Get Yer Food, Science, and Nature Ya-Yas Out
A Summer 2008 Reading List that is woefully devoid of The Rolling Stones.Posted on May 20, 2008 8:00 AM • 2 Comments •
The World's Fair
All manner of human creativity on display
Search this blog
Profile
David Ng is Director of the Advanced Molecular Biology Laboratory at the University of British Columbia - this is a just a fancier way of calling himself a science teacher.
Benjamin Cohen is an Asst. Professor of Science, Tech., and Society at the University of Virginia. He studies the place of S & T in environmental history, policy, and ethics. He also writes other stuff.
Trying to find your way around this place? Like most expositions, we offer a map: Map of The World's Fair
Need a car? Of course you do. Try this one:
Recent Posts
- Boy Band sings about automated pipetting [the video]
- Carbon Offsets in the World of Flying: A Big Picture - What would it take exactly? How's about a forest the size of Oregon...
- Spin spin spin - what you see is not always what you get...
- 3 Song Mix #3
- JK Rowling and her advice to students (on fear and imagination)
- Food Miles: Spinning Our Wheels?
- The unicorn - official mascot of the World's Fair (and a bit about nuclear warheads)
- The Uncombable Hair Syndrome
- Things that are unlucky (or lucky?): Carbon tax game on when gas prices high.
- 3 Song Mix #2
Recent Comments
- Joe in LA on Can you solve Puzzle Fantastica #3? - The Final Clue...
- clismo on Spin spin spin - what you see is not always what you get...
- AlanM on Can you solve Puzzle Fantastica #3? - The Final Clue...
- Barn Owl on Carbon Offsets in the World of Flying: A Big Picture - What would it take exactly? How's about a forest the size of Oregon...
- ecoli on Carbon Offsets in the World of Flying: A Big Picture - What would it take exactly? How's about a forest the size of Oregon...
- Jonathan on Boy Band sings about automated pipetting [the video]
- Joe in LA on Can you solve Puzzle Fantastica #3? - The Final Clue...
- Lisa on Spin spin spin - what you see is not always what you get...
- Lisa on Spin spin spin - what you see is not always what you get...
- Warren on Spin spin spin - what you see is not always what you get...
Archives
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
Links
- McSweeney's
- Science Creative Quarterly
- Terry
- boingboing
- A LIST apart
- Mediascout
- MAKE:
- Grist
- Treehugger
- The Morning News
Blogroll
- defective yeti
- Utterwonder
- The Concept of Irony
- The Education of Oronte Churm
- Inky Circus
- Hope for Pandora
- Strange Maps
- Paleo Future
- No Impact Man
- My Blue Puzzle Piece
- Trinifar
- The Collective Voice
And so forth...
The Book Building:
Michael Pollan: Chewed Up and Spit Out
"Big claims. Not too much support. Mostly unconvincing."Posted on May 9, 2008 10:15 AM • 3 Comments •
Borges was a Webelo (and Other Book Jokes)
New from McSweeneys: Because who *doesn't* want a good Borges joke?Posted on May 6, 2008 1:40 PM • 2 Comments •
Richard Powers on Biography and Memory
And so much more. A challenge to the uninspired, to the non-observant, to science, to the futurePosted on February 11, 2008 11:20 AM • 0 Comments •
"All epistemology begins in fear..."
It is a misconception...that historicism and relativism stride hand in hand, that to reveal that an idea or value has a history is...to debunk it.Posted on January 4, 2008 9:00 AM • 2 Comments •
Objectivity: True-to-Nature, Mechanical, and through Trained Judgment
a story of lofty epistemic ideals fused with workaday practices in the making of scientific images...Posted on January 3, 2008 1:00 PM • 2 Comments •
Scientific Objectivity has a History.
Here's a post about it. A post mentioning morality. And referring to historical contingency. Come on in.Posted on January 3, 2008 8:20 AM • 4 Comments •
Why don't we love science fiction?
"SF is, in fact, the necessary literary companion to science."Posted on December 7, 2007 7:30 AM • 4 Comments •
"A Note" (poem by W. Szymborska)
An extraordinary chance / to remember for a moment / a conversation held with the lamp switched offPosted on November 26, 2007 11:00 AM • 0 Comments •
What do you think of Stephen Jay Gould?
What do the other bloggers and readers here think of Gould, his work, his contributions, and his legacy? How does he fare in these parts?Posted on November 26, 2007 8:00 AM • 41 Comments •
New Game: Historical Fill in the _____!
"The period between the end of _______ and the end of ______ is one of the most important in American history and, these days, one of the most neglected."Posted on November 25, 2007 6:50 PM • 5 Comments •
Cogitations on an Accident
Overtures to certainty in science and engineering paired with uncertainty in fiction.Posted on August 2, 2007 2:33 PM • 0 Comments •
Is Biology Reducible to the Laws of Physics?
Alex Rosenberg, Philosophy Professor at Duke, argues so. John Dupre, Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Exeter, isn't buying it. I'm not either, ever averse to such reductionisms.* Here is Dupre's review of Rosenberg's Darwinian Reductionism: Or,...Posted on April 10, 2007 8:46 AM • 20 Comments •
Michael Pollan Interview: On Bookshelves Near You
April issue of The Believer brings you Pollan's thoughts on food, industry, and more.Posted on April 2, 2007 4:25 PM • 0 Comments •
Squid in Review: Shoddy Research, Bad Sportsmanship, Questionable Hair Style
Animals of the Ocean, In Particular The Giant Squid... leaves much to be desired...Posted on March 13, 2007 1:30 PM • 1 Comments •
Announcing The Morning News's 2007 Tournament of Books
A book tournament, in its 3rd year, and a good one at that. Size up the field here.Posted on February 20, 2007 11:32 AM • 0 Comments •
Sustainability & Climate Science concepts via the use of lovely children books' images.
Chris Van Allsburg, "Just a Dream" (over consumption) So as the truth experiment continues to do its thing, I'm getting ready to give two talks on sustainability and climate science concepts to an audience of visual arts students here...Posted on January 24, 2007 12:05 PM • 1 Comments •
The Mysteries of Iris R. Adsel. Captions needed.
MOVING DAY THELMA AND LOUISE THE PEACH TREE...Posted on January 5, 2007 5:56 PM • 6 Comments •
What different parts of the world eats in one week.
Faith D'Aluisio and Peter Menzel have a newish book out which is just wonderful from a food perspective. Essentially, they've traveled the world to meet "average" families and report on their dietary habits. Apart from being thematically intriguing from a...Posted on November 29, 2006 2:42 PM • 55 Comments •
Chris Ware: World's Fair Advisory Board Nominee #2
Nominee #1: Karl Iagnemma Nominee #2: Chris Ware Well, it was great to finally meet Ben (and Janet, John, John, and Steve) a couple weeks ago, when there was a PSA/HSS/4S conference in Vancouver. Ben and I had a chance...Posted on November 21, 2006 11:29 AM • 1 Comments •
Wouldn't it be great if Richard Scarry was still around to do a new Busytown book on science or sustainability? (I'd buy it anyway)
Yesterday, I was playing with my kids and having fun with the Find Lowly Worm game that seems to be a rite of passage when looking through a Richard Scarry picture book. Anyway, in our edition of "What Do People...Posted on November 20, 2006 2:52 PM • 4 Comments •
Frogs in Jars and Skeletons at Tables (and other States of Decay)
A slide show about a book about things decaying or already decayed...("Boston artist Rosamond Purcell repurposes the old, the burnt, and the mangled.")Posted on November 16, 2006 1:42 PM • 1 Comments •
Darwin Bibliography (Courtesy of Adam Gopnik)
Adam Gopnik writes in the Oct. 23rd New Yorker about Darwin's writing period after the Beagle and before Origins (which is to say, roughly through the 1840s and into the later 1850s). His essay is more or less an appreciation...Posted on October 24, 2006 5:19 PM • 0 Comments •
God and Theologians and Scientists and Dawkins
I saw two more reviews of Dawkins' new and widely discussed The God Delusion recently. Both were critical about the book. Both had points that I thought were very well made. One review is by Terry Eagleton, in the London...Posted on October 22, 2006 8:32 PM • 35 Comments •
Karl Iagnemma: World's Fair Advisory Board Nominee
The World's Fair's popularity has skyrocketed over the past few months, and all the more so in the post-Puzzle Fantastica Era. (Data: We have readers almost every single day now. Sometimes even more. Recent problems at the Sb server may...Posted on October 5, 2006 9:00 AM • 0 Comments •
This Post Sucks -- A Joke About Einstein
Called: "Dale Peck Reviews Einstein's Latest." I'm serious. This is a failed piece. Failed because it's too obscure, although it was fun to do. But it requires too much from the audience, and who really cares and wants to do...Posted on August 18, 2006 11:32 AM • 3 Comments •
Encyclopedia Brown returns
Encyclopedia Brown is back and more political than you might remember, with Encyclopedia Brown And the Mysterious Presidency of George W. Bush.Posted on August 9, 2006 2:33 PM • 2 Comments •
Stuff I've Been Reading #2: Vonnegut this time, not Nick Hornby.
(previous Stuff I've Been Reading) Books Read: "The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup" by Various (finished) "The Educated Imagination" by Northrop Frye (finished) "A Man Without a Country" by Kurt Vonnegut (finished) "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by...Posted on August 9, 2006 2:26 PM • 2 Comments •
Vonnegut Week Continues at The World's Fair
Ode to "Report on the Barnhouse Effect" (1950). The "Report on the Barnhouse Effect" was Vonnegut's first published story, appearing in Collier's. That was while he was working at GE in public relations, and after he was a chemistry major,...Posted on August 9, 2006 10:00 AM • 2 Comments •
"Little Charlie Darwin, God Bless Him": plus a blurb or so on biography
I just posted an entry on Darwin's status as a scientist, and wanted to tag on this brief run-down on some biography. (Although I'll say right off that I'm *not* a historical Darwin scholar, and a lot of brilliant people...Posted on July 30, 2006 7:45 PM • 3 Comments •
Seems like a decent collection to get your kids on their way... (Ask a Scienceblogger, sort of - round-up #2)
The question posed this time: Are there any children's books that are dear to you, either as a child or a parent, and especially ones that perhaps strike a chord with those from a science sensibility? Just curious really. And...Posted on July 24, 2006 2:23 PM • 20 Comments •
Nice change of pace: a question for you about science and about children's books.
So, today is the last day of the Children's book workshop, and it's been a nice change of pace for sure. The instructor, Susan Juby, was excellent and the content generally helpful and did I say, nice change of pace?...Posted on July 14, 2006 12:13 PM • 13 Comments •
Science book appendum: Maurice Sendak was a science illustrator
Mr. Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are is easily one of the best loved children's book on our planet, but it may surprise you to know that his first published illustrations were done in the name of science. Of...Posted on July 14, 2006 9:23 AM • 3 Comments •
Bookshelf #1: July 2006 Cohen edition
I'm following Dave's lead here, who was following Nick Hornby's lead, who could probably be made aware of our lead following and then wax poetic on the flourishing of his format. Except I'm sure he's busy. Lunching with Cusack. Unless...Posted on July 7, 2006 9:49 AM • 5 Comments •
Stuff I've been reading: My take on being Nick Hornby (if Mr Hornby did decide to provide some scientific commentary).
One of the monthly columns in The Believer, is written by none other than Nick Hornby, and is called "Stuff I've Been Reading: A Monthly Column." In it, he presents a list of books bought and a list of books...Posted on July 6, 2006 12:32 PM • 3 Comments •
Procastination Science Reading (June 29/2006)
Since thursday is no longer must see TV, here is a round up of some interesting pieces that relate (although sometimes weakly) to the sciences....Posted on June 29, 2006 10:56 AM • 0 Comments •
Procastination Science Reading (June 12/2006)
I thought it would be kind of interesting to try and showcase a few links from the types of journals and publications that take less than academic stabs at science writing. It's the sort of stuff that interests me to...Posted on June 12, 2006 12:58 PM • 3 Comments •
