Guests at the Fair

This post was written by guest contributor Jody Roberts. Follow this link for his most recent contribution to The World's Fair. The philosopher Marjorie Grene passed away on Monday, 16 March, at the age of 98. Grene's life is difficult to sum up in a few words, and I don't want to do that anyhow, since plenty of others have and surely will in much better fashion than I can muster. But since I imagine most will be unfamiliar with her work, I quote here from a letter composed by Richard Burian, a dear friend and colleague: Marjorie Grene passed away March 16 at age 98 after a brief illness…

This one's about integrity, oversight, and endocrine disruption and how the tangled web grows bigger by the day. It's a guest post by Jody Roberts, of the Chemical Heritage Foundation. - - - Two news stories in last week's edition of Chemical and Engineering News perfectly demonstrate the complex interweaving of technical, social, and political processes in attempting to grapple with emerging sciences and environmental health. In the article, "Debating Science," we see once again the hot button issue of science and politics, science in politics, and politics in science. In "Test of Endocrine…

Just a reminder that Jennifer and I will be hosting drinks at Koerner's pub this evening. We'll be there from about 6pm on. Come on out on Seed's dime - should be fun. And just in case, you don't know what we look like, Jennifer has her picture on her blog, and I look like this in the hands of a professional photographer (the columns are more apt to be upright in the hands of unprofessional photographers). To give us a bit of a sense of the "how manys" it would be great if you can leave a comment below, or better yet, place a notch in our FaceBook event page.

Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 - - - Part 4 with Jody Roberts and Michelle Murphy--discussing her book Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty--follows below. All entries in the author-meets-blogger series can be found here. - - - WF: The book is titled "Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty." Why is uncertainty a problem? Or, perhaps we should ask, where or when is uncertainty a problem? MM: Uncertainty, I would suggest, is a constitutive feature of much environmental politics, and particularly chemical exposures. Legal standards that demand we know the predictable…

Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 - - - Part 3 with Jody Roberts and Michelle Murphy--discussing her book Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty--follows below. All entries in the author-meets-blogger series can be found here. - - - WF: Racism is a word that generally makes us feel uncomfortable, especially when it's linked to politics or science. When I've introduced the term in courses I've taught (using your writings) my students get visibly uncomfortable. It's not the case or the injustices that sets them off - they tend to agree with much of what's said - but they have a very…

This post was written by guest blogger Elizabeth Green Musselman.* One year ago I began producing The Missing Link, a monthly podcast on the history of science, medicine, and technology. In case you are unfamiliar with the world of podcasting, which is a type of audio blogging that began in 2005, let me give you a brief equation that will explain what I am about to do: 1 year = grizzled, world-weary podcaster experience When I was young, back in 2004, we got our history from books and articles and the occasional blog, and we liked it that way. Then along came podcasts and whole new…

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…

Preface | Pt. 1 | Pt. 2 | Pt. 3 | (Sidebar 1) | Pt. 4 | Pt. 5 | Pt. 6 Pt. 7 | (Sidebar 2a) | (Sidebar 2b) | Pt. 8 | Pt. 9 | Conclusion This post was written by new guest blogger Jason Delborne.* George Cruikshank (1836), A London Audience, from Hulton Archive/Getty Images The notion of the "public" often surfaces when we think about science. What does the public understand about science? How can we improve the scientific literacy of the public? Is there such a thing as public-interest science? How should the public hold science and scientists accountable? How do research findings affect…

By Guest Blogger: Oronte Churm. (See here for Mr. Churm's prior guest post and mini-bio.) As an undergrad, I once attended a seminar where a prof from Berkeley, if I recall correctly, showed us an animated model of the learning path of a neural network. The Navy had funded the program in hopes of developing an autonomous undersea robot that could discern rocks from explosive mines, for obvious reasons. The visual was oddly gorgeous, similar to a leaf falling erratically down though an tall cylinder--each undulation marking a self-correction--until it reached a point at bottom center, which…

This post was written by guest blogger Wyatt Galusky.* It is in homage to David Ng's Police post of yore that I invoke this album cover to inaugurate the final installment of this three-part post on mystery, the unknown, and the remainder, all loosely filtered through quotes by Theodor Adorno. The term "ghost in the machine" originates with the philosopher Gilbert Rile, who used it to mock the mind-body dualism of Rene Descartes (who claimed that the physical body was guided by the nonmaterial mind through the pineal gland). For my purposes, I want to talk less about any vestiges of…

Part 1 | 2 | 3 --- World's Fair note: This new author-meets-blogger series of posts was written by guest blogger and new father Jody Roberts, author of previous posts on endocrine disruption and organic farming research. On behalf of The World's Fair, Roberts recently sat down with Elizabeth (Lizzie) Grossman, independent journalist, to talk about her book High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxins, and Human Health. High Tech Trash has been well reviewed and well received. All the while, as we were making reference to it in a post on "What We Waste," Grossman was contributing to…

By Guest Blogger: Oronte Churm. World's Fair friend, the venerable, unparalleled Mr. Churm, is our guest for the day, contributing the post below. He is the author of a top notch blog over at InsideHigherEd.com (called "The Education of Oronte Churm") and one of my favorite sub-features at McSweeney's, "Dispatches From Adjunct Faculty at a Large State University." Of the 15 dispatches, I might highlight #10, On Repose, as a personal favorite. If it isn't clear from those references, Mr. Churm is in fact a real-deal writer who teaches in the English department at a big state university. He…

This post written by guest blogger Jody Roberts.* What, you say, how can this be? What could Michigan and Michigan St. possibly be battling over in the middle of summer? No, it's not preseason football; it's not even sport fishing. The battle today, my friends (as highlighted here in The Ann Arbor News and here on UM's website), is about organic farming. So, in some sense we have a double header: organic farming vs. 'conventional' farming and Michigan vs. Michigan State. At issue: just how competitive is organic farming compared to petroleum-based farming? Well, according to a new study by…

This post was written by guest blogger Wyatt Galusky.* A Mouse, a Bird, a Cat and a Girl Hold Forth. A Provocation, with Digressions. "An object never goes into its concept without leaving a remainder." Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics So, this quote by Adorno, ever since I encountered it several years ago, has almost ceaselessly rattled around in my brain. The meaning of the quote itself can be parsed quite finely. But I am more interested here in the implications. What of the remainder? That is, if we assume that scientific knowledge seeks to articulate a clear understanding of the…

World's Fair note: This post was written by guest blogger Michael Egan, whom you might recall was the subject of our first author-meets-blogger contribution. See here for background on Egan. Another tour of author-meets-blogger, though with a twist: here we have an author-meets- guest-blogger-and-former-author. Affection for wilderness, Roderick Frazier Nash and others have told us, is as American as apple pie (which, as a Canadian, I never really got--the apple pie part, not the wilderness part). The point is: it's key. And now there's a new book on the history of wilderness creation in…

This post was written by Jody Roberts.* After more than a decade of anticipation, the EPA released a draft list of possible endocrine disrupting chemicals that will be subject to a new screening protocol - this according to a new brief in Environmental Science and Technology. So, those of you who've been following this topic from its media peak back in the days of Our Stolen Future might assume that we'd find chemicals like bisphenol-A or classes of chemicals like phthalates - both of which have been the subject of tremendous amounts of research recently. But, well, that's not the case.…

This post was written by Wyatt Galusky.* If you love the earth too, buy, buy, buy. So, I suppose it had to happen at some point - the Sam's Club model of environmentalism. Buy More (consumables imprinted with the imprimatur of the Earth). Save More (of aforementioned planet). Alex Williams reports in Sunday's New York Times on the burgeoning commoditization of the environmental movement, and the various views people have taken on this process. This on the heels of the two biggest big box stores - Wal-mart and Home Depot - taking the "green" plunge. As a committed environmentalist, I have…