fables

dear weather forecasters, why must you toy with my emotions?  no matter how many times you promise "severe" storms, sell your headlines, and fail to deliver, i keep believing you and hoping maybe this time you will change.  maybe there really will be a good, cathartic storm.  sure, i pretend to be skeptical when you carelessly spout your predictions  - but a little part of me still believes.  so yesterday, when you hinted at the possibility of funnel clouds, i was fairly certain you were exaggerating, but i thought maybe, just maybe, i might get to watch at least some small display of pyrotechnics over the park.  instead, i watched the fountain splashers pause for the briefest moment in response to the single crack of thunder ... and then i watched them return to their business of rinsing off the sweat soup that is city air.  it seems i am not the only one who thinks the weather channel should stop crying wolf.

watching the winds blow away the world science fair was of little consolation.  though it does make one wonder ...perhaps the winds were sent as a warning.  tents had been set up throughout the streets to attempt to indoctrinate innocent children with the belief that science is fun and cool:  free balloon animals, face painting, pictures taken in astronaut gear.  what they aren't telling these kids is that while building random structures with giant blue tubes and blocks at the imagination station is fun (and yes, i really wished i could have borrowed a nephew so that i could have played without looking like a pedophile), any further specialization has less to do with the joy of science than it has to do with the joy of listening to the letters p, h, and d roll off one's tongue (and closing one's eyes as graduate school chips away at one's soul).  until of course some day when one realizes that the scientists are in cahoots with the weathermen (no, i don't believe the friendly personalities who peddle their thunderstorm fables from blue screens are actually scientists).  give the children access to the knowledge they need to make informed decisions: for the record, i have never seen snow cones at lab meeting.

that said, i like the bio bus.  given that the bio bus didn't blow away, i'll suspend my skepticism and believe that some science could still be worthwhile.