Baraka is a poet down to his bones, and the wildly uneven stories of "Tales of the Out & the Gone," which veer from broad, Pynchonesque satire to pointed science-fiction parable to jazz-infused Joycean linguistic games, are unmistakably poet's prose.
In question after question, the document peppers Energy Department managers with pointed queries about climate science research, clean energy programs and the employees who work for those programs.
12.16pm: A pointed reference to "restoring science to its rightful place," and harnessing "the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories".
However this dispute is resolved, questions of trust and authority arise in a particularly pointed way in the sciences, and Hardwig's dilemma for the physics experiment is also a specific version of a more general phenomenon.
In a pointed 24 July memo to science committee members, Schmitt complained that they lacked "willingness to provide the best advice possible to Mike," refused to back Griffin's decision to cut research funds for astrobiology or recommend an alternative cut, and resisted considering the science component of future human missions to the moon.
A pointed scene in "L.I.E".
Point to its pointed teeth.
The second and third were more pointed, and attempted to draw a sharp line between science "journalism" (contextualising, investigating and, at times, challenging science) and science "communication" (a public relations exercise).
The perceived conflict between good science and prestige has become so pointed that, two years ago, Randy Schekman, a Nobel Prize-winning biologist, announced in the Guardian that he would no longer publish in Nature, Cell, or Science, which, he wrote, "aggressively curate their brands, in ways more conducive to selling subscriptions than to stimulating the most important research".
Centered above the horse is a seven-pointed star that also echoes the relationship of science and nature in the universe.
Thus, where there is no criticism of the biomedical sciences, there is a serious and pointed criticism to be made of those who fund research and those who set research priorities.
