bcohen
Posts by this author
July 29, 2008
The recent upswell in two-culture talk around Scienceblogs is driving me nuts (here's a good jumping in point -- oh wait, this one's better). One might question the so very many unquestioned assumptions in the current conversation about "what is science" and "what are the humanities" and "what does…
July 24, 2008
...According to Ex-Marine Brad Collum.
And Kevin Fleming, his apparent interlocutor, as originally published here.
You thought we couldn't pull off three Apple product satires in a row? Not to mention the Dick Cheney one we didn't like as much so we didn't include in this reprint series. But it…
July 23, 2008
This is one from the vault. Though not our vault. It was posted here in the original. But we offer a full reprint below the fold.
If you're a fidgety right-finger-on-that-mouse-scroller zooming-down-the-page reader (oh, did I nail it Mark?), don't miss chapter 18:
XVIII. Using the iPhone to learn…
July 22, 2008
Apple, Inc. joke week continues here during an all star World's-Fair-Scheduled-Posts-While-We're-Away Link Week. This one was originally published here, back in 2005, and remains one of my favorites of technology satire. (Oh, you have one too? What's yours? Is it Vonnegut's Player Piano? Cat's…
July 17, 2008
New Zealand and Canada both "received a significant number of settlers from Scotland and Ireland. Did these groups bring a particular set of land management techniques with them that had a particular impact on the landscape and environment? Did a particular conservation ethic develop among Scottish…
July 16, 2008
At "The Missing Link." In three parts. By historian Elizabeth Green Musselman.
Part I (her episode 8): The Ghost in the Machine. Or, the deep history of scientific method, and how the rules evolved to the point where intelligent design cannot follow them.
Part II: Evolution, Communism and Other "…
July 15, 2008
Not just floating around the northern Pacific Ocean, it's now on podcast too.
image from Greenpeace via Treehugger
To the likes of the New York Times Magazine "Sea of trash" and Harper's "Moby Duck", please welcome Jody Roberts' voice to the bibliography of garbage swirling around the sea. It's…
July 14, 2008
A cropped excerpt below from the full strip called "Faith," at Cat and Girl (do go see the whole thing):
July 13, 2008
Memoir
Orwell says somewhere that no one ever writes the real story of their life.
The real story of a life is the story of its humiliations.
If I wrote that story now--
radioactive to the end of time--
people, I swear, your eyes would fall out, you couldn't peel
the gloves fast enough
from your…
July 10, 2008
Keep up with the matter at Recall.gov.
While not a fun sport, it is an active one. They list product recalls in seven categories:
1. Consumer Products (in general).
2. Motor vehicles.
3. Boats.
4. Food.
5. Medicine.
6. Cosmetics.
7. Environmental products.
Oh boy. Go grab a burger with a slice of…
July 8, 2008
Oronte Churm asks: Are you happy? An interesting entry.
To get to that, he works from Virginia Postrel's article "Inconspicuous Consumption" in The Atlantic, on his way to Bill Watterson speaking to Kenyon College many years ago on happiness. In my experience, any time you get stuff from the…
July 7, 2008
Alphametics, viseopoetics, I don't even know if I'm typing this right.
Do you know what these are? I don't entirely understand them, but I know someone who does.
But what's the gist? Oh right, alphmetics. These are word games. And math. Or math. Kind of. But not Sudoku.
Where do you find them…
June 27, 2008
Resolved: a host of academic, journalistic, and community-based work has increased its focus in recent years on the matter of local food. In no way could I summarize the breadth of that work. But I am frequently surprised to find the same conversations going on, over and over again. For example…
June 23, 2008
Circa 1937.
Between me and you, and so don't go telling everyone, but I like that it's a gas-pump-shaped building even more.
June 19, 2008
Pt 1 | Pt 2
- - -
Part 2 with Graham Burnett, author of Trying Leviathan, follows below. All entries in the author-meets-bloggers series can be found here.
WF: What would you have biologists today take from this book? I ask because you are at some pains in Trying Leviathan to argue for the…
June 18, 2008
Part 1 | Part 2
- - -
The World's Fair is pleased to offer the following discussion about a most unique and forceful book, Trying Leviathan: The Nineteenth-Century New York Court Case That Put the Whale on Trial and Challenged the Order of Nature (Princeton University Press, 2007), with its author…
June 13, 2008
Stunning news out of Washington. John Boehner, that congress guy, you know who I mean, laid down a devastating critique yesterday by claiming that politicians in congress are "playing politics." He reports that in the Senate "it's been about politics everyday all day."
I thought they were there…
June 11, 2008
Won't you read this story over at Orion? Choice, consumption, citizenship.
Then reread Charles Kettering's 1929 article, "Keep the Consumer Dissatisfied." Says Kettering:
If everyone were satisfied, no one would buy the new thing because no one would want it. The ore wouldn't be mined; timber…
June 9, 2008
Circa 1976, an editorial cartoon from Bill Mauldin. File this under "everything old is new again"?
June 4, 2008
Somehow I couldn't help thinking of the study below when reading the recent article on a scientific study of sarcasm. As with that (sarcastic?) study, this one also considered ways to understand humanity with scientific analysis. As published in Life magazine in 1946, let's call it the optics of…
June 4, 2008
Quoth neuropsychologist Katherine P. Rankin: "I bet Jon Stewart has a huge right frontal lobe."
Sure. Why not.
June 4, 2008
Here's something on sustainable agriculture: Farmfoody.org seeks to connect those who eat food with farms and gardens. Do you eat food? If so, this might be of interest to you.
The site showcases a featured farm, links to an Eat Well Guide, provides a forum for local growers and buyers to…
June 3, 2008
This post was written by guest contributor Cyrus Mody.*
There's a new study reported in Nature Nanotechnology entitled "Carbon nanotubes introduced into the abdominal cavity of mice show asbestos-like pathogenicity in a pilot study." Or, as the title seems to have been understood by reporters at…
May 28, 2008
Scientists and engineers have helped empower the environmental justice (EJ) movement. But how has their participation changed their own scientific and engineering identities? A workshop this weekend will explore the matter.
(click on the image--a larger pdf version will open in a new window)
This…
May 27, 2008
A new off-off-off Broadway production is in the works. It has: Drama! Intrigue! Denialists Exposed!
It's Bisphenol-A: The One Act Play.
Read on to find out about Endocrine Disruptors! See how the tobacco interest is related to the recent Bisphenol controversies! Hear about Nalgene and the…
May 23, 2008
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY.
(By Jason Adams)
1778: Alexander Hamilton was "feelin' it."
1864: John Wilkes Booth was down with that.
1907: It was Teddy Roosevelt's bad.
1933: Amelia Earhart went, girl.
1933: Charles Lindbergh player hated.
1954: Rock Hudson had it going on.
1955: Albert Einstein kept it…
May 22, 2008
Geo-engineering from the '40s.
From Military Engineer, 1944
(via C. Pursell's Technology in Postwar America, 2007)
May 20, 2008
"In the long run men hit only what they aim at." H.D. Thoreau, Walden
This post's title is the poorly reasoned conclusion to a poorly reported and poorly conducted study. I couldn't tell if it was simply bad reporting at The Boston Globe or bad research. Either way (or both ways) it suggests that…
May 20, 2008
Now that summer draws near, I have ambitions to read the works listed below the fold. True, I put them here so I can keep track of them. Because I get confused and lose things a lot. But I also put them here to offer a mini bibliography on the themes (some related, some not) of Food, Environmental…
May 18, 2008
Summarizing some points on local food, community supported agriculture (CSAs), and energy, here's a Youtube catch.
By virtue of its length (3 minutes) and forum (You Tube), it necessarily glosses over the structural issues that make food issues as complex as they are (things like economic…