BLOG 4 --IN PRAISE OF GEEKS

Next weekend I will close out the year 2010 by posting Lifelines 91-100. I have 200 more but will hold off putting them on line for about six months and then I’ll remove this first batch of 100 and post ten a week of the second 100. In the meantime I will resume this blog feature with shorter thoughts about science and its relation to society and our lives. We are ambivalent about the geek in some of us (including me) that likes to immerse ourselves with gusto into a subject. We applaud the Mozart, the Picasso, or the Dickens that can pour out one work after another without let-up sometimes frustrating others in those fields. We also applaud such talent among performers in the arts, actors, billionaires who earned their wealth, and sports legends. We are less charitable to those who are immensely productive but who are not household names. They are your scientists, journalists, poets, composers, clinicians, and teachers who are not household names. But without their energy and commitment to their fields we would be the poorer as a civilization and as individuals because it is their daily work that we often depend on.