One Month Until "Two Cultures" Conference

It's April 9 today--the big extravaganza in New York is exactly a month away, May 9. It's gonna feature E.O. Wilson, Ken Miller, Lawrence Krauss, Dean Kamen, and many, many others. It's also going to feature both of your bloggers, fellow disco blogger Carl Zimmer, many other members of our ScienceDebate2008 crew, my Princeton history of science prof D. Graham Burnett, and many, many more. We'll have C.P. Snow experts, scientific experts, and science and society experts. We're going to take a look at the "two cultures" through the lens of history first, and then we're going to analyze the continuing gap between science and society as manifested through the media, politics, and education. And we're going to propose solutions--indeed, how fitting that Sheril just today has posted an amazingly exhaustive list of policy fellowships for scientists and engineers, which are precisely the sorts of programs that we need to see thrive if we're going to bridge the gulf between science and the rest of society. Meanwhile, I'm mooting a kind of blog countdown to the conference here at the "Intersection," and trying to think about how it should go. My attempt to blog about some of the other scientific classics I've been reading earlier this year didn't necessarily succeed, but perhaps we should all read "The Two Cultures" lecture together over the next month? How many people would be interested in doing that? It's not very long, it's easy reading--no math or anything, heh--and this is the best edition. Leave a comment if you think this is worth doing, and then we'll decide whether there's a critical mass. And meanwhile, if you want an early-bird conference rate, tomorrow is the deadline to register....