FADE IN: Dialogue in Mandarin with English subtitles. An impoverished rural village in contemporary China. EXT. A SMALL WOODEN HOUSE – – DAY MAMA, a single mother of three children in her mid 30’s, walks along a dusty dirt road into a meek wooden house lugging a heavy pail of water. A shabby cloth hangs in the doorway in place of a door. INT. MAMA’S HOUSE – – DAY A one-roomed house furbished with a couple of fold-out chairs and a few pieces of old wooden furniture. One large wooden bed is in the far corner. WEI, Mama’s youngest son…
The Science Creative Quarterly
The Science Creative Quarterly (SCQ) is not a quarterly, but instead publishes new material at a non-linear rate. Currently, it is sleeping and in a sort of stasis (turpor?) It used to seek science writing of any genre, and your contribution would have involved checking out our submissions guidelines.
The Science Creative Quarterly (SCQ) has a single print edition so far (half SCQ pieces, and half fake science journal – see here for more details). Also, badges?
Stay safe everyone!
THE MYTHOLOGY – AND POTENTIAL – OF THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL. LEARNING FROM RACHEL CARSON
“It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks…the public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can only do so when in full possession of the facts…”[1] In her crusade to galvanize the American public against what she considered an insidious enemy masquerading as progress, Rachel Carson combined rigorous science and compelling prose to convey her message. Her book Silent Spring, published in 1962, sparked public interest in, and outcry over, the growing use of chemical products for controlling plants and insects. Her work is considered a key catalyst of…
OBSERVATIONS / REFLECTIONS ON STATUS QUO
1. Trees in the city (at winter) we are surrounded by pavement. shallow roots and bare branches. perhaps strung with christmas lights or strangled by these strings of lights? fragile / frail / awkward we stand in parking lots, by sidewalks – illusions that the city has not been taken over by concrete and pavement. birds avoid us as if we don’t belong. 2. Vending machines… and their opposites picture, for a moment, a vending machine. what does it see? when we participate in this exchange – money for goods, or not-so-goods. material profit, material waste. do you think we…
TARGETING TELOMERES AND CANCER FOR ‘DUMMIӘS’
For ‘Dummies’ is a simple yet powerful publishing genre to alleviate the anxiety and frustration people feel about understanding complicated material by mocking them with insightful and educational descriptions, making difficult material interesting and easy to understand. One of the most widespread and complicated diseases affecting us today is cancer. Everyone’s heard about cancer, but how bad is it really? Super-duper bad. Canadian statistics alone state 4 in 10 Canadians will get cancer in their lifetime. That number is getting so high; almost everyone is going to know someone affected by cancer. This reality should be enough that everyone ought…
A NON-COMPREHENSIVE LIST OF 10 WAYS PHYSICAL CHEMISTS MAKE YOUR LIFE MORE COMPLICATED
10. This list is in octal for theoretical reasons that are currently un-testable by any known technique. 7. You always feel “dirty” when you use an approximation, or round to three significant figures. 6. For a while you believed that there really were practical applications for the Schrödinger equation. That’s four months of your life you’ll never get back. 5. Entropy. 4. Unexplained headaches can be induced by any field with over six ways to define an apparently simple concept, like the radius of a molecule. And don’t even ask about viscosity, unless you’ve pre-dosed yourself with ibuprofen. 3. Statistical…
BC YOUTHS RECEIVE RICH SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING TALKS ON EARTH DAY WEEKEND (PLUS A GLIMPSE INTO TRIUMF’S SATURDAY MORNING LECTURE SERIES).
(This piece is about Earth Day last year – and to also note that this year’s Earth Day is coming up on April 22nd) – – – It promised to be a great weekend. Earth Day was just around the corner. And ready for that occasion, the TRIUMF research facility on south campus was set to deliver a special version of its monthly Saturday Morning Talks, an outreach initiative spearheaded by the UBC Graduate Student Society and aimed at high school and layman audiences. The topic was to be hydrogen fuel cells. Although the occasional mention of fuel cells might…
CAN YOU SOLVE PUZZLE FANTASTICA #3? – THE FINAL CLUE
“It’s all about the pork products…” For a more detailed look at the first 4 clues, see below. If you’ve got one, leave an answer here. Good luck! – – – Clue 1 Clue 2 Clue 3 Clue 4
DETECTION OF LARGE WOODY DEBRIS ACCUMULATIONS IN OLD-GROWTH FORESTS USING SONIC WAVE COLLECTION
Originally under: INDIANA R. JONES AND ETHAN ALLEN (“ET AL” FOR SHORT), Department of philosophical biology, University of North Dakota at Hoople Earl’s Corner Bar, Main Street, Hoople, ND (Also available as a pdf file) * * * Abstract: We used directional microphones, professional electronic audio recording equipment and personal observation to monitor the accumulation of large woody debris in old-growth forests of northern Wisconsin from June 1999 through July 2001. We hired a really poor undergraduate student to collect nearly 20,000 hours of audio/video tape in really cool areas in the Chequamegon and Nicolet National Forests. Then we made…
YOUR EPIGENOME AND YOU: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO WHAT YOUR EPIGENOME DOES FOR YOU, AND WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR EPIGENOME.
DNA is a curious thing. It might make sense for you to think about the DNA in your brain in terms of “brain DNA” and DNA in your blood in terms of “blood DNA”, but you’d be wrong. Strangely, the DNA in your skin cells sloughing off to make up a considerable proportion of common household dust is the exact same DNA found in the rest of the cells making up your body and bodily organs like your brain, heart, liver and muscles. So how does DNA know to make neurons or finger nails? How does it know what to…