Articles for category: Fall 2021 Magazine, Perspectives

A Remarkable Government Investment

The PWA — the Public Works Administration — was, according to my father, a terrible exercise in government waste. Given the choice between creating soup kitchens and jobs during the Great Depression, the “New Deal” opted for a huge public works program, paid for by new taxes. So, while my father cursed, Washington created low-paying ...

In Praise of Frivolous Questions

Years ago, I would argue with friends in an army mess hall: “How should we best keep our coffee warm until we get around to drinking it? Should we put the cream in right away? Or should we wait?” Well, let’s see what happens when we play with that question. Perhaps the cream is just ...

Universities Step Up Research for Social Change

Before the Black Lives Matter movement, there were already committees and organizations at colleges around the country trying to change the systemic racism that, much like the virus, had worked its way into every facet of our American life – including within our institutions of higher education. But important seed funding for diversity and inclusion ...

From Mars Simulations to Spaceship Earth

UH alumna Patrice O. Yarbough (Biochemistry ’80, ’85) discusses the confinement studies she leads at NASA’s Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) and what insights they can give us to better cope with isolation. Cut off from the outside world. Day in and day out: the same faces and the same four walls. Living through quarantine sounds eerily ...

Art in Flux

“Make a salad.” One of the pivotal works of the Fluxus collective by artist Alison Knowles is —like most contemporary art— open to interpretation. Taking advantage of the work as a recipe for automatic participation, University of Houston professor of art history Natilee Harren often teaches this performance art instruction or “event score” in her ...

GI Bill hero image

The GI Bill

I started college in 1947. Most of the other students in my classes were returning veterans, ten or so years older than I was. That was just three years after President Roosevelt had signed Public Law 346, The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act. But everyone simply called it the GI Bill. It gave tuition, books, and college ...

Tim Holt

convergence research

Converging on the Answer: A Q&A with Beckham Dossett

Society is faced with a plethora of grand challenges. Energy crises, environmental pollution, and health disparities, for starters. Scientists and social scientists must work together to navigate these vast, rough waters. Their unique disciplines must intermingle. Their research must converge. What is Convergence Research? In 2016, the National Science Foundation (NSF) introduced convergence research as ...

bi plane next to a dragon fly

How Many Wings

Things that are obvious so easily mislead us. That came home to me when I picked up a used book: Jim Winchester’s The World’s Worst Aircraft. I’ve seen at least two other books with similar titles. Anyone who’s studied the history of flight will think of bad airplanes beyond the 150 in this book. Then ...

John Lienhard

children running on path through woods

When I Was A Child

We are told, “When I was a child … I thought like a child … When I was a man I put away childish things.” Well, I once helped survey the layout of rough dirt roads for logging trucks in the virgin Douglas fir forests near Roseburg, Oregon. That was in 1947. Nearby loggers felled ...

Eric Gerber

paper or plastic?

Funny You Should Ask: Paper or Plastic?

Prepare yourself for another edition of “Funny You Should Ask,” the feature that encourages UH researchers and scholars to put scientific method on hold and amuse themselves with a more light-hearted approach to inquiry. Previously, we’ve challenged our participants to ponder such puzzlers as whether breakfast is the most important meal of the day or ...