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The mission of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science is to support scientific education, critical thinking and evidence-based understanding of the natural world in the quest to overcome religious fundamentalism, superstition, intolerance and suffering.
The Magic of Reality
for the iPad
Sean Faircloth:
Attack of the Theocrats!
It could include poetry about those "Eureka!" moments, when poets marvel at what science has to say. I happen to be reading Hyperspace by Michio Kaku at the moment, and he reproduced these verses by Ian D. Bush:
Twinkle Twinkle little star, I don't wonder what you are; For by spectroscopic ken, I know that you're hydrogen; Twinkle Twinkle little star, I don't wonder what you are.
A Google search led me to versions by Neal McBurnett:
Twinkle, twinkle, little star. Now we're learning what you are. For by spectroscopic ken, You're Helium and Hydrogen; Twinkle, twinkle, little star. Now we're learning what you are. Now we know that you went bust Filled the void with clouds of dust. Oxygen and carbon are Elements made in a star. Twinkle, twinkle, little star. What you've made is what we are.
and Robert K Davis:
Twinkle, twinkle little star How I've wondered what WE are. Now I know you're made of dust Now I know you're just like us. Twinkle, Twinkle oh so far, Now I know I am a star.
Kaku also quotes the poem Cosmic Gall by John Updike:
Neutrinos, they are very small. They have no charge and have no mass And do not interact at all. The earth is just a silly ball To them, through which they simply pass, Like dustmaids down a drafty hall Or photons through a sheet of glass. They snub the most exquisite gas, Ignore the most substantial wall, Cold shoulder steel and sounding brass, Insult the stallion in his stall, And scorning barriers of class, Infiltrate you and me! Like tall and painless guillotines, they fall Down through our heads into the grass. At night, they enter at Nepal and pierce the lover and his lass From underneath the bed-you call It wonderful; I call it crass.
Permalink Fri, 17 Aug 2012 14:23:06 UTC | #950953