The three As: Astronomy, Arithmancy & Astrophysics on Library

Zack Dill, Fair Presenter

July 31, 2010 12:05 AM

The three As: Astronomy, Arithmancy & Astrophysics by Zack Dill, Fair Presenter

Zack Dill had been looking forward to his return to Sonora ever since he got the letter sent out to all alumni. It was, in some ways, kind of like a five year reunion, except he didn't know if there were going to be anyone else from his year and, well, it had only been four years. Still, that was four years since he'd been in Arizona, four years since he'd seen any of his former schoolmates, and four years since he'd been here, at this table next to the Muggle Sciences section of the library.

For old time's sake, he'd brought along a sign that read:
Sonora Prefect Station
Manned by: Former Head Boy Zack Dill of Alderaan
Today's topic: Astronomy, Arithmancy & Astrophysics

He'd considered tacking his newly minted bachelor's degrees to the end of his name, but didn't think young witches and wizards without much knowledge of muggle college degrees would treat his B.S. in Astrophysics with the proper amount of respect. So he decided to include his former House instead.

Once he had a reasonably good sized crowd of kids (they looked young, but sadly not as tiny as five-foot-and-one-quarter-inch-and-less-than-a-hundred-weight Zack had been hoping they'd all look), he cleared his throat and began. "Hello, everyone, for those who don't remember me, I'm Zack Dill."

He paused for a moment, but thankfully nobody mentioned aliens. During his Sonora days, he'd been less than discreet in his theories, and some of his classmates thought he was crazy. Hopefully, most of those had graduated. He didn't want the fact that he happened to be one of the tiny minority of the human race who knew about the invasion to color their opinion about his three favorite subjects (other, of course, than Aliens, which was honestly the most important of the four As). But the conspiracy was vast and Zack had learned the hard way that anyone trying to uncover it would be persecuted.

It was best, safest, not to mention the aliens at all.

So he smiled and continued as though they weren't potentially ear pieces of the extraterrestrial threat, and tried to recruit them into paths that could help humanity learn the Truth. "I'm here to talk about Astronomy, Arithmancy, and Astrophysics. I just finished my four year program at New York University, where I received degrees in muggle Astrophysics, magic Arithmancy, and both muggle and magical degrees in Astronomy. I'll be returning in the fall to continue with masters programs in all three subjects as well. Eventually, I plan to have a muggle doctorate in Astrophysics."

"With these degrees, I'll be able to get a job working for the muggle organization called NASA. That's the National Aeronautics and Space Administration here in the United States. Muggle advancements in Aeronautics and Space technology could be invaluable to the magical understanding of Astronomy. With their technology, Muggles can see things we can't. With our magic, we can see things they can't. We're all trying to understand the universe around us. The more witches and wizards we have in NASA's front lines, the better off both societies will be." Because it will take both - magic and technology together - to overcome the aliens when they come back.

"Okay, that's my spiel. The rest of this session is going to be an open question and answer thing. So shoot out any questions you've got about NYU, the college process, muggle versus magical degrees, getting into a muggle college program after attending a magic school for seven years - which, let me tell you, is kind of complicated - astronomy, arthimancy, or astrophysics, or anything else you want me to tell you about life after Sonora."

1 Zack Dill, Fair Presenter The three As: Astronomy, Arithmancy & Astrophysics 40 Zack Dill, Fair Presenter 1 5

Thomas Fitzgerald

August 08, 2010 10:16 PM

Kinda sorta vaguely not really related to that list question by Thomas Fitzgerald

The schedule posted in the Cascade Hall had been something of a disappointment, since none of the speakers available, with the half-exception of Helena Layne, really touched on his interests, but Thomas was still very interested in the morning section of the Fair. If the Head elections had not traditionally been announced at the end of the year event, it would have actually been the main attraction of the day for him. The alumni might not be discussing how to succeed in his exact planned life, but they all, presumably, had a level of experience in adjusting to the greater freedom of the outside world without losing focus on their goals, the rigors of higher education or training of some kind, and - most importantly - establishing networks of connections in their new fields, without even necessarily the benefits of similar ages and possible extracurricular activities to be of assistance.

After considering the times and durations of the various shows, he decided, at least a little out of House loyalty and convenience, to start with the library. There might be risks to reminding Anne Wright that she wasn't the Aladren Quidditch captain anymore - he had never really known her, despite rooming with her cousin for three years before she left, but most of the House had known she was kind of nuts - and Rosalind Rabindra's presentation was of no more than academic interest to him since he lacked several qualities essential to anyone who wanted to be a pureblood wife and had no interest in marrying anyone for some time, but Zack Dill had the potential to be interesting. Mixing Muggle and magical degrees wasn't something he had heard of often.

Thomas didn't fall under the strictest, pureblood-marries-Muggle, definition of half-blood, but he thought he came close enough. His great-grandmother, Ducky Proctor, was a pureblood, or at least said she was, but her husband was a Muggleborn. Thomas' mother, Ivy, was a witch as well, but one who, after her marriage to a Muggle attorney whose Muggleborn brother had briefly dated her twin sister, kept her use of magic so limited that technology was perfectly capable of surviving life with her. Balancing the worlds had never been much of a struggle, perhaps just because he had been born to it and possibly had a gene for secrecy considering the range of family occupations, but he expected that graduation made things much more complicated for people with reasons to stay in touch with both worlds.

He didn't know exactly how well Zack managed it, but he made an impressive speech. Very impressive. One of Thomas' earliest memories was having his father explain what all of his degrees meant, so he was fairly sure that having two, never mind three - assuming the two Astronomy ones weren't counted as separate - bachelor's degrees was impressive and figured that it was rare enough for college professors to have multiple master's degrees. That was something Thomas had even less intention of doing than he did of studying Astrophysics. He thought of himself as smart, perhaps unusually so in a few areas, but he was no genius, and such an undertaking in any group of subjects would take a lot more than another seven years of his time.

The rest, though, was more relevant to things he did have a level of concern for. The notion that the societies could help each other was one he had thought of before.

In the end, he had decided full disclosure was unworkable. There would be wizards who were thrown into a panic when they found out the Muggles knew about them, and there would be even more Muggles who went nuts to find out that, basically, a huge secret society that had probably informed their centuries of theories about the Illuminati and such was real and hidden right before their eyes. Government officials not in the know would feel betrayed, so someone would probably find a way to nuke the major centers of magical population in New York and Illinois and California, and then there would be normal guys with guns against normal guys with wands. Maybe he was a pessimist, but unless it really came down to using magic to fix the ozone layer or dying, Thomas didn't think he wanted to be the one to make the decision to risk setting off an apocalyptic war.

Infiltration, though, was a possibility. Muggleborns and half-bloods - it was unlikely, though possible, that anyone born and raised as an old-school pureblood could ever blend in well enough with Muggle society to attract no attention, which would be essential for an operation of this sort - could quietly work on projects, like environmental clean up and, yes, space exploration. When the sun blew up, wizards would need to escape right along with everyone else if they planned to survive. The problem, though, was that every moment of their lives would be consumed with secrecy, and that had a proven tendency, throughout history, to make people go a little crazy. People aware they had powers that, from the perspective of their Muggle colleagues, could warp reality and who were using that awareness and those powers to do things right under the noses of those colleagues could very well decide they were supermen and try to take over the world. Thomas opposed world domination schemes as a waste of time and resources; they never worked, and people who couldn't settle for a quarter continent were usually so unhinged that they needed to be either shot or cursed in the back as soon as possible anyway.

Of course, it was possible that he was a pessimist. His father was a lawyer. He spent his holidays hearing about what a wretched lot humanity on the whole was, and that was in a world where the fact that everything was based on strict class divisions at least had a thin, dirty sheet thrown over it.

After the speech, he considered potential angles and turns of phrase for a moment before asking his question. "Yes," he said, then added, "I'm Thomas Fitzgerald," since there was almost no chance that he would remember someone who'd been about thirteen when he graduated and there was a chance that Thomas would be taking Zack's old job at the end of the night. Now just to avoid sounding like he was working on a piece for the Oracle or the wireless networks. "What would you say is the biggest advantage, generally speaking, of studying on both sides of the Muggle-magical divide?" And he had slipped, just a little, into reporterspeak - too much listening, he suspected, to political reporting on the wireless at Ducky's at Easter - but he thought it got at the point.

0 Thomas Fitzgerald Kinda sorta vaguely not really related to that list question 109 Thomas Fitzgerald 0 5

Zack Dill

August 09, 2010 10:10 AM

I can handle it by Zack Dill

One of the first kids to raise a question was a guy who looked old enough that they'd probably been at Sonora together and familiar enough that Zack though he should probably be able to come up with his name, but Thomas supplied it himself before Zack got too frustrated with his inability to do so.

It was a good question, too, and Zack grinned a little at the phrasing of it. "The initial reason why I decided to study both sides was that I wanted to study both Arithmancy and Astrophysics. Muggles don't offer the first and Magic universities don't offer the other, so I had to find a college that offered both. I didn't want to give up magic entirely because, honestly, magic is best thing that ever happened to me. But as a muggleborn geek, one of the things I liked least about Sonora was the lack of hard sciences. Now I get it in spades. These books," he stabbed a thumb behind him at Sonora's sad little collection of muggle science texts, "got me through my entrance exams, but there's a lot to be said for having lab time and professors who don't see the laws of physics attacked by the laws of magic on a regular basis, and can therefore get a better idea of how those are actually supposed to work in a magic vacuum."

"Which brings me to the answer of your question. The biggest advantage, which I didn't realize existed until I started straddling the 'Muggle-magical divide' - actually, Professor Taylor sort of helped me see it a little, back in Advanced Charms with Sciences, but it became really clear once I started taking Astronomy from both sides of the spectrum. The world does not have the rules of physics over here," Zack's hands boxed in a square of space on his left hand side, "and the rules of magic over here," he boxed in an equal sized area on his right. "There is no magic vacuum anywhere, even in the heart of a muggle science building."

"The world - the universe - has the rules of magic and physics everywhere. Magical people are blinded to the physics rules because we don't study them like muggles do, we can't separate them and study them on their own because most magical education centers are literally incapable of putting magic aside. Muggles are blinded to the magic rules because they don't believe magic exists, and what magical effects they do observe, they try to explain away as exceptions to the rules."

"There are so many fewer exceptions in the world when you account for both magic and science. Because of advanced arithmancy, I understand more about some of the unknown forces out in distant galaxies than my muggle astronomy and astrophysics professors ever will. Because of the laws of physics, I can calculate the variables I need to create the right arithmantic equations to find that kind of thing out. Magic and physics work in tandem, not opposition. The world makes so much more sense when both are taken into account."

He fidgeted a little in place, trying to contain his enthusiasm for the topic because it tended to make wizards nervous and muggles wonder if he should be committed (not that he had intentionally talked to any muggles about it, but before his healthy sense of paranoia had really kicked in, he'd sometimes forgotten to notice who might be listening, which had led to some very awkward conversations).

He took another breath and delivered his conclusion, "The biggest advantage, in short, is that you get to see the whole picture. You can't really understand anything if you intentionally blind yourself to half of the influences on why it's happening."

1 Zack Dill I can handle it 40 Zack Dill 0 5