The Art/Science (Non?)Divide Building
worldsfair | October 17, 2007I currently teach an all day molecular laboratory course at UBC, where students go through various techniques in the confines of what is often a 4 to 6 hour session. Anyway, occasionally, there is some downtime, and last week, some students started to play around with the ice in their ice bucket.
Here is the fruit of their effort - a miniature snowman:
And I am so thinking, that we can turn this into a contest (maybe hosted by the SCQ with a prize, etc)!
Of course, I guess the other way to interpret things is that my class is so dreary that students resort to doing crafts on the side.…
worldsfair | October 10, 2007Had a coffee with a friend (Jon Nakane) who runs the UBC EngPhys Projects lab, and he told me about one of their most recent robot competitions held over the summer. Basically, this is bundled in a with an intense Robotics course that is a favourite of the engineering set (PHYS253 - Introduction to Instrument Design).
Anyway, this year the contest was to make an autonomous robot that could play the game of "Operation." It's pretty hilarious. Check out the YouTube video below:
I wonder what type of competition they will have next year? In previous years, they've had "HockeyBots", "…
worldsfair | September 5, 2007
The other night I had the privilege to check out Crowded House at a smallish venue. It was great - I highly recommend any serious music lover to check out Neil Finn and the boys. They are really one of the best live acts around, and for pure melodic prowess, Neil is definitely one of the best around.
Anyway, a couple of their songs had Climate Change appropriate titles (like Four Seasons in One Day, or "Weather with You"), so for fun, I'd thought I'd check out my iTunes library and run through "globally relevant" titles that I have.
Who'd a thought, it be such a downer.
Let's see, I had:
"…
worldsfair | August 31, 2007First up, an apology for the lack of posting of late. As the school term approaches, things have been more hectic than ever, and so... well... you how it is with prioritizing and all. Nevertheless, once next week rolls around, I should be back with some degree of regularity (i.e. still busy, but at least there's some order to the chaos).
Second up - check this out:
Anyway, this is to say that the Science Creative Quarterly's FILTER section is now being looked after by Timon Buys, author of many a great piece at the SCQ. In case, you're unaware of what the FILTER is all about, it's…
bcohen | August 29, 2007
This post was written by guest blogger Wyatt Galusky.*
It is in homage to David Ng's Police post of yore that I invoke this album cover to inaugurate the final installment of this three-part post on mystery, the unknown, and the remainder, all loosely filtered through quotes by Theodor Adorno.
The term "ghost in the machine" originates with the philosopher Gilbert Rile, who used it to mock the mind-body dualism of Rene Descartes (who claimed that the physical body was guided by the nonmaterial mind through the pineal gland).
For my purposes, I want to talk less about any vestiges of…
bcohen | August 27, 2007
It's Franz-Xaver Messerschmidt's The Yawner (model), circa 1778-1783
Did it make you yawn?
We'll take a tally.
worldsfair | August 14, 2007(By Jacqui Monaghan)
I am not ashamed to admit that I have a crush on Martha Stewart. I mean, come on: with those luscious locks, knitted ponchos, freshly baked cookies, and that home in the Hamptons, what's not to love?
Apparently, even cybergeeks love her. This week, Martha will go where Bob Villa hasn't gone before: the cover of Wired magazine, icing a--get this--Wii cake.
Aside from the fact that the words "buttercream" and "fondant icing" have now been printed, in ink, in Wired, and aside from the fact that, well, the cake looks like a Wii console (only tastier), there is another…
bcohen | August 10, 2007This post was written by guest blogger Wyatt Galusky.*
So, this blog entry represents, I am beginning to figure, the second of what I envision to be three interrelated posts, loosely grouped around quotes from Theodor Adorno. The first dealt with remainders and what we should do about an expressed preference for mystery.
In this post, I'd like to address fear of the unknown. The title of the post comes from the tired cliché drawn from cartography - that, once the limits of the known world were reached, monsters were inserted onto maps (apparently to both represent and explain the limits…
bcohen | August 2, 2007By Guest Blogger: Oronte Churm.
World's Fair friend, the venerable, unparalleled Mr. Churm, is our guest for the day, contributing the post below. He is the author of a top notch blog over at InsideHigherEd.com (called "The Education of Oronte Churm") and one of my favorite sub-features at McSweeney's, "Dispatches From Adjunct Faculty at a Large State University." Of the 15 dispatches, I might highlight #10, On Repose, as a personal favorite. If it isn't clear from those references, Mr. Churm is in fact a real-deal writer who teaches in the English department at a big state university. He…
bcohen | July 19, 2007
forearm musculature
The Bishopsgate Ward train depot, as taken from W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz (p. 133)
circuitry
This is another from our mid-summer's series of reposts from the vault -- ours or others', of which this one is both -- but now from the very top of that vault, since it's but a week old.
Fortunately, I'm both absent-minded and lazy. Many moons ago I sent Lawrence Weschler a hurried note about a series of visual convergences that'd struck me. Then I forgot about it. Then, much later, I was going to post the same commentary on those convergences at this blog, having thought…
worldsfair | July 12, 2007
O.K., it's been a while since I've checked in with our little "truth" experiment, but it appears that we're still holding in the top ten for google ranking (top five in google.ca). (Oh yeah, and if you're new to this, this is essentially a google bombing exercise attempting to raise a definition of "truth" high on google).
As well, if there's anything I've picked up from this exercise is that kitsch and non sequiturs are the things that ultimately rule on the web. I say this, because most of the dialogue and debate (and therefore activity that ultimately led to the current google ranking)…
bcohen | July 8, 2007Here's one from the vault. But not our vault. It's an all-time favorite of mine, from McSweeney's a few years ago, written by Joshua Tyree: "On the Implausibility of the Death Star's Trash Compactor." Lets file it under physics. For example:
2. Why do both walls of the trash compactor move towards each other, rather than employing a one-movable-wall system that would thus rely on the anchored stability, to say nothing of the strength, of the other, non-moving wall, to crush trash more effectively?
It's available here, in the original. But I deem it worthy of a full reprint below the…
bcohen | July 6, 2007"If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heartbeat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity."
George Eliot, Middlemarch
worldsfair | July 5, 2007Wow. This collection of portraits is wonderful. Here's an image of Robert Boyle I used for the lecture I mentioned earlier.
Anyway, worth checking out. (link)
worldsfair | June 27, 2007
(Image by The Norweigian)
Chalk it up to a life size model of the blue whale. Yup, I can say with certainty that the reason I got into science, biology, all of the things that have led to my current place as an academic, started with a freakishly impressive (especially if you're a young child looking up up up) model of a blue whale.
This blue whale, of course, is housed in London's Natural History Museum, one of the coolest museums on the planet, and also mostly with free admission (some special exhibits have a charge)
It's also one of the most architecturally inspiring places around.…
worldsfair | June 15, 2007My apologies for being more or less absent in the last three weeks or so, but I promise to get back to form on Monday. In particular, it's kind of cool that The World's Fair has been around for a whole year, which has led me to think about a readership drive (maybe another intern?)
As well, I just returned from San Francisco, and am loaded with enthusiasm to start my next science education project (the visit involved a Pirate store). Anyway, more on this later...
A picture of some street art in San Francisco. Image by Mr. Waldo
Actually, an intern sounds like a good idea, so lets put…
worldsfair | May 24, 2007Last weekend, my family rented a movie called High School Musical (my kids really loved it), and I tell you, it has infiltrated our very being to the point where... hush a moment... wait...be quiet for a second... do you hear it? Do you hear it?
(Yes, I am embarrassed to show this picture - thank goodness, I have tenure)
I hear it. I hear the soundtrack in my head - always in my head. Can't - make - it - go - away...
Anyway, no doubt one of the songs in the movie will make my family's year end music list, but here's the thing: The musical itself has a bit of a science angle to it.…
worldsfair | May 22, 2007
John Hartman
Since Ben put up that great post about urban planning and individualism, I thought I would just show off some of John Hartman's great artwork that explore the concept of the city. They're really very striking, and a wonderful way to look upon the ideas of urban living and design.
Hartman, a native of lake country Ontario, has been painting natural scenes for decades, but in the early 1980s, he started to experiment. By combining a variety of perspectives, he created complex works that brimmed with nuance, detail, information and historical narrative--all of them presented in…
bcohen | May 22, 2007I hear the American premiere of Carl Djerassi's play "Phallacy" is going on now in New York. Any good? Anyone?
Phallacy is Djerassi's fifth play. It premiered in England in 2005, but is now in NYC. It comes after "An Immaculate Conception," "Calculus," "Oxygen," and "Ego," and before the most recent, "Taboos," performed last winter in England.
The blurb I keep finding says this about it, by way of summary:
She's a top art historian in a world famous museum. He's a distinguished professor of chemistry. She searches for artistic truth through connoisseurship; he finds scientific fact…
worldsfair | May 18, 2007Isn't this pretty? A recent issue of the New Yorker had a marvelous cover that spread over three pages. I couldn't find the three page spread on the New Yorker site, so I thought I'd piece them together myself. Might be handy as a slide one of these days.
(By Bruce McCall - who also writes funny stuff in their Shouts and Murmur section)
Click here if you want a larger version - not high resolution, but big enough to translate well if you wanted to use it for a powerpoint presentation or something. (Note that you can also purchase the cover for real at the New Yorker site, but for some…