November 6, 2009
Category: Ethics Palace: Where ethical questions go to live or die • Industrial Agriculture • Links to Other Conversations and Articles • The STS Compages
Is It Possible to Eat Sustainably at the University of Virginia?
Eating sustainably requires (a) that you come to some resolution about what "sustainable" means, (b) that you have the opportunity to choose so-defined sustainable foods, and (c) that the constraints of your lifestyle, geography, and socioeconomic context make it possible for you to pursue such an endeavor. Threading the needle between all of that is tricky business. Thus many have chosen to run experiments about it, or related to the larger theme, defined in various ways: the "week without" processed food; the "week without" plastic; the "year" living on a local diet; the adventures of "No Impact Man." Elizabeth Kolbert reviewed books on that theme in a New Yorker essay at the end of the summer. Some students in a class I teach called "Technology, Nature, and Sustainable Agriculture" (here is the website the class made last semester) are trying it right now.
Read on »
Posted by Benjamin Cohen at 9:15 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 5, 2009
Category: Humor stuff, and in the best of worlds, science humor stuff • Music for discerning science geeks • The Art/Science (Non?)Divide Building
Science Scout Twitter Feed
Well, actually, mathematicians - but it would probably go like this:
CD Title: Inverse: (Special limited edition release) (2009)
Artist: VAMPIRE WEEKEND
Rating: 2.718 stars (out of 5)
- - -
The rating stands. (Spoiler alert: We rounded.) Actually, we took our cue here from Leonard Euler. Our rating is actually "e," as in the sound of the squeals that will inevitably emanate from the ladies of Cambridge after they all get a hold of Inverse come two months. Yes, M.I.T.'s finest are back with a shtick to shake up the innumerate masses for whom any further mention of the band's album sales sends us critics to sleep, and more than a few of the recent graduates of that other school up the river into jealous fits.
Anyway, you can read the rest here at the SCQ.
p.s. Horchata rocks! And this review is entirely fictional.
Posted by David Ng at 3:30 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 3, 2009
Category: Nature as in Earth, as in Global, as in Global Issues Generally • Nature, as in parts, bits, molecular and stuff • Video links (archive.org samples, for example; Youtube.com; others...)
Science Scout Twitter Feed
I mentioned earlier, about being involved in a
great student conference (you know the whole
Chewbacca thing). Well, we're starting to roll out the videos online. Here is the first, and it's a great one - worth checking out for those of you into H1N1 and also social media tools.
Dr. Jennifer Gardy, an alumnus speaker at the event, is co-leading the new genome research lab at the BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC). She is also known as Nerd Girl from her Globe and Mail blog of the same name. In her talk, Gardy shared how advances in technology have provided increased collaboration on scientific research and scholarly publications -- what she labelled as public health 2.0.
For example, she showed how one publication had 36 authors. After leading the audience through the origins of H1N1, she stated how it only took five days from the sequencing of the virus to the first open-source paper. Gardy ended her talk emphasizing how students should be willing to explore the benefits of Open Access publications, collaborative research, and emerging technologies. (From Phillip Jeffrey's Macleans' oncampus blog)
Links:
BCCDC, Nerd Girl, Phillip Jeffrey, TEDxTt09
Filmed by Craig Ross at TEDx Terry talks 2009 (October 3rd, 2009). Video edited by David Ng.
Posted by David Ng at 1:13 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 30, 2009
Category: Links to interesting sites and discussion of them • Nature as in Earth, as in Global, as in Global Issues Generally • NatureLand: What They Used to Call the Environment
Realclimate.org has a great post today called "An Open Letter to Steven Levitt." In case, you haven't heard, this is the economist, and one of the noted authors of the Freakonomics, who recently published Superfreakonomics, a book that is fast gaining notoriety as being fraught with many errors on the issue of Global Warming.
Essentially, the post does a great job in showing how some simple arithmetic could have easily demonstrated problems in one of the claims provided in the new book (on why utilizing Solar Energy would effectively be worse for Global Warming).
It's a wonderful piece, starting off as below, and definitely worth reading all the way through.
Dear Mr. Levitt,
The problem of global warming is so big that solving it will require creative thinking from many disciplines. Economists have much to contribute to this effort, particularly with regard to the question of how various means of putting a price on carbon emissions may alter human behavior. Some of the lines of thinking in your first book, Freakonomics, could well have had a bearing on this issue, if brought to bear on the carbon emissions problem. I have very much enjoyed and benefited from the growing collaborations between Geosciences and the Economics department here at the University of Chicago, and had hoped someday to have the pleasure of making your acquaintance. It is more in disappointment than anger that I am writing to you now.
Posted by David Ng at 11:44 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 29, 2009
Category: Gift Shop & Haberdashery
(I'm guessing that at least one of my five readers are from UBC, so here goes).
Of course, this happens just before Halloween...
The other night, I moved a human anatomy torso model from my lab to my car. This was in preparation for an elementary school visit the following morning. It's basically this model shown here:
Anyway, the organs can be removed for closer examination, and essentially I dropped the brain somewhere in the transport. I'm even pretty sure where it likely fell (somewhere between the Michael Smith Labs which is next to the Bookstore, and the main parkade by the hospital, along East Mall).
Actually, here's a map of roughly where it was probably dropped:
Read on »
Posted by David Ng at 6:35 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 20, 2009
Category: About writing generally • NatureLand: What They Used to Call the Environment
I've just had a piece published in the Walrus, and it's also available to read at their website. Basically, the piece is about how this 85ft Blue Whale skeleton was discovered and prepped for a new museum at the University of British Columbia.
It was really quite amazing to chat with Mike deRoos, the aforementioned Master Skeleton Articulator, and it's worth mentioning that he was not the one who came up with the job title. He was as humble and nice as humble and nice can be.
Anyway, whilst finding out stuff for the piece, I had a chance to take a few photos, which you can see below. It was awesome to see these bones, but it must be something else to see the whale itself in the wild.
Anyway, the article starts with a recipe:
Read on »
Posted by David Ng at 3:33 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 15, 2009
Category: The Art/Science (Non?)Divide Building
Today, seedmagazine.com has a piece about Luke Jerram, the artist that I wrote about earlier (he of the incredible glass microbe structures). Anyway, I was asked to write something to go along with the piece, and have done so here.
It's funny, but I even felt a bit awkward writing this response (being asked to do a piece on Art and Science). I know I do this sort of thing in my lab, but having to comment intelligently about it feels weird to me.
Still, I do believe that precisely because "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," there's not one best way to talk science to the non-scientist, and I guess that's why I'm fond of all of those projects that do thrive upon (what some might call) unconventional partnerships.
Anyway what do you think?
Posted by David Ng at 8:30 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 9, 2009
Category: About writing generally • Links to Other Conversations and Articles
Philip Graham is a writer and professor at the University of Illinois. Friend of the World's Fair Oronte Churm recently interviewed him. (Mr. Churm, aka John Griswold, also teaches at Illinois and is also a writer -- check out his beautiful new novel Democracy of Ghosts.) It's a good interview, right here at this link.
Read on »
Posted by Benjamin Cohen at 2:00 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 7, 2009
Category: Knoxville '82: Where Miscellany Thrive • Video links (archive.org samples, for example; Youtube.com; others...)
Let me explain...
First take a peek at this:
I actually posted this earlier, but basically, what you're seeing here is the promotional video for a student conference, called TEDx Terry talks. This, we just finished up the other day (it was amazing and you can see the synopsis here).
Anyway, we actually launched the video way back in early September - the first day of school to be exact. We even had a booth and stuff where the video was playing, and had quite a few spritely 1st year university students walk by, look at it curiously, watch it, chuckle at it, etc. You'll note that Chewbacca makes a brief appearance in the video.
What was amazing to me was that during that day, not just one, but indeed, two, separate groups of 1st year students uttered something to the effect of:
"What is a Chewbacca?"
Seriously?
Is it possible that there are people in the world who do not "nod knowingly" when they see a picture of this iconic figure?
Read on »
Posted by David Ng at 1:16 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
