worldsfair | October 17, 2007I currently teach an all day molecular laboratory course at UBC, where students go through various techniques in the confines of what is often a 4 to 6 hour session. Anyway, occasionally, there is some downtime, and last week, some students started to play around with the ice in their ice bucket.
Here is the fruit of their effort - a miniature snowman:
And I am so thinking, that we can turn this into a contest (maybe hosted by the SCQ with a prize, etc)!
Of course, I guess the other way to interpret things is that my class is so dreary that students resort to doing crafts on the side.…
worldsfair | October 15, 2007Puzzle Fantastica #1 was too hard
Puzzle Fantastica #2 was too easy
Puzzle Fantastica #3 is ...
As before, each of these three clues are held together by a common answer. Start the solution in the comments area, and good luck.
Clue 1
Clue 2
Clue 3
worldsfair | October 12, 2007
IPCC figures rock!
And there's a lot of discussion taking place around the blogosphere that concerns the merit behind this particular choice (here's a good overview at the NYT), ranging from the errors in his movie, as well as the debate over whether activism in the climate change arena constitutes a major contribution to issue of "peace" itself.
What do people think around here?
In any event, the IPCC being a co-winner, I think, is a no brainer. This is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a large (like 2000 or so!) UN group of academics from a variety of disciplines (many from…
worldsfair | October 10, 2007
Or maybe, I'm being too hard on myself.
Anyway, my brother has moved to start an MBA program in York University, and so I am left with several pieces of his musical gear. Which means that yes, (Dum dum dum!), I'm going to have a hand at recording some music.
Where does the science fit in?
Well, once I figure out how to set up my M-AUDIO box, so that I can plug in the instruments to GarageBand on my Mac, I'm going to write a few songs that are scientifically influenced in either of the following ways:
1. Using genetic notation. That's right! The nucleotides A, C, G can also stand in for…
worldsfair | October 10, 2007Had a coffee with a friend (Jon Nakane) who runs the UBC EngPhys Projects lab, and he told me about one of their most recent robot competitions held over the summer. Basically, this is bundled in a with an intense Robotics course that is a favourite of the engineering set (PHYS253 - Introduction to Instrument Design).
Anyway, this year the contest was to make an autonomous robot that could play the game of "Operation." It's pretty hilarious. Check out the YouTube video below:
I wonder what type of competition they will have next year? In previous years, they've had "HockeyBots", "…
worldsfair | October 9, 2007So, my New Yorker subscription is about done, and I've decided not to renew it this time. This is a shame, because I've been getting it for almost three years now, and it's become a bit of comfortable habit now. Hard to beat some of the writing that is presented there, despite my disappointment at not cracking the "Shouts and Murmur" door.
Also, it's not that cheap (although, price per word, it's awesome value), but the thing is, is that I just can't keep up. Right now, I'm wondering if a better use of magazine reading time is to get something like the Economist (which I always get when I'…
worldsfair | October 9, 2007
Shop fronts on the streets of Harbin
Well, I've been home for a week now from my trip to Harbin, still with a cold, and my mind whirring trying to compartmentalize all that I was lucky enough to see in the latter parts of my stay. During those days, I was fortunate enough to take in a few sights, particularly in the neighbouring city of ChangChun - a city most famous for its role in the Japanese invasion of NorthEast China, and its subsequent set up of the puppet nation of "Manchuria."
This includes the story of Puyi, or the last Chinese emperor, who was caught in the middle of everything…
bcohen | October 5, 2007
We at The World's Fair are proud to bring on the Grand Hotel Regina as our alternative sponsor for the month. It isn't just that we see a natural fit between the two of us -- they, in complete harmony with majestic Eiger and Jungfrau vistas; we, in complete unanimity with our distaste for the moral degradation of Dow Chemical. The thing is, if you talk to Alfred Krebs, the owner-manager of the Grand Hotel Regina, you don't end up with a megaton of carcinogenic chemicals in your watershed. Nor, as Alfred would be the first to tell you, could you get the same fine array of tennis courts,…
worldsfair | October 4, 2007Well sort of. I'm proud to say that as the editor of the Science Creative Quarterly, we have published our third ever squirrel piece today. This one is a doozy - in fact the title sort of says it all.
WAVE-PARTICLE DUALITY: OBSERVED PHENOMENA IN SCIURUS CAROLINENESIS
If nothing else, it is hoped that you will always be able to recognize the latin word for squirrel, and who knows - if we get more squirrel pieces, that might just be the needed incentive to make a squirrel specific science scout badge.
(previous squirrel related pieces include this serious one, and this not so serious one).
worldsfair | October 4, 2007Here is one of two cranes outside the Michael Smith Laboratories right now.
Apparently, there is a lot of jumping in the "Bionic Woman" television show. Anyway, they're also shooting in my lab right now, but I promised not to show pictures until the episode airs (in apparently 2 to 3 weeks).
But get this - each episode costs around $5 million dollars! Wow, talk about inequity. How many here can talk about being funded by even a science grant of that stature, and nevermind the math you can do with regards to the Millennium Development Goals.
Crazy. Just crazy.
worldsfair | October 2, 2007The Science Creative Quarterly is seeking wondrous, thought provoking, and potentially slightly silly science questions. These we hope to present to our esteem Bill Hick, the Science Prick, who in turn will attempt his best to answer them in due course.
As well, know that a little meat with regards to the questions submitted wouldn't hurt. And to attract such queries, we would like to make this request for questions our October monthly book contest. This time around, the prize is Edwina, The Dinosaur Who Didn't Know She Was Extinct by Mo Willems. This seems just about right, since Edwina…
bcohen | October 1, 2007Barbara Kingsolver contributed an op-ed in the Washington Post yesterday about dirty work. She argues there, as she does in her other writings and as scores of other agrarian-minded thinkers and practitioners have argued, that personal and civic virtue can be found from getting your hands dirty, from literally working to grow your food and be connected to the land as a consequence. In this, she argues against the grain of common sentiment: "My generation has absorbed an implicit hierarchy of values in which working the soil is poor people's toil."
I was at first put off by the piece,…
worldsfair | September 28, 2007O.K. I have a few minutes to scribble some stuff here, so here goes.
I've had a chance to tour Harbin a little more the last little while, and the one thing I can state is that it is a seriously big city. I guess you get use to hearing about Shanghai and Beijing being the "big" cities, but Harbin is no walk over. According to my Lonely Planet guide, the population is about 3 million, but my guide is at least two years old, and the locals here have been telling me that its probably closer to 10 million.
This, I'll have to check when I get back to Canada, but 10 million! Holy shit - no…
bcohen | September 28, 2007Our local paper reported the sad, sad news that famed anti-global warming enthusiast and industry hack Patrick Michaels "quietly left his position over the summer" as the Virginia state climatologist. (With apologies for formatting -- the Sb folks haven't yet invented the mock font yet, so you can't tell the "sad, sad" was actually composed in that secret mock font.)
It isn't clear if the newspaper itself was using the mock font and I just couldn't tell, since of course Michaels was never actually Virginia's "state climatologist" so there was no such position from which to step down.
But…
worldsfair | September 26, 2007
(I didn't actually see this sign, which I got via Shelley, but I put it up because my talk later today will actually break rule number 3.)
Well, I've been in China for the better part of three days now, having spent a few hours in Shanghai, and the remainder of my time in Harbin (North China). It's been lovely so far, and my hosts are pretty much all kinds of awesome.
The visit has been interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, the opportunity to go to Shanghai for a few hours, and to try and get a feel for the place. Basically, Shanghai struck me like any other major, high rolling,…
worldsfair | September 22, 2007I thought this blog post was pretty refreshing and kind of a nice way to look at things. It starts:
When people hear that I spend two hours each way commuting to UBC from Surrey every day, the most common question is: but why? When the train broke down today, and it took over three hours to get to UBC, I was asking myself the same thing. I made a list to remind myself why commuting is good.
Anyway, read the list by following this link.
worldsfair | September 21, 2007Well, I'm off to north China next week, although unlike Nigeria, it sounds like I'll be wired in and still able to contribute to the blog. Specifically, I'm heading to the Northeast Forestry University in Harbin to give a few talks on molecular genomics, particularly in terms of how it can be used as a tool in plant studies. This is actually quite timely in the blog fashion in that Ben recently took note of an article published by the Post on rural farming in China.
I have a couple colleagues at the Michael Smith Labs who are using such methodologies to see what type of plant defenses are…