Knoxville '82: Where Miscellany Thrive
bcohen | October 24, 2008The Telegraph's website has an "Atlas of the Real World." There are 18 different versions of the world map, where software depicts "the nations of the world, not by their physical size, but by their demographic importance on a range of subjects." Here is the Nuclear map:
Here is the map based on airline travel:
As compared to rail travel:
Here's the one about "Increase in emissions of carbon dioxide":
And the one, on the other hand, of "Decrease in emissions of carbon dioxide":
Then 14 others. Colorful.
bcohen | October 23, 2008I'm just the messenger. Given Dave's Jedi kid post, I figured what the hell. Link to the original at Topless Robot, via The Morning News.
4) Refusing to Listen to the Only Living Jedi in the Galaxy
Luke gets a vision of his dead mentor Obi-Wan telling him to go to Dagobah to get training from the Jedi Master, Yoda. Luke obeys, goes out to Dagobah, finds Yoda, and then proceeds to ignore him at every important turn. Yoda tells him not to go into the scary cave with weapons, Luke doesn't listen. Yoda gives him a lesson about overcoming great obstacles, and Luke doesn't take it to heart, can't…
bcohen | October 20, 2008"...presume to write, as it were, upon things that exist not, and travel by maps yet unmade..."
Walt Whitman, from "Democratic Vistas" (1871)
bcohen | October 17, 2008"To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair."
--Walker Percy
bcohen | October 17, 2008It's one of our more clearly titled posts. Pictures below of a White Bengal Tiger named Odin, who is six years old, 10 feet long (tail to nose), and living at a zoo in Vallejo, California. This all according to the same guy who sent me those Patagonian Volcano and Yucatan Golden Ray pictures.
worldsfair | October 3, 2008Although Jennifer and I had our 1,000,000th comment party a few weeks back, I only just had an opportunity to get the video footage on to YouTube. It was funny, but the "having to video" bit was a little surprising, and of course, us Canadians can be a shy group by default.
Anyway, we had a decent turnout, with a few notables in joining us for drinks. These included Joanne Fox (who co runs the AMBL lab with me), Nicola Jones (UBC Science Journalist in Residence and Nature Editor), Rosie Redfield (Zoology prof and blogger), Dave Semeniuk (Bake For A Change founder and blogger), Simon Donner…
worldsfair | September 16, 2008Again with the Canadian politics...
STEPHANE DION: Well, this is a treat - somebody really famous is in the race. Let me be the first to say that having that awesome soprano voice and being able to hit 4 to 5 octave range is just amazing. I mean that song in Titanic was certainly popular - couldn't escape it for a while! Plus it's cool that you have a Las Vegas gig (Vegas rules!). You also have quite the wardrobe which would make you easy to find in the Chamber of the House of Commons.
So what do you think of the liberal candidate?
worldsfair | September 12, 2008That's Canadian candidates folks. Anyway, it would go something like this:
STEPHEN HARPER: Voting for a harpist would be cool. I mean, I'm no classical musician, but that Stephen Harper seems downright magical on the harp - a real virtuoso. His fingers just seem to glide over the strings. His technique and speed are unmatched, and his concentration, you can see it in his eyes. It's like he's Eddie Van Halen, but on the harp, and with a sweater vest I guess.
More importantly, if you're a canadian reader, I'd love to hear your opinion of him. Better yet, leave that opinion here, so that…
bcohen | September 11, 2008In the pantheon of American letters, The Guilfoile-Warner Papers have long held a spot of hallowed pre-eminence. With their contribution this week, the correspondence has now reached Daily Shovian levels of excellence. I had sought to choose the best line in their column, but got caught unable to rank which of the many great lines was best. So, for us, a sampling below. I'll let readers decide how to rank their astuteness. But please, for sanity's sake, confer the entire column here at The Morning News.
On the implausibility of Pailn's selection:
The [probability] that [Palin] might be…
worldsfair | September 10, 2008Now that the world is safe, Jennifer (from Shifting Baselines) and I are going to be buzzing around one of local watering holes (Koerner's pub) on Thursday, September 18th, from 6pm. As well, we have a little pocket money from Seed which should be good for one or two rounds (depending I guess on how many folks turn up).
Anyway, if you hail from Vancouver or are within reach, and feel like coming down for a beer (Koerner's has some good stuff), then do come by and say hello.
Here is a link to let you know the whereabouts of Koerner's and I've also set up a Facebook event page just so that we…
worldsfair | September 4, 2008Just a quick delurking call. This site doesn't get a whole lot of traffic, but myself and Jennifer over at Shifting Baselines were thinking of seeing if there are any readers in Vancouver who want to say hello. More on this later, but I am curious to see if there are any Vancouver folks who check in at the World's Fair.
This might also work as a Science Scout call, and if you're a UBCer, I might even try to get some feedback/suggestions for the Terry talks.
worldsfair | September 2, 2008
I definitely think it's a contender.
This is a slide I quickly made for the "Things to avoid when speaking publicly" video (see below), where I tried my best to make it as jarring as possible.
Crazy thing is, is that this is actually a powerpoint template you can download! I'm at a lost to figure out who would (at least for something serious) would ever use this template. It gives me a headache just looking at it.
Anyway, other notable "evil slide" features include:
1. Text too small.
2. Conflicting colour scheme.
3. Deliberate but inconsequential change in font.
4. Filler and non-…
bcohen | August 20, 2008"Over the past three decades, grosso modo discourses of militancy in AFNs in the US have been superseded by more circumspect, incrementalist narratives of change, better adapted to hegemonic notions of the market and consumer choice promulgated by the dominant neoliberal political economy."
Well duh.
[AFN = alternative food network]
[this sentence = let's see how it stacks up against this series of sentences]
Overall, I give it 1 star out of 5. Fearless syllable/word ratio, daring use of Italian ("roughly," I'm told by Webster), but not nearly enough acronyms.
worldsfair | August 18, 2008Let's start this off with a mini-meme. Do you, or anyone you know, have apparent "superpowers"?
This request is not as weird as it seems - let me explain.
You see my wife has a superpower. And it's awesome in its own mind bending way. Best of all (and the reason why it's coming to mind recently), is that it appears that this same superpower has been passed on to my daughter. It's like it's hereditary or something, but whether this is an effect of genetics or environment, or (as the case may be) both, has yet to be determined.
So what is Kate's superpower? (Pause for dramatic effect)
It's…
worldsfair | August 8, 2008(From chrisharrison.net)
One of the realities of science academics (well, any academics for that matter), is the likely need to switch locales during your career path. And because of this reality, one often gets into debates about "good" versus "bad" places to go. I find nowhere is this discussion more heated is the perspective that the West coast and East coast each have their own advantages and their own faults.
I hear this all the time.
"Oh, I'm an East coaster - the West is not for me."
"Now that I'm here in the West, I just can't imagine going back East."
And etc.
I guess I'm curious…
bcohen | August 8, 2008After the little round of history of science talk earlier this week (this one from me; this one from Dave; this one from John Lynch) I was talking to a colleague about comparable history of technology blogs -- blogs that take the subject of studying and discussing the history of technology as their premise. That is, I *don't* mean the great many blogs that talk about technologies that existed before this moment in time (the one I like most being that Paleofuture blog linked over there on the side of this page). I mean one that, as with the history of science blogs, actually delve into the…
bcohen | August 6, 2008Worlds colliding here.
According to Mussina (13-7, 3.56), the piece was entitled "Discarded Titles For Hunter S. Thompson's Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas," and included such examples as "Dread And Abhorring In Las Vegas," "Trepidation And Disliking In Las Vegas," and, in what Mussina described as a "bit of a switch," "Fear And Loathing In St. Paul, Minnesota." Mussina said he submitted the piece--his seventh attempt overall--last Thursday, and received an e-mail reply Monday morning notifying him that it had not been selected.
Let's say I'm a fan of this piece, though I suspect it hits a…
bcohen | August 5, 2008We once pondered aloud what Homer had in mind with his claim that Batman's a scientist. Since then, and I'm sure because of it, a new movie about Batman has been released. Now Jon Barnes at the Times Literary Supplement traces seven decades of evolution in the Batman character and persona.
The adaptive behavior of Batman to his cultural ecosystem has yielded some strange variations. (I wonder as well if knowing this history would help scientists.)
From "a violent vigilante from his earliest appearances in May 1939" to guy with "a teenaged sidekick, battl[ing] against the Axis powers in…