Re: FoRK classic: Why is the sky blue?

Rohit Khare (rohit@godzilla.ICS.uci.edu)
Thu, 05 Feb 1998 11:00:18 -0800


The proper origin of this meme is Clifford Stoll's _The Cuckoo's Egg_,
in which an erstwhile astronomer turns hacker-tracker and sniffs out a
German club tied to the KGB with a fake star-wars site sting.

In between his personal exploits baking cookies and coming up with
new regular expressions with his SO in the shower, he explained his PhD
defense, in which one of his committee members asked just that questions--
and when he was done, asked "why is that", and repeated. He had to go, as
this explanation did, from chemical compositions of atmospheres, albedo,
to solar spectra, dipole effects and the photochemical effect.

But basically he was getting into the hierarchical complexity Science uses
at each level.

Fascinating read.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0671726889/6818-9550552-770502/forkrecommendedrA

Rohit