worldsfair | June 18, 2007
Image by Baskervillain
Last week I was in San Francisco for a meeting (sorry Janet for not touching base - I literally got my passport the day before flying out). This was actually the first work-related trip I've taken in about 5 years (the last being the workshop in Lagos, Nigeria), so it was with some amusement that this particular meeting happened to involve a pirate store.
Which makes more sense when you realize that the Pirate Store (no joke) is actually a front for a non-profit organization known as 826 Valencia. This is a remarkable set up with a general mandate that reads:…
worldsfair | June 18, 2007Just a quick note to let folks know I'll be giving a short talk tomorrow in Vancouver on the challenge of science literacy, and also hoping to generate some interesting and unconventional ideas for tackling this challenge.
Details are as follows:
"A dialogue on the here and now: Scientific and environmental literacy (or lack thereof)"
Some say that "science is culture." But maybe it's better to say that "science needs culture" or perhaps even more fitting would be to further tweak it into "culture needs more science." Whatever the opinion, this talk will look at the challenge of engaging…
bcohen | June 18, 2007The World's Fair sits down with Michael Egan, author of Barry Commoner and the Science of Survival: The Remaking of American Environmentalism (MIT Press, 2007), Assistant Professor of History at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and sometime Bonepony fan.
This is the first in a probable series of "Author Meets Bloggers" posts, where we talk to authors about their new work. Read below for Part I. Chime in with questions as they arise - for the author, for other readers, for your id.
THE WORLD'S FAIR: Here's a hard-hitting starter: what's your book about?
MICHAEL EGAN: I guess the…
worldsfair | June 15, 2007My apologies for being more or less absent in the last three weeks or so, but I promise to get back to form on Monday. In particular, it's kind of cool that The World's Fair has been around for a whole year, which has led me to think about a readership drive (maybe another intern?)
As well, I just returned from San Francisco, and am loaded with enthusiasm to start my next science education project (the visit involved a Pirate store). Anyway, more on this later...
A picture of some street art in San Francisco. Image by Mr. Waldo
Actually, an intern sounds like a good idea, so lets put…
bcohen | June 14, 2007It's all here at Fullyramblomatic.com, by Ben Croshaw. I take it he likes Yahtzee.
Some ways down the flowchart, we encounter this:
Then lots more portending...
Early on we find that "Antichrist is Bert from Sesame Street." There's also a Giant Meteor involved. Halfway down the flowchart "Bruce Willis Spontaneously Combusts." A bit later, "Famine calls Pestilence a 'pasty little queen' in newspaper interview." Then there's Yahtzee, and Tony Blair, and the Black Guy from Dawn of the Dead, but after that it starts to get somewhat ridiculous.
*Muffin Pan Man does it again, providing ye…
bcohen | June 14, 2007Holy cow, what a fascinating site! It maps the availability of Sweet Tea at the McDonalds' of Virginia, and shades and bounds and draws the surely-soon-to-be-infamous "Sweet Tea Line."
Yellow dots have Sweet Tea, black dots don't.
Said Sweet Tea Line is south of the Mason Dixon line, south of Virginia's border, but north of Richmond, the old confederate capital. I was especially intrigued to read that "Sweet Tea grew in popularity with it's public introduction at the 1904 World's Fair." It is now a staple of the Southern beverage diet.
You gotta follow the lead from the site, and click…
bcohen | June 14, 2007Beats me. But definitely worth looking in to.
(Seriously though, is this the best way to find out what RSS feeds really do?)
bcohen | June 12, 2007[To go with this post on images of consumption and that post on what we eat in a week.]
"Each year, between 20 and 50 million tons of electronic waste is generated globally. Most of it winds up in the developing world."
The caption from Foreign Policy was simply, "Throwing Stuff"
Foreign Policy has a photo essay, "Inside the Digital Dump," about the ungodly mounds of electronic waste we ship over to China. Oh you should go take a gander. And I offer a few sample images here for the faint of clicking. They say, by way of preface, "Welcome to the digital dumping ground, where the poor…
worldsfair | June 11, 2007Recently in my neck of the woods, the Green Party of Canada has been suggesting the addition of a straight-off 12 cents per litre tax on the price of gasoline. This is mainly positioned as a carbon tax to try and encourage the use of higher efficiency alternatives.
What's kind of promising is that there actually seems to be reasonable public support for the idea (although this appears largely anecdotal). Still, it's inevitable that they'll also be some serious criticism of this plan as well.
In any event, it got me thinking about how exactly (if enacted) would such a measure fare. Would…
bcohen | June 10, 2007Rorty, the American pragmatist philosopher, has died at the age of 75. I saw news of this via Arts and Letters Daily, which linked to a brief notice in Telos (a journal of political and social thought).
Rorty's most referenced work was 1979's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. His most recent was Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers IV (2007). For those not familiar with Rorty and (knowing scienceblogs readers) who may seek to reduce him either to leftist, po-mo, irrelevant, or an aid to the right, fear not that I'm sure all such critiques had been leveled against him…
worldsfair | June 7, 2007Continuing on. I also have a lot of doodles which are more about metaphor. A lot of these are kind of cool - here's a couple as examples.
bcohen | June 6, 2007You know, it's the rat race, and you're going a million miles an hour, and with all that domestic strife and international strife and strife in the domestic-foreign middle, and you know, strife, you don't even have time to remember it's your blog's birthday.
Now I have to deal with the fallout. I didn't get the blog anything. And since I'm posting this *at* the self-same blog, I can't go on and make up some hackneyed story about how that was intentional, and I was gonna wait for the weekend, or I thought we weren't doing the acknowledge-your-birthday thing anymore, or whatever. Blog will…
bcohen | June 6, 2007Artists Chris Jordan, from Seattle, has a fascinating series of images making "contemporary American culture" more visible. It's called "Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait."
The series will be on display at New York's Von Lintel Gallery starting mid-June. A student of mine sent me the link, and I'll put a few of the images below. This is right up the same alley as Dave's post a while back on "What different parts of the world eats in one week." But check out Chris Jordan's site, and check out the actual show in person if you can.
In quiz fashion, then, I ask: what is the…
worldsfair | June 6, 2007Continuing on with the doodle week (sorry for the no show yesterday, but I had a Canada Passport emergency going on on top of the workshop stuff), I've put up two pics which illustrate one of the common themes applied, when a student is asked: "Draw me a picture with DNA in it."
That theme, of course, is sex. (or at least a science geek version of it).
And here's another:
It's worth pointing out, that if we were to look at the 600 or so doodles that I have scientifically, the rabbit is one of the organisms that comes up an awful lot. But most surprisingly, the most drawn animal (not…
bcohen | June 5, 2007
Notice of a local event, here in central Virginia, and a comment on the idea of local itself.
I'm currently teaching environmental history (summer school), and we're to the point where we're discussing modern food systems. We had a nice trip to Whole Foods last week, with a scavenger hunt for all things so-labeled:
organic (unsurprisingly, almost everything)
"natural" (unsurprisingly with a great range of justification and definition)
local (not so much, but cheese and wine)
non-GMO (only a few volunteered to label as such)
or otherwise.
You know, just to see what's out there.…
worldsfair | June 4, 2007Hello again.
Sorry, I've been away of late. My kids (and then I) got a nasty bout of the tummy bug, so was sidelined for the better part of last week (trust me, the blog was the last thing on my mind). As well, this week is also a little tight on time since I'm hosting another one of my world famous Molecular Biology Workshops, in which a number of scientists come to beautiful Vancouver to learn the ins and outs of this pretty fast paced field.
In any event, every client (and university student) I've taught since offering this type of course, I've made filled out a questionnaire at the…
bcohen | June 3, 2007
By the cartoonist Mr. Fish, which I saw at the Harper's website, appreciated, and am now posting here to show you.
bcohen | May 31, 2007
NASCAR wreck* or parable for the future?
Just thinking out loud here, but you've got at least three problems with car racing as related to environmental health: gas usage in the races themselves, the use of leaded gasoline, and the hundreds of thousands of cars that drive to the races.
Doing a full calculation of the environmental cost of NASCAR (number of cars per race, number of miles per race, number of miles per practice run, number of races per week, number per season, number of fans driving to the races, number of beer cans thrown out the window) is beyond me.
So, just as a…
bcohen | May 29, 2007Mission Statement, 2007
"At Intelligent Design Biotech Corporation, we work around his watchmaker's clock to pursue biotech solutions to those improbable imperfections of his work here on earth."
Okay all IDBC Employees:
Let's go let's go let's go. IDBC is finally on its legs. We're trained, we're hyped, we've got that sharp-eyed Focus on the Family Approved ID curriculum. We're big time primed to speak for and as God. So let's make it happen, show those soon Left Behind what education is all about. God up people, let's go, God up.
As you know, we've got work stations for everyone.…
worldsfair | May 25, 2007I just realized that I've written a few science-y piece with an inherent Star Wars hook to it. As well, it seems to be something that comes up at McSweeney's and other similar humour sites. Anyway, here is a collection of the ones I'm aware of. Enjoy...
(From the Onion)
"WHEN CELEBRITIES, WHO HAVE BEEN CLONED IN THE MOVIES, GET TOGETHER FOR A COFFEE" (scq.ubc.ca)
"HAN SOLO AND CHEWBACCA WEIGH IN ON THEIR NEW HYBRID MILLENIUM FALCON" (terry.ubc.ca)
"Human Gene Commonly Associated with Cancer or Droid from Star Wars?" (The World's Fair)
"Quotes from Either President of the United States…