Author Meets Bloggers
bcohen | August 15, 2007Part 1 | 2 | 3
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Part III with David Hess, author of Alternative Pathways in Science and Industry, follows below.
All entries in the author-meets-bloggers series are here.
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TWF: You think all these farmers markets will really do anything? Or do they just make for a more fun middle class weekend?
DH: There are actually two or three complicated questions here. Even though one can demonstrate significant growth trends in many localist institutions (such as farmers' markets), does the localist movement really have any long-term economic significance? I'm doing a lot of thinking about…
bcohen | August 14, 2007Part 1 | 2 | 3
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Part II with David Hess, author of Alternative Pathways in Science and Industry, follows below.
All entries in the author-meets-bloggers series can be found here.
TWF: What specific areas do you examine in the book?
DH: I look at science and industry in five main fields, which I selected because of their close connections with issues of the environment and sustainability: agriculture, energy, waste and manufacturing, infrastructure, and finance. Across each of the five fields I examine four types of alternative pathways: the two described above plus pathways oriented…
bcohen | August 13, 2007Part 1 | 2 | 3
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The World's Fair sits down with David Hess, author of Alternative Pathways in Science and Industry: Activism, Innovation, and the Environment in an Era of Globalization (MIT Press, 2007) and Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, NY.
David Hess is a longtime leader in the field of STS. Like few scholars, this claim holds true by reference to academic leadership, mentoring, research, and community involvement. His past books, Science and Technology in a Multicultural World (Columbia…
bcohen | July 25, 2007This is the third of three parts in our Wilderness series interview with Kevin Marsh, by Michael Egan (Part I; Part II).
All entries in our author-meets-bloggers series are here.
Continuing from Part II...
ME: Moving into the twenty-first century, where are wilderness politics now, and where do you see them going?
KM: It's an interesting time of transition and renaissance in wilderness politics. After relatively little action in the 1990s (many debates over roadless lands had moved in to the court system, such as with the spotted owl controversy) Congress in recent years has passed some…
bcohen | July 24, 2007We bring you: Part II of Michael Egan's guest-blogging interview with Kevin Marsh about Marsh's new book, Drawing Lines in the Forest: Creating Wilderness Areas in the Pacific Northwest.
Part I is here.
All entries in our author-meets-bloggers series are here.
Continued from Part I...
ME: What does wilderness designation entail in terms of use?
KM: Wilderness designation in the U.S. is defined by federal statute, the Wilderness Act of 1964, with certain broad parameters: a minimum size of 5,000 acres, a generally "untrammeled" character to the land, an area off-limits to mechanized…
bcohen | July 23, 2007World's Fair note: This post was written by guest blogger Michael Egan, whom you might recall was the subject of our first author-meets-blogger contribution. See here for background on Egan.
Another tour of author-meets-blogger, though with a twist: here we have an author-meets- guest-blogger-and-former-author.
Affection for wilderness, Roderick Frazier Nash and others have told us, is as American as apple pie (which, as a Canadian, I never really got--the apple pie part, not the wilderness part). The point is: it's key. And now there's a new book on the history of wilderness creation in…
bcohen | July 10, 2007Part II of our talk with Saul Halfon about his new book, The Cairo Concensus.
Part I is here.
All entries in our author-meets-bloggers series here.
TWF: What about contraceptives? You said they were part of the technology you deal with in the book.
SH: Of course. Population control has always been about contraception - reducing births. This is very tricky terrain, strategically and analytically.
First, it is important to recognize the very long and deep history between population policy and contraceptive development. The pill, the modern IUD, Norplant and a range of other contraceptives…
bcohen | July 9, 2007Author-meets-bloggers I: Michael Egan, on Barry Commoner, science, and environmentalism.
Author-meets-bloggers II: Cyrus Mody on nanotechnology, ethics, and policy.
Below, The World's Fair sits down with Professor Saul Halfon in the first of a two-part conversation about his new book, The Cairo Consensus: Demographic Surveys, Women's Empowerment, and Regime Change in Population Policy (Lexington Books, 2006). Professor Halfon is a science policy scholar and an Assistant Professor of STS at Virginia Tech. He's a respected and sought after teacher and a gifted researcher. He's a good guy…
bcohen | June 27, 2007This is the third of three parts in our Nanotechnology series with Cyrus Mody. (Part I; Part II; plus, a previously unmentioned angle on it.)
The Wild West? Perhaps. It's the OK Corral of the nanoscale.
For all installments of this Authors-meet-Bloggers series, see our archive.
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...Continuing from Part II.
TWF: Is nanotech really like biotech? No, of course - but why? Hold on. So what is it like? I guess the better question is, what's a good question to ask here?
CCMM: Perhaps the "right" question is: why is it like biotech? There seems to be this assumption among policymakers,…
bcohen | June 26, 2007Part II of our conversation with Cyrus Mody, Ph.D., about nanotechnology and society. Part I is here. Part III is here.
For all installments of this Authors-meet-Bloggers series, see our archive.
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TWF: What are the real potential problems with nanotechnology?
CCMM: I like the idea of a problem that is both real and potential - it's a good shorthand for all of the ambiguities surrounding nano. Well, the issue that gets discussed all the time (on and on and on) is toxicological and environmental risks from nanoparticles. This has become a policy obsession the last couple years because…
bcohen | June 25, 2007The World's Fair sits down with Nanotechnology Scholar Cyrus C. M. Mody to discuss the history, ethics, and policy world of nanotechnology. And other stuff.
Mody is a Science and Technology Studies guy, and now a member of the Department of History at Rice University. He is a leading light in science studies and/of nanotechnology; his work has appeared in numerous professional journals (see end of this post for a select bibliography); he is a sometime participant at nanotechnology and microscopy meetings (his earlier work was on the recent history of probe microscopy); and, of course, he is…
bcohen | June 19, 2007A timely add-on to our recent Science and Society discussion with historian Michael Egan about his book on Barry Commoner, Science, and Environmentalism (Part I, Part II) is an article in today's New York Times about and with Commoner. And it refers to Egan's book. So ha, we didn't make all that up.
A quote:
Q. There's been some second-guessing about using nuclear power instead of fossil fuels. Do you agree?
A. No. This is a good example of shortsighted environmentalism. It superficially makes sense to say, "Here's a way of producing energy without carbon dioxide." But every activity that…
bcohen | June 19, 2007Part II of our Science and Society discussion with Michael Egan, author of Barry Commoner and the Science of Survival.
Part I is here.
Want a blurb? How's this:
For over half a century, the biologist Barry Commoner has been one of the most prominent and charismatic defenders of the American environment, appearing on the cover of Time magazine in 1970 as the standard-bearer of "the emerging science of survival." [In this book,] Michael Egan examines Commoner's social and scientific activism and charts an important shift in American environmental values since World War II.
Continuing now…
bcohen | June 18, 2007The World's Fair sits down with Michael Egan, author of Barry Commoner and the Science of Survival: The Remaking of American Environmentalism (MIT Press, 2007), Assistant Professor of History at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and sometime Bonepony fan.
This is the first in a probable series of "Author Meets Bloggers" posts, where we talk to authors about their new work. Read below for Part I. Chime in with questions as they arise - for the author, for other readers, for your id.
THE WORLD'S FAIR: Here's a hard-hitting starter: what's your book about?
MICHAEL EGAN: I guess the…