Tag Archives: skepticism

Theoretical Physicist Lawrence Krauss Can’t Draw Giraffes

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In light of the holiday season I thought I would treat everyone to a gift that has been sitting in the giraffe library for quite a while. Unfortunately, there is no exciting, adventure-filled story behind this as Dr. Krauss simply said, “Everything I do is better than Kaku” when I showed him Michio Kaku’s Uni-giraffe (he really doesn’t like that I guy), but you be the judge!

Theoretical Physicist Lawrence Krauss

Lawrence Krauss (wiki; web) is a theoretical physicist who teaches at Arizona State University and is the director of its Origins Project. Perhaps best known for his book The Physics of Star Trek (1995), Krauss is a popularizer of science who has written editorials in many publications and is a frequent guest on National Public Radio’s “Science Friday”. In January 2012 he has a book coming out that will address why there is something rather than nothing; in fact, in A Universe from Nothing he will make the case that “not only can something arise from nothing, something will always arise from nothing.”

Seems straightforward enough.

Though sometimes nothing is better than something.

A Postmodern Giraffe By Writer and Editor Michael Shermer

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Michael Shermer

Michael Shermer (web; twitter) is a humanist/atheist/nontheist/skeptic thinker best known for his seventeen books on psychology, biology, history, and … cycling, the former of which includes the popular Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (2002) and his most recent The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies – How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths (2011). In addition, Shermer is the editor-in-chief of Skeptic magazine and also writes a monthly column for Scientific American. So, as you can probably infer, if you give this guy a pen, he will probably return it completely drained – along with an essay.

Approaching him at a convention in Fargo, ND, Shermer was happy to contribute though with the proviso that he have full artistic license to do as he wished. Having no problem with this, I let him do as he wished. After a matter of minutes he returned my notebook with what I can only call a classic. Unlike his giraffe-drawing contemporaries, Shermer saw this as an intellectual challenge; instead of just creating a reflection of the social construction we call a “giraffe” he broke it down to its barest essence. And while I am by no standard (but my own) an art critic, I do believe Shermer to be a noble successor to Duchamp and contemporary of Damien Hirst.

This is the future of art.

… And what a sad future it is.