worldsfair | June 19, 2008Once again, Chris Jordan with a commanding use of aesthetics. This is as remarkable as it is horrendous. Go below the fold to zoom into the image.
bcohen | June 19, 2008Pt 1 | Pt 2
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Part 2 with Graham Burnett, author of Trying Leviathan, follows below. All entries in the author-meets-bloggers series can be found here.
WF: What would you have biologists today take from this book? I ask because you are at some pains in Trying Leviathan to argue for the contingencies of taxonomic systems, which appear always to be in flux, and seem generally to reflect a host of larger cultural preoccupations.
DGB: I don't think of my book as having special "lessons" for biologists. Indeed, I rather incline away from thinking of my books as having "lessons" for…
worldsfair | June 18, 2008This is kind of neat. A web tool called www.mixwit.com that allows you to post high quality mixed tapes online. Here's a sample of a three song mix that took me 15 minutes to make. Thanks by the way for suggestions (on the blog and off) for the previous post.
bcohen | June 18, 2008Part 1 | Part 2
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The World's Fair is pleased to offer the following discussion about a most unique and forceful book, Trying Leviathan: The Nineteenth-Century New York Court Case That Put the Whale on Trial and Challenged the Order of Nature (Princeton University Press, 2007), with its author D. Graham Burnett. He is associate professor of history at Princeton University.
Professor Burnett is the author of three previous books, Masters of All They Surveyed (Chicago University Press, 2000), A Trial by Jury (Knopf, 2001), and Descartes and the Hyperbolic Quest (American Philosophical…
worldsfair | June 16, 2008So... In an attempt to procrastinate some time away, I've put in the effort to collect all of the silly science humour pieces I've written over the years (as well as some of the few non-humour pieces I've written) into one easy to visit website.
After doing this, I can't believe how much stuff is there. It's funny, but I always thought it was like some very minor hobby, but there's actually quite a bit of stuff there when you put it all in one place. Granted, that almost half the pieces are at places where I get to play editor, but still, maybe, it's time to not feel stupid and embarrassed…
bcohen | June 13, 2008Stunning news out of Washington. John Boehner, that congress guy, you know who I mean, laid down a devastating critique yesterday by claiming that politicians in congress are "playing politics." He reports that in the Senate "it's been about politics everyday all day."
I thought they were there to play cribbage.
worldsfair | June 11, 2008I usually make a music mix about 4 times a year, with the culmination of those mixes becoming a more focused annual mix. This is something I've done since 2002, and it's always great to go back in time and check out a particular mix for a particular year.
Anyway, things have been so busy the last little while, that my musical spider sense is a little off. So, I'm looking for a few suggestions from readers passing by - a link to a youtube file would be especially helpful, I'm one of those folks that can tell if a piece will grow on me pretty quick. Hoping to find 7 more songs this way.
I've…
worldsfair | June 11, 2008Right now, I'm reading a gem of a book called Mortification, writers' stories of their public shame. It essentially has 70 or so mini-pieces from a wide variety of writers, at various stages of their careers. These pieces share humiliating anecdotes as it relates to the life of a writer: Here, the liner notes encapsulates it nicely:
Mortification is a collection of writers' tales of ignominy, a grimly compelling anthology of shame... Anyone who has ever fancied an author's life would find this book an eye-opener...
Just to give you a sense of the flavour, here is one of the stories from…
bcohen | June 11, 2008
Won't you read this story over at Orion? Choice, consumption, citizenship.
Then reread Charles Kettering's 1929 article, "Keep the Consumer Dissatisfied." Says Kettering:
If everyone were satisfied, no one would buy the new thing because no one would want it. The ore wouldn't be mined; timber wouldn't be cut. Almost immediately hard times would be upon us.
You must accept this reasonable dissatisfaction with what you have and buy the new thing, or accept hard times. You can have your choice.
Says Jeffrey Kaplan, in "The Gospel of Consumption," to give a sample of the link:
As far back as…
worldsfair | June 10, 2008Part of the reason for this post is just to say that I've finally been able to put up the Richard Dawkins' talk at the terry.ubc.ca site. This is essentially his "God Delusion" speech, and it happens to be available at a relatively high resolution (two files totalling about 350Mb) - if you have an hour to spare, it's definitely worth checking out.
Anyway, I quite enjoyed his talk (which was held on the 29th of April), although I suppose I would be giving this opinion as someone who more or less agrees wholeheartedly with him. If you watch the video, you'll find that he is quite funny, and…
bcohen | June 9, 2008
Circa 1976, an editorial cartoon from Bill Mauldin. File this under "everything old is new again"?
worldsfair | June 6, 2008I quite enjoyed this Shouts and Murmur piece (reprinted below in full). It's called My Nature Documentary (by Jack Handey)
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"Show monkey in a tree. Narrator says, "The monkey, proud and smart, in his native habitat. But one thing he does not have . . ." Show a giraffe. ". . . is a long neck, like the giraffe. Which is why nature has allowed them to combine forces." Show monkey on giraffe's neck. (Note: Monkey may have to be tied on.)
Then the narrator says, "The monkey can now see very far, and has protection from predators. And the giraffe has a little friendly guy to ride around on…
worldsfair | June 6, 2008Lately, my kids have really gotten into the whole Star Wars thing, which, of course, brings me great pleasure. It also brings to mind a silly question: that is whether affinity for all things Star Wars is at all related to an affinity to all things science (ah Popper and Kuhn, where are ye now?).
Anyway, I'm wondering whether there is a tidy, clever, and easy internet device/poll/search algorithm we can use to chip away at this query. If you have any ideas, it would be great to pass them on.
In the meantime, here is a Star Wars related video that I think is very funny. Note some…
worldsfair | June 6, 2008So it would seem my last post on pinatas needs to be corrected on two fronts. Firstly, my piece at McSweeney's and its marriage of science and pinatas is not such a unique concept, and secondly, after doing a bit more homework, it's clear that the best blogging category to unite these two terms is "Life Science." (and not "Humanities and Social Sciences" as previously suggested.
Why is this? Well, the term "pinata" (apologies for not including the little squiggle over the "n" - everytime I try, it comes out garbled) does crop up when you do literature searches. In fact, whilst the hits are…
worldsfair | June 5, 2008Ben just alerted me of one of my humour pieces going up today at McSweeney's. Like the post title suggests, it's about science and pinatas. The key question, of course, is why did I categorize this post in the "humanities and social sciences," but to be honest, I'm not sure of that answer myself (what category do you think science pinatas should fall under?)
Anyway, my favourite bit is the part about the animal pinatas, but go here to read the piece in its full times font glory.
worldsfair | June 5, 2008
Having just returned from a visit to the magic kingdom, the above was a question that continually haunted my consciousness. Disneyland was remarkably pristine in that cookie cutter, artificial, yet aesthetically pleasing way, but it must be a major sink in terms of waste, energy consumption, carbon emissions, etc.
Or is it? Maybe in terms of footprint, by applying its incredible density (>15 million visitors each year!), it comes out not looking so bad?
It should be noted that Disney appears to be viewing environmental issues in a relatively serious manner, with a number of programs…
bcohen | June 4, 2008Somehow I couldn't help thinking of the study below when reading the recent article on a scientific study of sarcasm. As with that (sarcastic?) study, this one also considered ways to understand humanity with scientific analysis. As published in Life magazine in 1946, let's call it the optics of housewifery. The title of this post was the title of their article. Please comment away. Yes, as facetiously as you'd like.
(as found in Caroline Jones, "Talking Pictures: Clement Greenberg's Pollock," in L. Daston, ed., Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Science and Art [Zone Books, 2004…
bcohen | June 4, 2008Quoth neuropsychologist Katherine P. Rankin: "I bet Jon Stewart has a huge right frontal lobe."
Sure. Why not.
bcohen | June 4, 2008
Here's something on sustainable agriculture: Farmfoody.org seeks to connect those who eat food with farms and gardens. Do you eat food? If so, this might be of interest to you.
The site showcases a featured farm, links to an Eat Well Guide, provides a forum for local growers and buyers to interact and arrange meetings, offers recipes, and allows farmers to tag members with foods that they grow and members to tag farmers with foods that they want.
Their premise follows from these basic definitions:
Farm - a farm, vineyard, PYO, Farmer's Market, CSA, a victory garden -- a local producer.…
bcohen | June 3, 2008This post was written by guest contributor Cyrus Mody.*
There's a new study reported in Nature Nanotechnology entitled "Carbon nanotubes introduced into the abdominal cavity of mice show asbestos-like pathogenicity in a pilot study." Or, as the title seems to have been understood by reporters at the New York Times and elsewhere, "Blah NANO blah blah blah ASBESTOS blah PATHOGEN blah blah."
The gist of the original Nature Nano study is this: (1) we know asbestos fibers, once heralded as a godsend, can cause mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lungs. (2) We know this has something to…