worldsfair
Posts by this author
October 3, 2006
This is from TEDtalks - worth a look for sure.
Click here to see the movie
October 3, 2006
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to have lunch with Jack Horner, a noted paleontologist, best known academically as the discoverer of the Maiasaura, a duck-billed dinosaur that proved that dinosaurs had parental instincts; and also an expert in the arena of dinosaur growth research (in particular…
September 29, 2006
(The Science Creative Quarterly is a science writing webzine I run at UBC)
PDF | JPG
The Science Creative Quarterly seeks science humour pieces for entry into our awesome new contest. Judging will be based on a number of criteria that can be annotated as follows:
Briefly, final Score (FS) is equal…
September 29, 2006
(terry.ubc.ca is a webzine on global issues that I coordinate at UBC)
TERRY'S WRITING CHALLENGE
There once was a website named Terry1
That wanted to make people wary
Of things going on
In the world that are wrong
Without making it all seem too scary.
So this is a call for submissions
To write or…
September 29, 2006
If so, please say "hello."
And just to make it a bit more interesting, I'll treat the first five commenters currently at UBC to a cup of coffee. Those on board first can then give me an email at tscq@interchange.ubc.ca. No creationists or scientology recruiters please...
September 28, 2006
(Hello folks from Kottke.org, just a note that it just so happens that today is contest day at the World's Fair - check out our front page, where the last few or so entries contain details of contests concerning coffee, limericks and mathematical notation)
Well, Ben has beaten me to the punch with…
September 26, 2006
The diagnosis we would all shudder to get. The below image is actually a joke (reprinted from an issue of Esquire in July of 2000)
But even in reality, Craig Venter is a piece of work. I mean it's perfect that he can be quoted as saying "People who are motivated by pure greed only get their…
September 25, 2006
However, unlike the MRI (which had strong personal significance), this time the sequencing data, hung by the lamp to the right, is of nothing in particular. Thanks everyone for the comments - it was interesting and also valuable. Nice to know that readers appreciate the nuances in scenarios such…
September 22, 2006
Currently in the ScienceBlog forums (as well as in posts such as this), and under a variety of such non-descript titles as "The Search-Spammer has been Banned..." there is much discussion about music, good and bad, and how life is part of it.
I'm a big music buff, less so now perhaps with the…
September 22, 2006
(From McSweeney's)
WEB SPITEBy Jim Stallard
Sadie,
Sorry about my little lie in the subject line. No, this isn't an e-mail from your mom, but it's the only way I could get you to open this. You ignore my phone messages, my poems get sent back to me, and the re-enactment I tried to perform at your…
September 21, 2006
...Which is a bit warped, because Muammar Gaddafi is resorting to the opinions of his own Libyan scientists, as oppose to the data presented by scientists from the Pasteur Institute and Tor Vergata University. This particular perspective might not sound so bad, except that it involves the…
September 21, 2006
Here is an example where an artist, perhaps unknowingly even, is consuming less. A short animated movie, using only the reused, recycled, or (at the very least) the very old, that shows how aesthetics can be achieved through any means.
By someone who goes by the name of PES, who I think could…
September 21, 2006
This figure was published a while back in Science, so it must be real.
(Jane Gitschier, University of California, San Francisco. Science, 1990)
September 20, 2006
Although I recently had a piece on the art of vanity searching of the motif DAVIDNG, here is an interesting art project that revolved around "Davids" in general.
(From Geist)
In Winnipeg in 1993, Micah Lexier put an ad in the local newspaper looking for males named David. Hundres of people…
September 20, 2006
So, for the last couple of days, I've been feeling a little unsettled. Here's the backdrop, but I'm also interested on what folks think, if they care to comment.
Basically, for about a week or so, I had a MRI head scan of someone I care about on one of my office walls. Initially, the reason to do…
September 19, 2006
I just thought this was an amusing liner note for the above song.
"The melody for 'Black Seam' has lain among my mental notes for perhaps ten years, could never finish it, or find a suitable lyric until the miners' strike and a long talk with a friend who has a job trying to mend nuclear power…
September 19, 2006
There is, it appears, a nice discussion going on over at a post that Ben recently put up regarding the use of nuclear energy. And quite a few of the commentary take a stance that the ideal for citizens to consume less, is at best unrealistic and at worst an impedent to our right towards…
September 18, 2006
Janet has finally put up the results for the nerd-off here, and I have to say that I feel like it was a fair and heated battle. Some folks have mentioned that I was a better contender for winning a "Geek-Off" and I am similarily confused by the Geek vs Nerd nomenclature. This I fear, could be a…
September 18, 2006
So it turned out that my back to school crunch was even crunchier than expected, no doubt brought upon by the fact that my daughter had just started Kindergarten (talk about the sense of relativity and time flying), and the usual chaos associated with a new semester starting. As well, I've been…
September 12, 2006
Well Janet has decreed a nerd-off, and I think I'm game to compete (albeit a little late). The truth is, is that I am a nerd at so many levels, whether this gauged by my application to the Super Friends, wearing t-shirts with Epithelial Cell Barbies on my chest, or owning a life size cardboard cut…
September 8, 2006
To start off the sophomore year of the SCQ, I published a piece that I had sitting around for the last year or two. Basically, it's a creative non-fiction piece that looks at the sorts of things one can fear in the sciences.
It actually started off as a request by Maisonneuve for their "Good…
September 7, 2006
I have to say that I was seriously upset by hearing that Steve Irwin was killed recently, and by a Stingray barb no less. It's kind of strange actually, because I was just about to submit a humour piece to Seed where I did a little play on words with the name "Crocodile Hunter."
I know that he'…
September 5, 2006
Here it is:
(Download pdf)(View high resolution JPEG)
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And in essense, we hope it had a feel of convergence to it all, in the sense that clues provided both a metaphorical and game play element. As well, it was our intention to make familiarity with the blog in general, a helpful component…
August 31, 2006
In response to the "Hooray for Global Warming" article as queried by this week's Ask a ScienceBlogger, I offer this public message from a representative of the glacier community:
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RANT FROM A GLACIER - CONCERNED, BITTER, AND SOMEWHERE NEAR THE NORTH POLE
Dear humans everywhere:
People. I'm…
August 31, 2006
Today, the SCQ in preparation for its second year run, has a sort of a housekeeping post, which talks about haiku projects, its print edition woes, but more importantly an interesting sidebar which has all the makings of a conspiracy involving Bobby Henderson and the FSM phenomenon.
It reads:
1.…
August 30, 2006
Remarks by Stephen Lewis, UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa,
to the Closing Session of the XVI International AIDS Conference, Toronto, Canada
"This is the last speech I shall make at any of these international conferences in my role as United Nations Envoy. I'm glad, for obvious Canadian…
August 30, 2006
In AIDS Crisis, Listen to UN's Lewis:CBS News.com / American Prospect, by Ezra Klein
It's become fashionable amongst a certain genus of blustering right-winger to deride the United Nations as sclerotic, weak-willed, mealy-mouthed, and lacking sufficient moral outrage and courage in confronting the…
August 29, 2006
Geez, it looks like our traffic stats are really taking a beating lately, so I am compelled to assume that this has something to do with the whole Pluto thing.
I mean this isn't too much of a stretch is it? Well, o.k. maybe it is.
Actually, the day it was announced, I ended up hanging out and…
August 29, 2006
It's been a year since Katrina hit New Orleans, and although sometimes it seems like we've learnt a lot, other times it seems like we've learnt almost nothing at all.
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Rohrich RJ, Spear S. "Hurricane Katrina, plastic surgery, and you: the art of giving back." Plast Reconstr Surg. 2005 Oct;116…
August 25, 2006
Last night, before she went to sleep, Hannah (my eldest) said to me, "Daddy, in two more sleeps, I'm going to be 5 years old." Man, do they ever grow up fast. Takes me back to the beginning...
August 27th,2001:
Kate starts recording her contractions. She has contractions at 9:24am, 9:28am, and 9:…