Links to Other Conversations and Articles

Wherein the author, Dave Frye, finds in his doctoral research that "it remains fairly safe to say that the modern science of cereal studies began no earlier than with the 1764 publication of Linnaeus's De Cerialibus." This, despite some early finds about "the famously lactose-intolerant Pythagoreans." There are some good findings in Frye's work, and one wonders how long it might be until his research is complete. I was particularly struck by the solid integration of the history of science and food studies into true, deeper cultural and political context. Many graduate students seek that…
"The [Environmental Justice (EJ)] movement," writes Gwen Ottinger, "was galvanized in the early 1980s by the observation that toxic chemicals and other environmental hazards are concentrated in communities of color. EJ activists, many of them veterans of the civil rights movement, began to argue that social equality demanded an end to this 'environmental racism.' Currently, however, it is not equality but health that dominates grassroots activists' campaigns against chemical contamination." Ottinger is a fellow at the Chemical Heritage Foundation's (CHF) Center for Contemporary History and…
Friend of the Fair Oronte Churm has a note on engineers over at The Education of Oronte Churm, "The Engineers Think On It." Eating at a diner with a book of poetry in hand, he posits the engineer's quest for utility--and for order and rationality, it seems--over poetry and spirit (or so my own poetic license has it, from reading his post). I'd say his interpretation is not of any engineers I know, though they do exist in lore and in lonely corners at Virginia Tech. They had a job to do, but they weren't going to rush it. There was pleasure in the food, companionship, and the pause, but…
I contributed an essay to the History of Science Society (HSS) newsletter called "Why Blog the History of Science?" It is now in print and available on line. Go go, check it out, you can learn about why all blogging should be understood along the Ayers-Onuf axis. Here I'll excerpt that part: About that axis. Two historians began a call-in radio show earlier this year. One of them, let's call him Ayers, considered it an opportunity to contribute to the public debate about current issues by discoursing on historical context - voting, race relations, the environment, what have you. His…
Add this to your daily read, I ask: Kevin Guilfoile and John Warner have expanded their occasional series of letters over at The Morning News into a full-on blog, back-and-forth, letters, epistolary. If nothing else, at least now you'll be able to use epistolary in a sentence.
Two things happened last year when we started to get the Sunday Washington Post. One was that I tried to figure out those crossword puzzles. That's not going so well. The other is that I would read the humor column in the back of the magazine by Gene Weingarten. That's turned out better. I thus feel compelled to share what is the definitive statement on why blogging does not straightforwardly amount to the democratization of public discourse. Or, I should say, does not straightforwardly elevate the value of the public sphere. "No Comment," at this link. And pasted in full below the…
In the pantheon of American letters, The Guilfoile-Warner Papers have long held a spot of hallowed pre-eminence. With their contribution this week, the correspondence has now reached Daily Shovian levels of excellence. I had sought to choose the best line in their column, but got caught unable to rank which of the many great lines was best. So, for us, a sampling below. I'll let readers decide how to rank their astuteness. But please, for sanity's sake, confer the entire column here at The Morning News. On the implausibility of Pailn's selection: The [probability] that [Palin] might be…
I came across this slide show by Christopher Benfey at Slate earlier this summer. It's a series of photographs by the German photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher. Apparently Bernd passed away last year, so I don't know (and Benfey didn't know) if there will be more. All of the Becher's pictures on display at a MoMA showing are black and white photos of industrial settings. Although they are images of a worked- and lived-in nature like those of Edward Burtynsky and other industrial landscape photographers, the ones recently displayed at MoMA are of places still at the center of those…
We once pondered aloud what Homer had in mind with his claim that Batman's a scientist. Since then, and I'm sure because of it, a new movie about Batman has been released. Now Jon Barnes at the Times Literary Supplement traces seven decades of evolution in the Batman character and persona. The adaptive behavior of Batman to his cultural ecosystem has yielded some strange variations. (I wonder as well if knowing this history would help scientists.) From "a violent vigilante from his earliest appearances in May 1939" to guy with "a teenaged sidekick, battl[ing] against the Axis powers in…
Chemical & Engineering news has a profile of Food Network guy Alton Brown. (Did you know the Food Network is about the only family-friendly station I can ever find? True story. Ergo, I've seen Alton Brown before.) If you've not seen him, Brown's "presentation style [is] a combination of Julia Child, British comedy troupe Monty Python, and Mr. Wizard." He's influenced in part, he says, by James Burke's Connections and he uses a lot of multi-syllabic words. Like multi-syllabic. Extended excerpt below the fold: He believes that the interest in molecular gastronomy detracts from a larger…
An advertisement from Frank Scott's company (as reprinted in Ted Steinberg's American Green). Talk about religion and nature--Scott thought it was un-christian not to keep a manicured lawn. Our lawn finally came in this year after three years in this house. We hadn't put much of an effort into it, I'll admit, though the original builder sought to. Our dirt is awful, just god awful. Ask my dad. He, the ardent gardener, is astonished by how poor the soil is. But this year the crabgrass grew in. And it looks good, real good. Plus it's helped prevent erosion from the occasional torrential…
This is one from the vault. Though not our vault. It was posted here in the original. But we offer a full reprint below the fold. If you're a fidgety right-finger-on-that-mouse-scroller zooming-down-the-page reader (oh, did I nail it Mark?), don't miss chapter 18: XVIII. Using the iPhone to learn whether superstring theory's positing of 10 dimensions (or 11 in M-theory) is viable in light of recent discoveries relating to dark matter Enjoy. "The iPhone: A User's Guide," by Darren Cahr. Congratulations on your purchase of the 8-gigabyte iPhone from Apple Inc.! For the first time, you will be…
Apple, Inc. joke week continues here during an all star World's-Fair-Scheduled-Posts-While-We're-Away Link Week. This one was originally published here, back in 2005, and remains one of my favorites of technology satire. (Oh, you have one too? What's yours? Is it Vonnegut's Player Piano? Cat's Cradle? No? I'm not even close? It isn't Vonnegut at all? Then what's your point, hombre? What the hell's your point?) Your sample: Q: I hate having to recharge my iPod Zepto every 12 minutes. Is there any way to extend the battery life? A: Yes, if you keep your iPod Zepto's power button in…
Oronte Churm asks: Are you happy? An interesting entry. To get to that, he works from Virginia Postrel's article "Inconspicuous Consumption" in The Atlantic, on his way to Bill Watterson speaking to Kenyon College many years ago on happiness. In my experience, any time you get stuff from the Calvin & Hobbes guy, it's solid. So I leave this minor post with the happiness question and the following passage. Quoth Watterson: Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life…
Won't you read this story over at Orion? Choice, consumption, citizenship. Then reread Charles Kettering's 1929 article, "Keep the Consumer Dissatisfied." Says Kettering: If everyone were satisfied, no one would buy the new thing because no one would want it. The ore wouldn't be mined; timber wouldn't be cut. Almost immediately hard times would be upon us. You must accept this reasonable dissatisfaction with what you have and buy the new thing, or accept hard times. You can have your choice. Says Jeffrey Kaplan, in "The Gospel of Consumption," to give a sample of the link: As far back as…
Quoth neuropsychologist Katherine P. Rankin: "I bet Jon Stewart has a huge right frontal lobe." Sure. Why not.
This post was written by guest contributor Cyrus Mody.* There's a new study reported in Nature Nanotechnology entitled "Carbon nanotubes introduced into the abdominal cavity of mice show asbestos-like pathogenicity in a pilot study." Or, as the title seems to have been understood by reporters at the New York Times and elsewhere, "Blah NANO blah blah blah ASBESTOS blah PATHOGEN blah blah." The gist of the original Nature Nano study is this: (1) we know asbestos fibers, once heralded as a godsend, can cause mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lungs. (2) We know this has something to…
A new off-off-off Broadway production is in the works. It has: Drama! Intrigue! Denialists Exposed! It's Bisphenol-A: The One Act Play. Read on to find out about Endocrine Disruptors! See how the tobacco interest is related to the recent Bisphenol controversies! Hear about Nalgene and the National Toxicology Program report and industry spokespeople! Revel in the claims of lobbyists! Look in on the outcomes of an entire regime of consumer products and late-modern chemical production! All at the Science Creative Quarterly today and, soon, in limited production at community theaters near…
"In the long run men hit only what they aim at." H.D. Thoreau, Walden This post's title is the poorly reasoned conclusion to a poorly reported and poorly conducted study. I couldn't tell if it was simply bad reporting at The Boston Globe or bad research. Either way (or both ways) it suggests that evidence is meaningless without a context and that scientific research is meaningless without a fuller recognition of its cultural moorings. Put another way, given data, what are we to conclude? In this case, "two new studies by economists and social scientists have reached a perhaps startling…
Well then. Seems some are worried the "Intelligent" modifier to "Design" makes them look dumb if they don't have it too? Read up to find out more, as Wyatt Galusky tells it, in these revealing minutes from a school board meeting last year: Here are some excerpts from those "Minutes of the Special Board Meeting to consider name change (16 September 2007)." Arbruster presents brief summary of the rationale for considering a name change for the school. Cites increased news coverage of the idea of "intelligent design," which calls into stark relief the adjective-less Leicester School of Design…