bcohen | December 17, 2007PRESS CENTER | PRINTABLE BRACKETS
I don't even know what to say. Darwin won. It was won, how to put this, how to put this, it was won a little more than handily. Particle didn't even score. Darwin won 142 to 0.
WF: [speaking to the camera, microphone in hand] Let me step into the press conference. Not many folks left. I should be able to get a good spot. I have no idea what I just saw out there. Particle had been so dominant, so free-flowing in defeating General Relativity. I don't know what happened over these past months, during this game. But what a debacle here today.
P:
WF…
worldsfair | December 17, 2007PRESS CENTER | PRINTABLE BRACKETS
"We're not quite done yet" said a smug Minister John Baird, Environment Minister for Canada, as he celebrated a close win for the Fossil Fuel team.
Fossil fuels vs d-orbitals - it really doesn't sound like a fair matchup from the get go, especially when you look at the stats over the last 300 years or so. Clearly, fossil fuels have a strong track record and have just kept getting stronger and stronger.
Meanwhile, d-orbitals had a tough time making any gains in the popular media (even googling the term only returns a paltry 37,000 hits).
"We wanted to turn…
bcohen | December 17, 2007PRESS CENTER | PRINTABLE BRACKETS
Aaaaannnnnd, we're back. Thank you for tuning in.
Remember? Remember the brackets? The 2007 Science Spring Showdown? The phenomenon Rolling Stone said was summarized at this url"; the tournament ESPN: The Magazine hailed as "full of 64 teams and then some, as shown here!"; the event Larry King called "As good as Cocoon, and twice as young!"? Remember?
We didn't, but our readers sent us a note. So do some clicking on the header links, and catch up. Because our readership has tripled since the Showdown's start, all you upstarts will want to do some…
worldsfair | December 13, 2007
(image source)
O.K. So the deal is that it's the holidays - and soon the whole merriment parade will be kicking into high gear. This includes a number of things that I bet many households end up going through. Things such as:
1. the strategic maneuvering of the mistletoe locale.
2. watching the antics of nasally sounding claymation elves,
3. arguing over the relative merits of putting raisins in the stuffing,
4. real tree, fake tree, or no tree.
5. debating the necessity of the feature length Grinch movie,
6. figuring out what did "my true love give to me" on the eleventh day?
And 7,…
bcohen | December 13, 2007As brought to us from researcher's at the Children's Television Workshop:
The letter Z (source: C.M.).
The number 10 (source: T.C.).
and
Carry on, having confirmed that, yes, two-year-olds can blog too.
worldsfair | December 11, 2007From the Science Creative Quarterly. Two days left to enter, so I'm just moving this post back up.
"O.K. so we're waaay behind on sorting out the Bill Hick, Science Prick contest, but figure that the best way to deal with that is to simply host another writing contest. This time, the book on the line is "I'm the Biggest Thing in the Ocean!" by Kevin Sherry.
This book is great by the way, and this appears regardless of the fondness many people have for squids.
This time we'll take any kind of submission. Just send some stuff in - because essentially the thing we like the best, is the thing…
worldsfair | December 11, 2007Patrick comes through with another great piece - this time on his hospital experience after inadvertently stabbing himself with a needle full of tissue culture cells (Hamster CHO cells specifically).
He informs me that he has yet to develop the relative strength and speed of a hamster.
(link)
worldsfair | December 11, 2007
So the premise is that Santa is at least several hundred years old, and you've got to assume that somewhere along the line, he spent some time in academia and probably got a degree or two. Now, I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that he is a man of science, but I guess the question to ask is in what way specifically?
I can think of a couple angles one can pursue here, whether it relates to reindeer or elves or climate or his delivery route and/or delivery methodology, but let's see what others will think about first.
Mind you, for some reason (and if I had to make a single…
worldsfair | December 11, 2007Sorry my posting has been sporadic of late. Things have been busier than usual, especially with Christmas looming. Anyway, the title of this post happens to be the lead headline in the yearly Christmas letter that my family produces.
This time, my wife suggested making it a newsletter instead of the usual essay since Hannah is now writing up a storm. Of course, my graphic design instincts took the better of me, and I had to make it look cool.
Anyway, I've got a couple posts I'd like to make sure are finished before the new year. Keep an eye out for them. Some of them relate to sports…
bcohen | December 10, 2007"Never has so little been asked of so many at such a critical moment."
Michael Maniates, a professor of environmental science and political science at Alleghany College, contributed a compelling op-ed to the Washington Post recently, "Going Green? Easy Doesn't Do it." Maniates basic point is captured both in the title of his essay and the quote I excerpted above. As related to the old industry-sponsored ad campaign, he's saying that Iron Eyes Cody isn't asking much of us.
He writes, ostensibly, to call attention to some recent books appealing to maintaining the status quo by suggesting we…
bcohen | December 7, 2007
It's a story I wrote, posted over at McSweeney's today.
As an understatement, let's call it more melancholy than uproarious.
Let's.
bcohen | December 7, 2007Science reported this a few weeks ago: "Did Horny Young Dinosaurs Cause Illusion of Separate Species?" (23 November 2007; Vol. 318. no. 5854, p. 1236)
I assumed this would be a study of the libido of such astounding creatures.
Credit: Holly Woodward, at Science
I was, umm, incorrect.
It is, rather, about this: "What were thought to be two unique species, [Jack Horner of Montana State University (MSU) in Bozeman argues], are in fact juveniles of different ages that would have grown up to be bony-headed Pachycephalosaurus."
True, I'm only a novice paleontology enthusiast. But with a six-…
bcohen | December 7, 2007
Looks like cartoon week is continuing in these parts; perhaps we have a cartoon month on our hands. The above is from The New Yorker, back on Nov. 19, and offered now as a long-awaited continuation to the dialog on blowing up mountains here.
bcohen | December 7, 2007"The British are sniffy about sci-fi, but there is nothing artificial in its ability to convey apprehension about the universe and ourselves."
Folks are always going on about Science Fiction in these parts. And that's fun. Figured I'd add a link to this essay, "Why don't we love science fiction?," from the UK's Times Online. It refers to two works about SF: A Science Fiction Omnibus edited by Brian Aldiss and Different Engines: How Science Drives Fiction and Fiction Drives Science by Mark L Brake and Neil Hook.
A few excerpts. This one:
The big problem with being sniffy about SF is that…
worldsfair | December 6, 2007
Just caught this at Boingboing: Here you have history professor, Dr. Alan Charles Kors, attempting to encapsulate the entirety of human history in a 60 second lecture. The transcript goes:
* First, tribes: tough life.
* The defaults beyond the intimate tribe were violence, aversion to difference, and slavery. Superstition: everywhere.
* Culture overcomes them partially.
* Rainfall agriculture, which allows loners.
* Irrigation agriculture, which favors community.
* Division of labor plus exchange in trade bring mutual cooperation, even outside the tribe.
* The…
bcohen | December 6, 2007Waterboarding. This is the topic for debate in our modern world. We go on and on about progress in civilization, yet we're talking about torture. Here are three recent views on the subject: This Modern World, The Onion, and Doonesbury. It's the torture satire trifecta.
(And for those who stay with us, a bonus feature for the atheists with the Doonesbury reference below.)
(source)
Conservation Group Condemns Waterboarding As Wasteful
*/
WASHINGTON--National Water Watch, a Washington-based conservation group, criticized the government's use of waterboarding Monday, calling the…
bcohen | December 6, 2007A poem by Mary Oliver (1992). Please make of it what you will. And please, for World's Fair regulars, connect it to prior posts as you will:
Rice [1992]
It grew in the black mud.
It grew under the tiger's orange paws.
Its stems thinner than candles, and as straight.
Its leaves like feathers of egrets, but green.
Its grains cresting, wanting to burst.
Oh, blood of the tiger.
I don't want you just to sit down at the table.
I don't want you just to eat, and be content.
I want you to walk out into the fields
where the water is shining, and the rice has risen.
I want you to stand there, far from…
bcohen | December 6, 2007I take it that the enterprise of SEED and scienceblogs, in its framing as a public conversation about science, is to argue about science. So, below, a quote from Isaiah Berlin.
But first, by way of follow-up to an earlier post by Jonah, here is the irascible historian of science Paul Forman on a late twentieth-century phenomenon relevant to the broader issue of this post (and these blogs):
"The artist has always had to contend with the hated critic. But whence comes this new thing, the science critic?"*
And now Berlin:
"[T]he bitterest clashes [between rival types of knowledge] have been…
worldsfair | December 5, 2007
Jason did a great job with this. Check out more at Crunchy on the Outside
worldsfair | December 4, 2007
link (via boingboing)
Speaking of which- it's time to think about that year end music mix again...