bcohen
Posts by this author
January 2, 2008
There is no precise category for this post, because it is about La Laboratoire, a new effort housed in Paris that explicitly and actively undermines the impoverished art/science divide. NPR ran a story about it last week, while Science published a review of it the week before that.
The "lab" was…
December 28, 2007
PRESS CENTER | PRINTABLE BRACKETS | FINAL GAME: Darwin v. HIV
Now that d-Orbitals are sitting at home doing the work of orbitals while TiVoing the Darwin-HIV match-up, it's hard for some to believe that they once looked to take it all. But this scrappy bunch of, of whatever d-Orbitals are (besides…
December 27, 2007
PRESS CENTER | PRINTABLE BRACKETS | FINAL GAME: Darwin v. HIV
This is how tournaments go. You end up with some of the classic games in the middle, you find a monster match-up in the Sweet Sixteen. And that's how it went down when Corporate met Darwin, as Rich called it over at Evolgen.
As Rich…
December 26, 2007
PRESS CENTER | PRINTABLE BRACKETS | FINAL GAME: Darwin v. HIV
It was Particle versus F=ma in the Sweet Sixteen, and BBC Radio 4 LW was broadcasting with those charming accents. Fortunately, geologist Chris Rowan was there to translate. Mostly.
This is what we heard when we first dialed in...
JA…
December 25, 2007
PRESS CENTER | PRINTABLE BRACKETS | FINAL GAME: Darwin v. HIV
And then there was a slew of action in the Mortar and Pestle Region. Janet Stemwedel, ethicist to the stars, was there to give the pre-game rundown. Her sense of the science's strengths and weakness proved prescient.
It began like this…
December 24, 2007
PRESS CENTER | PRINTABLE BRACKETS | FINAL GAME: Darwin v. HIVWhat began as a field of 64 highly competitive teams has ended with just Darwin and HIV. With the tournament's Final game currently underway, we look back on a Science Showdown like no other. Some of the best play in the early rounds…
December 21, 2007
"And each generation, full of itself,/ continues to think/ that it lives at the summit of history" -- so ends Affonso Romano de Sant' Anna's poem "Letter to the Dead" (as posted here last year).
In the same spirit of questioning Modern Exceptionalism, here is a quote by the German author Daniel…
December 19, 2007
I'm taking this from past guest blogger Oronte Churm, who has asked the following over at his blog:
John or Paul, and why?
Later, we may diffract the query to ask if the John/Paul split maps onto the Stones/Beatles split.
December 19, 2007
I had the fortune to be a bit experimental in the classroom this semester. Curricular innovation, they call it. More precisely, in one of my courses (called "STS 200: Technology, Nature, and Sustainable Communities"), the students wrote an entire book. These are engineering students. All…
December 17, 2007
Elizabeth Musselman, an historian of science at Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX, produces a wonderful series of podcasts called The Missing Link. You should all know about it.
(It's Bertrand Russell)
Of The Missing Link, she writes that it is:
A monthly program about science and its…
December 17, 2007
PRESS CENTER | PRINTABLE BRACKETS
I don't even know what to say. Darwin won. It was won, how to put this, how to put this, it was won a little more than handily. Particle didn't even score. Darwin won 142 to 0.
WF: [speaking to the camera, microphone in hand] Let me step into the press…
December 17, 2007
PRESS CENTER | PRINTABLE BRACKETS
Aaaaannnnnd, we're back. Thank you for tuning in.
Remember? Remember the brackets? The 2007 Science Spring Showdown? The phenomenon Rolling Stone said was summarized at this url"; the tournament ESPN: The Magazine hailed as "full of 64 teams and then some, as…
December 13, 2007
As brought to us from researcher's at the Children's Television Workshop:
The letter Z (source: C.M.).
The number 10 (source: T.C.).
and
Carry on, having confirmed that, yes, two-year-olds can blog too.
December 10, 2007
"Never has so little been asked of so many at such a critical moment."
Michael Maniates, a professor of environmental science and political science at Alleghany College, contributed a compelling op-ed to the Washington Post recently, "Going Green? Easy Doesn't Do it." Maniates basic point is…
December 7, 2007
It's a story I wrote, posted over at McSweeney's today.
As an understatement, let's call it more melancholy than uproarious.
Let's.
December 7, 2007
Science reported this a few weeks ago: "Did Horny Young Dinosaurs Cause Illusion of Separate Species?" (23 November 2007; Vol. 318. no. 5854, p. 1236)
I assumed this would be a study of the libido of such astounding creatures.
Credit: Holly Woodward, at Science
I was, umm, incorrect.
It is,…
December 7, 2007
Looks like cartoon week is continuing in these parts; perhaps we have a cartoon month on our hands. The above is from The New Yorker, back on Nov. 19, and offered now as a long-awaited continuation to the dialog on blowing up mountains here.
December 7, 2007
"The British are sniffy about sci-fi, but there is nothing artificial in its ability to convey apprehension about the universe and ourselves."
Folks are always going on about Science Fiction in these parts. And that's fun. Figured I'd add a link to this essay, "Why don't we love science fiction…
December 6, 2007
Waterboarding. This is the topic for debate in our modern world. We go on and on about progress in civilization, yet we're talking about torture. Here are three recent views on the subject: This Modern World, The Onion, and Doonesbury. It's the torture satire trifecta.
(And for those who stay…
December 6, 2007
A poem by Mary Oliver (1992). Please make of it what you will. And please, for World's Fair regulars, connect it to prior posts as you will:
Rice [1992]
It grew in the black mud.
It grew under the tiger's orange paws.
Its stems thinner than candles, and as straight.
Its leaves like feathers of…
December 6, 2007
I take it that the enterprise of SEED and scienceblogs, in its framing as a public conversation about science, is to argue about science. So, below, a quote from Isaiah Berlin.
But first, by way of follow-up to an earlier post by Jonah, here is the irascible historian of science Paul Forman on a…
November 30, 2007
Continuing with cartoon week here at The World's Fair, we offer this one from Herb Block, circa 1977:
I'll leave this without undue editorializing, instead wondering if readers will offer their own take on this thirty-year old view of research agenda-setting, policy making, and government of…
November 28, 2007
Our alternative sponsor for November (arriving very late in the month) is a Tom Meyer cartoon.
(by Tom Meyer, SF Chronicle cartoonist, as reprinted in Ann Vileisis's Kitchen Literacy, p. 213)
We offer this, as always, to call attention to favorite Sb sponsor Dow Chemical (though I haven't seen…
November 26, 2007
A Tom Toles editorial cartoon, from Sunday's Washington Post
I thought it was well put. It offers a concise vision of decision-making practices to someone (namely, me) predisposed to think about what makes evidence evidence and what makes for sound, well-supported reasoning. Among other things.
November 26, 2007
I just picked up Jonah's book, Proust was a Neuroscientist, which so far has me thinking differently about the other things I read. And with Whitman as the first chapter, I got to thumbing through some poetry. Plus, it's a nice season for poetry.
Moving on, inelegant as this transition may be…
November 26, 2007
Stephen Jay Gould in Simpsons' form
Just asking. I had a whole explanation about what brought me to wonder about this, but you don't really care, so I'll skip it. Between three and eight of you would've found the back-story interesting. No matter, the other 27 wouldn't have.
Cutting to the…
November 25, 2007
Taking a cue from Dave's recent meme-games and my own reading of the weekend book review section of the paper, I'm inspired to wonder how many answers can fit the following blanks:
"The period between the end of _______ and the end of ______ is one of the most important in American history and,…
November 7, 2007
Rachel Maines's book, The Technology of Orgasm: Hysteria, the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction (1999), is an exploration of the intersection of women's health, technology, gender, and broader social mores. It's now been used as the basis for a full-length documentary, Passion & Power…
November 7, 2007
Part 1 | 2 | 3- - -
Part III with Aaron Sachs, author of The Humboldt Current, follows below. All entries in the author-meets-bloggers series can be found here.
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WF: Okay, let me go back to modern environmentalism, which I only sort of brought up earlier. What does your book lead us to do…
November 6, 2007
Part 1 | 2 (below) | 3
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Part II with Aaron Sachs, author of The Humboldt Current, follows below. All entries in the author-meets-bloggers series can be found here.
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WF: I'll ask the manuscript reviewer's question: why do we need to know about Humboldt's 19th-century exploits?
AS: Because…