I was going to put this up on the blog regardless but I was waiting because I had hoped that Professor Schwartz would talk about it during class!!! Anyway, I assume that some of you guys caught this story but when I saw it I could not help but think about our class. Basically, James Cameron, the Academy Award winning director of the Titanic and Avatar, took a solo expedition into the ocean to research the deepest place on Earth. Scientists around the world paid him to conduct research. SCIENTIST PAID A MOVIE DIRECTOR TO DO RESEARCH FOR THEM!!! If that does not sound like breaking down the walls between the sciences and humanities then I do not know what does. I have attached a view links.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/post/james-cameron-and-our-exploration-evolution/2010/12/20/gIQA1D2EeS_blog.html
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2402234,00.asp
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/03/120326-james-cameron-mariana-trench-challenger-deepest-lunar-sub-science/
interesting... while admittedly my first reaction was one of disturbance and annoyance, i have come to realize that what James Cameron is doing is perhaps a wonderful thing: he is reinvigorating the actions of a "citizen scientist," a role that is often depended on for research. (the best example i know of is that of the ivory-billed woodpecker, thought to be extinct... and yet hundreds of citizen scientists go out every season hoping to see this bird again, and to report it to those scientists in need of as many eyes and ears on the ground and in the sky as possible.) let's just hope Cameron doesn't turn this into a media circus... oh wait... :(
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