Probably inspired by O.J.’s sterling example in “If I did it,” I’ve been keeping a list of reasons why this whole enterprise won’t work, if it didn’t. Call it a kind of pre-post-hoc rationalization. I came up with several “good” reasons, or, more accurately, I adapted the list from the kinds of reasons I’ve had students offer me.

1. NYU doesn’t feel like a real university because it doesn’t have a campus.
2. Random personal stuff.
3. Lack of background in science.
4. Terrible professor.
5. Terrible T.A.
6. Science sucks!
7. The book is boring.
8. The mid-term was really unfair.
Of course, that whole “self-fulfilling prophecy” thing, I have indeed moved away from the notion of doing everything and having Trace give me a grade, or a “grade,” but not because 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8. No, I’d have to say it is the lack of background, number 3, or the presence of a very old background, along with my Mother taking a turn for the worse, number 2, that did me in. Oddly, it wasn’t the book, indeed since I’m now reading it rather than attempting to study it, it’s really not all that bad. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t go out and buy it, and if I had done so, I wouldn’t be at all pleased, but reading it sans pressure is not too appalling a pastime.

But, more positively (I hope any scientists reading like this one!), the main reason I’m pulling back is that I trust scientists! Do you like it? I recently asked my orthopedic surgeon if many of his patients visit sites like webmd. “Don’t get me started!” he replied. I feel for him; I would never go to a doctor and think that my spending a few minutes on some web site made my opinion worth a damn. I wouldn’t do so because I think that I, and my insurance company, are paying him so that he’ll know what to do with my back, I’m going to stick to political theory and leave him to know the medical stuff.

Now, I’m off to Dublin to look in on the Mother, but I also hope to visit my alma mater and report on why my nephew, a biochem major at U.C.D., is thinking of dropping science.

Tomorrow, it’s time for the mid-term. After doing just an hour of revision yesterday, and barely half-an-hour today, I am woefully unprepared. This does not surprise me; what surprises me is that in spending my time worrying about not studying for the exam, I am not doing all the other things that I have on my 12 item “to do” list. Ignorance, and fear of exposure, which together form a kind of paralysis, thus seep out and infect all other aspects of my life. If I were a student, thus frozen by the midterm, I imagine I would not be working on the courses that interest me -- in this kind of situation, it seems there is no solace even in the books one want to read. So much for compartmentalization!

Or, “speaking of double-edged swords…”

I’m Albert Ferme-Bohr IV, I like chemistry, biology, physics, hell, name a science and I adore it. As a student at NYU, I have to do a course called “Conversations of the West” as part of my Morse Academic Plan (MAP) , NYU’s core curriculum. I just realized I couldn’t have escaped “Con’ West” while Dermot O’Brien could have, if he’d bothered his ass, escaped both Natural Science I, a course like his feeble “Energy and the Environment” and a Natural Science II with a 4 or 5 in AP Biology or Chemistry.

I’m pissed!

Knowing that Dermot wouldn’t have had to do the science parts of MAP if he’d done a science AP, I wonder why my APs in history and politics don’t do me any good vis a vis MAP? I wonder, above all, why the hell Dermot is complaining so much. After all, if science is really as dominant as he thinks (or fears), how come it’s so escapable?

Meanwhile, and this is what really pisses me off, in “Con’ West” I’m knee deep in Plato; I’ve read “the Symposium” and chunks of “the Republic.” I think it’s nonsense. Take the Symposium, a bunch of guys, about a third bi-, a third gay, and at least a third pedophiles, sit around and talk about love. No women at the conversation, but that’s okay because loving them is a lower kind of love…give me a break! Meanwhile, in the Republic, after a bunch of fatuous arguments about justice, “in-itself,” we’re presented with a utopia that features censorship, some form of eugenics, and a system built around the ridiculous notion that we already know what we know, we just have to recollect it.

We’re meant to respect Plato’s work because…because it’s old? Or because, as the professor put it, “it’s the foundation of Western thought,” but what does that mean? Did he mean it’s the foundation like a building has a foundation? I think he did. So far as I can tell his “foundation of Western Thought” is made of all the sexist, racist, aristocratic, stuff we’ve discarded, all the stuff that isn’t good enough for us to use in our actual building. All the stuff I don’t need to know.

I’ve been awake for about six hours now. During that time, I’ve cooked breakfast for my sons, showered, shaved, shopped, read 37 pages of John Keegan’s “Faces of Battle,” answered some e-mails, offered a few salty, irreverent, comments (ho ho!) on Facebook, and half-watched an episode of “Family Guy.” Busy, busy, busy, that’s me! But that’s not why I listed my activity. I’m interested in this because of a phrase from the textbook that’s been haunting me for weeks: “need to know.”

Leaving aside my shock that I could ever use the word “haunting” (in a good way too!) to describe anything in the book, and, for the moment, the thought that it’s kind of a double-edge sword to tell the reader of a textbook on the science behind the environment that the authors will just tell him what he “needs to know,” I wondered what I needed to know as I went about my business. I’m pretty hazy about the first few moments of today, I try to be that way every day, but I do remember turning on the stove to make breakfast, so in the interest of “moving this damn thing along” let’s start there…

I need to know that if I turn the given knob on my stove to “lite” [sic] a flame will emerge on whichever one of the four rings I wish. That a stove is where one cooks one’s food. That I must eat if I am to continue living. That, qua short-changed, university employee, qua divorced father whose kids like to cook with him, and qua excellent cook, it makes sense from the economic, familial, and taste vantage points for me to cook breakfast rather than going out. That I am a university employee, a father, and an excellent cook, what these terms mean, and why the first two roles involve extensive responsibilities backed up by legal, moral, and financial authority. English, even to read the word “lite,” and an understanding of the signs used by my stove to communicate with me. That the flame is the result of gas combining with a clicking sound and that if I turn the knob to “hi” (my stove has long been engaged in a fierce campaign against the English language) the clicking sound will go away. At this stage, the front right burner on my stove is emitting a blue flame, but I haven’t really done anything, yet I’ve needed to know a lot, and I left out a lot, all the stuff that led me to my stove, I probably glanced at my oddly long-lasting, black, plastic, Sony, clock-radio, I may have turned on a light, and I left out all the cool, interesting, worth-staying-up-all-night-to-read, continental, and, in contemporary terms, ‘non-scientific’ stuff about consciousness (all the stuff in “fuck off” books, as in “Fuck off, can’t you see I’m reading!”), so it seems safe to say that I needed to know, to put a definitive figure on it, tons.

Perhaps even tons and tons.

And yet I know nothing! And I don’t mean that in some form of Socratic, arrogant-faux-humble, sense; no, I mean I know nothing! Don DeLillo gets at something like this, he has the central character in “White Noise” awaken one morning and realize that he’s completely dependent on others, that he knows nothing (It’s peculiar that I remember this as I only read 50 or so pages of the book.) . So, what don’t I know? Well, the clicking sound, I assume that’s electrical, because there’s a plug and some cable running down the back of the stove, but I wouldn’t put money on it (whoa…something is true if and only if you’d put money on it – I smell tenure at UNLV!) , and anyway, what is electricity? How do you make it? And then there’s the gas.

But that’s okay, because I don’t need to know.

Thus the double-edged sword, for what do I need to know about the environment? I need to know the difference between climate and weather, check! That anyone who listens to Rush Limbaugh on the topic is a moron and if you read The New York Times, the Guardian, the New Yorker, and Harper’s, you’ll generally know what’s going on, check!

I don’t need to know anything else and that’s just as well because I don’t have any course materials here at home because NYU had a snow day on Friday (Yay!) so I didn’t bring my stuff home so now I’m not studying for my mid-term on Thursday, but that’s okay.

The worlds of science and politics were meant to be united in the fourth homework assignment for the course. After researching the topic, I had to write a one-page letter to my Congresswoman urging her to vote for, or against, a ban on sun tanning beds for under-18s. The science was unmistakably on the side of support for the bill, so I went with that. It was a bit of a slog to limit it one page (I eventually had to “cheat” by reducing the font from my usual 12 to 11 points), but, science aside, as it always would be in such a case, I would’ve preferred to take the opposing view - and, were this not a science course, I certainly would have. As I was writing this rather worthy piece (see below), I kept thinking of how the tanning bed industry would rubbish the science and, in some sense or other, accuse the bill’s proponents of being anti-American (or anti-freedom, the same thing for all-too-many Americans), or letting the terrorists win. And that, to a great extent, okay, maybe not the bit about letting the terrorists win, is what would happen and the average representative would probably find their arguments more compelling that the ones I offered not, of course, because the industry would offer arguments supported by that most telling of rhetorical devices, money.

The Honorable Nydia Velazquez
United States Congress
2241 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515-2104

Dear Congresswoman Velazquez,

My name is Dermot O’Brien, I live in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and I am a keen supporter of the fine work you do in the House, most especially through the “Children’s Caucus.” I am aware of the pending legislation H.R. 6637 Tanning Bed Reduction Bill and I urge you to vote yes on this bill because it will protect my two pre-teen sons from the harmful effects of tanning beds until they are at least 18 years of age.

It is clear to me, having researched the issue, that tanning beds are dangerous. As far back as 1997 in the British Journal of Dermatology, Woolloons et al found that tanning beds, “produce the types of DNA damage associated with photocarcinogenesis.” Beds thus damage skin at the most profound level imaginable from 3 to 8 times more than sunlight. Europe is, on this issue, well ahead of America with solid research from Sweden backing the claims of the British dermatologists, and Prof. Tom Keane, Ireland’s Director of Cancer Control calling for an outright ban on tanning beds.

I know that kids feel pressure to look tanned, but recent reports on the “look” demanded in the fashion industry suggest that designers are beginning to want models whose skin glows in a healthy manner rather than looking like, as one insider put it, “hazelnut chocolate ice cream.” But even I wanted to look like one of Ben & Jerry’s more exotic flavors, I can always use self-tanning cream, indeed I sometimes use it myself, which is infinitely safer than tanning beds (I found no evidence of any possible ill-effects from such creams) beds, and quicker and cheaper too!

Critics of this bill, as in so many other bills which attempt to protect our young people from harmful products, will, no doubt, adopt their usual twin tactics. First, they will try to say that the scientific evidence is not yet conclusive and that further study is needed. Second, they will couch their arguments in terms of “freedom.” They will claim that it is the right of every American to have any skin tone he or she wishes and say that this bill is an affront to “the American Way.” To the first claim, I offer the evidence above and the words of noted dermatologist, Dr. James Spencer of Mt. Sinai School of Medicine who says of indoor tanning, “we know it will cause skin cancer. Not maybe. Not might. It’s going to cause cancer. No one under 18 should be allowed to use those things.” In response to the second argument, I wish to point out that this bill will still permit adults to be as tanned as George Hamilton if they so wish, and that the real freedom to be protected is the freedom of parents to know that their wishes for their children are not undermined by society.

I cannot supervise my sons for 24 hours of the day, but if this bill passes, at least I can know that they are being protected from this highly carcinogenic practice.

Sincerely etc.

I don’t remember the title of the first book I read in college, but I do remember how I read it. It was a hefty tome on the state and as I read I wrote notes (“p 12 – state more capacious term than government” etc) on a pad. I remember feeling good -- all student-y, even intellectual, as I moved slowly through the text. After reading 50 pages, I decided to take stock. I had 20 pages of notes. I was new to the whole student thing, but I knew something was up.

Next, I tried I highlighter pens, these were definitely prettier than notes, but I could never remember why it was I’d used the different colors. Did pink mean civil society? Was pale blue power, or representation? And, of course, it wasn’t much use if I was reading a library book.

Gradually, I developed my own method (using the word method in its very loosest sense) which involves, in no particular order, Post-Its, marginal glosses, computer files, index cards, scribbled phrases on the edge of lecture notes, and, naturally, the occasional use of the highlighter. It has, on the one hand worked beautifully, I have a Ph.D., but, on the other, not so well, I don’t have tenure.

I’ve been thinking about study methods all weekend long (well, occasionally) because the mid-term is suddenly looming (I guess it isn’t suddenly looming, more like I’ve suddenly realized that it’s looming – bottom line, I’ve got more than my share of loomingosity in my life) and I want to do well. In theory, a good study method should lead to a good grade, and I’d say that’s true in my own field: I expect a student to come to class having read the texts, thus having arrived at what understanding he can, and open, through discussion in class, to having his view tested and challenged. But that’s not what goes on in Energy and the Environment.

In the world of science, I have to know stuff. And this stuff I have to know isn’t, at least at my level, open to interpretation. This would all be terrifying me if I hadn’t overheard one student tell another that we’d get study questions, I’m not wholly sure what they are, but I’m awfully glad they exist. Now I can calmly work on my letter to a Congressman telling him why he should support a law banning sun-tanning beds (due on Thursday). I can’t, I assume, write a letter extolling the virtue of “freedom” and telling her to ignore ‘the science,’ the fact that I can’t remains a subject for another day.

Still experiencing the afterglow of being in the presence of the transcendent artistry of Nina Stemme’s magnificent performance as Ariadne in Thursday night’s performance at the Met, I turn again to studying for the course. Hearing something like Stemme’s performance also, for me at least, produces a deep sadness: I will never do anything as well as she sang that role. Nonetheless, I must go on with my struggle to continue.

Today, Sunday, as I wait to head to my local to watch Super Bowl LXIV (my head says Colts, my heart wants the Saint -- I’ve never been to Indianapolis, but I find it hard to imagine I’d like it as much as New Orleans), I’ve decided to revive my fortunes in the course with one hour of studying.

I had planned to start this hour about two hours ago, but I had first to eat breakfast, vacuum my apartment, re-organize my closet, hear Tom Waits 1978 live performance of “On the Nickel” on the BBC’s “Old Gray Whistle Test,” read the latest of Tony Judt’s luminous memoirs in the New York Review of Books, bask in my relief and joy that my elder son was accepted into his dream high school, Beacon, answer some e-mails -- in short, anything but actually start studying. But now, with music switched from Van Morrison to some far less distracting Mozart horn concerti, I will...

Well, that was … well, I don’t know what that was: to be sure, I gave my full concentration to the text (by which I mean that, more often than not, I thought only about what I was reading) and I could see how it was building one formula on top of another as it explained light and its relationship to everything from pollution to sun tans.

Yet, I did not grasp it in the same way I would have grasped an hour’s worth of study of Plato’s Euthyphro. There are many reasons for this, most so obvious I need hardly recount them, but the main one, at least for today’s reading, is that it lacked a narrative.

Narrative aside, the main problem is that one hour is a drop in the ocean. If I was taking “Energy and the Environment” as a normal student, it would be one of four courses. I do not remember exactly how much studying I did for each course when I was an undergrad, but I’m certain that it would have been, over the course of three days, far more than 3600 seconds. I console myself that it is a necessary start, but I cannot delude myself into thinking that it is remotely close to being sufficient.

I thought I was hanging on, but midway through today’s lecture I realized I was deluding myself. As PTJ began to do some formulae, I found myself slipping away. By the lecture’s end, he might as well have been using Ukrainian as his language of instruction.

I knew I was starting to get into trouble when I realized that all week long I’d been putting-off the homework that was due today. I finally did it, well eight questions out of nine, during the last couple of minutes before class that I usually reserve for a quick cigarette. But that wasn’t the only clue, there’s also the fact that I’m about 15 pages behind on the reading assignments, and, probably most problematically, that I haven’t returned, as I promised myself I would, to the math review section of the lab manual.

For now, and very much against type, I’ll look on the bright side of this: I’ll get to experience the College Learning Center, the first place I’d send me if I was advising me, which will help me to better advise students who are struggling academically.… nah, that didn’t work. This is the moment when a student has to decide if he’s going to knuckle down, or blow off the whole course. I’ll think about it over a little Strauss, lucky scheduling that tonight’s opera at the Met is Ariadne auf Naxos -- it’s about a crisis of consciousness, too.

Today is another day of firsts. At the lab session, I’ll do my first quiz, then we’ll do our first experiments (we’ll discover the properties of air), and I’ll conclude by apologizing to the T.A. for turning in my first homework a week late.

Each lab is worth 50 points (10 for attendance, 10 for the quiz, and 30 for the assignment) with all lab work combined counting for 20% of the final grade. This, along with another 20% each for the midterm and for the homework, 30% for the final exam, and 10% for the in-class assignments will be the basis of my final grade. It is, indeed, a case of continuous assessment and markedly different from my own practice of grading via mid-term (40%), final (40%) and participation (20%). I tell my students that I don’t own a calculator (which was true until half an hour ago when I bought a shiny new one that, I’m pretty sure, is more intelligent than I am), and that I’m interested in how they finish not how they begin (many students, despite my best efforts, fail to grasp what I mean by a 1000 word essay, but if they take note of my comments, and improve in the final, I more or less, throw out the score on the midterm -- if they do not heed me they get the grade they deserve), but that kind of semi-laissez faire attitude wouldn’t cut it in a science class and, at least in my case, a jolly good thing too!

I’m pinning my hopes for a decent grade on the sheer amassing of points for things like attendance, making a decent stab at the tests and homework assignments, and not blowing up the lab…okay, you don’t really get points for that, but you do earn points for leaving the lab nice and clean. But what is, for me, a “decent grade?” I got a B on the last venture into mathscienceland, a grad stats course about fifteen years ago, so I’ll set that as my goal, but I won’t consider it a failure if all I manage is a more humble C. But given yesterday’s mortal eco-sin (I took my sons to a monster truck show) I should perhaps have already been failed tout court. I have enough Catholic left in me to see the course as penance -- perhaps that could be my motivation? To the books!

Take a balloon, a perfectly ordinary-looking blue balloon, pour dry ice over it, hey presto, it deflates, then remove it from the dish and, voila!, it re-inflates.… Thus did PTJ yesterday present an experiment and, although he didn’t identify it as such, Boyle’s law, I seem to half-remember, is proven. For proof of a half-remembered proof, or proof, at least, that my memory still works, I head, where else, to Wikipedia!

Wikipedia is not something I use in my own field, but in the last year or so I’ve found myself using it more and more for areas that are outside of my expertise. I assume that’s how others use it too, as I find it hard to imagine a chemist looking up Robert Boyle (a fellow son of the sod, another fact that I think I might have once known) when she could, qua chemist, write the entry herself. Anyway, I was right about Boyle’s law: the balloon deflated because dry ice is cold. It was all pretty impressive, very visual, a ‘reaction’ for all to see, but that isn’t what stayed with me most after yesterday’s class, no it’s the element, mixture, compound classification that I’ve mostly been thinking about.

My earlier supposition that elements are ‘elemental’ was correct, they can’t be broken down into other…things (file under, “for want of a better word”), or, more sciencesque (and after a peek at my notes) they contain only one type of atom. Then there are “mixtures,” which can be separated by physical properties like density, and “compounds” which can only be broken down by a chemical reaction. Background being the leading cause of foreground, I immediately thought: vinaigrette is a mixture, mayonnaise is a compound, and, with still less confidence, lettuce is an element. Then in the early hours of the morning, while not sleeping yet again, I thought, “No, that’s not right, mayo is a mixture because you could break it down in a lab.” Then I thought, “My mayonnaise extrudes a little of its olive oil on a warm day, I bet if I put some in a saucepan and heated it up it wouldn’t become decidedly un-mayonnaise pretty quickly, so it’s only a mixture!” Thus warring with myself (a war I couldn’t resolve at home as my course materials were all in my office) I eventually drifted off to sleep thinking that as subject for internal, insomnia-driven, dialogues go, mayonnaise beats the hell our of “stuff I wish I’d done,” or “stuff I really will do this time.”

Thus I make progress.