worldsfair | August 22, 2007
Just saw a piece I wrote got published in the Canadian magazine, The Walrus. What's especially cool about this one, is that it has been presented in comic form, which is first for me. This is another great example of just sticking to your guns when trying to publish a piece. I must have written a first edit of this piece way back in early 2005, and had submitted to the odd place here and there.
Originally, it was a text piece, entitled "Short Illustrious Collaborations of Research Career" detailing some real encounters (many very brief) with notable folks in the scientific research or…
bcohen | August 22, 2007
*This post was also written by intern Kate Lee. See Part I here.
When it comes to practicing what I preach, there is room for a lot of improvement. I am limited by where I live, my current budget, my knowledge, and my bad habits, and I act in a way that goes against my ideals more often than I'd like to admit. I manage to swing big dinners with my housemates and friends several times a week, and that's definitely a great source of joy in my life. One arena in which I feel secure about my behavior is in the YOGURT sector. To finish off this post, I'd like to tell you about why buying…
bcohen | August 21, 2007
*This post was written by intern Kate Lee.
There's been a lot of discussion around the World's Fair lately about food (Food Miles, Chinese Agriculture, Science and the Farm Bill, Subsidies and the Small Farm). Up until about a month ago, I was employed by the food industry, and that position opened my eyes to a number of patterns in human food consumption around Boston. I became very attentive (in and outside of work) to the way people approached their food choices, what they chose, how they asked for it, how they consumed it, and how they exited the experience. I couldn't resist sharing…
worldsfair | August 20, 2007It begins:
"It has been observed at least since the time of Aristotle that people cannot tickle themselves, but the reason remains elusive."
What we have here is a research paper (by CHRISTINE R. HARRIS and NICHOLAS CHRISTENFELD) that looks at a variety of hypotheses (namely two called the reflex and the interpersonal)on this phenomenon, and then attempts to discern the two by using a "tickling machine." Here's the rest of the abstract:
Two sorts of explanations have been suggested. The interpersonal explanation suggests that tickling is fundamentally interpersonal and thus requires another…
bcohen | August 20, 2007
Yes, it's a Kaspar Schott, you're right. Vintage 1664. And just how would you determine the depth of well?
We're pleased to announce that this week's alternative sponsor for The World's Fair is none other than "How to Determine Depth of a Well." It's from Joco-Seriorum Naturae et Artis, by Kaspar Schott. And it explains (wait for it...) how to determine the depth of a well. Apparently you use paper cut outs of tiny little men and hope they don't get wet. And yes, the well needs to be transparent also, looks like.
Why are we proud to have well-depthers on board as a new sponsor?…
bcohen | August 15, 2007Part 1 | 2 | 3
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Part III with David Hess, author of Alternative Pathways in Science and Industry, follows below.
All entries in the author-meets-bloggers series are here.
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TWF: You think all these farmers markets will really do anything? Or do they just make for a more fun middle class weekend?
DH: There are actually two or three complicated questions here. Even though one can demonstrate significant growth trends in many localist institutions (such as farmers' markets), does the localist movement really have any long-term economic significance? I'm doing a lot of thinking about…
worldsfair | August 15, 2007Part 1 | 2 | 3
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A: University College hospital,Ibadan, B: Entrance to College of Medicine
Monday morning, the first day of the workshop, and the adrenaline was already pumping. Today, we would have the opportunity to check out the facilities we had to work with, as well as meet our students for the first time. All of this, would be held within the College of Medicine, a teaching outcrop of the University of Ibadan, nestled within the grounds of the University College Hospital.
The hospital itself was an overwhelming structure, apparently one of the largest (though not the largest)…
worldsfair | August 14, 2007(By Jacqui Monaghan)
I am not ashamed to admit that I have a crush on Martha Stewart. I mean, come on: with those luscious locks, knitted ponchos, freshly baked cookies, and that home in the Hamptons, what's not to love?
Apparently, even cybergeeks love her. This week, Martha will go where Bob Villa hasn't gone before: the cover of Wired magazine, icing a--get this--Wii cake.
Aside from the fact that the words "buttercream" and "fondant icing" have now been printed, in ink, in Wired, and aside from the fact that, well, the cake looks like a Wii console (only tastier), there is another…
bcohen | August 14, 2007Part 1 | 2 | 3
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Part II with David Hess, author of Alternative Pathways in Science and Industry, follows below.
All entries in the author-meets-bloggers series can be found here.
TWF: What specific areas do you examine in the book?
DH: I look at science and industry in five main fields, which I selected because of their close connections with issues of the environment and sustainability: agriculture, energy, waste and manufacturing, infrastructure, and finance. Across each of the five fields I examine four types of alternative pathways: the two described above plus pathways oriented…
bcohen | August 13, 2007Part 1 | 2 | 3
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The World's Fair sits down with David Hess, author of Alternative Pathways in Science and Industry: Activism, Innovation, and the Environment in an Era of Globalization (MIT Press, 2007) and Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, NY.
David Hess is a longtime leader in the field of STS. Like few scholars, this claim holds true by reference to academic leadership, mentoring, research, and community involvement. His past books, Science and Technology in a Multicultural World (Columbia…
bcohen | August 12, 2007
For those who forgot, we began seeking alternative sponsorship at this site in the face of unstable valence properties in Dow Chemical's "Human Element." Last week, we read "Documents show that Dow Chemical has been pressing India to disassociate the firm from the 1984 tragedy," in Chemical and Engineering News (August 6, 2007, Volume 85, Number 32, p. 26). It's about how Dow is seeking to use some of its P.R. funds not just to plaster every magazine and website you've ever seen with their Human Element ad campaign, but to downplay (cover up, misrepresent, distance, poo poo, make appear as…
bcohen | August 10, 2007Herein, discussion of another recent piece on agriculture and science - the third one, as foreshadowed in my last post - this one an editorial in the Times that touches on Food Miles. (Thanks to Laura for sending it along.) Food Miles are the distance food travels to get to your plate. The author of the commentary, James McWilliams, notes that it has become part of the conversation on organic and local agriculture, referring to the same Barbara Kingsolver book--Animal, Vegetable, Miracle--we just made note of in the Science and the Farm Bill post.
The Food Mile measurement is helpful in…
bcohen | August 10, 2007This post was written by guest blogger Wyatt Galusky.*
So, this blog entry represents, I am beginning to figure, the second of what I envision to be three interrelated posts, loosely grouped around quotes from Theodor Adorno. The first dealt with remainders and what we should do about an expressed preference for mystery.
In this post, I'd like to address fear of the unknown. The title of the post comes from the tired cliché drawn from cartography - that, once the limits of the known world were reached, monsters were inserted onto maps (apparently to both represent and explain the limits…
bcohen | August 9, 2007In our post on Science and the Farm Bill, we might've noted more clearly that such a topic was worth a near-daily accounting. We might, or could, in another incarnation, devote the entire World's Fair to just that topic. Just this week, three stories related to agriculture and science came across our desk.
One was the Subsiidies and Small Farms discussion noted in an earlier post.
A second, which my father actually notified me of in an early morning call--and while I have the em-dash available, let me offer an aside on that matter, which is that parents should never make calls that…
bcohen | August 9, 2007Another post related to the Science and the Farm Bill one.
Image courtesy of Appalachian Sustainable Development (here)
Subsidies come in for a lot of debate. No controversy in saying that -- right wing, left-wing, top-wing, no wing. The controversy is about what the subsidies are for, who pays for them, who gets them, and what else we could've got with that money. It's here that you get a host of critiques about subsidies.
The Heritage Foundation, as we linked to before, is going to fight for reducing taxes under the cloak of fighting for taxpayer rights, not wanting their hard-…
worldsfair | August 8, 2007Part 1 | 2 | 3
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From left to right: Nash, Michelle, David P., and me
Sad goodbyes notwithstanding, the trip first concerned itself with a 12,700km journey, from Vancouver to London, London to Lagos, and then from Lagos to Ibadan, our final destination. During this time (and we had about 20 hours of it), the traveling would be made easier with the opportunity to acquaint ourselves with each other - each other being the three members of the teaching team: myself, Michelle Brazas, and David Peterson.
Michelle, I knew already. She was a colleague from the British Columbia Institute of…
bcohen | August 8, 2007"You put up a candidate and then try to tear it down. And, if you can't tear it down, it's probably bona fide. That's how we do science."
--Ian Lipkin, Columbia University (as quoted in E. Kolbert (6 Aug 07) "Stung," The New Yorker, p. 58)
Bees are dying off to an unusual degree. Although one researcher has found that there were 14 die-offs in the past 100 years, the current die-off so far seems more confusing and less explicable. So we find that Colony Collapse Disorder (C.C.D.) has been all over the news this year. So much so that now if we say "Bees" and "CCD," many readers will…
worldsfair | August 7, 2007So having just returned from a two week stint in Nigeria, I'm going to spend the next little while writing about the experience itself (I had planned to do this whilst there, but internet access was, at best, sporadic, and its speed could only be classed as heartbreaking . In any event, this series of posts will hopefully be (i) an eye opener, (ii) an invitation to be grateful for the way science is done around developed settings, and (iii) an information session for recruiting others who may be interested in such things. Hope you enjoy.
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Part 1 | 2 | 3
Pretty sure, scientific…
bcohen | August 7, 2007
This week's alternative sponsor for the blog. Inquire within.
Embarrassingly, Dow Chemical is still populating the scienceblogs webspace with it's P.R., and, regrettably, we here at The World's Fair have been lax to seek alternative sponsorship over the summer. But fear no more the carcinogens and toxins of Dow...embrace the knowledge of the Encyclopedia Britannica!
We say "give your child a fair chance," with the set that "Furnishes Accurate Knowledge." Available at Sears, Roebuck, and Co., with affordable monthly payments. What really grabbed us, excited us, about this sponsor is…
bcohen | August 4, 2007People seem generally interested in books and discussions about food, but less interested in books and discussions about how food is made. Of course, this is changing in recent years, perhaps because the visibility of sustainable practices, GMOs, and other biotechnological and genetically engineered food issues has made such matters part of a global debate. The 2007 Farm Bill in congress has elicited a good deal of interest this year - generally, it does not - perhaps because it touches on both parts of the equation: on the food we eat (the end product) and how food is made (the practices…