Knoxville '82: Where Miscellany Thrive
worldsfair | April 29, 2010Specifically, I'm trying to see whether we can engage folks into the PHYLO card process by seeing if they work with requests. And we're going to start with a special one - coming from a luminary in the science plus art arena, this is from Margaret Atwood, who notes that her favourite organism is the horseshoe crab (or if we're being a little more precise, Limulus polyphemus).
In case, you're not sure what Ms. Atwood is talking about, it's one of these:
(Image by iloew)
Curiously enough, we have an image already in the PHYLO illustration pool. It's great too, but let's see if we can get a…
worldsfair | April 22, 2010Seriously, if there's a day to enjoy the outdoors, then that would have to be Earth Day. If, however, you find yourself stuck inside due to poor weather, volcanic ash plumes, or some other reason, then go check out the Phylo game (http://phylogame.org).
It's been up for about a week and a bit, and is already gaining some steady traffic (it's creeping up on google and giving the Greek pastry a run for its money!). Normally, we only put up one new card per weekend, but because it's a special day, we're putting up 6 new cards, and with a variety of different art styles to boot.
As if that…
vlicata | April 18, 2010Astrobiology is an amazingly interesting, highly interdisciplinary, and relative new field of science. Basically, it's both the search for life elsewhere in the universe, and it's the study of how to sustain human life in space and on other planets (and how to protect other planets from Earth life). Our lab works on several different astrobiological projects. Given both the amazing breadth of science that falls under the heading of "astrobiology," and the fact that it is a branch of "space exploration", some of the titles of talks and papers in this field can seem rather bizarre when seen…
worldsfair | April 14, 2010O.K. Sorry this took a while, but you know, things are busy, having just finally launching the Phylo game website. A while back, I mentioned getting an acoustic bass, and wanting to work on yet another science-geekery song. This one with a biodiversity theme and the inclusion of reader supplied latin names as well. That part was tough, but I tried my best.
Anyway, below is a very quick demo cut of the song (with drums and most backup vocals courtesy of my talented brother Steve), as well as the lyrics below. I quite like this song, so will probably try to do a better take later.
(Link to…
vlicata | April 5, 2010The National Science Foundation and the National Academy of Sciences each are spearheading programs designed to get more accurate science into the movies, and they have two somewhat different approaches to this same "problem". Each presented its plan during a couple of sessions at this year's AAAS National Meeting. The National Academy of Sciences had a session on its "Science and Entertainment Exchange" program, which is celebrating its one-year anniversary. This program acts as a matchmaker service for Hollywood producers and directors, who can contact the Exchange and ask for an "expert…
worldsfair | March 30, 2010In this video, I'm actually speaking (as oppose to dancing silly), since it looks like TEDx has released the mini talks we gave on our experiences hosting a TEDx conference.
Anyway, it only confirms my theory that most people on TV have huge heads (this is data gathered from interacting with the odd TV host in my time). My head is somewhat normal sized, but doesn't it look kind of small in the video?
But I digress, really the point of this video is to check out the actual talks that were given at the TEDxTerrytalks. You can check them out here (they really did deliver).
And the orchestra of…
worldsfair | March 29, 2010A few months ago, for fun, I took a course on "Writing Books for Children." It was pretty good, in that it kind of forced me to sit down and come up and work through an idea. Or at least, work through it enough so that it was close to the stage of maybe querying publishers.
For readers who have followed this blog for a while, you probably know that children's books have always fascinated me, especially with two young children in my own household. It's probably why I've written about it on occasion (see here, here, here, and here for examples). There's something altogether amazing when you…
worldsfair | March 26, 2010Recently, I was on Australian radio doing a bit about the phylomon project and one of the creatures that the host brought up was the Kakapo.
As well, an article at the Escapist was just published (again on the phylomon project), and within the comments there, the Kakapo was highlighted once again.
What is it with this bird that delights the imagination of biology enthusiasts? Well, first you have to check out this video, which is maybe one of the funniest things I've ever seen.
Anyway, I think Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine describe the kakapo best in their wonderful book, "Last Chance…
vlicata | March 22, 2010Too much listening to Tea Baggers (their most appropriate name?), and the 100% Republican opposition to the Health Care Bill that just passed the House (hooray!!!), and fear of violence in the streets of Haiti as justification for the slow US response there, and the many bizarre responses to what I thought was a really excellent "State of the Union" address a couple of months ago- all of these things colluded to make me wonder if the basic difference between Democrats and Republicans is the dosage of their altruism gene(s). It would also help explain why neither side can really understand…
vlicata | March 14, 2010Well, here's my son and my entry for the Scienceblogs + Serious Eats Pi Day Contest:
(Warning: this entry may be frightening to children or people who know how to make pies.)
Tony and Vince's "Chocolate Pudding Meringue Pi Pi Pie (not quite)". It was designed to have the following dimensions:
Circumference = height = 2 x pi x r = 3.14 x diameter
The pie is a classic chocolate pudding pie base with a giant meringue and whipped cream pile atop it (pile is about the best word for it).
But, as you can see, we had to make up most of the height with a highly extended candle -- when put in the…
worldsfair | March 11, 2010This is straight from the main page:
Things are humming along! We have over 100 images submitted, 30 or so queued up for card production, and over 40 folks signed up on the forum (in fact, one set of rules is arguably close to beta testing). The response has been simply wonderful, and these numbers don't even the include the numerous comments and chats culled from coffee meetings to blog posts to tweets. To us, this outpouring is something else, especially in light of the fact that we've technically only seeded an "idea" out there!
The website, itself, is being prodded, poked and tweaked as…
vlicata | March 10, 2010In the Feb 26 issue of Science, the Chief Patent Counsel for GlaxoSmithKline has written a "Policy Forum" article outlining the reasons that the pharmaceutical industry needs longer and stronger patent protection on its new drugs (to fend off those nasty generics). I was kind of shocked to see such a propaganda piece in Science, but I suppose it is all part of looking at both (all) sides of an issue. Big pharma has been telling us how tough they've got it for years, and the argument that they must charge very high prices to pay for all that R&D is so old that you can probably find it…
vlicata | March 8, 2010I gave two "public science" talks, back to back this past week to two groups of 200 9th graders at Walker High School, which is about 20 miles east of Baton Rouge. (Two because their auditorium only holds 200 students at a time). I give public science lectures in a program run by the Louisiana Board of Regents, and I have several different talks, but this is the first time a high school had requested the talk "Funny Science: Using Humor to Convey Scientific Information". It was a very interesting experiment - and since it was two back-to-back identical talks, I actually did get to experiment…
vlicata | February 28, 2010Does it bother you when people say: "Wow, it's been so cold this winter, so much for global warming."? And you have to remind them that global warming means that the average temperature of the earth is increasing, and that, in fact, the average temperature of North America is predicted to get colder, by maybe even as much as ten degrees (on average). And does it bother you that many of the people that say this have Ph.D.s and work at a university? And does it bother you that this completely incorrect interpretation of our colder winters is making it into the general consciousness and…
worldsfair | February 24, 2010In case those of you (the 2 or so readers we have here) are anxiously waiting for the song on biodiversity that I promised a while back. Well, I'm still working on it (partly things have been busy, also partly I had some new recording hardware to figure out). Anyway, just to show that I haven't been slacking off, here is a draft of the lyrics:
The main body of lyrics being:
There's you and me, within biodiversity
Connecting us together in this world.
But you can't see, it all works so majestically
Almost imperceptively - day by day
Look around yourself and you will find them everywhere…
worldsfair | February 23, 2010I just noticed talks are up from the TEDxVancouver event I attended a little while back. At the time, I mainly focused on one particular speaker who was a Climate Change denialist, but now that the talks are up, I thought it fitting to highlight what I thought was one of the strongest talk (sort of the one where folks kind of went, "whoa - that's cool").
Of course, this had to do with video games, specifically a show and tell of some of the remarkable software mechanics behind the sport game titles produced by Electronic Arts. Anyway, the fellow talking is one Henry LaBounta, who happens…
vlicata | February 23, 2010I was just in San Diego for the 2010 AAAS National Meeting - that's the American Association for the Advancement of Science - the parent organization that publishes the journal Science. This year's theme was "Bridging Science and Society". As part of this, I organized and chaired a session called "Science in the Theatre" (although the AAAS changed "theatre" to "theater" in all the speakers' abstracts). I invited Carl Djerassi from Stanford, Lauren Gunderson, a professional playwright, and Brian Schwartz, a physics professor at City University of New York who also runs their Science and…
worldsfair | February 17, 2010
Is Bon Jovi an idea worth spreading? Not sure, but it seemed to do wonders with a certain amount of context at a conference I recently attended. This being the TEDactive conference: a satellite event where attendees viewed and immersed themselves in the TED universe at an "off site" locale, all the while taking in an HD video version of the big show that was occurring only 2 hours away in Long Beach.
This mention of Bon Jovi is in reference to a bus ride that occurred during the conference, where karaoke was suggested and quickly adopted with great enthusiasm. A great idea right? Well,…
vlicata | February 9, 2010Between the Saints and Mardi Gras time: Louisiana is in full celebration right now. Some of the "cultural" elements on view during the Super Bowl reminded me of parallels in the culture of science:
1. The Super Bowl champions are always called the "World Champions" - even though this is a solely US sporting event. Reminiscent of how some researchers who find something genuinely interesting about their biochemical system will give their paper a title that implies universality: Finding: Protein X takes up water when it binds its substrate. Paper title: "Water Uptake During Enzymatic…