the idea that nothing comes from nothing, or that, at the start, some being or great force conceived of existence itself. Science should not rule out ...

The BBC news (radio 4) had live coverage this morning of the turning on of the variously-named machine that will measure how the universe began. After the muted cheers and handclaps of the scientists (mostly, alas, men), champagne was passed around. It felt like the moon-landing, but somehow in reverse - all the fun was being had in the control room. This subterranean, coiled monster of an experiment may destroy the world, later today, or sometime soon - or instead merely explain how it was created. In many ways, it recalls Eliot's poetry - the murder and create dichotomy is strong with science. Hopefully, our end will not, though, be in our attempt to find our beginning. It's been said, by the media, who like metaphors they can sleep with, that this is like a "cathedral", and that the search is for a "god particle" - but science, more often than not, peels back the layers where the onion god makes us cry, exposing less, not more. What will the first things ...

Eyewear wishes NASA a very happy 50th birthday today, tomorrow (its precise anniversary), and in the future. The space agency has, famously, put men on the moon, and used a Canada arm to good effect. Hopefully, it will redouble its efforts, in years to come, to get men and women onto Mars. Terraforming the Red Planet needs to be one of the later 21st century's goals. Meanwhile, the unmanned probes go on, allowing us to extend, literally, human knowledge. While I have never been an Asimov -addict, or a slide-rule afficionado, I do believe that hard science, heavy lifting, and all systems go can inspire. Houston has sometimes been the Cape of Good Hope. Talk about retro: Obama as Kennedy , NASA back in the news (in a good way). Is it time to release the clones of Elvis from captivity?

There's been much derision, and some serious debate, in the UK, recently, surrounding the possibility that Catholic MPs might be "required" to vote against a three-line whip. It bears repeating that a politician ought to be a human being with a (moral) conscience, as well as a spin machine - and, if so, that conscience may (though not should ) be guided by religious conviction. In England, a basically Godless society ruled by Big Business and Big Science (those happy, pragmatic twins birthed by Mr. Charles Darwin and Mr. Adam Smith ), with Big Media a distant popular third, religious belief is usually synonymous with irrational lunacy. Actually, a respect for the Gods is an ancient, and wise, position. As The Enchiridion says, "As to piety toward The Gods you must know that this is the chief thing, to have right opinions about them, to think they exist, and that they administer the All well and justly". It is possible to follow one's religious faith and a...

It's been a bad few days for those who love British cinema. Arthur C. Clarke has died. Among other things, he co-wrote the screenplay (and the book) with Stanley Kubrick , of the most significant science fiction film of the 20th century (including Star Wars ): 2001: A Space Odyssey , still considered by most critics to be one of the ten best films ever made (see the 2002 Sight & Sound poll). It is surely one of the slowest moving, and hardest to easily comprehend. It was first shown almost forty years ago (in April 1968), having been filmed in England (Kubrick loathed flying). Often considered visionary for its concerns, the film's key scenes are those in which the intelligent, speaking computer HAL disintegrates vocally and intellectually during a tense cat-and-mouse game between man and machine; Canadian actor Douglas Rain provided the computer's unforgettably unsettling voice. Clarke himself was a professional visionary, as well as being somewhat controversial, fo...

The Sunday Times Culture section for January 6 ran several reviews which, taken together, expose, or raise, certain questions about the way in which exceptional talent is presented, and received, in contemporary Western society. The review of award-winning American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J Robert Oppenheimer relates the bizarre spectacle of a nine-year-old genius turning to his cousin and saying "ask me a question in Latin and I'll answer you in Greek", yet later in life refusing Einstein's advice, and subjecting himself to a ruinous grilling at the hands of the McCarthyite AEC inquiry. Oppie, Sanskrit-reading, was bullied terribly as a child, because he was exceptional, and most people, by definition, cannot be; exceptions are often picked on. John Carey's review is laudatory, as he ends by saying "no more absorbing biography will, I predict, come out this year". Oppenheimer is fascinating - I had never realised he was quite so wealt...

The BBC news has been fascinating today. First Pluto is demoted from planet to just a bit of dirt way out yonder (in Kafka's Prague, no less, by scientists who think Xena is a good name) - and you thought your ego was fragile, how about goofy Pluto's now? Then the UK gets bigger than 60 million people for the first time ever. Now for some good news. Tea is actually better for you than water. That may explain the thriving British population, eh? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5281360.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5282440.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5281046.stm