Ramo had the talent to second-guess US strategic thinking – from the implications of the A-bomb, through the space race to President Ronald Reagan's "star wars" fantasy and beyond – and he was also a stern critic of US science policy.
Inspired by his new science teacher, a stern, mittel-European Vincent Price-alike with a voice to match (by Martin Landau, who won an Oscar as Bela Lugosi in Burton's Ed Wood), the boy digs up the canine corpse, wires it to a pair of jumper cables and, in his attic laboratory at night, catches the electric currents shooting from a thunderstorm.
Hayflick as well will not bet against science, but he adds this stern caveat: "First we must invest substantially in the study of the basic biology of aging".
The annual shore walk was also a reaffirmation, members said, of the idea that environmentalism should not always be a stern-faced business of advocacy and hard science, but also a celebration of the things that are to be protected.
I have had some stern words with our colleagues in the climate science department about this, and they regret they ever told you to contact us.
A delegation of small-town officials led by a stern-faced minister interrupts a likeable young high school science teacher in the midst of telling his students about the Darwinian theory of human evolution.
The White House has not taken a position on the legislation, but Science has learned that budget officials asked NSF earlier this year to write a stern letter opposing the program.
That is, many of the participants initially viewed science as being a solitary endeavor, one conducted in a serious and stern environment that would require little use of communication and interpersonal relationship skills.
The movie's unvarying tone of grim menace and stern purpose has none of the energy of even the most banal of science-fiction cheapies.
But is that stern warning coming from the same Administration that touts "a historic $1 billion commitment to improve math and science achievement among K-12 students, an increase of over 40%" in its 2011 budget?
