Satisfy your curiosity

Did curiosity kill the cat?

It appears that the Union of Concerned Scientists does not believe that to be true.

Instead, it argues for "scientific curiosity" because that "is the key to solving our world's most crucial environmental, health and security problems -- such as global warming".

The grouping of scientists accuses those with "a vested interest in denying global warming" of "trying to kill the public's curiosity and thus squelch the truth".

"Scientists are curious for life," states the Union and it pleads the cause of supporting curiosity and urges us to start by being members of the grouping.

We should take a leaf from Union's book.

"Curiosity killed the cat" is an idiom meaning to tell somebody not to ask questions or try to find out about things that do not concern them.

That is appropriate for personal affairs but in all other matters we, like the children in our midst, should show curiosity about everything.

Why should it ever stop? When my niece was four she wanted to know "why her shadow was following her?" I was amazed at her ability to notice things around her. She is now in her early twenties and she continues to ask the "shadow"-type questions.

Many questions about life remain unanswered. It is time to dig up the truth. "Curiosity about the world is the beginning of knowledge -- and science", notes Union.

Comments

Why Shamsul Amri dislikes Facebook

Professor Shamsul Amri Baharuddin People who do not use Facebook fall into three broad categories. The first group is completely indifferent to it, the second finds it mildly irritating and the third dislikes it intensely. Malaysia's prominent sociologist Professor Shamsul Amri Baharuddin is of the last type. I made the mistake of asking Shamsul, who is director of the Institute of Ethnic Studies at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, if he was on Facebook, the social network which was hatched up in the dormitories of Harvard six years ago. "I have a face and I keep thousands of books. Why do I need Facebook?" How do you react to that reply? I didn't. I meekly invited him to elaborate on his reasons. "Facebook will take away my soul and I won't allow that to happen because I am a believer," says Shamsul fiercely, who launched into a tirade of accusations against Facebook. Ninety per cent of the things you read on Facebook are either p...

When a card came out of the blue ...

This post is prompted by a remark made by my good friend Wei Lin. She saw me reading a card I had received from a friend recently and said: "Traditional cards are so old-fashioned." I wondered if that was true and decided to probe into the issue. A Google search revealed numerous articles on the debate between traditional paper-based cards and e-cards. Tracey Grady's examination of the pros and cons of each type is informative. In my opinion, e-cards are not substitutes for the real (traditional) ones and they shouldn't be. I treat e-card e-mails with suspicion because spammers could be using them to download viruses and software onto my computer. I have never sent anyone an e-card and I don't plan to; I dislike the cold impersonality of conveying greetings electronically. I have always liked sending and receiving cards the traditional way. The ritual of going to a bookshop, browsing at the card section, picking a suitable one for the recipient and then walking to...

In the waiting room

People are always waiting for something. They could be waiting for the train, an opportunity, promises to be fulfilled or the return of a loved one. But "what does waiting mean in our lives and what is life without waiting?" That question was posed by Danny Castillones Sillada in his article "What is Life without Waiting?" (The Metaphysics of Waiting). The passing of the old year demands another round of gloomy introspection and Sillada's article came at the right time, given the value of waiting in our lives. "Waiting," he explains, is "an emotional and mental state, which is preconditioned to anticipate someone or something to arrive at a particular time and place". Sillada tells us that there are two types of waiting: empirical and metaphysical. The empirical form of waiting is "where the certainty of the waited and the occurrence of event are tangibly expected to happen within a particular time and place of the waite...

a fleeting stay ...

Search This Blog