Science in Culture & Policy
bioephemera | July 23, 2008Today FAS put up an online public archive of documents produced by the Office of Technology Assessment.
As you may know, the OTA was a legislative office authorized in 1972 to produce comprehensive nonpartisan reports for Congress on a variety of scientific topics. It was defunded and closed in 1995, and the bulky paper reports it produced have been rather hard to find. Although these reports no longer represent the state of the science, they are remarkable, often prescient time capsules - a fascinating look at how teams of experts tried to predict the trajectory of new technologies we now…
bioephemera | July 21, 2008
Vintage public health posters like this one are remarkable not only for their skilled design, but also for the varied ways they remain remarkably timely or seem bizarrely dated.
For example, compare the playful-yet-kinda-creepy "keep your teeth clean" poster above, as opposed to the very different meaning of "clean" in the anti-VD poster below. I think alarmist STD posters like this one and its contemporaries would have some difficulty getting approved today.
The National Library of Medicine has many more vintage posters here - or visit this Newsweek gallery for a quick tour.
bioephemera | July 17, 2008
"We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet." -- Al Gore
We all knew what he'd say, but we still stood in line for an hour to hear him say it. Today Al Gore issued his "Generational Challenge to Repower America" to a packed house at the DAR Constitution Hall in DC.
After zinging the administration a few times as a warm up ("I don't remember a time in our country when so many things seemed to be going so wrong simultaneously"), Gore laid down the We Campaign challenge. Basically, he wants the entire nation to be on "100…
bioephemera | July 17, 2008As I sit here waiting for Al Gore to start speaking, I'd like to note that Scibling Chris Mooney over at the Intersection has really annoyed me. Apparently the fact that I didn't like the film Sizzle is evidence that I, too, am likely a terrible communicator of science who lacks self-awareness. (Since there is no other possible reason for me to fail to LOVE the film!)
Now, Chris, some scientists who dislike Sizzle may dislike it for that reason - but there are a lot of other reasons to dislike the film, some of which I and other Sciblings have mentioned! When you say,
In my view, what's so…
bioephemera | July 15, 2008
This morning, a plethora of Sizzle reviews will saturate Scienceblogs. I've no doubt that the film's science will be thoroughly dissected by more informed reviewers than I. So I'm going to steer clear of temperature trends and timetables, and instead consider how the film pitches its message.
Sizzle is billed as "a global warming comedy"; the official website claims "Sizzle is a novel blend of three genres - mockumentary, documentary, and reality." Personally, I think the film suffers from an identity crisis: it tries to fit all three genres at once, and it gets a little scrambled in the…
bioephemera | July 11, 2008
Michael Dax Iavocone
Another opportunity for DC-area readers: Michael Dax Iavocone's new show opens at flashpoint gallery tomorrow (Saturday), July 12, 6-8pm.
From the gallery press release (pdf):
Artist Michael Dax Iacovone investigates and chronicles his familiar DC environs using mathematical algorithms to govern the way in which he experiences space. Using these formulas, Iacovone creates a blueprint to follow, film and photograph the DC area. Iacovone's solo exhibition at the Gallery at Flashpoint, The Numbers Behind, explores spaces and image-making in a new and mechanical way and is…
bioephemera | July 9, 2008"Sonnet: To Science"
words by Edgar Allan Poe
song by Alex Colwell
video by Jeff Burns
From oilcanpress
I love the pairing of Poe's sonnet, which basically accuses Science of destroying the poetic mysteries that make life meaningful, with the techno-optimistic nostalgia of early films glorifying science and technology. Yummy!
Poe had a curious relationship with science. Despite the accusatory tone of his poem, Poe was fairly well-versed in contemporary scientific theory, with a solid grasp of astronomy in particular. Poe even wrote a small book called Eureka (1848) about his early,…
bioephemera | June 26, 2008
Via the SEA blog: Jeremy Kalgreen at Amorphia Apparel has created some delicious t-shirts that help you advocate teaching your controversy of choice. Or, display your support for the amazing things Science has brought us - like giant guitar-playing robots and mechanical paramecia:
Rock on, Amorphia! We here at Scienceblogs understand that it's turtles all the way down. . .
bioephemera | June 18, 2008Okay. . . I know that bioephemera is not the most compartmentalized, well-defined example of "science blogging." Many of the subjects I blog about aren't science at all - which begs the question, what exactly is "science"? In my defense, I'm not the only one that's confused. Check out this story from today's NYT Arts section:
Pentagon to Consult Academics on Security
Eager to embrace eggheads and ideas, the Pentagon has started an ambitious and unusual program to recruit social scientists and direct the nation's brainpower to combating security threats like the Chinese military, Iraq,…
bioephemera | May 7, 2008
Tomorrow and Friday I'll be attending the 33rd Annual AAAS Forum on Science and Technology Policy in Washington, DC. According to AAAS, the Forum
is the conference for people interested in public policy issues facing the science, engineering, and higher education communities.
Gotta love those bold italics. Personally, I want to know what's going to happen to the penny that disembodied hand is dropping into the mysterious flask. Is the yellow liquid an acid? A base? A bodily fluid? Why do multicolored liquids in glassware scream "SCIENCE IS COOL!" like nothing else?
One of the highlights…
bioephemera | April 25, 2008
Mr. Tompkins Learns the Facts of Life, 1953
Via eliz.avery's flickr stream
Happy DNA Day!
It's been slow here on the blog lately, for a number of reasons - the most salient of which is that I've been on the Hill all week at the Congressional Operations Seminar sponsored by the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown. I highly recommend this course - it was a lot of fun. But unfortunately I didn't have a functional laptop this week, and thus couldn't blog. (At one point, my poor Mac burped up a blue screen of death - I didn't even know such a thing was possible!)
Yesterday, I just missed…
bioephemera | March 20, 2008Eric Hand had an article on Nature.com yesterday about trends in post-doubling NIH grants. I don't agree that giving prominent PIs disproportionately large numbers of grants is automatically a bad thing - it depends on the size of the lab's staff and how productive/important their research strategy, among other concerns. But I was interested by this (emphasis mine):
Zerhouni says that the inequities between the haves and have-nots were caused by a doubling of NIH funding between 1998 and 2003. As funding levels rose, many new PhD positions were created. Established investigators, using data…
bioephemera | March 18, 2008Yesterday I alluded to the wonder cabinet aesthetic of retailer Anthropologie. I love that store, though I can't afford to patronize it (not that insolvency always stops me). But I'm sometimes ambivalent about their use of science as marketing tool.
Here's a screenshot from their latest web ad campaign, "It's elemental":
Ok. . . the "science behind our March outfits?" What does that even mean? And what do any of these outfits have to do with their respective elements? A few do use the "right" colors, but I feel like this collection was compiled by the contestants of Project Runway: "Your…
bioephemera | February 27, 2008
Homeland Security Kitchen Towel
Christy Rupp
Labels for Genetically Altered Food
Christy Rupp
Artist Christy Rupp has created a small line of products designed to freak people out, in the hope that alarm will translate into environmental awareness. Let's hope she's right. At the very least, they're pretty cool hostess gifts for fellow enviro-geeks.
Shown here: Homeland Security Towel, $65, "A remedy for that queasy feeling at home," and Labels for Genetically Altered Food, $30, "Celebrate the mystery while you speculate what that new breed of organisms in your digestive system is up to!"
bioephemera | February 18, 2008Well, the 2008 AAAS Annual Meeting here in Boston was fun! I didn't expect that. I'm not a huge fan of scientific conferences because I have an extremely short attention span. And I haven't been blogging a lot - I'd rather just enjoy the frenzy. I've been averaging 4.5 hours of sleep a night, to the dismay of my roomies! But Discover has been blogging regularly, as have some of the Sciblings.
Saturday's highlight should have been the appearance by representatives of the Obama and Clinton campaigns, who spoke on the candidates' scientific policy positions. Sheril already summarized (update:…
bioephemera | February 13, 2008One of the questions an artist hates most is what is your artwork worth? Price is a subjective, unsatisfactory proxy for emotional angst, frustration, eyestrain, and time. Sometimes I find that NO (reasonable) value can compensate for the emotional investment I've made - in which case I either keep the thing myself, give it away, or throw a tantrum and rip it up. Other variables also influence price - the artist's fame and skill, obviously, but also whether the work has been copied. People are willing to pay a premium to own original art, even if a reproduction is virtually identical in…