bcohen | June 14, 2006There's a new Annals of Science at McSweeneys, which is actually about technology -- internets, trains -- and as such as much about history and philosophy of science and technology as just science straight-up. Although, I'm of the mind that there is no such thing as "science straight up." And I think the piece is more about space and time, to which, who doesn't love space and time?
worldsfair | June 14, 2006Because I am lucky enough to be in a position where my living is not dependant on writing, I've always taken the attitude of aiming high since the worst that can happen is that you get rejected from a place where you figured you would have been rejected anyway.
Using that kind of perspective, you can still bathe in the smugness of knowing that you were ultimately right in what was going to happen; and if you do happen to succeed, well then, that's just pleasant all around. My first ever attempt at some serious non-academic science writing involved detailing a trip I took to Lagos, Nigeria.…
bcohen | June 13, 2006What we have here is success, to communicate. Dave and I want to map out the site, and use a map to do it, and so a map it is. It's not just a metaphor, people. It's also an image. It's not just an image, it's also a guide. We're trying to get our stuff together, so this will help us wend our way through the place.
Source: A History of the World's Columbian Exposition, 1893
The proposed architecture for the place will go basically in this manner:
NatureLand: What They Used to Call the Environment
a. Industrial Agriculture
b. Nuclear Energy
c. Mountaintop Coal Removal
d. Nature on…
worldsfair | June 13, 2006Arlene, Bret, Cindy, Dennis, Emily, Franklin, Gert, Harvey, Irene, Jose, Katrina, Lee, Maria, Nate, Ophelia, Phillippe, Rita, Stan, Tammy, Vince, Wilma, Alpha, Beta, Delta, Epsilon, Gamma, Zeta...
Not exactly the makings of another Children's Alphabet Picture Book. Rather, these are names of the 27 hurricanes/tropical storms given by the World Meteorological Organization in 2005, the first time in history, where letters of the Greek alpabet had to be used when the predetermined names had run out. A few days ago, the first such storm of the 2006 hurricane season, named Alberto, rumbled and…
worldsfair | June 13, 2006Last semester I was fortunate enough to be involved with a UBC project (called Terry) that looks at global issues from a multidisciplinary angle. One of the things in my charge was arranging a kind of high profile speaker series, with an emphasis on bringing out individuals who are not only doing great things, but are also excellent engaging orators. This was wonderful in that I got to hang out with some pretty amazing folks. Anyway, the talks are all available online, a good portal for them being here, but I thought as bait, I'd present a few interesting, funny, at times poignant, and…
worldsfair | June 12, 2006I thought it would be kind of interesting to try and showcase a few links from the types of journals and publications that take less than academic stabs at science writing. It's the sort of stuff that interests me to no end, because if you read through "Public Understanding of Science" type studies (a really misfortune label since this causes the acronym PUS to be flitted around), you hear some negative stuff about how the scientific literacy of countries like the UK and USA generally hover around 20% or so.
Now granted, defining scientific literacy is a weighted chore, and maybe something I…
bcohen | June 12, 2006"Assuming that time and money were not obstacles, what area of scientific research, outside of your own discipline, would you most like to explore? Why?"
Hands down, I'd want to explore whatever science the women Thomas Dolby was talking about does. It's never really been clear to me how you can blind someone with science, but that's what I want to find out more about. Sure, you can blind a guy with lots of stuff, but those aren't "science." You can blind someone with a well-placed punch, I bet, and with damage to nerves, or looking directly at the sun, or something. And of course with…
worldsfair | June 12, 2006"Assuming that time and money were not obstacles, what area of scientific research, outside of your own discipline, would you most like to explore? Why?"
Well, being a molecular biologist with a pretty tight feed into the proteomics and genomics arena, my alternate career would whimsically (and in constrast) have something to do with astronomy - i.e. looking at big things far away. In particular, the sort that means I'm already beyond good with mathematics, dabble a bit in rocket design (just so that I can say I'm a rocket scientist), and of course the most important part would be free…
worldsfair | June 12, 2006continued from part II | from the beginning
DN: ... or how's about Jake and Elwood? (maybe, we should get Fedoras after all). You know, we do both dabble in the science writing game.
BRC: This is true, though there you go bringing this back to a relevant center, keeping this sensical/as opposed to nonsensical...while I'm aching to spiral away chaotically...and you mean "science writing" like writing science? Scientists do that, I'm told. You're one of them. Or science writing like writing about science? Science journalists do that, right? Of course you do that too. Or science writing…
worldsfair | June 10, 2006continued from part I
BRC: I saw a guy wearing a fedora the other day. I think he was serious. Anyway, I'm a conflicted soul always, almost by design, I'm starting to think. But not in a bad way. Which means with the whole "hats" thing, I too am involved in an array of topics. My degree is interdisciplinary, so there's that, first off. It already contains about 4 or 5 disciplines in it. I was also a chemical engineer for a time, working in polymer processing research. I have a degree in History too. Maybe not surprisingly then, given my various backgrounds, when I ditched corporate…
worldsfair | June 9, 2006DN: Hey, my name is Dave Ng.
BRC: I'm Benjamin Cohen. Dave, what's your story? You're Canadian right? So that's this whole other thing, I take it.
DN: Yes, I am Canadian, living in Vancouver actually and based at the University of British Columbia. I was born in England though, which you can sometimes hear when I talk (especially when I say the words water and four). I guess that makes me a chimera of sorts, which kind of works because I'm essentially a Faculty member who knows a thing or two about molecular genetics. You're at the University of Virginia right? Do folks call you…
worldsfair | June 6, 2006
Here is a selection of my writings on-line, many but not all of which are about science, technology, and nature - Ben
B.R. Cohen's Days at the Museum, a short series of dispatches from the Smithsonian.
B.R. Cohen's Annals of Science, a series of short stories about science and history and sometimes strange people.
"I Dream in Malcolm Gladwell", over at The Morning News (January 2009)
"An Anti-Environmentalist Writes His Next Column While Eating Take-out and Driving His Hummer", at McSweeney's (September 2008)
"Bisphenol-A: The One Act Play", at Dave's Science Creative Quarterly (May 2008)
"…
worldsfair | June 5, 2006Here is a selection of some of the writing I've done - Dave.
"True Encounters in my Research Career", The Walrus, September 2007 (with Chris Hutsul). (commented upon at The World's Fair)
"The Reason Is Math Bush Edit", Science Creative Quarterly, September 5, 2007
"Analyses of the Six Degrees of Separation of Bacons Other Than Kevin Bacon", Science Creative Quarterly, April 26, 2007
"Words I See When I Read the Phrase "Intelligent Design" While Squinting", McSweeney's, April 11th, 2007
"An Intelligent Designer on the Cow", Inkling Magazine, March 21, 2007
"Anytime", Science Creative Quarterly…