worldsfair | April 27, 2009Just a quick note to say that I'm currently in Louisiana, and therefore probably won't be blogging until I'm back in Vancouver on Wednesday. If you're in the area, I'll be giving a talk later today on Science Literacy - 3:30pm at the Life Sciences Annex Auditorium (A101Life Sciences). Should be fun.
worldsfair | April 24, 2009
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ABSTRACT:
This post will take the effort to present some points of consideration when making a "perfect mixed tape." Data will be collected on a weekly basis, where the author, as well as the community at large, will have an opportunity to present their music choice in an attempt to build a 10 song playlist. At the end of the ten week period, the mxes will then be critiqued and analysed for perfection.
Under this methodology, it is hoped that the author and the rest of the readers will be able to better evalate components that constutute a perfect mixed…
worldsfair | April 23, 2009
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Yesterday at the SCQ, a short paper was published describing a "Kingdom Cake," whereby the various layers represented the different kingdom designations. The cake itself was pretty cool, but made all the more impressive by its competition at a full on bake off for Darwin's birthday back on February 12th.
The range was marvelous, and as I sampled them, I kept wondering what type of baking would Darwin himself have preferred, or even prepared himself. In any event, here are a couple of highlights.
Firstly, the aforementioned "Kingdom Cake"
Accompanying this…
worldsfair | April 22, 2009Worth the five minutes of your time, and especially if you're the sort who thinks music is not a worthy (educational or otherwise) endeavour. For more info go here.
Oh, and by the way - Happy Earth Day...
(Hat tip to Boingboing and the other 9 million folks who saw this already)
worldsfair | April 21, 2009Sad and scary in a pretty sort of way. Just a few images pulled courtesy of the Flickr community.
(lyza)
If you just sit back and absorb the sentiment of these pictures, it's a little overwhelming just how removed we can be from our food.
(colodio)
(metroblossom)
This last picture I find especially intriguing. It seems more than capable of evoking a feeling of "hard times" which I guess is analogous to how farmers might feel in the event of a poor harvest.
worldsfair | April 21, 2009
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Unicorns are great. Seriously. And here I'm going to sort of think out loud and think of them in a conventional biology sort of way. You know - have a little fun evolution wise.
In many respects (except for the magical powers bit) I don't think this is necessarily too hard to do. i.e. you have something that looks like a horse, but hey what's this - there's also a horn there.
I guess the question I'm pondering is whether a unicorn could occur from a realistic evolutionary biology point of view - you know, given the right circumstances and the right…
worldsfair | April 20, 2009
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O.K. I'm on a bit of a roll, and definitely in the mood to write another science-y song. This time with a little crunch. Like last week, I'm hoping for readers to suggest the general comment. Hint: things like hypoxia and cannabis probably won't fly in the fast tempo department...
(Also, some of you may have noticed the creation of a new category - that is, the Music for discerning geeks category.)
(Also also, some of you may have noticed I tend to twitter some innocuous statement a few days before the post - what will I be posting next?)
bcohen | April 20, 2009Or so I was told.
Speaking of ill-conceived arguments, we've been blessed at The World's Fair to host a lively conversation about NASCAR over the past two years. After one provocative query -- isn't burning a lot of fossil fuel bad for the environment?; can you believe they just banned lead in racing fuel after all these decades? -- we found some support from the NASCAR fan community itself.
After you get a chance to read up on the prior NASCAR post, for context to this post, come on back. I think there are a few lessons to be had. One is that we still lack a facetious sans serif font for…
worldsfair | April 18, 2009
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So how come I've never seen this before? The infamous Kirk Cameron Banana YouTube clip? From what I can figure out, this is actually meant to be a serious attempt at describing creationist perfection. It's just that the video is so full of unintended (intended?) innuendo that it turns out to be one of the silliest things I've seen in a long time.
As well, I'd like to make a case that the banana is not so perfect afterall. Here's a quick list of why it sucks to be a banana:
1. As the twitter statement says, the banana shown in the video is parthenocarpic.…
worldsfair | April 17, 2009So, I'm looking around at other blogs, and basically a lot of them have recurring features, often specific for a particular day. And I'm thinking the World's Fair could do this as well.
But instead of something always related to science, why not spin it a little and say that there is, in fact, a science to making a perfect mixed tape. Whereby one of the things you hope for are songs that speak to you at a variety of different levels.
Anyway, more on the science of a perfect mixed tape later, but for now, why not start a Friday tradition of suggestion a great tune for your listening pleasure…
worldsfair | April 17, 2009
This is kind of cute. But also interesting since Kacie Kinzer, the artist responsible, asks:
Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.
Here it is in action:
The bigger question at stake here, was how would this cute if somewhat dispensible robot do in its mission. After all, It would need to rely on kindness of strangers…
worldsfair | April 17, 2009
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Photo of a nice set of boobies we saw at the Natural History Museum from the SCQ
So the question, of course, is "what exactly is up with birds and breasts?" And I'm not talking about white meat versus dark meat preferences.
Instead, there is this uncomfortable coincidence between bird names and colloquialisms associated with women's breasts. It's almost as if you can do this mental exercise of running off a list of slang words, and then seeing if there is a connection to avian nomenclature.
For example, you have the implied: such as hooters, where even…
worldsfair | April 16, 2009
That's right! This guy!
Often in the blogging world, we are advised that picking a good title goes a long way to securing an engaged reader. Likewise, the same principle also applies to the art of securing your audience when giving a talk. And I'm of the opinion that taking some extra effort into crafting your opening statement is going to pay off in the long run.
If I could break it down, here are things to keep an eye out for when working out how to start your talk.
1. Should be short.
2. Should set the tone of your personality. Doesn't necessarily need to reflect the tone of the…
worldsfair | April 15, 2009Eddie Vedder on vox.
Sting on bass.
Ringo on drums. Anybody on drums.
Thom Yorke doing backing vocals
A duet with Beyonce.
Lyrics by Margaret Atwood.
Samantha Fox's breasts.
A wardrobe malfunction.
Wilco in the studio.
A studio.
A studio with amps that go to eleven.
A cameo in a Woody Allen movie. A cameo in a Jackie Chan movie.
A mention at the next Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.
A mention on American Idol.
Blessing from the Pope.
Permission from my wife.
(This list presented again from a old posting, since we were on the subject of writing music anyways)
worldsfair | April 14, 2009
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Seriously pretty (from Semiconductor Films)...
As well, I'm of the opinion that a visualization like this really provides a great perspective on the awesomeness of magnets specifically and on physics generally.
I'm not sure why it's so effective. I don't think I would be so gushing, if we were viewing a straight up computer animation. Maybe it has something to do with its Roger Rabbit effect, whereby parts of the footage are "real" whereas others are computer generated. All in all, the effect seems to make the images more grounded and therefore all the more…
worldsfair | April 14, 2009As I was composing a few lyrics to a song about thermodynamics (mp3 is further down the page), it quickly occurred to me how the first three laws could easily describe various elements of love.
You've got the first law, a testament to bookkeeping, where explicit in equations like dU=dQ-dW is the idea that what you'll get out (a relationship) is directly determined by what you put in (to a relationship).
Then, of course, there is the second law - a statement on the notion of entropy, often laymanized (is that a word?) as a reflection of "disorder." (I don't think anyone would argue about…
bcohen | April 14, 2009In a post a few weeks ago, I included links to some current and recently passed legislation on food, food safety, and food labeling. One of them, H.R. 875 -- a bill "To establish the Food Safety Administration within the Department of Health and Human Services" -- has a particular devotion to "science" and "science-based" data and "science-based" practices. It's all so very post-Bush era. Debate about it is now starting to ramp up on-line.
But what got me thinking more about food and labeling was the Honest Tea Organic Honey Green Tea with 250 mg of EGCG Super Anti-oxidant I recently…
bcohen | April 9, 2009USA Today's Traci Watson includes a nice graphic showing reductions in CO2 emissions during the economic downturn. It's in this story, "Bad economy helps cut CO2 emissions". This trend follows and fits in line with a post a few weeks ago about landfills receiving less trash during the recession. I'll forgo duplicating my commentary here and say only to read the one at the landfill link.
But here are three stats Watson offers:
Carbon dioxide from U.S. power plants fell roughly 3% from 2007 to 2008, according to preliminary data from the Environmental Protection Agency analyzed by the…
worldsfair | April 9, 2009
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I'm doing a bit of research for book chapter, and one of the things I was looking into, was how much exactly would it take for a layman to set up a functional molecular biology lab. With respect to this query, there are a few things to keep in mind:
1. Most molecular biology research is driven by the use of plastic ware, and various biological reagents. These are the sorts of things that need to bought fresh or brand new. Fortunately, most of it is also quite affordable from a layman point of view, and as previously demonstrated, you can easily purchase this…