worldsfair | May 11, 2007
The SCQ recently published an interesting piece on the topic of science and religion.
It's called "Science, Religion, and the Creation of Life on Earth."
My feelings on the relationship between science and religion are described very well in the words of Dr. Henry Eyring[1]:
"For me there has been no serious difficulty in reconciling the principles of true science with the principles of true religion, for both are concerned with the eternal verities of the universe"[2]
This is obviously not a universally held view. There are many who believe the field of science and the field of religion…
worldsfair | May 11, 2007So one of the things I'd like to accomplish this summer is to really get a move on on this children's book idea. This is an idea, I've had sitting around my head for a long long while. And I've decided that what I really need is someone to egg me on, which logically suggests my seeing if there is an illustrator out there who is willing to take that leap with me.
(Clearly, I'm not the one to illustrate my own kid's book. The bird I can do - a bird waving, not so much)Without giving the specifics away, the idea I have is really good. Good enough for me to be quite excited by its…
bcohen | May 11, 2007The June issue Harper's features Seed's (our) own Chris Mooney. In a series of short commentaries about "Undoing Bush," Chris contributes some thoughts on science. The 11 contributors all ponder "How to repair eight years of sabotage, bungling, and neglect."
Although the Harper's website has vastly improved (and subscribers have access to the entire 156 run of the magazine, which should elicit a big ole, Holy Shit! I had no idea Henry Smith Williams wrote that article on the century's progress in chemistry in the October 1897 issue), it doesn't yet have the June issue's contents up. And…
worldsfair | May 10, 2007Since we were discussing lab work the other day, let's look at it from another angle. How cool would it be to be able to get a "mad scientist" version of a journal or a protocol book? It might go something like this:
* * *
1. Vortex each overnight bacterial culture thoroughly, and transfer 1ml into a clean microcentrifuge tube. HA HA HA! SOON, MY DARLING BACTERIA SOON!!
2. Spin the cells down for 30 seconds at maximum speed in the microcentrifuge. Remove all of the supernatent by pipeting out the last bit of media left. YES... YES... YES!!
3. Add 200ul of STET buffer to your cells and…
worldsfair | May 9, 2007
Title: Pushing the Right Buttons
Art Director/Designer: Erika Rothenberg
Country/Year: USA/1992
The political choice between feeding the hungry or military aggression is dramatized in this poster. (from The Design of Dissent, Milton Glaser & Mirko Ilic)
bcohen | May 9, 2007Please, won't you join us here for another in our occasional series of non sequitur posts? Pull up a chair. Make a scrutinizing face. Stare pensively.
Just a surmising here, but I'd like to promote the title of this post as a new bumper sticker platform.
Whenever I hear pro-life arguments, it's generally by those who go out of their way to support pro-death policies for anyone who is already born. Their concern about the yet-to-be born stands in contrast to their concern for the already-born. You know, things like war and bombs and not supporting health care for citizens and cutting…
worldsfair | May 8, 2007Currently, I teach a graduate course in molecular techniques, but also have the privilege to generally interact with a lot of grad students from many different disciplines. Anyway, if I haven't seen anyone in a while, I usually (jokingly and probably annoyingly) query with a "Are you done yet?"
(Assuming everything in your thesis worked right off the bat,
how long would it have taken to get it all done?)I guess the length of time it takes to do a Ph.D. or a Masters (especially in the sciences where you are bound by your ability to generate meaningful results from experiments) can be a bit of…
bcohen | May 7, 2007Cat and Girl offers a smashing take on facts and fiction. An excerpt from Spoiler Alert:
So many ways to pose a question here:
How come fiction reigns over fact?
Do you think facts are more meaningful?
Can you believe these people, suggesting that facts don't rule?
What is the danger of promoting fiction?
But facts are important of course, we know, so what place fiction?
Dare you propose we have to choose?
Yet, yet, where is beauty?
Oh please, go to some poetry blog for crissakes, alright?
But the world is larger than you or I, isn't it?
Depends what you mean...what do you mean?
I don't…
bcohen | May 7, 2007With the ease of post-industrial quotation, he notes:
- That is God.
Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!
- What? Mr Deasy asked.
- A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.
And what is more, to make the miscellany just that prescient...
It must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as possible. Aristotle's phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated out into the studious silence of the library of Saint Genevieve where he had read, sheltered from the sin of Paris, night by night. By his elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. Fed and…
bcohen | May 7, 2007This week's sponsor is none other than the good people at Fellman, Ltd., whose motto, "Individuality in Men's Footwear," we consider right on mark for the Scienceblogs demographic. Hear hear!
I want to say, on a personal note, that I have long been a fan of The Rover by Allen Edmonds, and can attest to the comfort and elegance of the Plantation Crepe bottoms. All the happier for us, then, that Fellman wanted to help sponsor our site. Kudos to you Fellman. Kudos to your Ltd. friends. And bullocks to anyone who calls you out for an open parentheses in your ad. We love your style!
Just…
bcohen | May 6, 2007PRESS CENTER | PRINTABLE BRACKETSWhuh? Dot? Speck? Wet? Triangle Foe? Nobody knows, but for his triumph over General Relativity
Stately, plump Particle walked off the court that night, victorious, triumphant. There was a dragon slayer on the loose, yes, there was a dragon slayer. And it was him. Despite odds makers giving General Relativity healthy, spacious, easy 5-1 odds, Particle had come out on top. Somehow, crawling from the depths of this near mythical tournament, Particle had climbed to the top of the mountain. The crowd quickly gendered this subatomic feature, dubbing it…
bcohen | May 4, 2007Want to fight global warming without changing anything about lifestyle?
Thinking Thomas Friedman and his astute "we don't have to change a thing, now let's go get 'em!" analysis is onto something, with Gore and Schwarzenegger? (But not with James Kunstler?)
Then "Tom the Dancing Bug" has a take on carbon offsets for you! It's at Salon (go here, and wait a sec for the ad, then you'll get to it).
bcohen | May 4, 2007'cept these folks:
Slate, on Janet Browne's new edition of Origin and on Darwin as a writer. Jonah's digging it too; and so is fellow Virginian Jason.
The Economist on the globalizing trend of evolution-creationism debates
The Chronicle of Higher Education dishes up an essay that discusses these:
Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, by Daniel C. Dennett (Viking Press, 2006)
The Creation: An Appealto Save Life on Earth, by Edward O. Wilson (W.W. Norton, 2006)
Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society, by David Sloan Wilson (University of Chicago Press…
worldsfair | May 3, 2007PRESS CENTER | PRINTABLE BRACKETSShe shoots! She scores!
O.K. folks, so this was a wierd one for sure. I'm mean seriously, on one team, you've got it stacked with 2 or 3 giant squids (the big female variety as well) plus a roster so deep as to command 97% of the animal kingdom; and on the other, you got these itty bitty viruses with some real scary ass ball-handling finesse.
It was crazy, just crazy...
I mean, just think of it like this. If we were to suppose that this red pixel (just a bit down from here) is the real size of an HIV virion (using mature HIV virion estimates of about 1.3 x…
worldsfair | May 2, 2007
I've just started playing around with facebook, and thought it would be a great way to organize the whole Science Scouts phenom (even Nature picked up on our anthem, "Increase the N"). Anyway, we've had at least 150 calls for membership from the first boingboing nod, and with the second nod from boingboing (to coincide with additional badges), well, I'll admit, I'm having a tough time keeping up.
Hence the use of facebook, where all of this joining and dialogue can hopefully take care of itself. So, if any of you are on Facebook, I'd invite you to join, and would especially appreciate it if…
bcohen | May 2, 2007Since we scorn corporate ads, we'll do our own advertising here. Today's ad:
So giddy up and head on over to Cutter Bill's. And tell 'em D and B sentcha!
Why this post?
One would be hard-pressed to summarize the frustration of this blogger at having to see ads for The Dow Chemical Company (his one-time employer) at his blog. I am not inclined to encourage anyone to click anywhere "to learn more about how The Dow Chemical Company is solving human problems." If one had to click somewhere, if one was simply forced to do some kind of clicking, they would do better to read over the…
worldsfair | May 2, 2007To hear the HEFE song, go here. Usual Science Scout stuff is here.
Sometimes, the web and the connections it provides are so interesting...
worldsfair | May 2, 2007Well, Ben has beaten me to the punch on showing some of the marvelous pictures presented here at Paleo Future. But I've actually been interested in these images for the past two weeks (with a nod to BoingBoing), having had the chance to look at some current projects that aim to use future simulations to aid in things like urban planning or policy authoring (particularly if it can be aimed at either mitigating or adapting to the possible consequences of climate change).
So what's this about? Why is a geneticist looking into the academia of such things?
Well, there's actually a pragmatic…
bcohen | May 2, 2007The blog Paleo Future has an amazing series of postcards showing past visions of 2000. Go here to see them all. I've given one sample below. (Thanks to TMN for the link.)
It's a weather machine (full size here)
I'd never seen this Paleo Future blog, but now will mine it heavily for technology studies courses. The History of the Future has always been an intriguing topic -- how our visions of what the future will look like have shifted across historical contexts. By seeing how these images are culturally situated, we get a nice corrective to the kind of technological utopianism that has…