worldsfair | June 27, 2006(Actually posted this a little earlier, but we're learning the ins and outs of blogging, choosing categories etc).
This is in regards to the Nude Mouse piece, shown earlier today...
This wierd little conversation piece initially began as a query to the Believer for a fiction interview piece. My letter to Matt Derby went as follows:
>Dear Matthew,
So I've been quite enjoying your interviews of late, and wanted to query how it is that one gets involved. In this respect, I'm a little on the naive side, since my writing endeavours have only been in practice for the last year or so. However…
bcohen | June 27, 2006Janet, as seems to be the norm, has another interesting thread going on at Adventures in Science and Ethics, about searching for biological bases for homosexuality. I did an interview for The Believer recently with a historian and philosopher of sexuality, Arnold Davidson, who's at the University of Chicago (and the University of Pisa too, actually). The interview hits on the subject at hand by putting questions about science and sexuality into historical context. It's an interesting piece, I think. Go, go. Go check it out. Look at that, twice linked in a mere three lines.
And as for…
bcohen | June 27, 2006This is a tell-all from one of the mice in the trenches. It in fact stands as a historical document, the first published piece co-written by Ng and Cohen (back in the Spring). And it's a pin-up, for your own home and office and car and garage and lab. And bunker.
People Magazine says, "A must read!" Sean Hannity says, "More evidence why the liberals are taking down America!" Stephen Hawking says, "Would. You. Like. To. Play. A. Game?"
It's also a re-post, of sorts, reappearing after its first entry onto the world stage at The Science Creative Quarterly, and then circulating thereafter…
worldsfair | June 26, 2006Our unpaid interns have alerted us of our less than enthusiastic showing at the Scienceblogger's DonorsChoose challenge. For those, who missed the first announcement, we had offer guaranteed publication of a Haiku of your writing at the Science Creative Quarterly, which culminates in the collection of hundreds of Haiku for use in our Haiku Phylogeny project (i.e. we're looking for Haiku's on organisms specifically).
Despite this, our donations currently stand at a paltry $300, which even here we suspect is mostly due to contributions from our unpaid interns.
Anyway, two interesting things…
worldsfair | June 26, 2006Previously...
(Image via Jay Pinkerton)
"My question to the audience: what kind of scientist is Batman?" (Ben Cohen)
Scienceblogger responses below:
Afarensis
Obviously, he is a forensic scientist...
The World's Fair (Dave Ng)
I'm gonna go out on a limb here, and suggest that Batman is (amongst other things) a "bat scientist." This, I think, would make him a chiropterist, since Bats belong to the family Chiroptera (greek for "hand-wing"). I can imagine Mr. Wayne going to his fancy cocktail parties and providing all manner of banter and trivia on bats, all the while chuckling to himself and…
worldsfair | June 24, 2006Maybe this will also help with this week's "Ask a Sciencebloggers question." Most institutions will likely ask for a teaching philosophy, especially when an academic is up for tenure promotion. Although mine was written in 2003, and my interests have expanded significantly, here it is below:
To Whom It May Concern:
My teaching philosophy is largely grounded in the belief that effective education is a major cornerstone in the development of individuals within a society. Whether this pertains specifically to junior/senior scientists about to embark on new research initiatives or generally…
worldsfair | June 24, 2006People often ask me what it is exactly I do, and in technical terms, I have a somewhat unque Faculty position at the University of British Columbia, with no clear Department that I can call my home. This means that whilst I am often out of the proverbial UBC loop, I am also happily privy to an enormous amount of autonomy in the types of projects I can pursue. In effect, Michael (Smith) did a wonderful job of setting up a tenured university "education" position where there is an unprecedented amount of freedom to follow up on worthy pursuits as the lab sees fit.
And what might be a worthy…
bcohen | June 23, 2006I posted a reply to a reply over at Janet's Adventures in Ethics and Science, but it had typos and I guess I'm supposed to traffic these things back to the home base here anyway. So, here's the non-typoed version of my reply to a reply to the topic: "reasons scientists give for not thinking about ethics."
It's always fascinating to me when students -- engineers, mostly, for me -- use the "ethics is anti-individualist" response that Lab Lemming gives (to the original post, which I already gave you the link to, above): "The idea of group ethics requires assent to some sort of group-think,…
bcohen | June 23, 2006If ever there was an art-science piece on the web, this would be it: environmental angle, artistic production, scientific context, you get it all. This is, courtesy of our friend Cletus, a piece at Salon about "Activist, environmentalist and former rock promoter" Natalie Jeremijenko.
Go here first, to get into the site, but then pop back to this blog post, and then go here for the article.
Excerpts and comments to come, later on...
...but would include:
1. Why "mad scientist"? Are we still doing that stereotype?
2. What's it take to provide a new perception of something, beyond the lab (…
worldsfair | June 23, 2006Sir Francis Bacon, British philosopher, essayist, and scientific revolution advocate (1561 - 1626):
Quite a few of them are dead.
B.L.T., sandwich:
A lot depends on whether the lettuce and tomato count as one degree.
Bacon County, Georgia:
Geographically speaking, could get you as far as Florida or South Carolina
Canadian Bacon, meat cut:
Network probably not as good as Kevin Bacon's, unless of course you're referring to pigs.
Roger Bacon, Franciscan friar, English philosopher, and one of the earliest advocates of the scientific method (1214 - 1294):
Sadly, all dead.
worldsfair | June 22, 2006Last Friday, I had a photo shoot in my lab, where a firm called Corbis spent the day taking a variety of stock "sciency" photos. It was quite the machine in place, with a crew of about half a dozen, a group of well over 25 extras lounging around, lights angled at beakers full of coloured water (why are they always coloured?), and an atmosphere that I thought was usually only reserved for fashion photography.
Really ironic, since here I was, face to face to poser scientists, whereas 72 hours later, I would have a room full of the real thing.
Anyway, I did ask a few questions out of…
bcohen | June 21, 2006Obviously any course that addresses issues of science, technology, and society uses the 4th Season Simpsons masterpiece, Marge v. the Monorail (unfortunately, this episode capsule doesn't have the full transcript). It is hallowed as a pitch perfect take on the technology-society relationship. That much has already been established. I'm just telling you what you know.
But there are serious weaknesses in its classroom use. These should not go unaddressed, even though the great and inglorious downfall of the Simpsons enterprise after their seventh season or so should (and, to that end, I…
worldsfair | June 20, 2006In one of my talks, I sometimes put up an ad which suggests that one day, there will be the astrological-type divination of fate via genetics - instead of a horoscope, a geneticscope if you will. The ad reads:
But the truth is, is that in some respects, we're really not that far off. So for fun, discussion and debate, I'd like to present a series of posts culminating in a less than extensive list of traits - some unlikely, some intimidating, some just sort of bizarro - where it's clear that genetics is playing some type of role (NOTE: that links below lead to a pdf of the first page of the…
worldsfair | June 19, 2006Re: Blogging is for Chumps, first off.
This is a call for outstanding candidates to apply for two intern positions within the context of producing relevant material for The World's Fair. The successful applicant is expected to work in areas of interest to current faculty members (Dr. David Ng and Dr. Benjamin Cohen), to interact with related groups within our network, and to have demonstrated ability in producing essays of reasonable quality and interest.
Due to the competitive nature of this process, we ask that all candidates at the very least meet the following criteria:
The candidate's…
bcohen | June 18, 2006We don't deign to actually do it. We're all about Unpaid Interns. They just looked up "deign" for us, in case you were wondering. The system works.
This, we say, because Sciencebloggers have been asked:
How is it that all the PIs (Tara, PZ, Orac et al.), various grad students, post-docs, etc. find time to fulfill their primary objectives (day jobs) and blog so prolifically?...
Unpaid Interns is the answer. Dave and I have yet to type a single word for the sake of this chump-infested blogging enterprise. We don't write this crap. Get real. You think we'd pen such canned tripe? Dave and I…
worldsfair | June 16, 2006As a Director of a science teaching facility, who sees maybe close to 2000 high schoolers in my lab each year, I'm hoping we can have a good showing in this great DonorsChoose challenge that Janet set up. There's certainly a lot of incentive, ranging from the simple act of promoting science within the school setting, to the prizes and offer of matching funds from Seed Headquarters.
From our end, to sweeten the pot even more, we would like to let you know that donations, $10 or higher, placed via our World's Fair + Science Creative Quarterly challenge, will immediately entitle the donor to…
worldsfair | June 16, 2006
(This is an old slide I used for one of my genetics classes - the general idea about what Grimace is exactly was pilfered from a graphic design school advertisement I saw where several presumably student's works were showcased. if you happen to know who the student was that originally designed it, let me know, because a few of my graduate students are interested in finding out).
I can't remember exactly how I found out about McSweeney's, but I do know that upon reading Wendy Molyneux's "How To Tell People That You Are A Billionaire Without Sounding Obnoxious", I was pretty much hooked. Also…
worldsfair | June 15, 2006Hello, those of you from boingboing.net. Please take a moment to peruse the site. In a nutshell, this is a site that is all about looking at things from both the humanist and scientific perspectives. The World's Fair is run by two science academics, who write things for McSweeney's and the like. We even have a puzzle if you think yourself the clever type (hey, that rhymes!)
- - -
Since I brought up Al Gore a few days back, I thought I may as well let you in on a cool little film that is available in Issue #1 of McSweeney's Wholphin DVD. Essentially, it's a short 15 minute movie filmed by…
worldsfair | June 15, 2006This is what happens when an individual is comfortable with the sciences...
Einstein's EEG
The World's Fair, in collaboration, with the Science Creative Quarterly is pleased to participate in The ScienceBlogs/DonorsChoose raise-money-to-help-science-classrooms-a-thon!. In our case, donations $10 and above via the World's Fair Challenge, will guarantee publication of a science Haiku of your composition over at the SCQ.
As Janet over at Adventures in Ethics and Science says:
Those of us who blog here at ScienceBlogs think science is cool, important, and worth understanding. If you're reading…
worldsfair | June 14, 2006Oh dear, there is certainly a lot of discussion over Ann Coulter's new book - in particular, her breathtaking views on evolutionary theory.
Hmmm, when I wrote Chapter Titles From My Creationist Textbook, I had no idea that it already existed or was perhaps in the process of being written, since it's clear that this must be the sort of reading she's basing her arguments on. Or maybe my original query and edit (below) leaked out somehow?
...Reviewing a few immunology textbooks, which led (of course) to procastination, which ultimately led to this.
cheers, dave ng
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