worldsfair | November 13, 2008If you take a gander at our "Terrytalks" speaker promo video, you'll note that one of the sillier requests we had for our student speakers was to pick a song that would work if Terry talks were to have a soundtrack. If you remember, Terry talks has a fairly straight up mandate to connect students to each other over things related to social reponsibility, interdisciplinary collaborations, and/or environmental stewardship.
Anyway, what was great was that the suggested songs were so very diverse in genres. In fact, you can have a listen by clicking the tape below.
There was actually one…
worldsfair | November 12, 2008Not sure if you remember a previous mention on this, but I'm one of the folks involved in a new student conference initiative at UBC. Christianed "Terrytalks", this is basically a clone of the TED talks, where we'll offer the chance for students to share their globally relevant passions and desires to a large audience (about 400 this time around) of their peers, students, faculty and staff.
Anyway, I just made this quick promo video to highlight our student speakers. Would be great to get some feedback on the video in general (I'm generally new to video editing stuff). Would be even better…
worldsfair | November 12, 2008(Previously: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4)
O.K. o.k. so I've been ultra delinquent with keeping on top of the PF3 puzzle, and for that I heartily apologize.
But here we go - the proverbial home stretch. As it stands what did happen was that somewhere in the conversation, in the comments, in the hypothesizing, the answer was indeed found.
However, in a manner that some might say happens also in the scientific process, the answer when proclaimed was done so in a way that didn't really reflect a full on "aha!" moment. Truth is, it seemed like maybe it was a lucky guess - I don't know - maybe it wasn't, but…
bcohen | November 11, 2008Pt. I | Pt. 2
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The World's Fair is pleased to offer the following discussion about Agroecology in Action: Extending Alternative Agriculture through Social Networks (MIT Press, 2007), with its author Keith Warner. Warner is a Franciscan Friar and currently at Santa Clara University, where he lectures in the Religious Studies Department, and serves as assistant director for education at the Center for Science, Technology & Society.
Agroecology in Action, says its publisher, "shows that agroecology can be put into action effectively only when networks of farmers, scientists, and other…
bcohen | November 10, 2008Click on the book cover to go to Part I of the respective discussion. Or, see here for a complete list of entries.
I: M. Egan on Barry Commoner II: C. Mody on nanotechnology
III: S. Halfon on int'l science policy IV: K. Marsh on forestry policy
V: D. Hess on social movements VI: L. Grossman on e-trash
VII: S. Parthasarathy on genetics policy VIII: A. Sachs on environmentalism
IX: J. Golinski on Enlightenment weather X: K. Joyce on MRI & visual knowledge
XI…
bcohen | November 3, 2008The cruise-ship piece ["A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again"] ran in [Harper's in] January 1996, a month before [Infinite Jest] was published. People photocopied it, faxed it to each other, read it over the phone. When people tell you they're fans of David Foster Wallace, what they're often telling you is that they've read the cruise-ship piece...
It's heartbreaking, this lengthy article in Rolling Stone about David Foster Wallace. Reading the tributes and memories of DFW over at McSweeney's, you can't get away from the impression that he was just a regular guy who, oh, happened to be…
worldsfair | October 31, 2008
Recently, we had an opportunity to host a variety of great talks for science teachers. One of the talks was by Dr. William Rees. It was a nice little introduction into the conundrum of our reliance on "progress" to fix things. In any event, here is the link that will lead you to a 25 minute talk he gave.
If you do watch it, I'd be interested to see what you think. In many ways it suggests that human behaviour is currently not well suited to dealing with an issue of this magnitude.
Interestingly, one of the questions that came up after the talk, (that I thought really nailed the going…
bcohen | October 31, 2008The data presented below were first published after Halloween in 2006, here at The World's Fair. After further (non-anonymous) peer review, we pushed into the second phase of the research in 2007, as published here. We are proud to acknowledge that these earlier efforts--pilot studies, both--led to further funding. We've now been able to pursue the third phase of the work. Difficult work, yes. Labor-intensive, to be sure. Gut-wrenching, perhaps. But huge breakthroughs were in the offing. The hierarchy below includes the results of our continuing work.
To re-repeat our earlier claims to…
bcohen | October 28, 2008I lectured today on technology and progress in my big-lecture class (the main thrust being: in what way is technology progress, and who says so, and why). Just before I'd watched a documentary, Our Daily Bread (and here), about the modern industrial agriculture process. It pairs very well with another documentary, Manufactured Landscapes, and in that way ties into the recent thread of "landcsape" images at the site (the West, fences, and bombs). In discussing technology and progress, the lecture was built with commentary on mechanization and the values of technical rationality. That got…
worldsfair | October 28, 2008So, this is one of the things that has been keeping me busy the last couple of weeks.
Essentially, the lab hosted a largish conference for high school science teachers (about 95 registrants) - as well, we took the tact of blogging the conference so that almost all of the content is already up (by my calculation, all content will be up by week's end).
Here are some highlights:
- We had 4 great talks (available to view) by William Rees, Hadi Dowlatabadi, Patrick Keeling, and Brian Ellis, who covered a wide range of topics, but all (fittingly) involved elements of sustainability, education,…
bcohen | October 27, 2008Friend of the Fair Oronte Churm has a note on engineers over at The Education of Oronte Churm, "The Engineers Think On It." Eating at a diner with a book of poetry in hand, he posits the engineer's quest for utility--and for order and rationality, it seems--over poetry and spirit (or so my own poetic license has it, from reading his post). I'd say his interpretation is not of any engineers I know, though they do exist in lore and in lonely corners at Virginia Tech.
They had a job to do, but they weren't going to rush it. There was pleasure in the food, companionship, and the pause, but…
bcohen | October 27, 2008These offer another set of landscape images (here were some others: one; two), these punctuated by the contrast of nuclear sky, horizon, and military maneuver. I saw them at this site, though that site was reposting images from the book How to Photograph an Atomic Bomb, by Peter Kuran. The Cal Lit Review site says this by way of couching the images:
Between 1945 and 1962, the United States conducted over 300 atmospheric nuclear tests above the ground, in the ocean or in outer space.
On August 5, 1963, the United States and the former Soviet Union signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty,…
bcohen | October 26, 2008I think the poem below, by Edward Hirsch, is in league with the one by Vijay Seshadri, "Memoir," posted a few months ago. Hirsch's was apparently inspired by the poem "Account," by Czeslaw Milosz.
_____________________
Traffic was heavy coming off the bridge
and I took the road to the right, the wrong one,
and got stuck in the car for hours.
Most nights I rushed out into the evening
without paying attention to the trees,
whose names I didn't know,
or the birds, which flew heedlessly on.
I couldn't relinquish my desires
or accept them, and so I strolled along
like a tiger that wanted to…
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 21, 2008In the essay I wrote for the HSS Newsletter about blogging (here) I noted in passing that one virtue of the blog space was that it provided a place to store notes. It is an electronic version of note cards. This post is one example, a placeholder that I'll come back to. Let's hope.
Pollan's Farmer-in-Chief essay in the New York Times Magazine two weeks ago brought together many of the points he's made in the past few years about the role of food and agricultural policy for environmental, political, and health outcomes. His overarching point:
[M]ost of the problems our food system faces…
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 20, 2008In my line of work, fenceline discussions are more often about pollution from chemical manufacturers that border residential communities -- "fenceline communities" like those all up and down Cancer Alley in Louisiana. But the fenceline images below are in keeping with the set of landscape photographs I referred to in a post last week. And rather than the western scenery captured by Jesse Chehak in those images, the ones below (taken by my wife) are of a regular old central Virginia farm site. They put the human contrivance of fencing, bordering, containing, demarcating , etc., in contrast…
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