science popularization
vlicata | May 19, 2013I was discussing SciArt on several occasions with different people recently and was fishing for a way to classify different SciArt in order to make a particular point - the point being that the type of SciArt I find most interesting and valuable is in the minority. Basically, it seems there are 3 (or maybe 4) general types of SciArt: informational, inspirational, and degradational. I should note that mostly I am talking about SciArt that is performed - mostly plays and movies. Although probably some variant of this can be applied to visual arts or music and such.
Degradational is when the…
vlicata | September 4, 2011The "Dance Your Ph.D." contest is on again for 2011. This unusual and highly interesting experiment in science outreach continues to be shepherded by John Bohannon, and continues to attract new sponsors -- this years sponsor is TEDx Brussels.
So what is this? Basically: you create an interpretive dance that "explains" your Ph.D. research and videotape it. Sounds easy, eh? No words, no powerpoint, just dancing. And you want the audience to walk away with a reasonable understanding of what you did or are currently doing your Ph.D. on. Send in a video and John will collect them all on his…
vlicata | June 23, 2011Reblogitation (pronounced with a "j" sound for the "g", of course): the blogospheric phenomenon of reposting, and re-reposting, and re-re-reposting the information from the "apparent first" or "most snarky" report (or blog post) about a news item.
Mother-post: the "apparent first" or "most snarky" report of an item, that then provides "the facts" for most of the other stories about that item online (even those that don't reference or link to the mother-post).
The flurry of recent news about the question "Should evolution be taught in public schools?" that was asked of the recent crop of MIss…
vlicata | March 24, 2011The chair of the Theatre Dept. here at LSU and I have begun co-producing a new "SciArt Conversation Series" here at LSU -- where we get scientists and artists on stage together at the same time for informal presentations of their work. We are trying to pick combinations that have some sort of real or semantic overlap. Our first one, which we just called "Silk", had an entomologist talking about the evolution of spiders and spider silk along with a choreographer and two dancers demonstrating and explaining dance moves on hanging silks.
This first one had a small but very vocal and…
vlicata | July 31, 2010There is one month to go to submit to the 2010 "Dance Your Ph.D" Contest! Entries are due by September 1st. My lab previously won in the Professor category, so I get to be one of the judges for the 2010 contest. This is our dance from the 2009 contest:
And what we won was: a real dance! Jenn Liang Chaboud, a real choreographer in Chicago, created a dance based on one of our lab's publications in JBC, here is the dance she created:
This is Science: Jenn Liang Chaboud from Red Velvet Swing on Vimeo.
The two muscular guys are Klenow and Klentaq DNA polymerases, the women are all DNA.
THIS…
bcohen | May 5, 2009The World's Fair is pleased to offer the following discussion about The Caveman Mystique: Pop-Darwinism and the Debates Over Sex, Violence, and Science (Routledge, 2007), with its author Martha McCaughey. McCaughey is a Professor of Sociology and the Director of Women's Studies at Appalachian State University.
Professor McCaughey's work fits at the intersections of gender, sexuality, science, technology, social movements, and the media. I first met her during her tenure at Virginia Tech, where she distinguished herself as a leading feminist scholar in science studies, an atypically…