bcohen
Posts by this author
September 22, 2008
And yet it continues. I'm so naïve. I was astonished several months ago to note that the same food miles and local food conversation was going on and on. But here it is again. The same one. Anew. Again. More. the. Same.
(from a study by the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, 2001…
September 19, 2008
"Construction of green roofs grew 30 percent in North America last year," reports the Chicago Tribune.
(image credit: G. Paul Burnett/The New York Times)
White roofs, green roofs, what can I say? My grandfather was a roofer.
The architects and engineers have done a lot with green roofs here at…
September 19, 2008
More low technology solutions to energy problems. Just ask guest blogger Jody, he's always going on about this. Or Isaac Newton. He knew something about light.
Here's an L.A. Times story,"To slow global warming, install white roofs," reporting on it.
But why not title it, "To reduce energy use…
September 15, 2008
Two things happened last year when we started to get the Sunday Washington Post. One was that I tried to figure out those crossword puzzles. That's not going so well. The other is that I would read the humor column in the back of the magazine by Gene Weingarten. That's turned out better. I…
September 13, 2008
The same guy who sent me those Patagonian Volcano Storm pictures (thanks Dana, by the way) also forwarded these images of a mass migration of stingrays. To quote the note I got, they look "like giant leaves floating in the sea." I first thought it was some kind of quilt, a checkered pattern on a…
September 12, 2008
A former student sent along these fascinating images. The e-mail said: "Tons of dust and ash from the eruption of the Chaitin volcano poured into the night sky just as an electric storm passed overhead. The resulting collision created a spectacular sight as lightning flickered around the dust cloud…
September 11, 2008
In the pantheon of American letters, The Guilfoile-Warner Papers have long held a spot of hallowed pre-eminence. With their contribution this week, the correspondence has now reached Daily Shovian levels of excellence. I had sought to choose the best line in their column, but got caught unable to…
September 11, 2008
"As America's colleges and universities search for ways to go green, many are looking at the dining hall....where five times more energy and water are consumed than any place else on campus." (WVTF)
Small things matter.
Here at U.Va. and apparently at several hundred other colleges, Aramark--a…
September 11, 2008
Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
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Part 4 with Jody Roberts and Michelle Murphy--discussing her book Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty--follows below. All entries in the author-meets-blogger series can be found here.
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WF: The book is titled "Sick Building Syndrome and the…
September 10, 2008
Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
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Part 3 with Jody Roberts and Michelle Murphy--discussing her book Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty--follows below. All entries in the author-meets-blogger series can be found here.
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WF: Racism is a word that generally makes us feel…
September 9, 2008
Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
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Part 2 with Jody Roberts and Michelle Murphy--discussing her book Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty--follows below. All entries in the author-meets-blogger series can be found here.
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WF: So we've got the women on the inside organizing and…
September 8, 2008
Part 1 (below) | 2 | 3 | 4
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Note: This author-meets-blogger set was produced by guest blogger Jody Roberts, whose prior contributions can be found here, here, and here.
On behalf of The World's Fair, Roberts recently cornered historian and STS scholar Michelle Murphy to talk about her award-…
September 5, 2008
Or thank whatever/whoever it is atheist readers thank. PZ I guess.
Required viewing below the fold.
From the 3 Sept 08 show.
September 3, 2008
That's how today's McSweeney's column began at least. In the course of revision, it became "An Anti-Environmentalist Writes His Next Column While Eating Take-out and Driving His Hummer." My motivation was this asinine column by Tierney a little over a month ago. Did I mention how unnerving this guy…
August 22, 2008
I was struck by the comments over at Razib's blog on the matter of Jamaicans and genetic pre-disposition. I even left a skeptical comment there about it. I'll keep going on about it here.
I'm sure genetic make-up has something to do with pretty much everything; and I'm just as confident that other…
August 20, 2008
"Over the past three decades, grosso modo discourses of militancy in AFNs in the US have been superseded by more circumspect, incrementalist narratives of change, better adapted to hegemonic notions of the market and consumer choice promulgated by the dominant neoliberal political economy."
Well…
August 18, 2008
This post was written by guest blogger Elizabeth Green Musselman.*
One year ago I began producing The Missing Link, a monthly podcast on the history of science, medicine, and technology. In case you are unfamiliar with the world of podcasting, which is a type of audio blogging that began in 2005,…
August 13, 2008
I don't make it a point to keep up with the goings on at Lower Blakemere Farm, Blakemere, Herefordshire (UK). But they have a very well-developed series of podcasts that let me do so anyhow.
Here then, with a great name: Wiggly Wigglers. Criminy, there's a lot -- they're up to #144.
Fun to…
August 12, 2008
In a time of increasing concern for water quality and availability, nuclear power facilities require enormous quantities of water and put back effluent into those nearby water sources. At a time of carbon counting, they also generate considerable carbon emissions through the process of construction…
August 12, 2008
MIT Press publishes a series called Urban and Industrial Environments. Several of the "author-meets-blogger" books were from that series. The main editor is Robert Gottlieb of Occidental College out in California. I was just made aware of a blog for his Urban & Environmental Policy Institute…
August 8, 2008
After the little round of history of science talk earlier this week (this one from me; this one from Dave; this one from John Lynch) I was talking to a colleague about comparable history of technology blogs -- blogs that take the subject of studying and discussing the history of technology as…
August 8, 2008
"But it's delicious."
Here's a link worthy of linking to, eminently linkable: "Carnivores, Capitalists, and the Meat We Eat", by Jon Mooallem, in The Believer some time back (October 2005). It's all about popular meat writing. I take that to be about environmental ethics too, about how humans…
August 7, 2008
From friend-of-The-World's-Fair WJG comes a link to The Grass Seed, a graphic story/comic strip by Claudia Davila at Ballyhoo Stories.
Read on from the link above. It's a five-sheet story. A meditation, in part, on embodied knowledge, sensory limitations, or the limits of knowledge. One…
August 6, 2008
Worlds colliding here.
According to Mussina (13-7, 3.56), the piece was entitled "Discarded Titles For Hunter S. Thompson's Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas," and included such examples as "Dread And Abhorring In Las Vegas," "Trepidation And Disliking In Las Vegas," and, in what Mussina described…
August 6, 2008
I came across this slide show by Christopher Benfey at Slate earlier this summer. It's a series of photographs by the German photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher. Apparently Bernd passed away last year, so I don't know (and Benfey didn't know) if there will be more. All of the Becher's pictures…
August 5, 2008
We once pondered aloud what Homer had in mind with his claim that Batman's a scientist. Since then, and I'm sure because of it, a new movie about Batman has been released. Now Jon Barnes at the Times Literary Supplement traces seven decades of evolution in the Batman character and persona.
The…
August 4, 2008
Historians and some scientists argue that it is a relevant and important pursuit to understand more about the history of science. I agree; in part this is what my day job is. But why exactly does it matter? To whom is it important? In what way? What will they get from it? How do historians…
August 1, 2008
Chemical & Engineering news has a profile of Food Network guy Alton Brown. (Did you know the Food Network is about the only family-friendly station I can ever find? True story. Ergo, I've seen Alton Brown before.)
If you've not seen him, Brown's "presentation style [is] a combination of Julia…
August 1, 2008
Proof of "a threshold species between modern birds and their prehistoric dinosaur relatives" hanging out with Mephistopheles in Flight. Though don't take my use of the word "proof" too sincerely.
Archaeopteryx lithographica
(Berlin Specimen)
[Convergences #33]
Eugène Delacroix, Mephistopheles…
July 29, 2008
An advertisement from Frank Scott's company (as reprinted in Ted Steinberg's American Green). Talk about religion and nature--Scott thought it was un-christian not to keep a manicured lawn.
Our lawn finally came in this year after three years in this house. We hadn't put much of an effort into…