ksharpe | April 14, 2006On Tuesday, April 4, Boston-area Seed friends and contributors gathered for dinner and conversation at Cambridge's Oleana restaurant.
Seed founder and editor-in-chief Adam Bly hosted the event. Steven Pinker, Seth Lloyd, Irene Pepperberg, Jonah Lehrer, Karl Iagnemma, and Alex Palazzo were some of the guests in attendance at dinner, an event designed to connect friends of Seed throughout the area.
"The idea" of the evening, writes attendee Palazzo on his blog, The Daily Transcript, "was to throw together scientists from various disciplines and Seed contributors, and observe the resulting…
ksharpe | April 12, 2006Seed's daily science news aggregator, phylotaxis.com, has been nominated for a Webby Award in the category of 'Best Navigation/Structure.'
Designed for Seed by artist Jonathan Harris, phylotaxis is based on the mathematical elegance of the Fibonacci Sequence, and the ordered growth of leaves on a plant stem. The appearance of the phylotaxis represents the integration of science's rationality and order with culture's energy and unpredictability. Result? A stunning visual arrangement continuously gathering and transmitting science news as it breaks on the web.
Bestowed annually since 1996, the…
ksharpe | April 7, 2006Polish science-fiction author Stanislaw Lem, author of The Cyberiad, Solaris and His Master's Voice, died on March 27. His ashes have been buried in the Salwatorski Cemetery in Krakow.
Link to a short article on Candada.com, here.
Born in 1921 in Poland, Lem began training as a medical student in Krakow in 1946. Afterwards, he worked in a science lab and took up writing on the side.
His 1961 novel Solaris was made into a film by Andrei Tartovsky in 1972 (and remade, with the addition of George Clooney, by Steven Soderbergh in 2002).
According to Wikipedia,
"[Lem] wrote about human…
ksharpe | April 7, 2006Earlier this week I asked about the best science books of all time.
Today, a related question crossed my mind: what novels do scientists like to read...and why?
A couple of years ago, I took a grad-school English class devoted to postmodern fiction. Six weeks of the thirteen-week semester were devoted to Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. And I remember hearing along the way that Gravity's Rainbow was supposedly huge with engineers and physicists. In one way, this surprised me: I'm a literature nerd by training and temperament--a professional reader, ferchrissake--and I found Gravity's…
ksharpe | April 4, 2006I'm not the first here to post about it, but sharpen your pencils, because Seed Magazine has just announced its first annual nonfiction science-writing contest.
The instructions ask people to write an essay, in 2000 words or less, about the future of science in America, and what the country can do to preserve and leverage its leadership role in the sciences.
The deadline for entries is June 30. Winners will have their essays published or excerpted in Seed Magazine and on seedmagazine.com, and will also be rewarded with cash-money.
Link to full contest details, here.
Hmm...what would you say…
ksharpe | April 4, 2006I'm between books right now. As an inveterate reader, this makes me feel antsy and unmoored. I want to get my hands on something good--and specifically, I'm thinking of going on a science-book spree.
The science-books-for-laypeople genre is one that I haven't explored as much as I would like. (Bloggers--any recommendations? Can we put together an ultimate science book list, a science-reader's garden of prose?)
Partly, this interest is sparked by recent days spent in the Seed offices. And partly it's sparked by one recent discovery of mine, a book that dazzled me with a vision of what…
ksharpe | April 4, 2006Welcome to Stochastic, the new in-house blog from Seed Media Group. This is the place where Seed editors weigh in about matters great and small. In case the launch passed you by unawares, check the link back to the first entry, which will give you a clue what we're all about.
ksharpe | March 31, 2006Here's some jollity, just in time for Friday. Chevrolet has launched a promotion in which people visit a website and use online modules to create a 30-second advertising spot for the Chevy Tahoe SUV.
The early entries might not have been what Chevy corporate was hoping for.
More screenshots and links after the break.
Early entrants of the Chevy Tahoe: The Apprentice contest vented their spleen about the Tahoe's contributions to global warming, the United States' continued reliance on foreign oil, and their perception of SUVs, and SUV drivers and manufacturers, as arrogant, selfish, and…
ksharpe | March 30, 2006...long live Stochastic.
Hello, and welcome to Stochastic, the new in-house blog from Seed Media Group, the makers of Seed Magazine and Scienceblogs.com. Come on in and make yourself at home.
Stochastic is our contribution to Scienceblogs--because we couldn't let the other bloggers have all the fun.
As you may know, and as I just found out, the word 'stochastic' is a mathematical term connoting randomness. Stochastic is the opposite of deterministic; that which is stochastic is subject to chance, to wild and unpredictable variation.
In other words: What comes after is not determined by…