Knoxville '82: Where Miscellany Thrive

What 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 the…
"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…
"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…
continued 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…
continued 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…
DN: 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…