Resistance is futile. Photo by James Williford

As promised, here is intern James Williford’s dispatch from the Perot Museum of Nature and Science:

The Newest Cube To Come to Dallas
By James Williford

“A large cube floating over a landscaped plinth.” That’s one of the phrases that the public relations folks at the new Perot Museum of Nature and Science chose to describe the building that, over the last two years, has risen out of the ground in downtown Dallas. “Plinth,” the informational packet handed out at today’s media tour helpfully explained, means “roof” — at least, according to whatever dictionary the Perot PR team relies on, that’s what it means. So we’re to imagine this rather severe-looking, 170-foot-high, 180,000-square-foot hexahedron hovering just above its 4.7-acre site next to Victory Park. Yes, hovering.

Now, initially, I was hesitant to compare the structure to a Borg vessel. First, because it makes me sound like a Trekkie. (But, then, I suppose I am.) And second, because it seems obvious. (I’m not the first to point out the similarity between the Perot and the mobile homes of Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s archenemies.) But it’s almost unavoidable. The Borg were collectors of knowledge with a marked bent for geometrical form — not at all, it seems, unlike the decision-makers at the Perot who chose architect Thom Mayne, the Pritzker Prize-winning head of Morphosis Architects, to design their new institutional digs.

And then there was the tour itself. Whatever lingering misgivings I had about pursuing a Perot-Borg comparison went out the window when Mayne, responding to a reporter (not me) who suggested that there are those in Dallas who “hate” the design, likened his creation to a lunar landing module. “It’s not about liking or disliking it,” he said. “It’s about understanding it — its scientific logic.” He meant that, from the outside, the design is, as he put it, “systematized in geological terms,” that it’s meant to look something like stratified rock. Still, there was something cold, sterile, unfeeling about his defense of the Perot’s aesthetic.

Things only got weirder as the tour progressed. Borg-like, Mayne insisted that the building wasn’t his “in any way,” but “absolutely a collective effort,” the end result of “hundreds of thousands of discrete conversations.” At one point, Walt Zartman, of Hillwood Development Company, said, “Literally, the building is coming alive.” His “literally” made me chuckle, then shudder. And, finally — the crowning touch — in the Gems and Minerals Hall, a tour docent described a huge geode that museum-goers can open and close by spinning a wheel as “an alien egg.”

Yep, the Perot is a Borg ship, come to collect and disseminate the knowledge of our race.

Scary? Not really. The thing is — as any fan of The Next Generation will attest — the Borg were cool. And so is Mayne’s work. I visited one of his firm’s recently completed projects, 41 Cooper Square in New York, and was thoroughly impressed by both the building’s scarred, undulating shell and the light, almost serene openness of its interior. The Perot isn’t there yet, of course. Right now, its exhibit halls are a mess. And where they aren’t a mess, they’re just bare concrete, waiting to be filled with dinosaur skeletons, ornithological displays, representations of the expanding universe, and whatnot. But I’m looking forward to the finished product, to wandering its exhibitions spaces, seeing the lush landscaping that, eventually, will embrace the building, and grabbing a bite at the cafe.

The Perot is, and even when completed will remain, a stark, imposing structure. But it’s also a truly compelling bit of design — so compelling, in fact, that I’m tempted to call it irresistible. And resistance, my fellow Trekkies will recall, is futile.

Jordan (the shadowy figure out front), with his buddy, Nate, outside the Knox Street Apple store last night.

I’m worried about my son. It’s not just because he camped out all night at the Apple store on Knox Street, so he could be among the first to buy the new iPhone 4S this morning. It’s because Jordan, who’s 17, has apparently fallen in love with Siri, the phone’s new voice-activated personal assistant.

All day he’s been babbling meaningless questions and requests into his phone: “Siri, how old is the earth?” “Siri, can you wake me up at 4 p.m.?” “Siri, what is the weather like in Chicago?” “Siri, tell me a joke.” (”Two iPhones walked into a bar …,” Siri replied.)

I keep thinking he’ll get bored with it, but after his latest question, I’m not so sure. “Siri, I love you,” Jordan said. “Will you marry me?” Answered Siri, who claims to be genderless, “I think we should just be friends.”

Perry Tries to Downplay Racist Name of Family’s Hunting Camp: So who had  a worse weekend, Tony Romo, who threw three interceptions to lay the ground for the worst collapse in Cowboys history, or Rick Perry, whose family’s hunting camp, we learn, has been long known by a racial slur? Perry spent much of the weekend denying the report.

UT Southwestern Professor Shares Nobel Prize for Medicine: Bruce Beutler, who will soon rejoin the faculty of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine along with Frenchman Jules Hoffman and Canadian Ralph Steinman for their work on immune system defenses. His most important discoveries were made, in part, during a previous stint at UT Southwestern, when he discovered a molecule that plays a role in the nervous system’s first line of defense against disease.

Tim standing at his computer.

We all know that sitting will kill you. Some of us took the news a little more to heart than others. Here’s Tim with his new super desk that raises and lowers as he stands and sits. He’s not going to start out standing all day. He’s done research. He has to ease into it. Though it makes me a little nervous to sit next to someone who’s standing all day, it’s way worse for Laura, who sits across from him. Her reaction to seeing this? “OH, NO!” And his response? “I look at you less.”

These scientists decided, for kicks I guess, to see if they could get their little electronic monster to suffer the symptoms of schizophrenia. According to this Forbes blog post:

What they discovered is that, like the schizophrenics, the DISCERN program had trouble remembering which story it was talking about, and got elements of the different stories confused with each other. The DISCERN program also showed other symptoms of schizophrenia, such as switching back and forth between third and first person, abruptly changing sentences, and just providing jumbled responses.

Have they cracked the code of determining why Skynet will turn against us?

A researcher at Texas Woman’s University in Denton has found that the high polyphenol content in blueberries could help fight obesity. So, local grocers, get ready for a run on your produce sections as people embrace a berry-heavy diet.

Let us hope that no one takes this too far and ends up like poor Violet Beauregarde:

Brooks rocketed to fame with 2000’s Bobos in Paradise, a hilarious and prescient look at America’s new bourgeois-bohemian elite. And last night, in a prelude to the Social Animal discussion, he was at his old best scattershooting at the Bobos: How, for example, it’s OK for them to drive a “luxury” car like a Volvo or a Saab–”so long as it’s from a country that’s hostile to U.S. foreign policy.” Then, unfortunately, he launched into this long discussion of some woman named Erica–apparently this is a character he made up for the new book–who was empathetic and purposeful and who used her emotions to … do something sort of important with her life, but it wasn’t really clear what it was.

Sensitivity and our unconscious thoughts are too often ignored, I believe Brooks was saying, and if we don’t make public policies that speak to “our central emotional natures,” it’s, well, it’s going to be too bad for us.

When he was finished, a questioner asked–rightly I thought–for Brooks to please give an example of how public policy would be smarter if only we would address our emotional natures.

In response, he pointed to the U.S. “COIN” counter-insurgency program in Afghanistan, which seeks, Brooks said, to “build networks” among the Afghani people, leading (everyone hopes) to lasting democratic reform there.

A second example involved “rethinking our human-capital policies.” Meaning? Since many students are not emotionally engaged in college studies, they need to have a “favorite teacher” in order to re-engage emotionally and build up their relationship skills.

Which I guess is cutting-edge stuff in somebody’s world.

To his credit, Brooks disclosed that some of his Washington, D.C., colleagues have been puzzled by his new book, asking him jokingly whether he weren’t having a “mid-life crisis.”

I think he said he isn’t.