Scot's page on science interests.

My interest in science goes far back into my childhood, probably to second grade at Mount Auburn Elementary in Dallas, where my PE teacher was also my science teacher. He was Jim Canaday, and was one of the first real male role models for me. My dad had died when I was only three, and I did not have any adult male influences in my life. Mr. Canaday introduced me to science and I was hooked. I augmented that education with the local community college science program, which rounded out my science knowledge.

Later I had the real science teacher in our school, Mrs. Haney. She was inspiring and fun and sweet. She died a couple of years later of cancer, but while I was in her class I found a home for my love of science.

I would have liked to go on to become a physicist, but I had problems in school, and it wasn't until my adulthood, at age 34, that I found out that I had ADHD. I still plan to pursue science more in the coming years, hopefully down either the physics road or perhaps archeology (how's that for variety?).

I'll say now that I have long been an adherent of the theory of evolution. Sure, I was raised in a Southern Baptist church, but from the first time I heard about the theory it just made sense to me. Since I first learned of the theory many things have transpired, including the growth of evolutionary studies among short-lived species such as flies and birds and even fish! There's even a documented study that tracked the speciation of a species of fly into two co-existent species due to population pressures.

Beyond evolution is the theory of the "Big Bang", or the explosive creation of our universe some 13 billion years ago. It fits beautifully with the theory of evolution and is part of what I see as the ultimate of God's creation, given you believe in some higher order of being such as something called "God". To me the absolute miracle of God's creation is that it all started with a single point of energy about the size of a superball (1 inch or a couple of centimeters in diameter). Just imagine, from that little but absolutely dense ball of energy all the things in the universe developed, right down to little ol' Earth. All the massive super-galactic clusters and microscopic cellular enzymes come from that little ball. What greater majesty than to have such a complex, diverse structure come about on its own?

Put it this way: I see it as the difference between a gardner who plants flowers already in full bloom and a gardner who plants the bulbs and seeds and then does little more than water from that point on. The beauty of the achievement is in its steady growth to full beauty and its eventual demise, only to give rise to a new bloom in the future.

Enough proselytizing about evolution and the big bang... On to what magazines I read and what magazines I wish I could read...well, I wish I had the time to read.

Scientific American, the classic science magazine for scientists and the scientifically inclined. SciAm is not a science journal so much as a science interest periodical, allowing, say, a physicist to keep up on current behavioral theories from psychology or materials engineering principles and beyond. It's a great magazine in my opinion, and not just because is has pretty illustrations and pictures.

Discover, the science magazine for the everyday intelligent person who wants to understand the world of science and the world around us. Discover doesn't go into the sometimes hairy depth of SciAm, but it does cover the same breadth of subjects and with the same classy approach. It's a magazine for those truly interested in scientific issues from all fields.

National Geographic, which is more of a magazine for moderate-depth science-related issues, delivered with a great deal of photographic backup. I don't think of National Geo as a pure science magazine, but it certainly puts you into the arena of broad science, from sociology with their ongoing review of various parts of the US by zip-code, to astronomy and physics with an exploration of the auroras at the polar regions.

Omni Magazine, which is no longer a print magazine, finding its existence solely on the world-wide web for a while. I rarely kept up with it in later years, but I do have an unbroken collection at least the first three years of the original publication. My brother gave me the premier issue as a reward for finding a wheel cover that flew off his car and landed in some brush under a bridge. While the online version remains it doesn't look to be current. Omni was always a very innovative magazine, sometimes veering into the off-beat area of near-science.

Another, older mag I remember is "Science Digest", but it either went away or became something else. I seem to remember it having some connection later of to Discover, but I'm just not sure.

On cloning humans. There has been much debate on the issue of cloning humans, especially for the purpose of "harvesting" body parts to promote a longer life in the original person. So much arguing, and so little thought. US law, at least, recognizes the separate body as a person, so even a clone would be considered a separate and free individual with full rights. The former concept is one of slavery, with an industrial edge for making replacement body parts.

There. I think that will do for my science page for now.