Knoxville '82: Where Miscellany Thrive
Being Friday the 13th and all - a short list of scientific papers on the subject of the day at hand.
worldsfair | October 13, 2006From the ever entertaining (and, of course, useful), PUBMED search:
Radun I, Summala H.Females do not have more injury road accidents on Friday the 13th.
BMC Public Health. 2004 Nov 16;4:54.
Exadaktylos AK, Sclabas G, Siegenthaler A, Eggli S, Kohler HP, Luterbacher J. Friday the 13th and full-moon: the "worst case scenario" or only superstition? Am J Emerg Med. 2001 Jul;19(4):319-20.
Veale D. Friday the 13th and obsessive compulsive disorder. BMJ. 1995 Oct 14;311(7011):963-4.
Scanlon TJ, Luben RN, Scanlon FL, Singleton N.Is Friday the 13th bad for your health? BMJ. 1993 Dec 18-25;307(6919):…
worldsfair | October 6, 2006
7 Worlds Collide (Neil Finn and Friends, 2001)
It's like this - you have the former front man for a moderately successful 80's pop band who is apparently so good at writing melodies, he commands enough respect to form a momentary band with the likes of Eddie Vedder (Mr. Vox), Johnny Marr (Mr. Guitar), and other eclectics from artists like Radiohead, Soul Coughing, and John Mellencamp. Even scarier is that this live CD isn't even close to the beauty he concocts with his studio stuff.
(Link to CD | DVD)
bcohen | October 1, 2006I saw this at Defective Yeti. It is *not* an Onion story. Somehow. I'm reposting the screen shot here, but all credit goes to M.B. And as for categorization, this has to be the very of core of the place where miscellany thrive.
bcohen | September 27, 2006This groundbreaking report--"Marion duPont Scott Equine Medical Center offers new treatment for lameness"-- just out, is riveting. And I think this says it all:
"Lameness is a condition that affects many [people] and this therapy is a very promising alternative to traditional treatments."
I can't believe this work hasn't already spun through the blogosphere. Briefly put, scientists have been working on treatments for lameness. "Lameness, which is recognized as an abnormality in the way [we] move or stand," the researchers note, "is typically associated with a painful musculosekeletal…
bcohen | September 24, 2006Always so worried about public relevance this, public relevance that, why not cherish the pointless? Why not celebrate the wasted funds, effort, and resources? Let's do so, with the Most Scientific-Buzz-Marketing-Synergy-Tacular Nanotech Patent of the Month (MSBMSTNPM)!
Now...deep breath...a collective two cheers for "Nano-particulate compositions for decreasing the water vapor transmission rate of golf ball layers"!
(This is all courtesy of the good man at The Battle-Scarred Muffin Pan, whom I propose is the most skilled homebrewing historian and philosopher of biology we've got, a…
worldsfair | September 22, 2006Currently 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 hecticness that comes with having young kids, but always on the lookout for things I like, and always trying not to let image sway a choice selection.
So here's my invite to ScienceBloggers in particular (because I know we scientists are music buffs as a whole), but to others in general:
If you make a…
worldsfair | September 18, 2006Janet 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 whole field in the philosophy of names.
Anyway, here are some choice reasons used for the battle:
That's a real picture of me on my blog, balding ponytail and all.
(Mark Chu-Carroll)
When I was in high school, my sister was watching Star Trek. I walked into the room. I saw Kirk leaning over the…
worldsfair | September 18, 2006So 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 procastinating lots on a book project where the first two chapters are entitled "A is for ASS," and "B is for BEETON," a process I hope to be able to discuss more fully if I have the luxury of certain things being finalized.
But no matter, back to the blog. And I thought easing in would be the best…
worldsfair | September 12, 2006Well 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 out of Han Solo (although it's currently carefully folded, because it scares the begeezus out of us everytime we forget about it and walk by).
As well, I have it on good authority (via a vote actually) that I am one of the "coolest geeks" around. Which I'm not sure how to take, and also not sure…
worldsfair | September 5, 2006Here it is:
(Download pdf)
(View high resolution JPEG)
- - -
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 to solving the puzzle. In any event, we hope that this was as much fun for you, as it was for us. Some of the answers given were truly truly wonderful.
So for now, let's just say: To be continued?
worldsfair | August 31, 2006Today, 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. Who gets the Ramen?
Many of you have been waiting to hear from Bobby with regards to the FSM contest. In truth, we have been too, but repeated emails to him have been unsuccessful. The one time we did received a reply (on May 19th, 2006), it simply said, "help selma pee." This, of course, has all…
bcohen | August 28, 2006Spirit has done well in past years, jabbing and ducking, bobbing and weaving, while Matter has met every lunge, every uppercut, everything. It's a stalemate, for any reasonable viewer, but the odds-makers are still booking it and the networks are still promoting it. The whole fight is ill-conceived, I fear, born of some prior age when oddsmakers still thought there was a battle to be fought, when they were still in the flush of modern youth with the belief that spirit and matter were to set be against one another....
...I'd have to point to the literature of the early twenieth-century, to…
worldsfair | 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 9:33am.
Kate calls Dave at about 9:30am and tells him that she "sort of has contractions," but that they are irregular. She's thinking that they are actually Braxton Hicks contractions.
Dave asks if he should come home and skip his 10:30am meeting - Kate says no, it's alright.
Kate has contractions…
bcohen | August 21, 2006I'll have to work on putting this new building together - The Worlds' Fair Gift Shop - but know that one of our first items will be a scientifically backed, technologically robust Psyche Strainer. This strainer, which is still technically under wraps back in the lab and of which we can't yet post an image, works with Snake-Plane simplicity: it takes the psyche of the populace, and strains it. We can provide a prototype image, which I think Salvatore got from the Crate and Barrel.
Earlier prototype of The World's Fair's Psyche Strainer
The Psyche Strainer we'll be marketing, though, is…
worldsfair | August 18, 2006Specifically, he said:
Well, I think if you're going to focus on the similarities of your three examples, it's almost as if an inherant goofiness is key for the spreading phenomenon. Mel Gibson drunk? That's goofy. Zidane with the headbutt? Also goofy. Maybe that's why something like 0.7% won't work - can you really make something like that goofy?
Of course, this wasn't the Bono that left the first comment on the previous Snakes in a Plane/Viral Marketing post.
Was it?
Although, come to think of it, that post did immediately follow a rejected science humour piece about him. And the email…
worldsfair | August 17, 2006
...will be released on September 5th, 2006 (we forgot to mention that last time)
bcohen | August 17, 2006Mario Biagioli, a historian of science at Harvard, wrote a book a dozen or so years ago called Galileo, Courtier. It's a study of the context of patronage, courtly virtue, and shifting credibility between philosophers and mathematicians in and around the time of Galileo's trial. Great book, fascinating to read, lots to say about it. But my point of interest right now is in the idea and practice of scientific patronage. Biagioli says in his epilogue that his story of Galileo helps highlight the shift in scientific patronage from earlier princely forms to later institutional ones, and that…
bcohen | August 14, 2006Of course you haven't. What a silly question. I'm the only one who knows about this unearthed gem.
Now what of Science and The Simpsons? We've already blogged here at The World's Fair about classroom Simpsons and science utility, but of course that can only be a start. Let's do this slow and let the audience drive it, after I put in the first: Duffless.
Duffless is 4th Season, which is to say, at the pinnacle of the run, where every episode is super upper echelon. It's a split-plot one, where the one half is Homer-centric, with Homer quitting drinking for a month; the other theme is…
bcohen | August 10, 2006
(Click here for the large version)
What's all this then?
P.F. #1 has become born and grown and lived and shown its charity and, to quote Whitman, it will forever "be curious, not judgmental." It has not been solved. Near 200 contributions have been made, and near 10,000 people have gandered.
Where do we go from here? We weren't being coy earlier when we said the puzzle was bigger than us. We'd like to say it was now bigger than Sudoku but, as Kerouac would have it (certainly quoting someone else anyhow), comparisons are odious. We've not offered a clue in these sentences, please…
worldsfair | August 9, 2006Since we were on the topic of replication yesterday, here is a gem of a personal ad I found several years back.
For the record, it should be pretty clear that the ad was not composed by me. Anyway, this often gets used as a slide before discussion related to either replication or PCR (polymerase chain reaction). If you see any others of similar intent, please pass them on. These are great visual aids.