bcohen
Posts by this author
May 11, 2007
The 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…
May 9, 2007
Please, 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'…
May 7, 2007
Cat 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…
May 7, 2007
With 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…
May 7, 2007
This 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…
May 6, 2007
PRESS 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…
May 4, 2007
Want 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…
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:…
May 4, 2007
I'm a fan of this one: list over at McSweeneys. It's so true, it's so true.
May 2, 2007
Since 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…
May 2, 2007
The 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…
April 30, 2007
Ostensibly related to nature, but not really. Let' say instead impermanence and its contrary. Another poem, this one from Rosanna Warren.
MAN IN STREAM
You stand in the brook, mud smearing
your forearms, a bloodied mosquito on your brow,
your yellow T-shirt dampened to your chest
as the current…
April 29, 2007
By way of starting to return to the blog, after a few weeks of VT/Blacksburg-only considerations, we offer the poem below, by American poet Marvin Bell. It appeared in The New Yorker last October. Fond of it then; fond of it now.
OPPRESSION
I begin by a window, a lamp over my shoulder,
and a…
April 24, 2007
I wrote in a post last week: "I lived a good percentage of my life in Blacksburg (as recently as 2005) and won't go on about that here." But I did go ahead, writing a personal essay about it at The Morning News. Thanks for reading.
April 23, 2007
Classes resume today in Blacksburg. Somehow.
A wiki site (here) has been created at Virginia Tech, but meant for all. This is the main cover page that leads to the wiki.
As Jane Lehr, who has posted the site, writes:
As we begin on Monday April 23rd to 'teach after April 16th', some of us may…
April 20, 2007
A friend and colleague of mine, who teaches engineers at Virginia Tech and who is a gifted photographer, took a series of photos earlier this week. They are on display here, with captions beneath each one. I've also put a few of them below the fold (shrunk to fit this page -- the originals, in…
April 19, 2007
While everyone decides the best way they can deal with the mass murder this week, I'll point only to this commentary in the Chronicle yesterday that I found well put. It's by an author whose written about the Texas 1966 murders.
I lived a good percentage of my life in Blacksburg (as recently as…
April 10, 2007
Alex Rosenberg, Philosophy Professor at Duke, argues so. John Dupre, Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Exeter, isn't buying it. I'm not either, ever averse to such reductionisms.* Here is Dupre's review of Rosenberg's Darwinian Reductionism: Or, How to Stop Worrying and…
April 5, 2007
Editorial at The New York Times today keeps the corn-bonanza trend in the spotlight. A few prior posts here at the World's Fair have broached the issue of the dangers of gung ho ethanolism (one, two, three, four). In the face of massive energy production, consumption habits, and climate change…
April 5, 2007
This is an article from the Christian Science Monitor: "What's happening to the bees?: Suddenly, the bees farmers and growers rely on are vanishing. Researchers are scrambling to find out why." Worth a read.
Here's why we might care:
While staple crops like wheat and corn are pollinated by wind…
April 4, 2007
So, like most of us, I'm reading over back issues of The Western Journal of Medicine and Surgery, and I stumble upon an article I'd dog-eared some time back. It's an "Analysis of Boston Waters," from their April 1846 issue. You know, page 362? The one that has Benjamin Silliman warning against…
April 3, 2007
So says Czech President Vaclav Klaus, fan of Thatcher, admirer of Reagan, despiser of global warming rhetoric. Speaking to U.S. Congresspeople last week, he offered a few nuggets to chew on (but didn't mix metaphors like that). The Inter Press Service News Agency reports it here.*
A few snippets…
April 3, 2007
Honestly, I didn't intend to barrage the site with this series of MTR posts, but a lot of news came through in the past few weeks.
One is this New York Times Editorial on Mountaintop removal legal action (I'm also pasting it under the fold). Another is the court case that the editorial refers to…
April 3, 2007
Check these out: "postcards" from Appalachia have been placed as ads on Washington DC Metro. The new ad campaign --from the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OHVEC and at this new website, Stop Mountaintop Removal.org) -- takes the issue of visibility as its premise: if we can see/are forced…
April 2, 2007
The Michael Pollan interview I did for The Believer is at long last on booksehelves at fine retailers near you. For those not familiar with that publication, it was recently nominated for two National Magazine Awards, was last year nominated for a few, and will next year be nominatd for some. It'…
March 30, 2007
Peter Melchett writes in The Guardian (on-line) that the scientific evidence for organic food's healthier claims is clear and persuasive. (Melchett is "policy director of the Soil Association, a UK organic food and farming organisation.") But will that sway governments to encourage organic over…
March 30, 2007
Philip Zimbardo, professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford University and the guy who conducted the Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971, writes today in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the lessons and conduct of that pyschological test.
The conclusion of his updated reflections on the…
March 29, 2007
Grist has been posting many excellent links, discussions, and interviews about Mountaintop Coal Removal in the Appalachians. It's been a while since we added to our MTR posts (one, two, three, four), so allow me to do so now.
photo source: Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition
First is an article in…
March 29, 2007
Lots of future Nobel Laureates had their groundbreaking work rejected by scientific journals. Juan Miguel Campanario, a Physics Professor in Madrid, writes an article about it called "Rejecting Nobel class articles and resisting Nobel class discoveries." But he can't get it published.
Hmmmm. Do…