Knoxville '82: Where Miscellany Thrive
worldsfair | July 30, 2008The response for the "Things to avoid at all cost when speaking publicly" post was awesome, and so, I've tried to formalize the suggestions into a fairly definitive list. The ones that didn't make it tended to be more debatable, although admittedly, there are few in the list right now that sort of sit on the threshold of that parameter (I'm think about stuff like "winging it" or being "arrogant").
Anyway, the list can be viewed at the SCQ, but I'll reprint it here for your viewing pleasure.
THINGS TO AVOID AT ALL COST WHEN SPEAKING PUBLICLY
- - -
Vomiting.
Aggressive sweating.
Evil…
worldsfair | July 28, 2008
As plans for our student speaker conference are ramping up, we've been talking about ways to recruit excellent speakers to the project (this is where we're trying to host a university centric TED talks sort of thing). One idea, was to make some kind of video public service announcement that would direct people towards the application process as well as have a bit of web (as in hopefully viral) fun.
Anyway, I thought it might make an interesting slideshow to present things that you definitely should avoid at all costs when giving a talk. Some of these are obvious, some maybe not so much,…
bcohen | July 13, 2008Memoir
Orwell says somewhere that no one ever writes the real story of their life.
The real story of a life is the story of its humiliations.
If I wrote that story now--
radioactive to the end of time--
people, I swear, your eyes would fall out, you couldn't peel
the gloves fast enough
from your hands scorched by the firestorms of that shame.
Your poor hands. Your poor eyes
to see me weeping in my room
or boring the tall blonde to death.
Once I accused the innocent.
Once I bowed and prayed to the guilty.
I still wince at what I once said to the devastated widow.
And one October afternoon,…
worldsfair | June 30, 2008
This cracks me up every time, and will be sure to somehow make an appearance in my talks on science literacy. I'm thinking this would make a great graphic to segue into discussions on the public perceptions of technologies, etc.
Anyway, summer is upon us, and so the good old blow-up pool is making an appearance in our backyard. But look at the pic, and note the huge difference between what you see on the box, and what you get in real life.
Below is a proper graphic of the actual box the product came in (still available on sites like amazon, by the way). I guess they can get away with…
worldsfair | June 24, 2008As in popperfont.com
Last week, I opened up a free wordpress blog, with the hopes of collecting my writings in one place, as well, as trying to categorize the silly "true or false" questions I use in many of my public talks on science literacy (most of which have been discussed in some form or fashion at the World's Fair, but are kind of buried because of my poor categorization skills).
I initially decided to use the URL davengwrites.com, which was chosen partly out of frustration because every "davidng" or "daveng" URL seemed to have been taken.
Anyway, since yesterday, I've been tweaking…
bcohen | June 23, 2008
Circa 1937.
Between me and you, and so don't go telling everyone, but I like that it's a gas-pump-shaped building even more.
worldsfair | June 18, 2008This is kind of neat. A web tool called www.mixwit.com that allows you to post high quality mixed tapes online. Here's a sample of a three song mix that took me 15 minutes to make. Thanks by the way for suggestions (on the blog and off) for the previous post.
bcohen | June 13, 2008Stunning news out of Washington. John Boehner, that congress guy, you know who I mean, laid down a devastating critique yesterday by claiming that politicians in congress are "playing politics." He reports that in the Senate "it's been about politics everyday all day."
I thought they were there to play cribbage.
worldsfair | June 11, 2008I usually make a music mix about 4 times a year, with the culmination of those mixes becoming a more focused annual mix. This is something I've done since 2002, and it's always great to go back in time and check out a particular mix for a particular year.
Anyway, things have been so busy the last little while, that my musical spider sense is a little off. So, I'm looking for a few suggestions from readers passing by - a link to a youtube file would be especially helpful, I'm one of those folks that can tell if a piece will grow on me pretty quick. Hoping to find 7 more songs this way.
I've…
worldsfair | June 11, 2008Right now, I'm reading a gem of a book called Mortification, writers' stories of their public shame. It essentially has 70 or so mini-pieces from a wide variety of writers, at various stages of their careers. These pieces share humiliating anecdotes as it relates to the life of a writer: Here, the liner notes encapsulates it nicely:
Mortification is a collection of writers' tales of ignominy, a grimly compelling anthology of shame... Anyone who has ever fancied an author's life would find this book an eye-opener...
Just to give you a sense of the flavour, here is one of the stories from…
worldsfair | June 6, 2008Lately, my kids have really gotten into the whole Star Wars thing, which, of course, brings me great pleasure. It also brings to mind a silly question: that is whether affinity for all things Star Wars is at all related to an affinity to all things science (ah Popper and Kuhn, where are ye now?).
Anyway, I'm wondering whether there is a tidy, clever, and easy internet device/poll/search algorithm we can use to chip away at this query. If you have any ideas, it would be great to pass them on.
In the meantime, here is a Star Wars related video that I think is very funny. Note some…
bcohen | June 4, 2008Somehow I couldn't help thinking of the study below when reading the recent article on a scientific study of sarcasm. As with that (sarcastic?) study, this one also considered ways to understand humanity with scientific analysis. As published in Life magazine in 1946, let's call it the optics of housewifery. The title of this post was the title of their article. Please comment away. Yes, as facetiously as you'd like.
(as found in Caroline Jones, "Talking Pictures: Clement Greenberg's Pollock," in L. Daston, ed., Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Science and Art [Zone Books, 2004…
bcohen | June 4, 2008Quoth neuropsychologist Katherine P. Rankin: "I bet Jon Stewart has a huge right frontal lobe."
Sure. Why not.
worldsfair | June 2, 2008Well, maybe the post title is a little on the hyperbole side of things.
Anyway, many apologies for being more or less absent from this blog for the last couple of weeks. As usual, the end of term chaos is partly to blame, but basically the last month or so has been especially time sucking due to the three things mentioned above.
Still, I guess in many respects, it has been death defying in a way...
Firstly, the last week or so, my youngest has been dealing with a bout of Shigella. This is a bacteria infection that can be fairly nasty (in the bowel movement and serious dysentry department…
bcohen | May 23, 2008ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY.
(By Jason Adams)
1778: Alexander Hamilton was "feelin' it."
1864: John Wilkes Booth was down with that.
1907: It was Teddy Roosevelt's bad.
1933: Amelia Earhart went, girl.
1933: Charles Lindbergh player hated.
1954: Rock Hudson had it going on.
1955: Albert Einstein kept it real.
1972: Richard Farnsworth gave/was given props/a shout out.
1985: Ted McGinley broke it down.
1998: Oprah Winfrey busted it out.
[No more than a 1999 reprint here folks. But the key insight is this: it's only been nine years since Oprah was still known as Oprah Winfrey.]