One of the things that drives the textbook team is the newly tappable potential of scientific visualization. When Gael McGill and Drew Berry and their teams square off at their workstations, they're booting up a billion bucks in software research and development spent by Hollywood studios to populate Hogwarts and Middle Earth. We're using the Hollywood stuff to make biologists. We want kids to see what we're making for them, but what we really want is for them to see what Ed sees when he's outdoors. There are different ways of seeing. When Ed peels a blossom, he sees how the pistil and stamen were sculpted by the pollinating insect, and how the insect was sculpted by competition for the flower. He sees how they serve each other and how both serve the grazers that serve the predators. We'll make a visualization of those connections, but the real goal is to make connections in the synaptic jangle of young brains so that when they walk around outside, they'll see what Ed sees.
This morning Ed hopped over the wire to explore in dry, dusty grass. He didn't find a single ant. Conclusion? Rainy season must come hard here. Ants are the boss of the world, but they're fussy about flooding. Obvious if you know how to look.
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