But, in all honesty, given Campbell’s 9% approval rating and his recent attempt to buy back support with the voter’s own money, this isn’t particularly shocking.  I’m curious what Terry readers think about his resign. I hope that with a new driver at the wheel, the provincial government might reconsider how it’s been funding provincial [...]

Plastic Bags, 2007     60×72″

Depicts 60,000 plastic bags, the number used in the US every five seconds

Dave Ng loves Chris Jordan, and so do I.  Lucky for us, his series, “An American Self-Portrait“, a visual investigation of American “statistical” life, will be on view at SFU in early [...]

Do you often find yourself asking, “Oh, shit, what was that element song called again?  The one with the guy with the accent, and the alliterations?”  Well, I do.  Often.  So, I thought a post might be an appropriate place to act as a repository for all such goofball science videos on youtube.

First, my [...]

Parody of “Most Beautiful Girl in the Room” by Flight of the Conchords

Filmed by PhD students in the Tetrad Graduate Program at UCSF for an annual departmental retreat.

We’ve arrived on board the J. P Tully, and have finished loading all of our personal effects and scientific gear onto the ship.  After a brief stint in Sydney for dinner and to peruse a couple of used book shops, a few of us are back on board taking stock of [...]

(source – Inhabitat)

From Times Online:

Bill Gates, the Microsoft billionaire, is funding research into machines to suck up ten tonnes of seawater every second and spray it upwards. This would seed vast banks of white clouds to reflect the Sun’s rays away from Earth.

The British and American scientists [...]

Funding supplied by: Facebook.

The real joke is the $10 price tag.

(link)

…and I did (during Alan’s lecture in today’s ASIC class).

How much does a first edition copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: the Modern Prometheus cost?   A cool $170 grand.

Is pigeon kosher? Yes (but ostriches aren’t)!

What does a GloFish look like? It glows (under a [...]

A student in tonight’s class brought up the story of an artist implanting an ear onto his arm (reminiscent of the ear on a Vacanti mouse).  I did a bit of googling, and found his website (here).  His name is Stelarc.  Here’s his ear:

From the BBC:

The ear does not [...]

As Dave noted in class this evening, a study published in 1997 demonstrated that human mate choice was based partially on a protein found in human urine.  Given this study is almost 15 years old, I decided to check Web of Science for any new literature on the subject.  A review came up, “An [...]

With issues of sustainability behind us, and big agro on deck for this week’s ASIC class, I thought I’d share with you the following graph of food production in the US (care of Sociological Images; click through for larger versions):

Notice the high levels of production of chickens throughout the southeast. This [...]

From (strangely enough) the International Business Times:

The Indian government has moved to establish its own body to address and monitor science surrounding climate change, saying it “cannot rely” on the official United Nation panel.

The move is a severe blow to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) following the revelation parts [...]

This in the from VAG – the show opens this Saturday.

Leonardo da Vinci was the quintessential Renaissance man. He explored the world with an unrivalled spirit of curiosity, making discoveries centuries ahead of his time. Leonardo appears to have collaborated with the University of Pavia to participate in dissections of corpses, which in the [...]

“Punkin Chunkin, for Christ’s sake,” added Bunting, referring to the popular program in which contestants launch oversized pumpkins into the air using catapults. “What more do you people want?”

also:

“People liked that the particle accelerators were really huge, but apparently the show didn’t have enough smashing to hold their interest,” said a former employee [...]

From Copenhagen:

“The diplomatic snub was obvious and brutal, as was the practical implication: several times during the session, the world’s most powerful heads of state were forced to wait around as the Chinese delegate went off to make telephone calls to his “superiors”…

…I am certain that had the Chinese not been in the [...]

When the CBC asked whether the success of the climate talks [currently undergoing at Copenhagen] would depend on the ability of China and the United States to come to an agreement, I watched Kenya’s environmental minster reply, “That is bullshit.”

I think he summed up the conference quite succinctly.

Have you read Vancouver is Awesome? If not, go read it.

I’ll wait. Take your time, explore the website, check out the interviews with Dan Mangan, George Stroumboulopoulos, or Douglas Coupland.  Big fan of dogs?  They do dogs, they do Japadogs, and most other things that make Vancouver [...]