This is the first post to this site, but not my first attempt at blogging. I’ve previously been a part time, hobbyist type of blogger and although it felt good to write the things floating in my head it took some serious effort to get to the point where I found myself wanting to write on a daily or even weekly basis.
I began keeping on-line journals during my undergraduate years for two simple reasons.
- It felt really good to drain the “stuff” out of my head and to let it fall onto a page: physical or electronic.
- Competition.
How does competition come in to writing a personal journal? I’ll tell you. My roommate at the time, who later turned into one of my closest friends, was extremely competitive. He was smart, funny, athletic and an all around good guy. He was exactly like me. I don’t mean we were alike, I mean we were the same.
We both had:
- the same major
- the same course schedule
- been in the same orientation group
- similar taste in music
- similar taste in girls
- similar taste in alcoholic beverages
- similar taste in tastes…
- etc. etc. etc.
It actually got to the point where people had trouble telling us apart. This led to some amazing times, great stories and a healthy competitive spirtit which helped us to become healthy, better students, better people, and better friends.
The best part about this whole competition though was the need to outdo each other in every facet of our lives; to lift the bar to knew heights in everything we did, including the writing we each did on our electronic journals.
I would read his post. Take a peak at where he had been funny or used a play on words, look at the depth of his topic or the way in which he turned a phrase and suddenly found myself injecting more humor and looking for ways to make my writing more engrossing than his.
Let me back up a quick step. I was an architecture major at the time and although I was given the opportunity to take liberal art courses and round off my education, I have always been technically minded. I’d take things apart as a child to see how they worked. I marveled over the Rube Goldberg
types of contraptions in movies and cartoons. I’ve always been better at crafting equations than words, but with the spark that competition created, I wanted to write and found a way to force my full brain into action instead of the single half.
So now we know why I write the way I do. But why focus on the marriage of art and science? Simply put, because I want to. This is my site after all.
There are so many areas of the world and of my life that involve either art or science. I’d have no problem saying that everything involves one or the other. The parts of this life that really excite me, though, are the experiences which place the two in the same room and let them create happiness or war.
Here’s an example that was recently brought to my attention by a fellow grad student.
Science: ElectroMicrograph
Basically an image from a really powerful microscope of really small things. (Extreme Simplification)
Art: Photography
A mix of patterns, light, shade, color and texture which create atmosphere and mood
The Part that I see as important:
A published site containing the work of researchers to produce artistic images from the work done to characterize booze. Check Out Beershots!
It’s this kind of stuff that gets me really excited. Not just because it involves humorous material (that does help.) but because it is appreciable in both realms by anyone with a soul and a calculator.
Ahhhh. I think I’ll go enjoy my favorite beer now and look out at the beautiful day. Yet one more thing that science and art collectively create. There is no feeling better than a deep breath, a cold beer and a warm spring day out on the porch.
Jason
