bcohen | July 10, 2008Keep up with the matter at Recall.gov.
While not a fun sport, it is an active one. They list product recalls in seven categories:
1. Consumer Products (in general).
2. Motor vehicles.
3. Boats.
4. Food.
5. Medicine.
6. Cosmetics.
7. Environmental products.
Oh boy. Go grab a burger with a slice of tomato, put your Swiftlik safety raft on, take a swig of that Nestle Purified Water, keep a bottle of your oldest antipsychotic drugs on hand, send an HP fax to your friend to tell them all about it, and call it a day well recalled.
worldsfair | July 9, 2008Isn't this picture great?
This is from a book called Rotten Island, which was written and drawn by William Steig (best known for his books, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, as well as Shrek). Anyway, Rotten Island chronicles a place that begs:
What would happen if every creature on land and sea were free to be as rotten as possible? If every day was a free-for-all; if plants grew barbed wire; if the ocean were poison? That's life on Rotten Island. For creatures that slither, creep, and crawl (not to mention kick, bite, scratch, and play nasty tricks on each other), Rotten Island is…
worldsfair | July 8, 2008I doodle a bit, and sometimes, it has this Breakfast of Champions look to it - which to be frank is deliberate, since I think it's a great visual style, especially for the purpose of teaching.
Anyway, since, I'm playing around with my relatively new flickr account (mainly set up so that I can start to organize my slides properly on my popperfont site), here's a video of a few goofy slides that highlights a variety of biological "modifications" that can occur. Full narrative below the fold by the way.
Again, the point is that the resultant organism can be different due to nuances at…
bcohen | July 8, 2008Oronte Churm asks: Are you happy? An interesting entry.
To get to that, he works from Virginia Postrel's article "Inconspicuous Consumption" in The Atlantic, on his way to Bill Watterson speaking to Kenyon College many years ago on happiness. In my experience, any time you get stuff from the Calvin & Hobbes guy, it's solid. So I leave this minor post with the happiness question and the following passage. Quoth Watterson:
Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life…
bcohen | July 7, 2008
Alphametics, viseopoetics, I don't even know if I'm typing this right.
Do you know what these are? I don't entirely understand them, but I know someone who does.
But what's the gist? Oh right, alphmetics. These are word games. And math. Or math. Kind of. But not Sudoku.
Where do you find them? Katelyn Sack runs a Friday contest over at her wonderfully rich site. Go there. Solve them. Feel free to leave me the answers as well.
Here's one from a few weeks ago.
VIOLENCE
+ SILENCE
--------
PEACE
"Assume base 10. Go figure."
Go here for another one. And/or here.
Incidentally: Katelyn is…
worldsfair | July 2, 2008
To offset flights out of North America in 2007, you'd need to plant a forest the size of Oregon.
In this summer's issue of the Walrus, there's a great piece by UBC'er, David Beers, called "Grounded" which imagines circumstances leading to a world where flying is essentially ground to a halt. It's a good read, but in this case, I also had a little fun with the accompanying graphic.
In the original picture (the left hand side of the slide), we see the number of trees needed to offset a few particular flights (presumably, a sampling of some that David recently took), and I was essentially…
worldsfair | June 30, 2008
This cracks me up every time, and will be sure to somehow make an appearance in my talks on science literacy. I'm thinking this would make a great graphic to segue into discussions on the public perceptions of technologies, etc.
Anyway, summer is upon us, and so the good old blow-up pool is making an appearance in our backyard. But look at the pic, and note the huge difference between what you see on the box, and what you get in real life.
Below is a proper graphic of the actual box the product came in (still available on sites like amazon, by the way). I guess they can get away with…
worldsfair | June 27, 2008This is actually very nicely done - a commencement speech by JK Rowling at Harvard a few weeks ago. I've embedded the movie file below the fold for convenience, but full details (as well as the transcript of the speech) can be found here
The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination - June 2008
bcohen | June 27, 2008Resolved: a host of academic, journalistic, and community-based work has increased its focus in recent years on the matter of local food. In no way could I summarize the breadth of that work. But I am frequently surprised to find the same conversations going on, over and over again. For example, just this week there was yet another article asking if fewer food miles are really better. I was astounded that the author wrote the story--in which he assumed that carbon emissions were the measure of a food system's environmental value--and that the Salon editors gave it the go-ahead, because it…
worldsfair | June 26, 2008When I read pieces like this one (at McSweeney's), it makes me want to make the World's Fair the place to go to at ScienceBlogs when you want to catch up on unicorn stuff.
Anyway, here's the first paragraph:
The unicorn starts out by laying out its plan to counter the North Korean nuclear threat. It says, "Create a giant rainbow over the entire country that lasts 100 years and then flood the DMZ with thousands of puppies--er, kittens. Because nothing's cuter than a kitten scratching and meowing to get in somewhere. Then, after we break through, the Marines go in and take over any nuclear…
worldsfair | June 26, 2008
Occasionally, I talk about this when I'm giving a talk on science literacy, and most often, I'll present the following statement asking if it's true or false:
There is a human disease characterized by uncontrollably messy hair. It is called the "uncombable hair syndrome."
Anyway, it's true and the disorder is also known as Pili trianguli et canaliculi
Basically, a genetic syndrome affecting the structure of one of the proteins in the hair follicle. Results in literally uncombable hair (hence the name).
An abstract from Pediatr Dermatol. 2007 Jul-Aug;24(4):436-8.
A 4-year-old boy was noted…
worldsfair | June 25, 2008So, there's been much argument lately in my neck of the woods, over the BC's new carbon tax. This is coming online in a few days (July 1st), and will be responsible (amongst many other things) for what has been figured to be a 2.4c/litre hike in gas prices.
Anyway, folks are getting quite antsy here, with the opposition government saying all the usual things about getting rid of it, etc.
In many ways, however, I think the timing couldn't be better. Mainly because this convergence of activity has just raised the "carbon tax" and "things concerning fossil fuels" to a whole new, almost…
worldsfair | June 24, 2008As in popperfont.com
Last week, I opened up a free wordpress blog, with the hopes of collecting my writings in one place, as well, as trying to categorize the silly "true or false" questions I use in many of my public talks on science literacy (most of which have been discussed in some form or fashion at the World's Fair, but are kind of buried because of my poor categorization skills).
I initially decided to use the URL davengwrites.com, which was chosen partly out of frustration because every "davidng" or "daveng" URL seemed to have been taken.
Anyway, since yesterday, I've been tweaking…
worldsfair | June 23, 2008I think this statement should be obvious, and for that reason alone, we've included it in the SCQ's list of truths.
This, by the way, is a web experiment run by the Quarterly. The background can be found here, and I'll note that I'm constantly surprised by its staying power. On a general google.com search, the list of truths still ranks in the top 10 for the keyword "truth."
In case, you're curious, the celebrity that comes to mind, is all the silliness associated with Jenny McCarthy, but a list of others in the comment section, would be lovely to have on hand.
bcohen | June 23, 2008
Circa 1937.
Between me and you, and so don't go telling everyone, but I like that it's a gas-pump-shaped building even more.
worldsfair | June 20, 2008This is straight from the minds of the young: I just had to highlight today's piece at the Science Creative Quarterly. It's a letter composed during one of our Science Creative Literary Symposia sessions, detailing a secret force of woodpeckers issuing an ultimatum to Canada's leader.
Anyway, it's awesome. It begins:
To the Human Leader of Canada,
Greetings from all Woodpeckers. We send this letter as a warning, but also as a letter heralding the beginning of a possible alliance.
And continues a bit later with:
We have an offer to make, and there will be consequences for not accepting.…