bcohen | August 2, 2007In turn, incidentally, I've written a guest post for Oronte Churm. It's here, and it's about a short story I use in my engineering ethics class by the brilliant Chinese author Gao Xingjian, called "The Accident."
In it, I touch on certainty, and although I don't know that this was intentionally placed there, I notice this quote at the top of Churm's page:
The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning.
--Erich Fromm
I think dealing with that idea is part of the same conversation, in some way, that Wyatt Galusky brought up last week on mystery and "the remainder" -- that space…
bcohen | August 2, 2007By Guest Blogger: Oronte Churm.
World's Fair friend, the venerable, unparalleled Mr. Churm, is our guest for the day, contributing the post below. He is the author of a top notch blog over at InsideHigherEd.com (called "The Education of Oronte Churm") and one of my favorite sub-features at McSweeney's, "Dispatches From Adjunct Faculty at a Large State University." Of the 15 dispatches, I might highlight #10, On Repose, as a personal favorite. If it isn't clear from those references, Mr. Churm is in fact a real-deal writer who teaches in the English department at a big state university. He…
bcohen | July 30, 2007New volume, number 13, of Annals of Science is now up over at McSweeney's. Care to gander? It's here.
Teaser? Okay. Here's the opening:
I don't know if the image of thousands and thousands of crushed mice on a city street--mice crushed so thoroughly and efficiently that their guts and gore are thick over the road, carpeting it in a semiliquid paste-like sheet, a slick sluice, making said road too slippery to drive on, totally impassable without maybe those winter tire chains I'm not even sure people have anymore except maybe in Alaska, I'll have to ask someone in Alaska--I don't know if…
bcohen | July 27, 2007
Obviously, when a movie comes out by the best show television ever created (at least if we count the first 6, maybe 7 seasons, as that show, and maybe we don't even keep Season 1 in the mix, and we say humor show, not any show, and we admit The Wire and Arrested Development and Blossom are also up there and we stop caveating because this could go on for a while...), so when The Simpsons Movie is out, there's a lot of buzz about the show and the movie. A media blitz, let's admit. Matt Groening on The Daily Show; Groening on NPR; long-time show big guy Al Jean on Fresh Air; season 4 DVDs…
bcohen | July 26, 2007"Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) announced [on July 24th] that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has rejected four key Monsanto patents related to genetically modified crops that PUBPAT challenged last year because the agricultural giant is using them to harass, intimidate, sue - and in some cases literally bankrupt - American farmers."
The article "MONSANTO PATENTS ASSERTED AGAINST AMERICAN FARMERS REJECTED BY PATENT OFFICE: PUBPAT Initiated Review Leads PTO to Find All Claims of All Four Patents Invalid" from the Public Patent Foundation, explains recent follow up action in…
bcohen | July 26, 2007This post was authored by new World's Fair intern Kate Lee.*
Hi, my name is Kate Lee, and I'm happy to be your intern today.
How cool is this? I get to write stuff and it will be posted on the World's Fair, one among many of the fine blogs on scienceblogs.com! When Dave and Ben first sent out the call looking for interns, the idea of me filling those shoes got me excited mainly for selfish and egotistical reasons.
On the selfish side: Since I graduated college, it has become rare for me to sit down and write about science (or anything, really). In college, I spent so much time writing,…
bcohen | July 26, 2007This post was authored by new World's Fair intern Jacqui Monaghan.*
Five lists of five things that may or may not interest you about me
Five things you don't know about me:
1.I once wrote a choose-your-own-adventure story about my brothers and sisters, which pretty much kicked ass.
2.My childhood bedroom had Pepto-Bismol pink walls and dusty pink ceilings.
3.Sometimes I whistle and/or hum the Inspector Gadget theme song at work.
4.I ate so many peanut butter and honey sandwiches when I was little that I no longer enjoy them.
5.I do experiments almost every day, which also pretty much kicks…
bcohen | July 26, 2007This post was authored by new World's Fair intern Laura Arneson.*
Ben asked in a recent post: "What would happen if we all just ignored [creationism and intelligent design], didn't mention them, and thus didn't allow them to interfere with the science discussed in the other thousands of posts at these blogs?"
I think the same question could be asked of those who oppose stem cell research or even global warming. If the scientific consensus is different from public opinion, why do scientists keep addressing the topics?
(kids lovin' science, from the Times article linked below)
The Telegraph…
bcohen | July 25, 2007This is the third of three parts in our Wilderness series interview with Kevin Marsh, by Michael Egan (Part I; Part II).
All entries in our author-meets-bloggers series are here.
Continuing from Part II...
ME: Moving into the twenty-first century, where are wilderness politics now, and where do you see them going?
KM: It's an interesting time of transition and renaissance in wilderness politics. After relatively little action in the 1990s (many debates over roadless lands had moved in to the court system, such as with the spotted owl controversy) Congress in recent years has passed some…
bcohen | July 24, 2007This post written by guest blogger Jody Roberts.*
What, you say, how can this be? What could Michigan and Michigan St. possibly be battling over in the middle of summer? No, it's not preseason football; it's not even sport fishing. The battle today, my friends (as highlighted here in The Ann Arbor News and here on UM's website), is about organic farming.
So, in some sense we have a double header: organic farming vs. 'conventional' farming and Michigan vs. Michigan State. At issue: just how competitive is organic farming compared to petroleum-based farming? Well, according to a new study by…
bcohen | July 24, 2007We bring you: Part II of Michael Egan's guest-blogging interview with Kevin Marsh about Marsh's new book, Drawing Lines in the Forest: Creating Wilderness Areas in the Pacific Northwest.
Part I is here.
All entries in our author-meets-bloggers series are here.
Continued from Part I...
ME: What does wilderness designation entail in terms of use?
KM: Wilderness designation in the U.S. is defined by federal statute, the Wilderness Act of 1964, with certain broad parameters: a minimum size of 5,000 acres, a generally "untrammeled" character to the land, an area off-limits to mechanized…
bcohen | July 23, 2007This post was written by guest blogger Wyatt Galusky.*
A Mouse, a Bird, a Cat and a Girl Hold Forth. A Provocation, with Digressions.
"An object never goes into its concept without leaving a remainder."Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics
So, this quote by Adorno, ever since I encountered it several years ago, has almost ceaselessly rattled around in my brain. The meaning of the quote itself can be parsed quite finely. But I am more interested here in the implications. What of the remainder? That is, if we assume that scientific knowledge seeks to articulate a clear understanding of the…
bcohen | July 23, 2007World's Fair note: This post was written by guest blogger Michael Egan, whom you might recall was the subject of our first author-meets-blogger contribution. See here for background on Egan.
Another tour of author-meets-blogger, though with a twist: here we have an author-meets- guest-blogger-and-former-author.
Affection for wilderness, Roderick Frazier Nash and others have told us, is as American as apple pie (which, as a Canadian, I never really got--the apple pie part, not the wilderness part). The point is: it's key. And now there's a new book on the history of wilderness creation in…
worldsfair | July 21, 2007I'm heading out today - so just in case I won't be able to blog in my absence, this is just to say I'll be back in about two weeks.
(Snapshot of my luggage)
bcohen | July 20, 2007I've long thought it odd that so many of us spend so much time elevating the public presence of creationism and intelligent design (as I am doing at this exact moment) by discussing them ad nauseum. Generally for the purpose of denouncing it, mocking it, or denigrating it and its adherents in some way, we go on and on. Here's the search return for "creationism" at scienceblogs: page 1 of 76 pages, the first 15 of 1136 posts. Search return for "intelligent design": p. 1 of 93, 1-15 of 1387 entries.
What would happen if we all just ignored them, didn't mention them, and thus didn't allow…
worldsfair | July 19, 2007Well, we're finally pleased to announce that we have, indeed, acquired the services of three excellent interns (see our original call here).
This, after our somewhat disappointing Ultraman experience, and some studio pressure to go with George Lucas (in the end, our people ran into scheduling problems with his people, and though we still really want to work on a project together, it'll have to wait till early '09, maybe '10), but we were suitably pleased with the response we got from the ad.
In the end, we have selected our three best applicants - they are Jacqui, Laura, and Kate. We'll…
bcohen | July 19, 2007forearm musculature
The Bishopsgate Ward train depot, as taken from W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz (p. 133)
circuitry
This is another from our mid-summer's series of reposts from the vault -- ours or others', of which this one is both -- but now from the very top of that vault, since it's but a week old.
Fortunately, I'm both absent-minded and lazy. Many moons ago I sent Lawrence Weschler a hurried note about a series of visual convergences that'd struck me. Then I forgot about it. Then, much later, I was going to post the same commentary on those convergences at this blog, having thought about…
worldsfair | July 17, 2007So, previously, I pointed out some of the difficulties involved in getting reagents and other scientific things to a place like Nigeria. Anyway, I thought a post like this might therefore be useful for the odd reader out there who also does this sort of thing.
Because the norm is traveling by bringing stuff along as "carry on," here's a run down of what I know. Please add more in the comments section if you have a trick or two yourself.
1. DNA constructs: Basically, the easiest thing to transport. Should easily survive any trip you plan to make with it. Of course, spiking with EDTA will…
bcohen | July 17, 2007It must've seemed inevitable that we'd go to The Onion's vault for a reprint soon enough. And here it is. Originally appearing here, we reprint it in full below the fold. It's for your entertainment, on our summer holiday, and abiding by our just-made-up rule that reprints should be at least 1, if not 2, full years old.
Fifth-Grade Science Paper Doesn't Stand Up To Peer ReviewFrom the April 20, 2005 Issue (41â¢16) of The Onion
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DECATUR, IL--A three-member panel of 10-year-old Michael Nogroski's fellow classmates at Nathaniel Macon Elementary School unanimously agreed Tuesday that his…
worldsfair | July 16, 2007In some ways, we can construe this as a classic "Technology" vs "Nature" battle. Where high tech takes on no tech. It's the ultimate philosophical slash pop-culture analogy for, well, I'm sure, something...
So, basically, I'm just saying I'm curious what others think. Who exactly would win?
Earlier I wrote down this - and was even pretty confident about it. But now, I'm not so sure. Especially when I think back to that chess-like game in episode IV and the whole "Let the Wookie win" incident.