tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10302204330258940482024-03-13T22:01:57.055-04:00AmericanScience: A Team BlogDavid Roth Singermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12841041983824755867noreply@blogger.comBlogger345125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-17803827648711720222015-09-13T13:40:00.001-04:002015-09-13T13:42:51.719-04:00We've moved to americanscienceblog.com!<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="281" mozallowfullscreen="" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/117375257" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="500"></iframe><br />
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Hi readers!<br />
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As you may have noticed, we've got a new home. From now on, your burning need for expert commentary on STS and the history of science will officially be satisfied by our elegant new site, at our elegant new address: <a href="http://americanscienceblog.com/">americanscienceblog.com</a>.<br />
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We have a lot of exciting plans that we're looking forward to bringing to you on the new platform. There will be reading groups on classic articles, press-hot book reviews, and expanded coverage both thematically and temporally. And fear not: all of our previous posts (and the posts of American Science bloggers emeriti) can also be found at the new site. (This old site isn't going anywhere, so links will still work.) <br />
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If you haven't been keeping up with us over the summer, there are plenty of links you've missed, all available at the new site. And we've now started posting our favorites daily, rather than weekly, so there's already tons of material to help you get your semester's procrastination off to a solid start. And as always, we're on twitter at <a href="http://twitter.com/americansciblog" target="_blank">@americansciblog</a>. <br />
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See you at <a href="http://americanscienceblog.com/">americanscienceblog.com</a>!<br />
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—David, Jenna, Leah, and Evan David Roth Singermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12841041983824755867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-70423066961899037732015-05-01T17:30:00.002-04:002015-05-01T17:30:35.276-04:00Lost Museums Conference @ Brown, May 6-8<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7dE2ZefCAhs/VUPv6Mbt4xI/AAAAAAAAAWk/8A3fsAeSBz4/s1600/presenterguide_lostmuseumssymposium.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7dE2ZefCAhs/VUPv6Mbt4xI/AAAAAAAAAWk/8A3fsAeSBz4/s1600/presenterguide_lostmuseumssymposium.jpg" height="222" width="320" /></a></div>
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American Science alum Lukas Rieppel has extended a warm invitation to readers of this blog to visit Brown University for the upcoming Lost Museums
conference from <span class="aBn" data-term="goog_1870178435" tabindex="0"><span class="aQJ">May 6th - May 8th</span></span>.
The symposium will kick off with an artist's talk by Andrew Yang from
the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, followed by a reception at
RISD's Nature Lab. Then, there will be two days of talks on the theme of
"lost museums" -- which includes the death and deterioration of
museums, the afterlives of collections, and questions about
ephemerality, impermanence, and inauthenticity. In addition to Andrew
Yang, there will also be keynote presentations by Elizabeth Merritt from
the Center for the Future of Museums, as well as noted the installation
artist and photographer Rosamond Purcell.</div>
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Registration (free!) is encouraged, but not required. (We're also told that nobody will be
checking tickets, so feel free to attend even if you don't manage to
register.)</div>
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See <a href="https://lostmuseumsymposium.wordpress.com/">here</a> more information on speakers and logistics. </div>
<br />leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05917318456021402017noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-60048533917366368692015-04-20T09:58:00.004-04:002015-04-20T09:58:48.086-04:00Links for Monday, April 20, 2015<style>
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<li>Art + cultural studies + data analytics + Instagram: a visual history of <a href="http://www.the-everyday.net/" target="_blank">everyday life in Kiev during the Ukranian revolution</a>, from Lev Manovich and his lab.</li>
<li>Participants in the Digital Public Library of America's <a href="http://dp.la/info/get-involved/dplafest/april-2015/" target="_blank">DLPAfest </a>discussed "everything from technology and development, to (e)books, law, genealogy, and education." Peruse <a href="https://digitalpubliclibraryofamerica.atlassian.net/wiki/display/DPLAfest2015/DPLAfest+2015+Home" target="_blank">notes from the meeting</a> here.</li>
<li> <a href="http://www.alicedreger.com/" target="_blank">Alice Dreger</a>, a bioethicist and historian of medicine, made <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/04/17/what-happened-when-a-medical-professor-live-tweeted-her-sons-sex-ed-class-on-abstinence/" target="_blank">national headlines</a> earlier this week when she live tweeted her son's abstinence-only sex ed class. Check out <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/books/review/galileos-middle-finger-by-alice-dreger.html?_r=0" target="_blank">New York Times's review </a>of Dreger's latest book, <i><a href="http://thepenguinpress.com/book/galileos-middle-finger-heretics-activists-and-the-search-for-justice-in-science/" target="_blank">Galileo's Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science</a></i>, in which Dreger reflects on the role of academics in social movements.</li>
<li>A Kickstarter for Kidneys? A <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/04/should-patients-be-able-to-find-organ-donors-on-facebook/390144/" target="_blank">recent case in Belgium </a>has raised ethical questions about using social media to find an organ donor (without the waiting list).</li>
<li>Five years ago today, BP and Transocean's Deepwater Horizon
drilling platform exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, resulting in a
catastrophe that scientists are still trying to understand and measure.
Watch artist and science communicator Perrin Ireland's <a href="http://grist.org/news/this-gorgeous-video-will-remind-you-what-an-ugly-mess-the-bp-oil-spill-made/" target="_blank">video</a> that explains how scientists continue to respond to the ongoing crisis. </li>
<li>Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg recently named <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/03/steven-weinberg-13-best-science-books-general-reader" target="_blank">thirteen classic science books</a> for the general reader in an article for <i>The Guardian</i>,
that is itself a sort of super-brief history of science (from a very
particular perspective). Fortunately the historian of science Rebekah
Higgitt also writes for the newspaper. She <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/science/the-h-word/2015/apr/04/an-alternative-13-best-books-about-science" target="_blank">has pointed out the </a><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/science/the-h-word/2015/apr/04/an-alternative-13-best-books-about-science" target="_blank">presentist rhetoric of the piece</a> and suggests some updates to the list of books. </li>
<li>This month's <a href="http://www.e-flux.com/issues/64-april-2015/" target="_blank">issue of e-flux</a>,
the online art theory magazine, includes a number of good essays about infrastructure and technology as they relate to sovereignty and
capitalism in the twenty-first century. </li>
<li>A group of academics, scientists, and environmental activists this week published the <a href="http://www.ecomodernism.org/manifesto/" target="_blank">Ecomodernist Manifesto</a>,
a call not to scale back global human development efforts (farming,
energy extraction, etc), but rather to intensify these efforts in ways
that somehow "use less land and interfere less with the natural world."
See the New York Times's coverage <a href="http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/04/15/business/an-environmentalist-call-to-look-past-sustainable-development.html?_r=4&referrer" target="_blank">here</a>.</li>
<li>A handful of mutual funds often owns large fractions of several companies in the same industry. Economists at Charles River Associates and the University of Michigan have made <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2427345" target="_blank">a novel and radical argument</a>: that these funds <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/view_from_chicago/2015/04/mutual_funds_make_air_travel_more_expensive_institutional_investors_reduce.html" target="_blank">function like Gilded Age trusts</a>, reducing competition and raising prices for the rest of us.</li>
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David Roth Singermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12841041983824755867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-57093691555202012902015-04-13T13:03:00.000-04:002015-04-13T13:03:59.398-04:00Links for Monday, April 13, 2015<style>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/wbur/2926259123">Jeff Lichtman/Harvard University</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a>, via theconversation.com</span></td></tr>
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<li>"<i><a href="http://www.backtothesustainablefuture.net/" target="_blank">Back to the Sustainable Future</a>: Visions of Sustainability in the History of Design</i> explores the historical conditions for, and development of, sustainable design."</li>
<li>Neat <a href="http://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/timelines/diseases-and-vaccines" target="_blank">timeline of the history of vaccines</a> from the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.</li>
<li>A weird <a href="http://gawker.com/the-food-babe-blogger-is-full-of-shit-1694902226?rev=1428349613882" target="_blank">feud</a> has erupted in the blogosphere between the "food babe" and the "science babe." What would <a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo3631967.html" target="_blank" title="Stephen Greenblatt">Stephen Greenblatt</a>
say about this particular moment of modern self-fashioning, especially
the use of femininity and sexuality to bolster authority and power?</li>
<li>April's <i>Scientific American</i> features this <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/graphic-science-the-bird-family-tree-gets-a-makeover/" target="_blank">infographic</a>
of bird evolution, which incorporates recent genetic analysis that has
rearranged the avian tree. Falcons, for example, are more closely
related to parrots than eagles!</li>
<li>Architecture critic <a href="https://artforum.com/inprint/issue=201504&id=50735" target="_blank">Rem Koolhaas</a> weighs in on the implications of the spread of the "smart city."</li>
<li>Meanwhile, America's first <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/realestate/the-passive-house-in-new-york-city.html" target="_blank">"passive buildings"</a> or housing complexes with no active heating or cooling systems, are open for business in NYC.</li>
<li>Since the early 1960s, biological workhorse GFP (also known as green fluorescent protein) has been <a href="https://theconversation.com/fluorescent-proteins-light-up-science-by-making-the-invisible-visible-39272" target="_blank">making the laboratory a more colorful place</a>.</li>
<li>Last week ActiveHistory.ca ran a great series of posts about infectious
disease, contagion, and the dilemma of the "anti-vaxxer." Check out the
introduction by series editors Jim Clifford, Erikca Dyck, and Ian Mosby <a href="http://activehistory.ca/2015/03/theme-week-infectious-disease-contagion-and-the-history-of-vaccines/" target="_blank">here.</a> A favorite is this <a href="http://activehistory.ca/2015/04/animal-matter-the-making-of-pure-bovine-vaccine-at-the-connaught-laboratories-and-farm-at-the-turn-of-the-century/" target="_blank">post by Joanna Dean</a> on the use of animals, particularly cows, in the process of vaccine production.</li>
<li>The postdoc system in the sciences, like the adjunct system in the humanities, <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/the-future-of-the-postdoc-1.17253" target="_blank">is broken</a>. (Unless you are a major research university, of course, in which case it works extremely well for you.)</li>
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David Roth Singermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12841041983824755867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-83416597824542550992015-04-07T12:41:00.001-04:002015-04-07T12:41:27.656-04:00Links for Tuesday, April 7, 2015<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<li>A company called <a href="http://www.hybridairvehicles.com/" target="_blank">Hybrid Air Vehicles</a> is <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/30/worlds-largest-aircraft-looking-for-investors-to-give-it-liftoff" target="_blank">raising money</a> for a humongous vehicle called the Airlander 10, a combination of airship and powered plane that can stay aloft for weeks. Related concepts have been around a long time—in the U.S., since at least 1863. In the U.S., it's been sustained by the Aereon Corporation: a small group of engineers, pilots, and aircraft builders around Princeton, N.J., which is where the New Yorker's John McPhee found out about it. With his typically wonderful style, McPhee wrote about Aereon's efforts in his 1973 book <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780374516352-4" target="_blank"><i>The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed</i></a>. (Go buy the book; it's one of McPhee's best.) Aereon was still around in 2010, when Flying Magazine <a href="http://www.flyingmag.com/william-miller/flying-lessons-true-believers" target="_blank">wrote about it</a>. (The Airlander <a href="http://youtu.be/w8sGP7iB-5c" target="_blank">first flew</a> in Lakehurst; is the Garden State the airship capital of the world?)</li>
<li>Fukushima and Bhopal were highly visible tragedies. But how do you dramatize a brownfield? Scholar-artist Max Liboiron writes <a href="http://discardstudies.com/2015/03/27/visually-representing-slow-disasters/" target="_blank">on environmental slow disasters</a>.</li>
<li>Kids: keep reading your critical theory, and you, too, can become an online billionaire. The <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/5/20/5730762/buzzfeeds-founder-used-to-write-marxist-theory-and-it-explains" target="_blank">techno-Marxist vision behind Buzzfeed</a>.</li>
<li>The Explorers Club, an international organization that strives to
promote field research and "preserve the instinct to explore," grapples
with what it means to be <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/science/explorers-club-dinner-modern-explorer.html" target="_blank">an explorer in the GPS age.</a> </li>
<li>Steven
Keating, a graduate student at MIT, saved his own life. By collecting
and analyzing his medical data (including a scan of his brain), Keating
correctly <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/01/technology/the-healing-power-of-your-own-medical-data.html" target="_blank">diagnosed himself with a brain tumor</a>. Physicians hold Keating up as a model of the patient of the future, who will demand better data (and will also become an <a href="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/02/using-patient-data-to-democratize-medical-discovery/?_r=2" target="_blank">active participant</a> in medical research).</li>
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David Roth Singermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12841041983824755867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-57599120244728889272015-04-02T08:41:00.000-04:002015-04-02T08:41:00.452-04:00Celebrating 50 Years of JAS-Bio<div class="p1">
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This past weekend in New Haven, Yale hosted the 50<span class="s1"><sup>th</sup></span> annual Joint Atlantic Seminar for the History of Biology, known colloquially as JAS-Bio. Since 1965, the seminar has been hosted by institutions up and down the Eastern seaboard. JAS-Bio is a unique setting where historians of biology at all stages of their careers can meet and interact. While all the papers are given by graduate students, the audience is a great mix of senior faculty, early career scholars, and graduate students from many different institutions. This makes JAS-Bio an ideal venue for graduate students to receive feedback on their research, both from their peers and from more established scholars.</div>
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Polly Winsor, the esteemed historian of biology, published <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/238015?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents"><span style="color: blue;">a short history</span></a> of the seminar in <i>Isis </i>in 1999. Winsor describes the seminar as a small, friendly, and supportive environment in which students could “try their wings in circumstances less daunting than the annual meeting of HSS.” This year’s meeting was no exception. After each paper, the audience of over fifty people had an abundance of friendly feedback for the speakers. There were so many questions, in fact, that some session chairs had to forbid speakers from responding in order to collect all of the comments. The intellectual exchange didn’t stop there. At coffee breaks, meals, and receptions, I heard speakers field questions about their talks and discuss their larger research projects (including one lively conversation that carried on well after midnight). As compared to larger national meetings, there really is something unique about the type of intellectual engagement that happens at JAS-Bio. The seminar provides the time and space for extended conversation that can get drowned out in a larger conference setting. The regular attendees also take the seminar’s tradition of supporting graduate students very seriously, and it shows.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Reminiscing about fifty years of JAS-Bio. Photo Credit: Daniel Liu.</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>On Saturday, ten talks were delivered by students from Johns Hopkins, Yale, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, UW Madison, Brown, and Princeton (check out the program <a href="http://hshm.yale.edu/joint-atlantic-seminar-history-biology"><span style="color: blue;">here</span></a>). The papers covered everything from the biochemistry of the cell membrane (Daniel Liu, UW Madison) to the economics of goldfish breeding (Laurel Waycott, Yale). I learned why the disappearing pinky toe has become a ubiquitous symbol of human evolution (Emily Kern, Princeton) and how the discovery of echolocation grew out of military research on sonar and radar during WWII (Richard Nash, Johns Hopkins). I would say there was an even split between intellectual history and social/cultural history, with some speakers dabbling in intellectual frameworks such as disability studies and the history of capitalism. What struck me was not only the high quality of all of the papers, but also the growing awareness among graduate students about what makes a good presentation. Shira Shmuely (MIT), for example, took advantage of Powerpoint to show off her amazing archival find: handwritten laboratory inspection notebooks from late Victorian Britain. Speakers also shared a lot of jokes and light-hearted anecdotes, which was fitting given the relaxed tone of the meeting (also, I just really enjoy puns).</div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>My favorite part of the day was the final session. Henry Cowles, AmericanScience alum and co-organizer of the conference, invited audience members up by “cohort” (the year they first attended the meeting) to reminisce and reflect on their experience. Over the next hour, audience members sketched out an informal history of the seminar and, in the process, the history of the discipline. Three members of the audience - Everett Mendelesohn, Garland Allen, and Ruth Cowan - had attended the original 1965 meeting at Yale. They recalled the department’s hospitality as well as the intellectual generosity of the original gathering. Research in the conference archive (held at the Smithsonian) revealed that two of the graduate students originally slated to give papers that day were unable to do so when time for discussion ran short. They were apparently quite relieved, however, as they had been roped into giving talks by their advisor and didn’t actually have anything prepared!</div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>In her history, Winsor highlights the role of JAS-Bio as a “training ground” for young scholars giving their first academic paper. The tradition continued at this year’s seminar. The program included four first-year graduate students and one incredibly impressive undergraduate (Eliza Cohen, Brown). Indeed, the list of scholars who gave their first academic paper at JAS-Bio is impressive: Ruth Cowan, Gar Allen, Steven Shapin, Bernie Lightman, Rob Koehler, Jane Maienschein, John Harley Warner, Janet Brown, and Jim Secord, among many others. In reminiscing, these scholars recalled the nerve-wracking experience of delivering their first papers (tenured professors - they’re just like us!). Bernie Lightman was afraid that his mother (in attendance) was going embarrass him by asking a question; John Harley Warner was worried that the smart British girl who presented before him would make him look bad (it was Janet Browne). Pam Henson, scheduled to present her first paper after taking three days of oral exams, tried to escape the lecture hall (but was dragged back in by one of her professors). </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Leonard Wilson was the co-founder of JAS-Bio (along with Frederic Holmes). Reflecting on the seminar's history in 1999, he said: "Clearly the Joint Atlantic Seminar filled a need, unexpected but real, that was not met
by national meetings. It was the need of students working in relative isolation to talk about
their work, to meet others engaged in similar problems, and to exchange ideas and information.
When Frederic Holmes and I were planning the first Joint Atlantic Seminar, we
thought that if it were not a good idea, the meeting simply need not be repeated. So far it
has been worth repeating."</td></tr>
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This exercise in collective memory also turned up a host of other entertaining anecdotes. When Stony Brook hosted JAS-Bio in 1994, James Watson was invited to give short opening remarks, which ballooned into a forty-minute lecture on the history of biology. As Nathaniel Comfort recalled, Watson’s speech was “interesting to [historians of biology] in ways that he could not even imagine.” Sharon Kingsland described eleven-hour drives from Toronto and groups of graduate students lounging around the seminar room listening to Janis Joplin (before getting busted by their advisors). In 2009, graduate students had to work together to help a fellow speaker who locked himself out of his room wearing only a towel (while his clothes and talk remained inside). At the very end of the day, Luis Campos opened a package containing the very first advance copy of his book, fresh from the publisher. Luis explained that he wanted to share the accomplishment with his JAS-Bio family, who had been there since the beginning of the project. Put together, all of these anecdotes demonstrate the role that JAS-Bio has played not just intellectually, but socially, in the creation of a history of biology community. I can attest to the fact that the meetings are a great venue for forging friendships across institutions. This is true not only of JAS-Bio but its many siblings, including the Joint Atlantic Seminar for the History of Medicine (JAS-Med), the Midwest Junto for the History of Science, and Phun-Day (the Harvard-Princeton-MIT History of Physical Sciences Workshop).</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="p1">
With so much reflection on JAS-Bio’s history, we weren’t left with much time to reflect on its future. Upon studying the list of this year’s participants and their first JAS-Bio appearances, one scholar noted that there was a conspicuous gap between 1965 and 1978. What happened to the scholars who had first presented during those years? Someone suggested that the gap could be explained by the dismal job market during that time, a comment that was not lost on current graduate students facing our own job market crisis. As more historians of biology find employment outside of the academy, or forge hybrid careers, JAS-Bio has the potential to bridge the academic/non-academic divide by bringing together the largest possible number of historians of biology (regardless of academic appointment) at least once a year. And while I don’t pretend to know which new framework will preoccupy us ten, twenty, or thirty years down the line (if I did, I would write a book about it!), this year’s papers indicate that graduate students are not afraid to push the discipline in exciting new directions. Here’s to another fifty years of fun, friendship, and exciting ideas in the history of biology.</div>
Jennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08919705479619555709noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-51785852456063655022015-03-31T09:37:00.000-04:002015-03-31T09:37:30.345-04:00So Tell Me About TSCA Reform, Part II<style>
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<br />
For an overview of the recent history of chemical regulation in America and the proposals to restructure it currently under consideration by the Senate, see <a href="http://americanscience.blogspot.com/2015/03/so-tell-me-about-tsca-reform.html">my post of last Friday</a>.<br />
<br />
In this post, I'll get into a little more detail on how these two bills, Udall-Vitter and Boxer-Markey, deal with several of the issues at the heart of calls to reform the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). As I covered in my previous post, the Udall-Vitter bill stands a better chance of being approved in something close to its current form, so I will discuss this bill in more detail. <br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Lc_fvpOBXF0/VRoAWVX06qI/AAAAAAAAAsQ/RqfQ0o2iWB8/s1600/150318-boxerudall-editorial.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Lc_fvpOBXF0/VRoAWVX06qI/AAAAAAAAAsQ/RqfQ0o2iWB8/s1600/150318-boxerudall-editorial.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Tom Udall (D-NM), the sponsors of the two competing bills to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act currently under consideration in the Senate.<br />
<a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/03/18/green-groups-split-on-competing-chemical-reform-bills">http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/03/18/green-groups-split-on-competing-chemical-reform-bills</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Once again, I'm drawing on the <a href="http://www.lawbc.com/regulatory-developments/entry/tsca-reform-detailed-analysis-of-frank-r.-lautenberg-chemical-safety-for-th">analyses</a> of <a href="http://www.lawbc.com/regulatory-developments/entry/tsca-reform-detailed-analysis-of-the-alan-reinstein-and-trevor-schaefer-tox">each bill</a> published by Bergeson & Campbell, a law firm that assists chemical firms with TSCA compliance.* In case you're interested, you can find links to full text of the two bills <a href="http://www.khlaw.com/resources.aspx?show=TSCA">here</a>.<br />
<br />
<b>Review of chemicals currently in use</b><br />
<br />
The primary aim of TSCA was to ensure that new chemicals would be subject to careful evaluation before they were introduced into commercial use. One EPA staffer summarized the goal of the law as simply "no new <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polychlorinated_biphenyl">PCBs</a>."<br />
<br />
After years of negotiations, the authors of the bill made a crucial compromise that gained them the support of representatives of chemical industry interests. Under TSCA, chemicals already in commerce as of the late 1970s would be gathered into a master inventory of "existing substances" not subject to immediate evaluation or control. They were all supposed to be reviewed eventually, but according to less stringent standards than new substances, within an unspecified timeframe.<br />
<br />
Predictably, the EPA ended up dedicating the vast majority of its TSCA resources to fulfilling the statutory mandate that it review new chemicals immediately. Eventually, the agency developed voluntary procedures according to which chemical firms review some of the substances that they produced and used in especially high quantities. However, only very recently has the agency begun to develop a procedure for sifting through the backlog of pre-1980 chemicals whose safety has never been assessed and select those of greatest concern for evaluation.<br />
<br />
Udall-Vitter would introduce a two-stage procedure to deal with this backlog. First, the law would "reset" the inventory of existing substances. Within a year and a half of the law's passage, firms would be required to submit the set of chemicals from this list that they had used or sold within the past 10 years. All of these recently-used chemicals would be designated as <b>active</b> chemicals. The EPA would work its way through the list of active chemicals, assigning them to <b>high-priority</b> and <b>low-priority</b> categories.**<br />
<br />
Chemicals with the potential for high hazard or widespread exposure could be designated as high priority (chemicals with potential for <i>both </i>high hazard and widespread exposure <i>must</i> be so designated). Chemicals could be designated low-priority only if the EPA has "information sufficient to establish that the chemical substance is likely to meet the applicable safety standard."<br />
<br />
Under Udall-Vitter, <b>within seven years</b> after a chemical is classified as high-priority, it would be subject to assessment and regulation "to ensure that the chemical substance meets the safety standard … or, if the safety standard cannot be met with the application of restrictions, ban or phase out the chemical substance." The seven-year window includes three years for completing the safety assessment, two years for writing rules, and two years of wiggle room.<br />
<br />
Udall-Vitter also includes benchmarks for beginning to populate these lists: at least twenty chemicals must be added to each list within three years of the bill's passage, and at least twenty-five within five years. The benchmarks for <i>completing</i> this process, however, are squishy - the EPA is required to publish an annual goal for priority screenings and to "make every effort" to screen all active substances "in a timely manner."<br />
<br />
Boxer-Markey takes a similar approach on an accelerated schedule, mandating that evaluations of high-priority chemicals be completed in two years, rather than three, and that fifteen chemicals be added to the high-priority list within <i>each</i> of the first four years after the law's passage (two to three times as many as Udall-Vitter). Furthermore, for every high-priority chemical evaluation completed, three new substances would be added to the high-priority list. (Boxer-Markey would use the cost of keeping to this schedule as the basis for setting fees on chemical companies to pay for carrying out these evaluations.)<br />
<br />
The high-priority lists also plays a significant role in how Udall-Vitter deals with the relationship between chemical regulation at the state and federal levels - more on this below.<br />
<br />
<b>Testing requirements and funding</b><br />
<br />
The European chemical safety framework, REACH, specifies a particular "base set" of toxicological tests to be used in the evaluation of all chemicals produced in large quantities. TSCA does not specify any such mandatory tests for new chemicals, nor does it specify any way of paying for testing.<br />
<br />
Udall-Vitter does not add any such mandatory tests; as under TSCA, the EPA must determine that testing is necessary in a case-by-case basis. The particular tests that the EPA uses to assess chemical safety and toxicity are to be determined by the agency and reassessed on a regular basis, rather than written into the law. (I covered an apparent regulatory catch-22 related to this situation <a href="http://americanscience.blogspot.com/2015/03/so-tell-me-about-tsca-reform.html">on Friday</a>).<br />
<br />
However, the new bill does provide a mechanism for paying for these tests. Under Udall-Vitter, the EPA would be authorized to charge chemical manufacturers and processors fees generating a total of no more than $18 million per year.*** These fees would be used to provide "a sustainable source of funds" defraying approximately 25% of the costs of enforcing the act (including chemical testing). The section authorizing these fees would expire in ten years unless reauthorized by Congress.<br />
<br />
Boxer-Markey has no such cap on the fees that the EPA can charge to manufacturers.<br />
<br />
<b>Should EPA decisions pre-empt stricter state regulations?</b><br />
<br />
This question is the central point of debate between the sponsors of the dueling bills. Chemical industry groups support Udall-Vitter in large part because it promises to replace the growing patchwork of state-level regulations on specific chemical substances with uniform federal standards. Boxer and Markey want to maintain the authority of states to regulate the use of chemicals more strictly - an authority that Senator Boxer's home state of California has employed particularly actively. <a href="http://www.ag.ny.gov/pdfs/S%20697%20Letter%20States%203%2016%2015%20FINAL.pdf">Attorneys General of several states</a> have echoed this defense of state regulatory authority.<br />
<br />
Under Udall-Vitter, chemicals designated as high-priority would be off-limits to state regulation. Furthermore, if a state were to restrict any chemical not yet designated high-priority, that chemical would be subjected immediately to a prioritization screening in which the EPA could take impact on interstate commerce into consideration. A manufacturer could also request EPA screening of any chemical subject to state regulation (the manufacturer would have to pay the full cost of such screening). A chemical designated high-priority as the result of such screening would be exempt from state regulation, like chemicals already on the high-priority list.<br />
<br />
The current language of the bill leaves an important ambiguity as to when this pre-emption of state law would take effect. It is not clear whether state restrictions would be invalidated as soon as the chemical is designated as high-priority, or only after the EPA completes its assessment and issues a rule regarding the substance. The California Attorney General's Office has noted that the former interpretation could lead to a perverse consequence in which chemicals currently regulated in some states and flagged by the EPA as potential hazards would be opened up to unrestricted use throughout the country for up to seven years.<br />
<br />
Boxer-Markey eliminates pre-emption entirely. A plausible speculation: proponents of the Boxer-Markey bill could negotiate an unambiguous adoption of the latter effective date of pre-emption (only after an EPA rule takes effect), perhaps accompanied by more exceptions in which state-specific restrictions could remain in effect, within the framework of Udall-Vitter.<br />
<br />
<b>Public access to information about chemicals vs. "confidential business information" claims</b><br />
<br />
Currently, there are two parts of the TSCA inventory. One is public-facing, containing information about the chemical identity of existing substances approved for use in the US. The other is a closely-held secret, containing (from the public's perspective) only generic terms for approved substances that submitting firms have claimed as trade secrets, or "confidential business information" (CBI) in the terms of the statute.<br />
<br />
Environmental and public health advocates have criticized the relative ease with which a firm can claim a substances as CBI under TSCA. Under Udall-Vitter, each existing CBI claim would need to be reaffirmed and substantiated by the chemical firms claiming the substance as a trade secret. The EPA would be required to decide upon all of these renewed claims within six years of the passage of the law (plus two further years of wiggle room). Each approved CBI claim would be valid for ten years, though it could be renewed if the ongoing significance of the substance's confidentiality could be demonstrated.<br />
<br />
Udall-Vitter also deleted a rather draconian provision in a 2013 version of the bill mandating that an EPA employee be fired for an improper disclosure of CBI, even by accident.<br />
<br />
<b>Asbestos, cost-benefit analysis, and safety standards</b><br />
<br />
As I described in Friday's post, the 1991 federal court decision invalidating the EPA's attempt to ban asbestos under TSCA is often taken as the signal failure of the law. In overturning the EPA's decision, the judge ruled that the ban failed to satisfy the act's stipulation that any control measure imposed on an existing substance involve the "least burdensome requirements" necessary to alleviate a definite "unreasonable risk."<br />
<br />
A previous reform proposal had introduced cost-benefit analysis throughout as a flexible means of assessing how "burdensome" a given regulatory measure might be in any given case. Udall-Vitter explicitly excludes cost-benefit analysis from determinations of safety. In light of the asbestos episode, it is worth quoting the bill's definition of safety in its entirety:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The term ‘safety standard’ means a standard that ensures, without taking into consideration cost or other nonrisk factors, that no unreasonable risk of harm to health or the environment will result from exposure to a chemical substance under the conditions of use.</blockquote>
The bill goes on to specify that "unreasonable risk" includes both risk to the general public and to any particularly exposed or susceptible group.<br />
<br />
However, in deciding <i>what to do</i> about a risky chemical - that is, what control measures to enact - Udall-Vitter specifies that cost-benefit analysis be applied. In other words, under Udall-Vitter, <i>epistemically</i>, safety is not a function of cost, but <i>pragmatically</i>, it is.<br />
<br />
Boxer-Markey excludes cost-benefit analysis from rule-making except when a rule is likely to have an economic impact of more than $100 million. It also fast-tracks asbestos and persistent bio-accumulative toxins (PBTs) for assessment and control.<br />
<br />
<b>Loopholes</b><br />
<br />
Under Udall-Vitter, various circumstances can exempt a chemical or product containing it from normal assessment and control procedures. For example, the EPA may exempt replacement parts containing a regulated substance from controls on that substance, as long as the object whose parts are getting replaced predates the regulation.<br />
<br />
Udall-Vitter would also authorize the EPA to exempt particular uses of a substance from general EPA regulations on that substance in cases in which the strict enforcement of the law would<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>harm national security</li>
<li>significantly disrupt the national economy</li>
<li>interfere with a critical or essential use for which no feasible safer alternative is available</li>
<li>interfere with a substantial benefit to health, the environment or public safety</li>
</ul>
<br />
<b>Come on: toxic chemicals, nefarious capitalists, fire-breathing environmentalists, tear-jerking stories of chronic illness, the dismantling of American industry, and all we get is a breakdown of legislative minutiae?</b><br />
<br />
Fine, you may have one inflammatory cartoon.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BXuEoLLqxlM/VRoAWf1AELI/AAAAAAAAAsM/PKV-sbYU3UE/s1600/TSCA-partisan-L.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BXuEoLLqxlM/VRoAWf1AELI/AAAAAAAAAsM/PKV-sbYU3UE/s1600/TSCA-partisan-L.jpg" height="182" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.ceh.org/american-health-depends-stronger-tsca-reform/">http://www.ceh.org/american-health-depends-stronger-tsca-reform/</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
---<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">* See caveat/justification at the bottom of last Friday's post.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">** Under certain specific conditions, an inactive chemical could be added to the high-priority list.</span><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">*** I think it's $18 million per year, anyway; the bill just states "not to exceed $18 million."</span></div>
Evanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18194354174479536249noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-26765617458852813202015-03-30T16:18:00.000-04:002015-03-31T14:09:05.430-04:00Links for March 30, 2015 (UPDATED)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.nybooks.com/media/photo/2015/03/11/halpern_1-040215.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.nybooks.com/media/photo/2015/03/11/halpern_1-040215.jpg" height="320" width="232" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><small>CCI/Art Archive/Art Resource via nybooks.com</small>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<ul>
<li> Inmates at a women's prison in Indiana took it upon themselves <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2015/03/indiana_women_s_prison_a_revisionist_history.html" target="_blank">to research their own prison's history</a>, and drew on their own experiences as well as published and archival evidence to radically revise a story of heroic reformers into something much darker. They've presented at conferences, <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0WaPggKV2mkYUJPS2hLNXBoVUk/view" target="_blank">published articles</a>, and are hoping to write a book.</li>
<li>When an airplane crashes, listen to James Fallows of the Atlantic and William Langewiesche of Vanity Fair. Both, but particularly Langewiesche, are excellent on the dynamics of human interactions with the enormous technological systems that are aircraft and the air-travel system. For Fallows on the Germanwings crash, read <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/03/germanwings-crash-murder-suicide-pilot/388778/" target="_blank">this</a>, and especially <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/03/pilots-on-the-germanwings-murdersuicide/388949/" target="_blank">this</a> and <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/03/more-on-the-germanwings-crash/388967/" target="_blank">this</a>. Here's Langewiesche on a similar, probably even more terrifying incident of pilot suicide, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/11/the-crash-of-egyptair-990/302332/" target="_blank">the 2001 crash of EgyptAir flight 990</a>, where he is astute about the roles of uncertainty, plausibility, and bureaucratic cultures on the art of finding out what happened to a crashed aircraft. And here is the Guardian on <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/28/germanwings-4u9525-whats-it-like-to-listen-to-black-box-recording" target="_blank">what it's like</a> to listen to a cockpit data recorder.</li>
<li>James Krupa, a biologist, recently published related essays in <i><a href="https://orionmagazine.org/article/defending-darwin/" target="_blank">Orion</a></i> and <i><a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/03/teaching_human_evolution_at_the_university_of_kentucky_there_are_some_students.single.html" target="_blank">Slate</a></i> about the challenges of teaching evolution at the University of Kentucky, where many of his students approach the "e-word" as conjecture with dangerous atheist undertones. </li>
<li>Mathematician Leif Ristroph studies patterns in biological organisms, such as the bumps that most fish species have along their sides, known as the lateral line. To understand why these bumps are typically arranged in the same way across many fish species, he <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/mathematics-fish-flow?intcid=mod-latest" target="_blank">mounted pressure sensors to polyurethane fish surrogates</a> in his lab at New York University.</li>
<li>Sensory histories of New York City: check out the Atlantic's breakdown of an <a href="http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/03/this-19th-century-stench-map-shows-how-smells-reshaped-new-york-city/388727/" target="_blank">odor map from the 1870s</a>, and while you're at it, take a look at Emily Thompson's interactive map of <a href="http://www.nycitynoise.com/" target="_blank">NYC noise during the 1920s</a>.</li>
<li>The <a href="http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-first-transhumanist-to-run-for-uk-office" target="_blank">Transhumanist Party UK</a> is a thing.</li>
<li>Concerns about the Robot Revolution--automation of everyday life at the expense of human capital--are nothing new, but has it finally arrived? Sue Halpern reviews a new book about the <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/apr/02/how-robots-algorithms-are-taking-over/" target="_blank">increasing ubiquity of machine labor</a> in the post-recession era.</li>
<li><div>
High School Historiography? An <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/03/the-problem-with-history-classes/387823/" target="_blank">essay in the <i>Atlantic</i> </a>calls
for a rejection of historical synthesis and the embrace of
historiography in high school classrooms. According to author Michael
Conway, "historiography is potentially freeing for the next generation
of students"; it allows them to pull back the curtain on how historical
narratives are constructed and understand how different versions of
American history can co-exist. This proposal is a far cry from <a href="https://www.bighistoryproject.com/home" target="_blank">Bill Gate's latest foray into historical pedagogy</a>, where students are taught a single cohesive narrative of the entire history of the universe (in just twelve weeks).</div>
</li>
<li>HistSTM March Madness Update: <a href="http://dhayton.haverford.edu/blog/2015/03/29/historystm-march-madness-round-3-bracket/" target="_blank">Round 2 is over</a>,
and we're down to the Elite Eight. The question for Round 3 is "Whose
work/contribution are you most willing to erase from history?" Will your
favorite scientist emerge victorious?? <a href="http://dhayton.haverford.edu/blog/" target="_blank">Vote here.</a></li>
</ul>
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David Roth Singermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12841041983824755867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-59507498251421491382015-03-27T09:45:00.000-04:002015-03-27T09:45:00.059-04:00So tell me about TSCA reform<style>
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<br />
Perhaps you have heard: over the past couple of weeks, the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works has begun to consider a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/03/18/us/politics/ap-us-chemical-regulation-congress.html">pair of dueling bills</a> to overhaul the regulation of chemicals in America. Perhaps you have seen this debate described under the heading of "TSCA reform." Perhaps you have wondered what TSCA is, why everybody seems to want to reform it, and what substantive differences lie behind the competing proposals for doing so.<br />
<br />
Perhaps you haven't. But you should! The bills under consideration have significant stakes for human health, the environment, and businesses that produce, processe, trade in, or use any of the tens of thousands of chemicals in American commerce. And - not to be glib about such weighty matters - chemical regulation is also pretty fun grist for nerding out.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZYHBGouBBGk/VRVAErTmWCI/AAAAAAAAArg/76yB5L222ws/s1600/Toxic-Substances-Control-Act.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZYHBGouBBGk/VRVAErTmWCI/AAAAAAAAArg/76yB5L222ws/s1600/Toxic-Substances-Control-Act.jpg" height="280" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">http://www.asbestos.com/blog/2013/08/19/asbestos-victim-advocates-against-proposed-changes-toxic-substances-law/</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In this post, I'll take you on a quick tour through the history of chemical regulation in America, the concerns that motivated the current legislative efforts, and how the two bills under consideration propose to address these concerns. In a separate post, I'll delve in a little more detail into the particular issues at play.<br />
<br />
In my discussions of the particulars of the two bills, I'm drawing on the <a href="http://www.lawbc.com/regulatory-developments/entry/tsca-reform-detailed-analysis-of-frank-r.-lautenberg-chemical-safety-for-th">analyses</a> of <a href="http://www.lawbc.com/regulatory-developments/entry/tsca-reform-detailed-analysis-of-the-alan-reinstein-and-trevor-schaefer-tox">each</a> published by Bergeson & Campbell,a law firm that assists chemical firms with TSCA compliance.* In case you're interested, you can find links to full text of the two bills <a href="http://www.khlaw.com/resources.aspx?show=TSCA">here</a>.<br />
<br />
<b>What is TSCA, anyway?</b><br />
<br />
The Toxic Substances Control Act is the legal framework for the regulation of chemical substance in commercial use in the US. It is administered by the US Environmental Protection Agency.<br />
<br />
A little background: in the US, chemicals are regulated under a patchwork of laws and agencies that has developed over the course of the 20th century. Food and drugs came first, with the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, administered (eventually) by the Food and Drugs Administration. Then came pesticide legislation, administered by the US Department of Agriculture until the EPA was created in 1970. The EPA also took charge of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), formed around the same time as the EPA, handles the regulation of chemicals in the workplace.<br />
<br />
TSCA was intended to serve as an umbrella statute, regulating the production and use of chemicals in America outside of the particular contexts addressed by this patchwork of laws and agencies. After years of negotiations, the act made it through Congress in 1976 and was signed into law by Gerald Ford in the waning days of his presidency.<br />
<br />
<b>Okay, so what are the problems with TSCA?</b><br />
<br />
There's a <a href="http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/30/5/898.full">long list</a>. The most frequently-cited:<br />
<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><b>Testing</b>. TSCA mandates that firms seeking to bring a <b>new</b> chemical to market must apply to the EPA for permission to do so and submit any relevant information. However, the manufacturer is not required to carry out any particular tests on the substance. As a result, the EPA has often had to make judgments about the safety of a new substance without the benefit of any experimental data on the substance in question.</li>
<li><b>Existing substances</b>. Alongside the mandatory evaluations of new chemicals, TSCA charged the EPA with evaluating chemical substances that were already in commerce as of the late 1970s (so-called "existing" chemicals). They were to be subject to a less stringent safety standard than that applied to new substances, but they were nevertheless to be assessed. However, just keeping up with the new substances was about all that the EPA could manage with the resources available to it, and there has continued to be an enormous backlog of chemicals whose safety has never been evaluated.</li>
<li><b>Confidential business information</b>. Information regarding most chemicals regulated under TSCA is available in a publically-accessible database. However, firms can claim a particular compound or mixture as a trade secret. Under TSCA, the EPA is required to keep "confidential business information" (CBI) regarding the structure and properties of such chemicals out of public view.</li>
</ul>
<br />
Stories about the "failure" of TSCA most often focus on <b>asbestos</b>. As is <a href="http://www.asbestosexposureschools.co.uk/pdfnewslinks/03%20JPC-SE-Position_Statement_on_Asbestos-June_4_2012-Full_Statement_and_Appendix_A.pdf">well-documented</a>, these mineral fibers, long used as fire-resistant insulation in clothing and buildings, have been found to caused lung cancer and other particularly terrible forms of lung disease. The EPA banned the substance in 1989. However, as a chemical substance whose use predated TSCA, the law's language required the EPA to demonstrate that asbestos “will present an unreasonable risk” and that the agency's regulatory action imposed the “least burdensome requirements” necessary to alleviate the risk. In 1991, a federal judge ruled that the EPA had not met these high thresholds, and overturned the ban.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-alr8yF3Bisk/VRVAzaiC-bI/AAAAAAAAAro/4SS58kiay7w/s1600/Anthophyllite_asbestos_SEM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-alr8yF3Bisk/VRVAzaiC-bI/AAAAAAAAAro/4SS58kiay7w/s1600/Anthophyllite_asbestos_SEM.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Absestos under the microscope. Scary, right? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asbestos</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>What's the background to the current reform bills?</b><br />
<br />
The asbestos episode confirmed to many within and outside the EPA that TSCA offered a very limited basis for adversarial regulation. The EPA turned to voluntary testing agreements with chemical firms to generate data; legislators and environmenal groups turned their attention elsewhere, including to state-level regulation.<br />
<br />
In the late 2000s, both the chemical industry and environmental groups began calling for reform of the law. Concern over the health dangers of substances in consumer products, such as the plastic bisphenol A (BPA), brought increased public attention to the question of chemical safety. Meanwhile, chemical firms were concerned with the accumulation of various state-level chemical regulations passed in the absence of a more robust federal statute. Environmentalists and public health advocates looked to a new EU framework for chemical regulation, REACH, as a model for legislation in the US (for more on all of this, see <a href="http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/30/5/898.full">Vogel and Roberts, 2011</a>).<br />
<br />
Two reform bills were introduced in late 2010, but failed to gain traction. In 2013, the late Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Senator David Vitter (R-LA) introduced the Chemical Safety Improvement Act. The current proposal sponsored by Vitter and Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) is based on the 2013 bill, revised to take into consideration some of the critiques of that bill by environmental and public health groups.<br />
<br />
<b>Ok, so talk to me about the Udall-Vitter bill.</b><br />
<br />
You mean the "Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act"? Yeah, let's call it the Udall-Vitter bill.<br />
<br />
As I mentioned, I'll cover its ins and outs in a little more detail in a separate post, but here are the main points:<br />
<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>There's a plan to <b>clear the backlog of existing substances</b>. Chemicals currently in commerce but whose safety has not yet been evaluated would be assigned either high-priority or low-priority status. High-priority compounds would have to be evaluated according to a series of deadlines that would assure a final decision within seven years.</li>
<li>For chemicals designated high-priority, <b>state law would be superseded</b> by the EPA's ruling.</li>
<li>There's still <b>no mandatory testing</b> for new substances. However, when the agency determines that testing is necesssary, the <b>EPA gets to charge</b> approximately 25% of the cost of testing to the chemical firm that submitted the new substance (up to an annual maximum of $18 million).</li>
<li>Firms would need to reapply for their existing claims of confidential business information. All <b>CBI evaluations</b> would be subject to slightly more stringent requirements. CBI approvals would be limited to ten years, though they would be renewable.</li>
<li>The determination of a chemical's safety would take into account not just the general population but also any <b>populations particularly at risk</b> in a given case.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<br />
<b>What's the deal with that other bill?</b><br />
<br />
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, has argued that the Udall-Vitter bill provides insufficient protection to public health and the environment. She and Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) have introduced the "Alan Reinstein and Trevor Schaefer Toxic Chemical Protection Act."<br />
<br />
Their bill has the same basic structure as the Udall-Vitter bill, but it differs on numerous important particulars, from funding (the EPA could get more money from firms to support testing) to the definition of what makes a chemical "safe" to cost-benefit analysis in rule-making (under Boxer-Markey it could only be applied above a threshold of $100 million). It also specifically mandates the fast-track consideration of asbestos for additional regulatory action.<br />
<br />
<b>What's really at issue here?</b><br />
<br />
There are two big disputes at the root of the dueling bills.<br />
<br />
The first is the <b>pre-emption</b> of state law. Boxer's home state of California has passed some of the nation's toughest chemical laws. The Vitter-Udall bill would invalidate state regulations for chemicals with "high-priority" status - precisely the cases in which the evaluation of a chemical's safety is determined to be most important. Furthermore, economic significance and, under certain conditions, a chemical firm's petition could earn a chemical high-priority status, further empowering firms to circumvent state regulatory authority by encouraging regulation at the federal level.<br />
<br />
Boxer isn't the only one concerned about pre-emption. Attorneys General from ten states - some predictable (California, New Jersey, New York), some less so (Maine, Iowa) - have weighed in against the pre-emption provisions of the Udall-Vitter bill.<br />
<br />
The second is the definition of the <b>standard of safety</b> for a chemical substance. The debate over the safety standard is not nearly as heated as the pre-emption fight. However, as the asbestos case demonstrates, the precise threshold that EPA determinations must satisfy can have enormous consequences for the agency's ability to regulate.<br />
<br />
The Udall-Vitter bill's safety standard is "no unreasonable risk of harm." In order to make a rule, therefore, the agency would have to demonstrate risk in order to regulate a substance. The standard of the Boxer-Markey bill is "reasonable certainty" that a chemical causes "no harm"; thus, the EPA would be required to demonstrate safety in order not to either continue the evaluation (subjec t to deadlines) or make a rule.<br />
<br />
<b>Would you care to comment on the politics of this dispute?</b><br />
<br />
Not really, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/07/us/tom-udalls-unlikely-alliance-with-the-chemical-industry.html">but</a> <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/18/senate-chemical-hearing_n_6897404.html">plenty</a> of <a href="https://chemicalwatch.com/5839/tsca-reform-prospects-in-a-new-political-landscape">others</a> <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/03/war-over-chemical-reform">would</a>.<br />
<br />
<b>Okay, let's try again. Are there any interesting STS-type angles here?</b><br />
<br />
Glad you asked! <br />
<br />
The European regulatory framework, REACH, specifies a "base set" of tests to be applied in the evaluation of all chemicals produced in large quantities. The 2013 version of the TSCA reform bill had similarly proposed defining particular testing methods to be used. However, neither the Udall-Vitter nor (to my knowledge) the Boxer-Markey bill includes any such list. Instead, the bills specify that the "best available science" be used in evaluating the safety of chemicals.<br />
<br />
The Society of Toxicology, a professional association for toxicologists, was a vocal proponent of the "best available science" standard over the specification of particular tests. Its <a href="http://www.rollcall.com/news/tsca_reform_should_embrace_the_best_application_of_toxicological_science_a-239923-1.html">president wrote, in an op-ed</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Best available science” means that experiments and their findings are transparent and reproducible and the methods used are underpinned by our current understanding of the underlying biology. This understanding is not static but is constantly evolving. Congress should resist the temptation to try to spell out specific scientific methods in law and allow scientific evolutionary progress to continue.</blockquote>
This seems to me to illustrate an interesting catch-22 of regulatory science. If you specify particular tests to be done, you run the risk of writing legislation that will quickly become outmoded, mandating reliance on evidence that may turn out to be substandard, expensive, or even inaccurate according to future scientific standards.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, the standard of "best available science" seems to open the door to legal contestation of decisions, regulatory capture, and the like. As we all know, in many cases dealing with systems as complex as the environment and human health, what exactly constitutes the "best available science" can be defined convincingly (convincingly enough for legal purposes, at least) in different ways.<br />
<br />
<b>What are the prospects that these bills are going to make it through Congress?</b><br />
<br />
For what it's worth, the legislation-prediction website govtrack.us forecasts a 35% chance of Udall-Vitter making it out of committee and a <a href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/s697">5% chance of the bill getting passed</a>. From what I've read, and from the relative breadth of support for the bill, this seems a bit low. But I am no expert on the mechanications of Congress.<br />
<br />
As things stand, Boxer's bill seems to stand <a href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/s725">little to no chance</a>. Its central distinction from Udall-Vitter - no preemption of state regulations - removes the bargaining chip that has brought the chemical industry to the table. In the current legislative climate, it's difficult to imagine a bill getting passed without some degree of industry support. It may be, however, that there is middle ground to be found on this issue. (See my next post for more on this.)<br />
<br />
<b>What happens if neither bill passes?</b><br />
<br />
The EPA, which has taken care <a href="http://www.law360.com/articles/632446/epa-chem-safety-head-coy-on-tsca-reform-bill">not to take a position</a> on either bill, will go on regulating under the framework of TSCA. Over the past couple of years, the agency has focused on developing its framework for evaluating existing chemicals. The current "TSCA workplan" for assessing such substances is generally similar to the high-priority list that the two bills propose, though less ambitious in scope (especially in comparison to Boxer-Markey). In a <a href="http://chemicalwatch.com/22869/2015-outlook-james-jones-us-epa">statement of the agency's plans for 2015</a>, the Assistant Administrator for Chemical Safety discussed how these efforts would continue, without mentioning the ongoing efforts to overhaul the laws governing his work. This was surely a politic omission; if the current conventional wisdom about Congress is to be believed, it was a realistic one as well.<br />
<br />
Stay tuned for a more detailed breakdown of the reform bills soon.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">* Of course, the lawyers for chemical firms are not a disinterested party when it comes to chemical regulation, to put it mildly. Still, they presumably have an incentive to analyze the proposed legislation accurately.</span><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
Evanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18194354174479536249noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-41442968538512498262015-03-23T09:34:00.002-04:002015-03-23T09:37:37.272-04:00Links for March 23, 2015<style>
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<a href="http://i.guim.co.uk/static/w-620/h--/q-95/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/3/9/1425910441603/3bd93887-7f2a-4cd7-91c0-329e01e336b2-bestSizeAvailable.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i.guim.co.uk/static/w-620/h--/q-95/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/3/9/1425910441603/3bd93887-7f2a-4cd7-91c0-329e01e336b2-bestSizeAvailable.jpeg" /></a></div>
<ul>
<li>A short and vivid <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/mar/12/the-invention-of-the-colour-purple" target="_blank">history of the color purple</a>,
or how the chemist William Henry Perkin inadvertently created synthetic
purple dye, which, until 1856, was extracted from the mucous of
Mediterranean sea snails. </li>
<li><a href="http://dhayton.haverford.edu/blog/2015/03/17/historystm-march-madness/" target="_blank">History of Science March Madness</a>! Historian of Science Darin Hayton has created a tournament for our kind of geek.</li>
<li>Mark Zuckerburg's <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com.au/mark-zuckerberg-the-structure-of-scientific-revolutions-2015-3" target="_blank">Facbook book club </a>is reading Kuhn. </li>
<li>In honor of St. Patrick's Day, <a href="http://cen.acs.org/articles/93/i11/Periodic-Graphics-Chemistry-Pint-Guinness.html" target="_blank">the chemistry of Guinness</a>.<span style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0); color: black;"><a href="http://cen.acs.org/articles/93/i11/Periodic-Graphics-Chemistry-Pint-Guinness.html" style="background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0);" target="_blank"></a></span></li>
<li>Our very own Evan Hepler-Smith <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/book-review-making-marie-curie-by-eva-hemmungs-wirten-1426882447" target="_blank">reviewed</a> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Making-Marie-Curie-Intellectual-science-culture/dp/022623584X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1427077289&sr=8-1&keywords=making+marie+curie" target="_blank"><i>Making Marie Curie</i></a> for the Wall Street Journal. (!!!)</li>
<li>Biologists have called for a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/20/science/biologists-call-for-halt-to-gene-editing-technique-in-humans.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share&_r=0" target="_blank">global moratorium</a>
on use of a new technique for editing a human's genome that allows for
manipulation of hereditary traits, arguing that the technology as it
stands is dangerous from an ethical standpoint. Can you ever put the
gene-ie (get it) back in the magic lamp, though?</li>
<li>Leaping lizards! American herpetologists are speaking out against government inaction in the face of a potential "<a href="http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/21/riled-herpetologists-press-obama-administration-to-protect-americas-salamanders-from-a-fungal-threat/?_r=0" target="_blank">North American salamander apocalypse</a>"
(their words, not mine). In all seriousness, the fungus
Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal) poses a grave threat to
American salamander populations, and will most likely spread to North
America unless the government institutes a strict ban on the import of
salamanders from Europe and Asia. On a related note, check out this
amazing (but potentially fraudulent) photo of a lizard strumming on a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/09/lizard-guitar-photo_n_6832984.html" target="_blank">leaf guitar.</a></li>
<li>This week, <i>Jacobin </i>magazine released a theme issue on "<a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/issue/ours-to-master/" target="_blank">Technology and Politics</a>."
It features an amazing line-up of articles, including one by historian
of science Eden Medina about her research on the history of cybernetics
in Chile. You can read the introduction to the issue <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/03/automation-frase-robots/" target="_blank">here</a>, which reflects on the complicated relationship between labor, capital, and technological progress.</li>
<li>Baltimore Ravens offensive lineman John Urschel <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/03/20/394340722/john-urschel-ravens-offensive-lineman-publishes-math-paper" target="_blank">has published a paper</a> in the Journal of Computational Mathematics. It's on "<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.0565" target="_blank">A Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm for Computing the Fiedler Vector of Graph Laplacians</a>" and he is the lead author. Urschel lists his favorite activities as "<a href="http://www.theplayerstribune.com/why-i-play-football/" target="_blank">reading math, doing research, playing chess</a>."</li>
</ul>
David Roth Singermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12841041983824755867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-36593295607965121332015-03-23T09:20:00.000-04:002015-03-23T09:20:12.240-04:00When Bibliomania Came to America<style>@font-face {
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<span style="color: #00000a; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In 1809, the
Englishmen Thomas Frognall Dibdin published a detailed description of a disease
that was instantly recognizable in the manifestation of a few key symptoms: a desire
for black letter, a passion for luxurious illustrations, and an intense focus
on first editions. These were </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">indicators
of bibliomania <span style="color: #00000a;">or the book-madness, which Dibdin
outlined in his treatise. The bibliomaniac<span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt;"> </span>was
easily seduced<span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt;"> </span>by the physicality of
books: fine bindings<span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt;"> and elaborate
frontispieces </span>were more valuable than content. Bibliomania was described
as a feverish passion that could quickly escalate into hoarding. In extreme
cases, the bibliophile might not have any intention of actually reading the
prized books in his possession. Dibdin followed his original eighty-page tract
with a new edition in 1811 that was ten times longer; the swollen second
edition literally embodied the concept of the disease with its extensive
bibliographic footnotes, supplements, and not one, but three indexes—one chronological,
one bibliographical, and one general<span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;">.<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1030220433025894048#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #00000a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; letter-spacing: 0.05pt;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a></span>
</span>Dibdin, a bibliographer<span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt;"> </span>and
book collector himself, was<span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt;"> </span>showing
all the signs of being gravely stricken by the disease. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bibliomania</i> was<span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt;">, of course, </span>a
mock exposition that treated book collecting as pathology. As the founder of
the Roxburghe Club—one of the <a href="http://www.roxburgheclub.org.uk/">world’s
oldest societies for bibliophiles</a>—Dibdin’s work was a clever satire of the
elite English book collecting culture in which he and his friends proudly
participated. In jest, he remarked that bibliomania was raging in Europe, with
England being disproportionately afflicted. In reality, only a very small
subset of the population could afford to fall ill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #00000a; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">By the late
nineteenth century, however, American newspapers were reporting that the
disease had crossed the Atlantic. Often employed sardonically, bibliomania was
also used more earnestly in print social commentary on elite American culture. Employing
Dibdin’s rhetoric, newspapers and magazines ran stories that covered the
highest selling items at book auctions, described the country’s largest private
collections, and detailed the increasing interest in books as pricy
commodities. Some Gilded-Age articles also suggested that book collecting was becoming
a legitimate social ill. As early as December of 1845, the </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Boston
Evening Transcript</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">
described bibliomania as “a complaint formerly of rare occurrence” in the United
States, which was prevailing “to an alarming extent.”<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1030220433025894048#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">[2]</span></span></span></span></a></span> While
Washington’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Daily National Intelligencer</i>
defined bibliomania as an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">amabilis
insania</i>, or a pleasing madness, some depictions of book collecting were
more scathing; <span style="color: #00000a;">in 1878, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York Times<span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt;"> </span></i>asked, “When will Bibliomania cease?”
and lamented that it had been “predicted over and over again that it</span> <span style="color: #00000a;">must<span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt;"> </span>come to
an<span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt;"> </span>end.<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">”<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1030220433025894048#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #00000a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; letter-spacing: -0.15pt;">[3]</span></span></span></span></a></span></span><span style="letter-spacing: .95pt; mso-text-raise: 5.5pt; position: relative; top: -5.5pt;">
</span>The next<span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt;"> </span>year, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Times<span style="letter-spacing: -.1pt;"> </span></i><span style="letter-spacing: -.1pt;">re</span>published an opinion<span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt;"> </span>piece from England’s</span> <span style="color: #00000a;">popular magazine <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Fortnightly Review </i>that chided: “Collecting rare books and forgotten
authors<span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt;"> </span>is perhaps, of all the
collecting<span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt;"> </span>manias, the most foolish
in our<span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt;"> </span>day.<span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;">”<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1030220433025894048#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #00000a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; letter-spacing: 0.05pt;">[4]</span></span></span></span></a></span></span><span style="letter-spacing: .8pt; mso-text-raise: 5.5pt; position: relative; top: -5.5pt;"> </span>Book
collecting was comparable to other trivial pursuits, such as a penchant for collecting
rare china or “curious beetles,” but the author noted “china<span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt;"> </span>is occasionally<span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt;"> </span>beautiful; and the<span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt;"> </span>beetles,
at least,<span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt;"> </span>are droll.<span style="letter-spacing: -.1pt;">”<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1030220433025894048#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #00000a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; letter-spacing: -0.1pt;">[5]</span></span></span></span></a></span></span><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"> </span>Bibliomania, according to the article,
“seizes hold of rational beings and so perverts them, that in the sufferer’s
mind the human<span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt;"> </span>race exists for the<span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt;"> </span>sake of the<span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt;"> </span>books, and not the<span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt;"> </span>books
for the sake<span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt;"> </span>of the human race.<span style="letter-spacing: -.1pt;">”<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1030220433025894048#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #00000a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; letter-spacing: -0.1pt;">[6]</span></span></span></span></a></span></span>
Dibdin’s work was satire, but these selections from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York Times</i> reflect
a sincere anxiety over book collecting as a form of idolatry<span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;">.<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1030220433025894048#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #00000a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; letter-spacing: 0.05pt;">[7]</span></span></span></span></a></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="color: #00000a;"><span style="letter-spacing: .05pt;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #00000a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; letter-spacing: 0.05pt;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span>
</span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yXGKuHDRNBM/VRARS-aOZvI/AAAAAAAABGI/zh6bteKs2I4/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2015-03-23%2Bat%2B8.45.03%2BAM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yXGKuHDRNBM/VRARS-aOZvI/AAAAAAAABGI/zh6bteKs2I4/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2015-03-23%2Bat%2B8.45.03%2BAM.png" height="136" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 5.75pt; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: #00000a; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Despite its
association with extreme material</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">ism,
<span style="color: #00000a;">American bibliomania proved to have some social
good </span>in<span style="color: #00000a;"> the last decades of the century. By
the 1870s, most of the country’s original book collectors—men like John Carter
Brown, James Lenox, </span><em><span style="font-style: normal; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">George Brinley</span></em><span style="color: #00000a;">—were dead.<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1030220433025894048#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #00000a; font-family: "Times New Roman";">[8]</span></span></span></span></a></span>
As a result, their abundant private libraries were auctioned off, initiating a
new wave of interest in the purchase and preservation of books, especially
those with American content. Many of these books were bought by the first state
historical societies and public libraries in the U.S., including the Library of
Congress. Some bibliophiles also collected with an explicit intention of
leaving a cultural legacy. James Lenox, for example, inherited a fortune from
his father</span></span><span style="font-family: Times;">, a wealthy merchant
and landowner in Manhattan and retired young to collect books. </span><span style="color: #00000a; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">He originally hoarded
thousands of rare books behind the locked doors of his New York City mansion, but
eventually wanted to establish a</span><span style="color: #00000a;"> library “of
unusual character and scope.”<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1030220433025894048#_ftn9" name="_ftnref9" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #00000a; font-family: "Times New Roman";">[9]</span></span></span></span></a></span> </span><span style="color: #00000a; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Lenox’s wish was
fulfilled in 1870, when the doors of the Lenox Library—later incorporated into
the New York Public Library—opened.<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1030220433025894048#_ftn10" name="_ftnref10" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #00000a; font-family: "Times New Roman";">[10]</span></span></span></span></a>
</span>Although characterized as a borderline sin and analogized as an infectious
mental disorder, bibliomania in America also resulted in a greater public good,
as more books were preserved in the country’s cultural heritage institutions. </span></div>
<div style="mso-element: footnote-list;">
<br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div id="ftn1" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1030220433025894048#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">[1]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
Tho<span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">m</span>as<span style="letter-spacing: -0.6pt;"> </span>Frognall<span style="letter-spacing: -0.55pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">D</span>ibdin<i>,<span style="letter-spacing: -0.55pt;"> </span>Biblio<span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">m</span>ania:<span style="letter-spacing: -0.55pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">O</span>r<span style="letter-spacing: -0.55pt;"> </span>Book<span style="letter-spacing: -0.55pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">M</span>adness;<span style="letter-spacing: -0.6pt;"> </span>A<span style="letter-spacing: -0.5pt;"> </span>Bibliographical<span style="letter-spacing: -0.55pt;"> </span>Ro<span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">m</span>ance,<span style="letter-spacing: -0.55pt;"> </span>in<span style="letter-spacing: -0.55pt;"> </span>Six<span style="letter-spacing: -0.55pt;"> </span>Parts</i><span style="letter-spacing: -0.45pt;"> </span>(London:<span> </span>Printed<span style="letter-spacing: -0.4pt;"> </span>for<span style="letter-spacing: -0.4pt;"> </span>the<span style="letter-spacing: -0.4pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">A</span>uthor,<span style="letter-spacing: -0.4pt;"> </span>by<span style="letter-spacing: -0.4pt;"> </span>J.<span style="letter-spacing: -0.4pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">M</span>'<span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">C</span>reery,<span style="letter-spacing: -0.4pt;"> </span>and<span style="letter-spacing: -0.35pt;"> </span>sold<span style="letter-spacing: -0.35pt;"> </span>by<span style="letter-spacing: -0.4pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">M</span>essrs.<span style="letter-spacing: -0.4pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">L</span>ong<span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">m</span>an,<span style="letter-spacing: -0.4pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">H</span>urst,<span style="letter-spacing: -0.4pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">R</span>ees,<span style="letter-spacing: -0.4pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">O</span>r<span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">m</span>e,<span style="letter-spacing: -0.4pt;"> </span>and<span style="letter-spacing: -0.4pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">B</span>ro<span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">w</span>n,<span style="letter-spacing: -0.4pt;"> </span>1811).</span></div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">
</span></div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">
</span><div id="ftn2">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1030220433025894048#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Times;">[2]</span></span></span></span></a> “The
First Charter of Massachusetts Bay,” <span>in<b>
</b></span><i>Boston Evening Transcript</i>
(Boston, Massachusetts), December 8, 1845. </span></div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<br /></div>
</div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">
</span><div id="ftn3">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1030220433025894048#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">[3]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span>“Notes on New Books,” <i>Daily National Intelligencer</i> September
23, 1858; <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">“B</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">iblio<span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">m</span>ania,”<span style="letter-spacing: -0.45pt;"> <i>The</i> </span><i><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">N</span>ew<span style="letter-spacing: -0.45pt;"> </span>York<span style="letter-spacing: -0.45pt;"> </span>Ti<span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">m</span>es,<span style="letter-spacing: -0.45pt;"> </span></i><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">O</span>ctober<span style="letter-spacing: -0.45pt;"> </span>20<span style="letter-spacing: -0.4pt;"> </span>1878,<span style="letter-spacing: -0.45pt;"> </span>p
4.</span></span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">
</span><div id="ftn4">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1030220433025894048#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">[4]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> F.<span style="letter-spacing: -0.4pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">H</span>arrison,<span style="letter-spacing: -0.35pt;">
</span>“<span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">T</span>he<span style="letter-spacing: -0.35pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">M</span>ania<span style="letter-spacing: -0.35pt;"> </span>For<span style="letter-spacing: -0.35pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">R</span>are<span style="letter-spacing: -0.35pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">B</span>ooks,”<span style="letter-spacing: -0.4pt;"> </span><i><span style="letter-spacing: -0.45pt;">The</span></i><span style="letter-spacing: -0.45pt;"><span> </span></span><i><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">N</span>ew<span style="letter-spacing: -0.3pt;"> </span>York<span style="letter-spacing: -0.35pt;"> </span>Ti<span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">m</span>es,<span style="letter-spacing: -0.35pt;"> </span></i><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">A</span>pril<span style="letter-spacing: -0.35pt;"> </span>27<span style="letter-spacing: -0.35pt;"> </span>1879,<span style="letter-spacing: -0.35pt;">
</span>p.<span style="letter-spacing: -0.35pt;"> </span>3.</span></span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">
</span><div id="ftn5">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1030220433025894048#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">[5]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Ibid.</span></span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">
</span><div id="ftn6">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1030220433025894048#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">[6]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Ibid. </span></span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">
</span><div id="ftn7">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1030220433025894048#_ftnref7" name="_ftn7" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">[7]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">N</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">icholas<span style="letter-spacing: -0.45pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">B</span>asbanes<span style="letter-spacing: -0.45pt;"> </span>also<span style="letter-spacing: -0.35pt;"> </span>locates<span style="letter-spacing: -0.45pt;"> </span>a<span style="letter-spacing: -0.45pt;"> </span>shift<span style="letter-spacing: -0.4pt;"> </span>in<span style="letter-spacing: -0.4pt;"> </span>book<span style="letter-spacing: -0.4pt;"> </span>culture<span style="letter-spacing: -0.4pt;">
</span>in<span style="letter-spacing: -0.4pt;"> </span>the<span style="letter-spacing: -0.45pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">m</span>i<span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">d</span>-nineteenth<span style="letter-spacing: -0.35pt;"> </span>century,<span style="letter-spacing: -0.45pt;"> </span>noting<span style="letter-spacing: -0.4pt;"> </span>that<span style="letter-spacing: -0.4pt;"> </span>books<span style="letter-spacing: -0.45pt;"> </span>“h<span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">a</span>d<span> </span>beco<span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">m</span>e<span style="letter-spacing: -0.5pt;"> </span>valuable<span style="letter-spacing: -0.45pt;">
</span>objects<span style="letter-spacing: -0.5pt;"> </span>in<span style="letter-spacing: -0.4pt;"> </span>their<span style="letter-spacing: -0.45pt;"> </span>o<span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">w</span>n<span style="letter-spacing: -0.45pt;"> </span>right;”<span style="letter-spacing: -0.45pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">B</span>asbanes,<span style="letter-spacing: -0.45pt;"> </span></span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">A Gentle Madness</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">: <i>Bibliophiles,
Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books</i> (New York: H. Holt and Co., 1995)</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">,<span style="letter-spacing: -0.45pt;"> </span>155.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">
</span><div id="ftn8">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1030220433025894048#_ftnref8" name="_ftn8" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span><span><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Times;">[8]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
Book collectors were overwhelmingly male in this period the author has had
little success in finding examples of female book collectors in the United
States and Canada until the 20<sup>th</sup> century. </span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">
</span><div id="ftn9" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">
</span><div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1030220433025894048#_ftnref9" name="_ftn9" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span><span><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Times;">[9]</span></span></span></span></span></a>
<span>Francis<span style="letter-spacing: -0.65pt;"> </span>J.<span style="letter-spacing: -0.6pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">B</span>osha,<span style="letter-spacing: -0.6pt;"> </span>“Ja<span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">m</span>es<span style="letter-spacing: -0.6pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">L</span>enox,”<span style="letter-spacing: -0.6pt;"> </span>in<span style="letter-spacing: -0.6pt;"> </span><i>A<span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">m</span>erican<span style="letter-spacing: -0.55pt;"> </span>Book-<span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">C</span>ollectors<span style="letter-spacing: -0.65pt;"> </span>and<span style="letter-spacing: -0.55pt;"> </span>Bibliographers<span style="letter-spacing: -0.55pt;"> </span></i>(<span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">D</span>etroit:<span style="letter-spacing: -0.6pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">G</span>ale<span style="letter-spacing: -0.6pt;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1pt;">R</span>esearch,</span><span> </span><span>1994):
114. </span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn10" style="mso-element: footnote;">
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Meridith Beck Sayrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05967423747509065898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-7272523584701748932015-03-16T11:31:00.001-04:002015-03-16T11:33:05.052-04:00Vintage-inspired links for March 16, 2015<style>
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<li><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/2015/03/09/dd125130-c691-11e4-aa1a-86135599fb0f_story.html">"Metrics and standards" in court!</a> Last week, the Supreme Court <a href="http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/13-1080_f29g.pdf" target="_blank">decided in favor of Amtrak</a> and the US Department of Transportation in a case regarding Amtrak's authority to set standards. Lots of interesting legal reasoning about metrics and standards as regulation, as Sasha Volokh points out in his analysis of Justice <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/03/09/yay-minimalism-supreme-court-totally-ducks-interesting-issues-in-amtrak-case/" target="_blank">Kennedy's decision</a> and the concurrences of Justices <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/03/10/does-the-amtrak-statute-violate-pretty-much-all-of-separation-of-powers-justice-alitos-take/" target="_blank">Alito</a> and <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/03/11/justice-thomas-delivers-what-he-promised-on-february-27-2001/" target="_blank">Thomas</a>. But what would Justice <a href="http://www.sorbonne.fr/wp-content/uploads/Conf%C3%A8rence_Marc_Bloch_2014_illu_1-690x460.jpg" target="_blank">Schaffer</a> say?</li>
<li>For those of you who have been waiting for a 2,000 page parable of the scientific method in the form of Harry Potter fanfic: <a href="http://hpmor.com/" target="_blank">wait no longer</a>! Here's a <a href="https://cdn.rawgit.com/rjl20/hpmor/7a684652aa73d74380371e57a546a47f512312af/out/hpmor.pdf" target="_blank">pdf of the whole damned thing</a>, penned by <a href="http://www.yudkowsky.net/" target="_blank">Eliezer Yudkowsky</a>.</li>
<li>This week in Anthropocene news: A new study argues that the Age of Man <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31836233" target="_blank">began in 1610</a>, with the arrival of white Europeans in North America; Scientists believe a series of recently formed craters in the Russian Arctic are the <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/siberia-mystery-craters-methane-climate-change" target="_blank">result of global warming</a>; and paleontologists reported the discovery of an extinct species of arthropod that was similar in size and shape to a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/17/science/fossil-tells-of-520-million-year-old-creature-like-a-giant-lobster.html?ref=science&_r=0" target="_blank">six-foot lobster</a>.</li>
<li>Scientists try to explain <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/hunger-good-bad-hangry?mbid=social_facebook" target="_blank">"hanger,"</a> that seemingly irrational feeling of extreme anger you feel when it's been to long since your last meal.
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<li>"All living organisms have absorbed the products of 20th century petrochemistry. We now embody its genius, its intellectual property, its mistakes, and its hubris": Grappling with the legacy of our <a href="http://aeon.co/magazine/science/plastic-runs-in-my-family-and-in-yours-too/" target="_blank">century-long romance with plastics</a>.
</li>
<li>This week, the Australian National Health and Research Council (under the leadership of CEO and historian of medicine Warwick Anderson) released a comprehensive report <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/03/11/no-evidence-homeopathy-is-any-better-than-a-placebo-major-australian-study-says/" target="_blank">condemning practice of homeopathy</a>. Edzard Ernst, a physician and leading expert in complementary medicine, declared the debate over homeopathy's merits officially <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/12/no-scientific-case-homeopathy-remedies-pharmacists-placebos?CMP=share_btn_tw" target="_blank">over</a>. The report has also reignited arguments across the pond that homeopathy <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/sarah-mehta/the-people-want-homeopathy_b_6862072.html" target="_blank">should no longer be covered</a> by Britain's National Health Service. [The British comic duo Mitchell & Webb had a wonderful bit called <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGIbOGu8q0">Homeopathic A&E</a>. —Ed.]</li>
<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HMGIbOGu8q0" width="560"></iframe>
<li>Marina Warner <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n06/marina-warner/learning-my-lesson">writes for the London Review of Books</a> on the way that measurement systems like the Research Excellence Framework in combination with huge funnels of cash are radically transforming British universities, and not for the better. The mining conglomerate BHP Billiton can finance a sustainability center at UCL, and "by getting involved closely with a university, BHP Billiton can then be involved potentially in defining the very term sustainability." </li>
<li>Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen <a href="http://grantland.com/the-triangle/paul-allen-musashi/">finds the wreck of the battleship Musashi</a>. </li>
<li> A highly sophisticated break-in at a South African site that stores weapons-grade fissile material <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/03/14/16894/assault-pelindaba">has never been satisfactorily explained</a>. </li>
<li>You can buy a "vintage-inspired" [??] <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/3/13/8204655/submarine-cables-internet">map of the world's submarine cables</a>.</li>
<li>And Leah and David are both presenting this weekend at the annual meeting of the American Society for Environmental History in Washington, D.C. David is up <a href="http://convention2.allacademic.com/one/aseh/aseh15/index.php?cmd=Online+Program+View+Event&selected_box_id=178497&PHPSESSID=qvps6eh04mn8md5mohql7c29j0">on Friday morning</a> and <a href="http://convention2.allacademic.com/one/aseh/aseh15/index.php?cmd=Online+Program+View+Event&selected_box_id=178420&PHPSESSID=gf1jg74eluqq4u2t3p58gvde94">Leah on Saturday</a>. Drop by if you're around.</li>
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David Roth Singermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12841041983824755867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-75763789343027012762015-03-13T18:25:00.000-04:002015-03-16T11:25:00.542-04:00The Apple Watch and the history of capitalism (updated)<style>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Selçuk Demirel, from <i>Le Monde Diplomatique</i>, 1999</td></tr>
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In the March 2015 issue of Harper's Magazine there's a terrifying article by Esther Kaplan called "<a href="http://harpers.org/archive/2015/03/the-spy-who-fired-me/" target="_blank">The Spy who Fired Me: The Human Costs of Workplace Monitoring</a>." Kaplan examines the $30 billion industry of "telematics": software and hardware that allows firms and managers to surveil their workers in real-time and in excruciating detail. UPS trucks, for instance, now feature 200+ sensors recording and transmitting seemingly everything about the current state of the vehicle and the driver, from whether the back door is open to speed to whether the seatbelt is buckled. The data is not just gathered but can be, and is, watched in real time. <br />
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These systems are pitched to drivers as safety benefits, but they are pitched to investors—much more persuasively—as saving hundreds of millions of dollars. "You can't manage what you can't measure" is a slogan she sees on one PowerPoint slide. As Kaplan writes, "Workforce-management technologies make productivity
visible and measurable, allowing employers to distinguish between labor
time that generates profits and labor time—down to the minute—that does
not." (Jonathan Levy has <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/677977" target="_blank">recently shown</a> the ways in which "profit" itself was myopically redefined over the 20th century.) Instead, the costs are transferred to the drivers themselves, who increasingly have to sprint up stairs, buckle their belts behind them, and run yellow lights in order to make the delivery targets, leaving them fatigued and injured. <br />
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In retail, employees are measured in other ways: how long between the end of one sale at a cash register and the beginning of the next, for instance. As Kaplan quotes one consultant, "The important thing is where the power lies," and in a perpetually weak labor market, the power lies with employers. She documents the numerous ways in which retailers have combined shift-assignment software with instantaneous calculations of profitability, so that shifts can be and are often terminated on the spot when the software determines that the marginal value of an employee has dropped below zero. But employers like McDonald's can, at the same time, require that employees stick around—unpaid—for an hour or more, in case the same software decides that sales have gone up again. Unpaid breaks are meant to be included, but the leanness of staffing means that very often there's no time to take them. Of course, miss a shift or break a rule, and you're fired.<br />
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I couldn't help, as I was reading Kaplan's article, but think back to Peter Linebaugh's extraordinary book <a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781859845769" target="_blank"><i>The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century</i></a> (Verso, 2003). By looking at the charges against and testimony of those who were executed in London, mostly for theft, in the 17th and 18th centuries, Linebaugh shows how powerful mercantile and trading interests, in cooperation with the highest levels of the British government, gradually seized all the forms of "customary" income that had allowed the people of London to survive and redefined them as theft and fraud.<br />
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For instance, he writes that "The class struggle in the oceanic tobacco trade took a metrological form, because the ambiguities of measure benefited the porters, the crews, the slaves, the lightermen and the 'little inconsiderable persons'" (162). Legislators standardized the size and construction of the hogshead, the barrel in which tobacco was shipped. Whereas once it had been accepted that coopers and samplers were entitled to the little bits of tobacco that fell out during the sampling process, now that too was defined away as the property of the planter or the merchant. The construction of the West India Docks at the end of the eighteenth century as a massive walled-off area allowed all the workers who worked within to be searched at the end of the day for any sugar they were taking out with them. (The Supreme Court recently ruled that companies like Wal-Mart do not have to reimburse their employees for the time spent waiting for mandatory security checks after the end of their shifts.) Linebaugh writes that "Customary appropriations appear as
inefficiency or waste to the technologist, as an inventory loss or
transaction cost to the economists, and a depredation or crime to the
police." Replace "appropriations" with, say, "lunch breaks" and the
sentence might have appeared in Kaplan's piece. It's incorrect, Linebaugh argues, to say that commodities in the 17th century or time in the 21st century are the property of the merchant or the employer—it's the ownership of these things that is precisely in dispute. <br />
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The connection between Linebaugh and Kaplan points to the way in which it historically has been far easier for employers to claim ownership of things that they can quantify. As Leonard Cohen <a href="http://www.leonardcohen.com/us/music/futureten-new-songs/future" target="_blank">sang</a> of the end of the world: "Things are going to slide, slide in all directions / Won't be nothing, Nothing you can measure anymore." But whereas Linebaugh's workers fight the imposition of new metrologies, we are foolishly doing the counting ourselves, through devices like the Apple Watch. As the philosopher Julian Baggini <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/11/apple-watch-are-you-feeling-the-terror" target="_blank">wrote in the <i>Guardian</i></a>,
"smartwatches encourage a kind of auto-instrumentalisation, in which we
treat ourselves as machines to be well-oiled, serviced and working at
maximum efficiency." The "quantified self" movement has mostly been thought of, perhaps
because that's how its adherents would like to see it, in terms of "<a href="http://www.natashadowschull.org/" target="_blank">new modes of introspection and self-governance</a>." But it's a very public introspection, in which it's not enough for me to track the pace of my run yesterday, I also, for some weird reason, feel a compulsion to <a href="https://www.strava.com/activities/267022956" target="_blank">slap it on the internet</a> and share my whereabouts yesterday morning with all of you. In doing so, quantified-selfers might wind up doing the hard work of employers, who would claim their employees' time as their own property.<br />
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<iframe height='405' width='590' frameborder='0' allowtransparency='true' scrolling='no' src='https://www.strava.com/activities/267022956/embed/36e7bcda3304f74b56448b49b3c04002994c2ed0'></iframe>
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<b>3/14/15 update:</b> One further thought. Kaplan notes that she became interested in telematics because she noticed that a number of her deliveries resulted in "failed delivery attempt" slips even when she was at home. This was because, she discovered, when drivers are running behind their mandatory target pace, they will often slap those slips on recipients' doors. It's faster than actually delivering a package, but looks the same to the software, which doesn't know whether you're home or not. But really, how long is it going to be before the software starts scanning Facebook, or Instagram, or for that matter Strava (where I posted my run), to figure out whether the recipient is at home? If I put the over-under at two years, would you really take the over?<br />
<br />David Roth Singermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12841041983824755867noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-55027920708783952812015-03-09T11:43:00.000-04:002015-03-09T11:48:34.712-04:00Links for March 9, 2015<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
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<li>Science Magazine is <a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.sciencemag.org_site_special_generalrelativity_-3Fintcmp-3Drelativity-5Fcomic&d=AwMFaQ&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=i1DZBuHBedjCDXh8D289kFX9E4hIWkpsaihZ4LPzMZA&m=3bKuLJK_SRt3rVH971a4myTFaME0Yq2-U682MxlZ0H0&s=I6JinILpVtbRNk2thSbqZtb9SIy6qL1wuWw0QANC0Qg&e="><span style="color: blue;">celebrating the centennial of general relativity</span></a> with a special issue, which includes an <a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__spark.sciencemag.org_generalrelativity_-3Fintcmp-3Dcollection-2Dgeneralrelativity&d=AwMFaQ&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=i1DZBuHBedjCDXh8D289kFX9E4hIWkpsaihZ4LPzMZA&m=3bKuLJK_SRt3rVH971a4myTFaME0Yq2-U682MxlZ0H0&s=QvSRgNAdW0PsNr4cXGFM7fhzDjvaMpuKrT-PnBDql9A&e=">i<span style="color: blue;">nteractive webcomic</span></a> featuring a very spry Einstein in a super-hero unitard. </li>
<li>Margaret Weitekamp, curator of science fiction and space memorabilia at the <a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__airandspace.si.edu_&d=AwMFaQ&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=i1DZBuHBedjCDXh8D289kFX9E4hIWkpsaihZ4LPzMZA&m=3bKuLJK_SRt3rVH971a4myTFaME0Yq2-U682MxlZ0H0&s=4nHastOoGlnuwxxIsEOAfMa-RyqRgtVz3nITlIFFfVE&e="><span style="color: blue;">National Air and Space Museum</span></a> reflects on recently-deceased <a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.smithsonianmag.com_smithsonian-2Dinstitution_smithsonian-2Dcurator-2Dreflects-2Dleonard-2Dnimoy-2Dpassing-2Dwhy-2Dstar-2Dtrek-2Dfans-2Dloved-2Dhim-2D180954430_-3Fno-2Dist&d=AwMFaQ&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=i1DZBuHBedjCDXh8D289kFX9E4hIWkpsaihZ4LPzMZA&m=3bKuLJK_SRt3rVH971a4myTFaME0Yq2-U682MxlZ0H0&s=NBECqRJhX1L9Wr5JTZOcAhzN2sQ-K1A_ZioDLbiuaVk&e="><span style="color: blue;">Leonard Nimoy's Spock</span></a> character from Star Trek. </li>
<li><a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__medium.com_backchannel_a-2Dspreadsheet-2Dway-2Dof-2Dknowledge-2D8de60af7146e&d=AwMFaQ&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=i1DZBuHBedjCDXh8D289kFX9E4hIWkpsaihZ4LPzMZA&m=CnIdN-IZUN7DUMqt5i6WdNnZ9nozNWEa07X1O555-B8&s=84NgDb8VAPRM_Ddxnaf0-BmzL4FATKCd1rOL7hYlBAQ&e="><span style="color: blue;">"A Spreadsheet Way of Knowledge"</span></a> (and 'way of knowing,' we might add): a throwback history of a throwback (and now omnipresent) technology, first written in 1984. Planet Money has an excellent <span style="color: blue;"><a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.npr.org_blogs_money_2015_02_25_389027988_episode-2D606-2Dspreadsheets&d=AwMFaQ&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=i1DZBuHBedjCDXh8D289kFX9E4hIWkpsaihZ4LPzMZA&m=4HwoXwNiWGoaSA8ZUKczdgmerK5ZkPj8kEXtXiCHXdI&s=KJKCdUyydxOywL8V8FMyPQUhL-HYVxoiPqf125AHu0w&e=">podcast episode</a> </span>devoted to ye olde spreadsheet, too. </li>
<li>The Smithsonian has posted the <span style="color: blue;"><a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.smithsonianmag.com_multimedia_12th-2Dannual-2Dsmithsonian-2Dphoto-2Dcontest-2Dfinalists-2D180954445_&d=AwMFaQ&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=i1DZBuHBedjCDXh8D289kFX9E4hIWkpsaihZ4LPzMZA&m=CnIdN-IZUN7DUMqt5i6WdNnZ9nozNWEa07X1O555-B8&s=qhJEFoGYiTCqzLjRtWSCk4i3BBBekl2f2UG8L4PBYAQ&e="><span style="color: blue;">finalists in its annual photo contest</span></a>.</span> As a Newark resident, Evan's favorite is the <span style="color: blue;"><a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__thumbs.media.smithsonianmag.com__filer_bf_d3_bfd32bb2-2D777a-2D40a0-2Dbf6e-2De6588e13b80a_07b85957e19347caecc6ab60e2af2d563fd1c69a.jpg-5F-5F1072x0-5Fq85-5Fupscale.jpg&d=AwMFaQ&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=i1DZBuHBedjCDXh8D289kFX9E4hIWkpsaihZ4LPzMZA&m=CnIdN-IZUN7DUMqt5i6WdNnZ9nozNWEa07X1O555-B8&s=lA4NzIGCyhDg9nZigoDXSpIGC69MRa8a-84jdcmLD-E&e="><span style="color: blue;">wall of shipping containers</span></a> </span>from our west coast sister city, Oakland... </li>
<li>A <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/08/magazine/is-most-of-our-dna-garbage.html?_r=0"><span style="color: blue;">long read</span></a> about the debate among geneticists over the concept of “junk DNA.” Depending on who you ask, the majority of our genome is either worthless or an untapped treasure trove of regulatory messages.</li>
<li>The <a href="http://priceonomics.com/the-mit-science-club-for-disabled-children/"><span style="color: blue;">sad story</span></a> of the MIT Science Club for Disabled Children.</li>
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Jennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08919705479619555709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-9609224521713472262015-03-05T09:24:00.000-05:002015-03-05T09:24:00.573-05:00Dispatches From The Particle Accelerator<div class="p1">
Back in January, I was presented with a unique opportunity: the chance to walk inside of a particle accelerator.</div>
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And I was <i>really really</i> excited about it.</div>
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The tour was part of Yale’s Science Studies Lunch series. The brainchild of AmericanScience alum Joanna Radin and Bill Rankin, both Assistant Professors in the Program for the History of Science and Medicine at Yale, these monthly events bring together an interdisciplinary crowd of historians, sociologists, scientists, medical practitioners, and artists: anyone remotely interested in the social study of science. In a series of field trips, we have explored scientific collections, museums, labs, farms, and, on one day in January, a particle accelerator.</div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2n8foSFIVm4/VPfrT0zqbwI/AAAAAAAAGd0/KMsM7DNb1TQ/s1600/particle%2Baccelerator%2B1965.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2n8foSFIVm4/VPfrT0zqbwI/AAAAAAAAGd0/KMsM7DNb1TQ/s1600/particle%2Baccelerator%2B1965.jpg" height="504" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The installation of the original accelerator, 1965</td></tr>
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Part of Yale’s <a href="http://wlab.yale.edu/">Wright Lab</a>, the Van de Graaf particle accelerator is in the process of being decommissioned. Originally installed in the mid-1960s, the atom smasher made Yale a national hub for the study of nuclear particle physics. At 100 feet long, the machine is dwarfed by the mammoth particle accelerators in operation today (for comparison, the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva is 17 miles long). But at the time of the accelerator’s last upgrade in 1987, it was the highest-energy tandem accelerator in the world. </div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0ZALFu9JEBc/VPfrYDMn3OI/AAAAAAAAGeE/dPFCncC-HuY/s1600/accelerator1985.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0ZALFu9JEBc/VPfrYDMn3OI/AAAAAAAAGeE/dPFCncC-HuY/s1600/accelerator1985.jpg" height="352" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The installation of the new tandem accelerator, 1985.<br />
Note the yellow exterior - the tank was promptly painted blue for purposes of school spirit.</td></tr>
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From the outside, the accelerator looks unremarkable. Nestled in the side of a grassy knoll on campus (in an area known as Science Hill), the only outward clue of what lies beneath is a formidable set of double doors plastered with a “Security Notice.” The accelerator is so unremarkable, in fact, that I lived two blocks away from it and walked by it every day for <i>three years</i> without ever noticing it was there. We postulated that the grassy camouflage was a strategy to keep the lab hidden from view, or perhaps served as a shield for radiation. But the lab’s director, Karsten Heeger, assured us that he knew of no particular reason that the accelerator was placed underground other than an apocryphal story that the lab’s original director didn’t want his graduate students to have windows (sigh).</div>
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Realizing that I had lived in such close proximity to the lab made it even more exciting to explore the particle accelerator at my own doorstep. Here is what I took away as three of the most interesting themes of our conversation.</div>
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<b>The Challenge of Commemoration </b></div>
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As the accelerator is decommissioned, the Wright Lab is making a concerted effort to commemorate the occasion and to preserve the accelerator’s historical legacy. Back in November, the lab held a open house that attracted <a href="http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2014/11/17/hundreds-bid-farewell-to-yale-particle-accelerator/">over 700 people</a> from across Connecticut. Long lineups of visitors waited out in the cold for their chance to tour the accelerator before it is dismantled. As one employee explained, this kind of public outreach wasn’t possible while the accelerator was still operational, because there was rarely a moment when the facility wasn’t being used to run experiments. But the lab has relished the opportunity to finally let the public in to explore the accelerator, and have proven receptive to alternative uses for the space. For example, local artists are organizing an exhibition that will take advantage of the unique setting. There has also been “at least one” skateboarder who has used the accelerator as a half-pipe.</div>
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As a historian, I was impressed by the lab’s sensitivity to issues of historical preservation. The lab is working with history of science Professor Paola Bertucci, who is also the Assistant Curator of the <a href="http://peabody.yale.edu/collections/historical-scientific-instruments">Historical Scientific Instruments Collection</a>, to preserve key artifacts and eventually build an exhibit commemorating the accelerator in conjunction with the Peabody Museum of Natural History. We discussed the challenges inherent in preserving an experimental apparatus that takes up more than 14,000 square feet of space<i>. </i> As I snapped pictures with my phone, I quickly realized that photography was an insufficient medium for capturing the size of the machine, and the sense of awe it entails. So how do we preserve a sense of scale? One suggestion was to project and then paint an outline of the accelerator onto the wall. This way, future visitors to the lab will be able to see the accelerator’s footprint long after it disappears.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QE3dE6L4bbQ/VPftm6b3AUI/AAAAAAAAGeQ/B5M_IPa2Vys/s1600/insidetheaccelerator.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QE3dE6L4bbQ/VPftm6b3AUI/AAAAAAAAGeQ/B5M_IPa2Vys/s1600/insidetheaccelerator.jpg" height="480" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The group inside the accelerator. I'm there too! <br />
Photo Credit: Charlotte Abney</td></tr>
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I wondered aloud if the accelerator might not be preserved as is (or at least in part) for future museum goers to walk through and experience just as our group did. I had in mind my visit to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum last summer, where life-sized models of space shuttles and airplanes hang from the ceiling and can be explored by the museum’s visitors. It was explained, however, that the accelerator and its scientific paraphernalia had to be taken apart because it is being parceled off to various institutions around the country. In fact, because the accelerator was partly funded by the federal government, Yale doesn’t actually own all of the equipment and therefore doesn’t control what happens to it. If the equipment can still be used to conduct “useful science,” it will be recycled and repurposed. I think there is much more to say about the idea of recycling in science, and the ways in which “outdated” technologies can have long and varied scientific careers of their own.</div>
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Heeger also explained how the spirit of the lab’s history will be preserved in the new designs for the Wright Laboratory, which will be renovated following the accelerator’s removal. The accelerator’s centrality in the lab meant that generations of Yale students received hands-on training in the design, construction, and maintenance of equipment. The lab hopes to keep this hands-on training as a fundamental part of student life by building a workshop for designing and building detectors for use at other major research sites. Even for theoretical physicists, these mechanical skills are a crucial part of the research endeavor. </div>
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<b>Maintenance, Repair, and the Invisible Labor of Big Science</b></div>
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My favorite part of the trip was hearing from Frank Lopez, the lab’s Research Development Technician. He described the day-to-day operations of the accelerator, and the challenges of keeping such a complex piece of machinery working properly. As Lopez quipped, “if it exists, it will break down,” and the accelerator seems to have been a particularly finicky piece of equipment.</div>
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Lopez described the mundane task of cleaning the machine, as any dust or hair present in the inner chamber could interfere with the experiment. The accelerator is made up of thousands of individual metal parts, and they all had to be perfectly clean for an experiment to succeed. The image of scientists perched on top of a giant particle accelerator, carefully removing dust and hair from every nook and cranny, contrasts sharply with stereotypically heroic representations of experimental science. Graffiti along the walls and ceiling of the accelerator hints at the long hours the crew must have spent inside of the chamber inspecting, cleaning, and maintaining the equipment.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pqX9r4Vu7S0/VPft2VjagiI/AAAAAAAAGeY/EEdxf6EemYY/s1600/movingparts.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pqX9r4Vu7S0/VPft2VjagiI/AAAAAAAAGeY/EEdxf6EemYY/s1600/movingparts.jpg" height="425" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">There are lots and lots of individual parts, and lots of things that can go wrong.<br />
Photo Credit: Bill Rankin </td></tr>
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Because visiting teams of scientists would reserve the accelerator months or even years in advance, the crew had to be ready to run the experiment as soon as the group arrived. As each scientific team usually only had a week with the accelerator, there was no time for second chances. Part of the challenge was that in order to insulate the accelerator (which operated at 22 million volts), the inner chamber had to be pumped full of gas. Once the gas was pumped in (a process that in itself took an entire day), no humans could go back inside to tweak the machinery. </div>
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If one of the thousands of parts that made up the accelerator came loose and fell on the ground, it would create sparks so massive that the machine “sounded like a monster.” To solve this problem, the crew actually used remote-control cars, and later a robot of their own design, to retrieve errant pieces and save the experiment. If the robot failed to solve the problem, all of the gas needed to be pumped back out (which would take another day), so that the crew could re-enter the chamber and fix the machine. With such tight timelines, there was a lot at stake in making sure the machine worked properly.</div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Jeffery Ashenfelter, the Associate Director of Operations, reflected on the the tacit knowledge required to make the accelerator work. The key to successful science was tricking nature - but nature doesn’t always like to be tricked. He described the process of aligning the ion beam as “ion sorcery,” and admitted that they didn’t always understand how or why a certain alignment worked better than others. It took a lot of trial and error and a deep familiarity with the machine to create a successful experiment.</div>
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When we think of “big science,” we (naturally) tend to think about what’s “big”: the exorbitant costs, the challenges of international cooperation, the sheer scale of the required machinery. But the day-to-day operation of a particle accelerator requires a highly knowledgeable team that can carry out the countless small tasks and adjustments that make experiments work. </div>
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<b>The Future of Big Science</b></div>
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Lastly, our tour guides reflected on the future of the Wright Lab and of “big science” more generally. The decision to decommission the particle accelerator stemmed in part from the lab’s shift away from particle physics towards the study of neutrinos and dark matter. When the accelerator was first installed in the 1960s, particle physics was an exciting and politically significant area of inquiry. Today, particle physics is what one lab member described as a “mature field.” While the accelerator could still be used to generate new knowledge, research in a mature field holds less appeal for an elite institution like Yale who strives to be on the cutting edge of new knowledge production.</div>
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While Yale had been a central hub for visiting researchers around the world, the massive scale of modern research facilities requires them to be placed in remote locations scattered throughout the globe, away from universities and urban centers. Members of the Wright Lab, for example, conduct research in several facilities around the world including the <a href="http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/february-2010/gran-sasso-a-tale-of-physics-in-the-mountains">Gran Sasso National Underground Laboratory</a> in Italy, the<a href="http://dayabay.ihep.ac.cn/twiki/bin/view/Public/"> Daya Bay Reactor</a> near Hong Kong, and (the coolest of all) the <a href="https://icecube.wisc.edu/">IceCube High-Energy Neutrino Telescope</a> in Antarctica. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iouVF9HbItg/VPfuiSWTaTI/AAAAAAAAGeg/BBpz-AikOaE/s1600/outsideshot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iouVF9HbItg/VPfuiSWTaTI/AAAAAAAAGeg/BBpz-AikOaE/s1600/outsideshot.jpg" height="425" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A shot of the outside of the accelerator. It looked a little like a submarine, complete with portholes. <br />
Photo Credit: Bill Rankin.</td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>The international nature of such work presents new challenges for physicists. While they know how to write equations and design detectors, members of the lab felt less prepared for the cross-cultural cooperation required to conduct major experiments. Ashenfelter spoke of his experiences in Italy and admitted that at first he didn’t know how to “get science done” in a different cultural setting. At every new site there is a learning curve as scientists adjust to the facility’s unique culture and regulations.</div>
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Thank you to the Wright Lab for giving us such an excellent tour and for answering our many questions about the facility and its history. I can now brag about having been inside of a particle accelerator, which I'm sure will be a huge hit at future academic gatherings and nerdy cocktail parties. </div>
Jennahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08919705479619555709noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-45066411140911392332015-03-02T09:27:00.001-05:002015-03-02T09:27:13.688-05:00Links for March 2, 2015<style>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://magazine.jhsph.edu/sebin/f/n/08-WHO-Paining-collections-spring-2015.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://magazine.jhsph.edu/sebin/f/n/08-WHO-Paining-collections-spring-2015.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">WHO smallpox workers in Ethiopia, courtesy of Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health</td></tr>
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<ul>
<li>Further proof that
all good ideas begin in wordplay: Historians of technology Lee Vinsel
and Andy Russell have opened up a call for contributors to <a href="http://leevinsel.com/blog/2015/2/25/the-maintainers-a-call-for-proposals" target="_blank">a project to complicate innovation-centered histories of technology</a>, à la <a href="http://books.simonandschuster.com/The-Innovators/Walter-Isaacson/9781476708690" target="_blank">Walter Isaacson's new book</a>, The
Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the
Digital Revolution. The project began with Russell's counter-title, <i>The
Maintainers: How a Group of Bureaucrats, Standards Engineers, and
Introverts Made Digital Infrastructures That Kind of Work Most of the
Time.</i></li>
<li><i><i>"...There is no saving the world, and the ones who say there is are the ones you need to save it from.":</i> In this <a href="https://orionmagazine.org/article/dark-ecology/" target="_blank">scathing critique of neo-environmentalism</a>,
Paul Kingsnorth argues that, short of the destruction of
techno-industrial civilization, there is little we can do to protect
nature from the tyranny of "sustainable" development.</i> </li>
<li>A
recent exhibit at the Institute for the History of Medicine at Johns
Hopkins highlighted artistic representations of smallpox throughout
history. The exhibit is now closed, but you can check out some of the
images <a href="http://magazine.jhsph.edu/2015/spring/departments/collections-the-art-of-smallpox/" target="_blank">here</a>.</li>
<li>Although she was told by Columbia that it was "a
waste of their time to admit her to their graduate program because she’d
end up as a housewife," <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/02/27/the-rock-star-female-scientist-who-put-shark-research-on-the-map/?tid=sm_tw" target="_blank">Eugenie Clark </a>got her PhD from New York University and went on to pioneer shark research. She was an<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/us/eugenie-clark-scholar-of-the-life-aquatic-dies-at-92.html?smid=nytcore-ipad-share&smprod=nytcore-ipad&_r=0" target="_blank"> ichthyologist, oceanographer, expert diver, prolific writer, and rider of whale sharks</a>.
Before dying at 92 this February, she celebrated two of her birthdays
in a submersible 900 feet under the surface of Lake Tahoe.</li>
<li>The geneticization of cancer is in the news again—the New York <i>Times</i>
looks at how doctors have begun to select therapies based <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/health/fast-track-attacks-on-cancer-accelerate-hopes.html?smid=nytcore-iphone-share&smprod=nytcore-iphone" target="_blank">not on what kind of cancer they treat, but on the kind mutation</a>
that likely caused the cancer. In many cases, the therapy has proven
extremely effective, although the overall numbers of patients treated
remains low</li>
<li>From Karl Marx to William Cronon, we've seen how information erasure is part of the process of commodification. Now the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled: <a href="http://qz.com/350705/the-us-supreme-court-has-affirmed-that-fish-are-not-an-information-storage-device/" target="_blank">you cannot store information on a fish</a>.</li>
<li>The <i>Guardian</i> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/27/civilization-sid-meier-interview-starships" target="_blank">interviews Sid Meier</a>, creator of the <i>Civilization</i> computer games that have stolen half your life.</li>
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David Roth Singermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12841041983824755867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-43253621084331277672015-02-23T15:28:00.002-05:002015-02-24T09:33:18.837-05:00Links for February 23, 2015<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://d38s399h0y8g1i.cloudfront.net/connect/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/1414858567_DC4P83342014-11-0115-57-18.jpg?dcb443" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://d38s399h0y8g1i.cloudfront.net/connect/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/1414858567_DC4P83342014-11-0115-57-18.jpg?dcb443" height="266" title="royalcaribbean.com" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Oliver Sacks's op-ed in the <i>NYT</i>, "<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/opinion/oliver-sacks-on-learning-he-has-terminal-cancer.html?fb_ref=Default&_r=0" target="_blank">My Own Life</a>,"
in which he confronts his eminent death from cancer has been making the
social-network rounds; here's a related piece from a few years ago,
sub-titled "<span style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/08/27/altered-states-3" target="_blank">Self-experiments in chemistry</a>" where Sacks describes his history of drug experimentation. </span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">A glimpse into the <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/02/han-solo-shot-first/385551/" target="_blank">edit wars raging in the Wikiverse</a> over tense in <i>Star Wars</i> related entries. </span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">How to have a tempered conversation about the <a href="http://genotopia.scienceblog.com/495/tweeting-the-life-of-the-mind/" target="_blank">bad habit of genetic determinism talk</a>: a happy example of public engagement on the rhetoric of science writing, from Nathaniel Comfort.</span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Natural history collections are <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/museums-the-endangered-dead-1.16942" target="_blank">an endangered species,</a>
and their disappearance means the loss of thousands of valuable
specimens whose potential for enriching the study of biodiversity is far
from extinct.</span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Historian of medicine and expert in
the history of vaccination Elena Conis weighs in on the latest measles
outbreak by reminding us how <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-vaccines-change-the-way-we-think-about-disease-36941" target="_blank">vaccinations shape how we perceive disease risk</a>.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">A New York Times editorial documents the wide-ranging economic and infrastructural effects of the recent <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/20/opinion/bostons-winter-from-hell.html?_r=0" target="_blank">spate of snowstorms in Boston</a>, and argues that long-term weather events like these constitute a natural disaster.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Charlotte Connelly <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/science/the-h-word/2015/feb/18/alessandro-volta-anniversary-electricity-history-science" target="_blank">isn't entirely pleased</a><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> with Google's Alessandro Volta doodle.</span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">An <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/02/the-luxury-liner-of-the-future/385588/" target="_blank">eco-friendly cruise ship</a> with <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CC0QtwIwBA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DTBF7EE2xnN4&ei=7ovrVPK0K8aiNofogbAH&usg=AFQjCNE-ZzpU71sggqEy9qSh8FIW6xR2lg&sig2=w0jNmtE6bRB4q1fyr8DVcg&bvm=bv.86475890,d.eXY" target="_blank">robot bartenders</a>?</span></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Skepticism is the science news du jour: on top of <a href="http://americanscience.blogspot.com/2015/02/links-for-tuesday-217.html" target="_blank">last week's</a> <i>National Geographic</i> cover, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/us/ties-to-corporate-cash-for-climate-change-researcher-Wei-Hock-Soon.html" target="_blank">another Merchant of Doubt</a> is on the front page in <span class="aBn" data-term="goog_1168686456" tabindex="0"><span class="aQJ">Sunday's</span></span> New York <i>Times</i>. (Though it seems to at least one of your bloggers that when the paper writes </span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">"</span></span>Historians
and sociologists of science say that since the tobacco wars of the
1960s, corporations trying to block legislation that hurts their
interests have employed a strategy of creating the appearance of
scientific doubt," it may inadvertently reproduce the problem it attempts to describe.)</span></span></span></li>
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David Roth Singermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12841041983824755867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-67736976727456458372015-02-17T10:12:00.002-05:002015-02-17T10:12:54.717-05:00Links for Tuesday, 2/17<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">https://medium.com/press-play</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"></span><ul>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">Historian of science and religion Adam Shapiro discusses the history of
William Paley's watchmarker analogy, technological metaphors more
generally, and God in <i><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/02/god-watchmakers-and-the-short-half-lfe-of-technology-metaphors/385408/" target="_blank">The Atlantic</a>.</i></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">Ötzi, the 5300-year-old mummy found in the Italian Alps had <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/02/mapping-61-ancient-tattoos-on-a-5300-year-old-mummy/385198/" target="_blank">mad ink</a>.
The purpose of his 61 tattoos are now a matter of debate for
archaeologists, who speculate they could have preformed therapeutic,
religious, or symbolic functions. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">A
catch-22 of regulatory science: try to get specific testing procedures
written into law and risk that they might seem inappropriate or obsolete
in five years, or advocate for flexibility and expert discretion, thus
risking the possibility of regulatory capture? Toxicologists weighing
in on Congressional plans to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act <a href="http://www.rollcall.com/news/tsca_reform_should_embrace_the_best_application_of_toxicological_science_a-239923-1.html" target="_blank">opt for the latter</a>.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">The heroin economy, gun violence, urban planning, tax collection, and foreclosure laws meet in <a href="http://www.northjersey.com/heroinreport" target="_blank">Paterson, NJ</a>. A remarkable, sad feature about a broken city.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">From Alex Wellerstein: <a href="http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/02/13/how-to-die-at-los-alamos/" target="_blank">Two dozen deaths at Los Alamos</a>,
most of which have nothing to do with radiation, reveal a cross section
of the lives of those who literally built the Manhattan Project.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">National Geographic tries to give a scientific explanation for <a href="http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/science-doubters/achenbach-text" target="_blank">skepticism of scientific facts. </a></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">Meanwhile, the Smithsonian's American Art Museum has a new show that investigates <a href="http://www.npr.org/2015/02/04/382450504/beautiful-bird-exhibit-spotted-at-smithsonian?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social" target="_blank">birds as subject matter</a> in contemporary art. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">Punny Valentine: Celebrate a belated Valentine's Day with these <a href="http://skunkbear.tumblr.com/post/110933375264/i-asked-people-to-send-in-tweet" target="_blank">groan-worthy science themed valentines</a>.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">Speaking of Valentine's Day, University of Kent's Ruth Wainman reflects on <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/science/the-h-word/2015/feb/13/marriage-scientific-careers-history" target="_blank">the role of marriage in the history of science</a>, both for female scientists in dual career couples and the role of domestic partnership in making scientific careers work.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">"In
its heyday, RadioShack was so much more than a store — it was an art
gallery, a museum, a school. " As RadioShack files for bankruptcy, a <a href="http://www.wired.com/2015/02/radioshack-helped-build-silicon-valley/" target="_blank">look back </a>on the store's important role in the history of Silicon Valley and the birth of personal computing.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">"Systematic inequality and hierarchy in faculty hiring networks." That is the title of <a href="http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400005" target="_blank">a new AAAS Science Advances paper</a> quantifying just far academia is from a meritocracy.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">That award-winning rum you love: <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/16/-sp-nicaragua-kidney-disease-killing-sugar-cane-workers" target="_blank">a kidney disease is killing thousands</a> of the Nicaraguan sugar-cane workers who spend 14 hours a day in the baking heat to make it, and the mill kicks them off its payroll when they get sick, with the acquiescence of the ex-Sandinista president.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">And David Carr, the brilliant New York <i>Times</i> journalist and media columnist who died suddenly last Thursday, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/business/media/david-carr-as-a-passionate-professor-shaping-the-future-of-journalism.html?_r=0" target="_blank">was teaching a class at Boston University</a> on how to be a journalist in the digital world, or what he called "the present future we are living through." The course was built around Medium, and <a href="https://medium.com/press-play/press-play-4b26bed77b7d" target="_blank">the syllabus is available there</a> for everyone to benefit.</span></li>
</ul>
David Roth Singermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12841041983824755867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-68760617671853010212015-02-10T09:45:00.000-05:002015-02-10T09:45:00.209-05:00A very recent history of Histories of the Future<style>
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"The future is a great historical resource."</b><br />
<br />
This, <a href="http://histscifi.com/essays/milam/apeman.html">to quote</a> Erika Milam, was the premise of <a href="http://histscifi.com/"><i>Histories of the Future</i></a>, a workshop held last Friday and Saturday at Princeton. Milam and co-organizer Joanna Radin brought together a dozen workshop participants and another dozen or two audience members to pay serious (and playful) attention to science fiction as a subject of historical study.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IjngFnh1ZoE/VNlQJnsb6FI/AAAAAAAAAo0/zcl84y6Y40Y/s1600/histscifi-1.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IjngFnh1ZoE/VNlQJnsb6FI/AAAAAAAAAo0/zcl84y6Y40Y/s1600/histscifi-1.PNG" height="154" width="320" /></a></div>
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The participants in the workshop explored the rich possibilities of science fiction as a historical source. As Milam <a href="http://histscifi.com/essays/milam/apeman.html">puts it</a>, "Reading past iterations of projected futures allows us to uncover the underlying assumptions about the present that scientists mobilized in constructing their theories." More provocatively, participants took science fiction as a methodological provocation. <b>Can science fiction open up new ways of conceiving and doing the history (and sociology and anthropology) of science?</b><br />
<br />
Milam, associate professor of history of science at Princeton, and Radin, assistant professor of history of medicine at Yale, came up with the idea for the workshop a few years ago, after a discussion of how science fiction kept popping up insistently at the margins of their research. The workshop is an experiment in reframing the history of science by making that marginal topic into a focal point of scholarship. Science fiction is amenable to such a centering move; as workshop participant Nikolai Krementsov noted, sci-fi lies at the intersection of scientific change and sociocultural change.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Design in the service of scholarship: the scholarly website</h3>
The workshop was experimental in another way. It was the kick-off event for a collaborative project in which the workshop participants will explore the possibilities of a new genre of publication: the scholarly website.<br />
<br />
In lieu of a chapter-length paper, each participant submitted a 1,500 word essay in advance of the workshop, which were uploaded onto <a href="http://histscifi.com/essays/">histscifi.com</a>, the project website. At the workshop, participants presented their plans for following up or adding to that essay in several short installments over the coming year.<br />
<br />
Fred Gibbs, assistant professor of history at the University of New Mexico, opened the workshop by laying out some of the possibilities for presenting historical work on the web. Gibbs, who works in digital history and web design as well as medieval history, argues that <b>we can and should think of websites as scholarship</b> in themselves, not just as containers for scholarship. The goal of this particular website, Gibbs and the organizers emphasized, was not radical experimentation (though such experimentation is great and should be encouraged). Rather, it will be an exercise in thinking about how historians can use the web to do an even better job presenting the kind of text-centered argument and storytelling that they already aim to do.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ULtuKeqDXPY/VNlQNMc5qvI/AAAAAAAAApU/kr8pJ67EBBo/s1600/histscifi-2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ULtuKeqDXPY/VNlQNMc5qvI/AAAAAAAAApU/kr8pJ67EBBo/s1600/histscifi-2.png" height="200" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">On his own website, <a href="http://fredgibbs.net/posts/consider-the-poster/">Fred Gibbs explains</a> why a poster is a useful format for presenting all sorts of historical scholarship, including scholarship on digital methods.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Gibbs laid out several guiding principles that he is following in leading the design of the project website:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>The website will begin with a spare design. As the contributors flesh out their individual projects and accrue a vocabulary for talking about web design, the group will use design elements to form and express an integral message of the project. At the same time, the design should leave flexibility for individual contributions to develop in different ways.</li>
<li>Hyperlinks are tentacles into the world. The website will use lots of them.</li>
<li>The site should be dynamic in two ways. First, it will provide a layered, interactive user experience (though "user" doesn't quite seem to be the right word, and "reader" isn't quite sufficient either). Second, the site should be a living platform for scholarship, not just a record of it. One might imagine it as part-archive, part-magazine, part-journal. (However, one audience member cautioned that a website might not be able to fill all of these roles at once.)</li>
</ul>
<br />
The contributions themselves were wonderfully eclectic, addressing a wide range of places and genres of speculative fiction from the mid-19th century through the present day. Sadly, I had to depart before the concluding discussion, so I can't report on the unifying themes that the participants drew out of the two days of discussions. Instead, I'll offer a few of my own, touching upon as many of the presentations as I can. (Read all of the contributors' essays <a href="http://histscifi.com/essays/">on the website</a>!)<br />
<br />
<h3>
Overcoming (through) distance</h3>
We usually think of science fiction, like history, as an attempt to overcome temporal distance. Historians reconstruct the past; sci-fi authors imagine the future. Several of the workshop's essays and presentations complicated this picture, showing that science fiction is a means of bridging distances in time, in space, and across the gulf between life and death. What kinds of technology or imagination has it taken to overcome each sort of distance for speculative authors in different historical settings?<br />
<br />
Patrick McCray discussed cryonics: technologies for freezing ("de-animating") dying human beings in anticipation of the development of future technologies for reanimating them and restoring them to health. Cryonics is true heterogeneous engineering, involving not only decoagulating solutions and aluminum canisters of liquid nitrogen but also financial instruments and legal frameworks. Silicon Valley engineers arrange for their bodies to be frozen in order to overcome death, but seem not to consider what measures might be necessary to bridge the social distance between the present and the future into which they hope to re-animate.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2n1Tz34B2sM/VNlQJrIyywI/AAAAAAAAAo4/yAnRekbbf5c/s1600/histscifi-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2n1Tz34B2sM/VNlQJrIyywI/AAAAAAAAAo4/yAnRekbbf5c/s1600/histscifi-3.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Many are cold, <a href="http://histscifi.com/essays/mccray/cryonics.html">few are frozen</a>."</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Profit Mukharji discussed the categories of animacy and the <a href="http://histscifi.com/essays/mukharji/paranimate.html">"paranimacy" of the undead</a> as potential models for subjecthood and agency in a necropolitical society. In the science-fictional work that he discussed, space and time were at once overcome by a chronotopic technology referred to as a "steam-boat." He suggested that in colonial settings, utopias are generally located not on a distant planet or far in the future, but in the afterlife.<br />
<br />
Michael Gordin took up <a href="http://histscifi.com/essays/gordin/languages.html">language as a marker</a> of social, temporal, and geographic distance in science fiction. Science fiction authors in Cold War America drew upon the ideas of contemporary sociolinguistics to conceive a world after globalnuclear war. Taking the fall of Rome and the break-up of Latin into the Romance languages as their model, they presented the breakdown of political and social order through the divergence of language.<br />
<br />
Distance is not only an obstacle to be overcome, but also a means of overcoming the limitations of the scientific and political imagination. Frédérique Aït-Touati discussed how seventeenth-century astronomers used <a href="http://histscifi.com/essays/ait-touati/distance.html">speculative narratives</a> of interplanetary travel to made Copernicanism conceivable. She presented <i><a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-collapse-of-western-civilization/9780231169547">The Collapse of Western Civilization</a></i>, a recent speculative essay by Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway, as a similar exercise in using the of the distant future to dramatize phenomena of climate change, whose stakes can remain obscure when viewed from the present.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Science by other means</h3>
How has science fiction contributed to the doing and public understanding of science? Hans-Jörg Rheinberger has referred to experimental systems as "machines for making the future" (quoting a scientist, the biologist François Jacob). Colin Milburn extended Rheinberger's insight to <a href="http://histscifi.com/essays/milburn/time.html">thought experiments involving tachyons</a>, hypothetical faster-than-light particles. Like Rheinberger's epistemic things, tachyons have played a role in organizing scientific work, even as they were treated as the stuff of science fiction.<br />
<br />
Stephanie Dick asked how the effort to <a href="http://histscifi.com/essays/dick/thinking.html">build a thinking machine</a> changes how we conceive of human reason. When computer scientists encountered obstacles in their various efforts to make machines behave like humans, they developed new ways of thinking about the differences between human and (potential) machine cognition. As scientists have attempted to make computers perform acts associated with human intelligence, our definition of what it means to be human has changed as well. Computers haven't yet replaced human beings, but they have been a means of displacing and redefining them.<br />
<br />
Erika Milam, too, considered modes of speculation the nature of humanity, but from the perspective of <a href="http://histscifi.com/essays/milam/apeman.html">evolutionary theory</a>. Mid-20th century evolutionary biologists wrestled not only with the past but the future; following the latter dimension of their speculations provides a different path through the history of evolutionary thought.<br />
<br />
In discussion of her paper on evolutionary imaginings of the human future, participants noted that such phenomena as the paleo diet might be seen as attempts to replace a discredited map of human evolution in geographic space (the stuff of Victorian race science) with a varied chronology of evolution within the human body. The various tempos of development of the immune system, bone structure, and digestion thus take the place previously held by Europe, Australia, and Africa held in the old evolutionary map of the world.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0WP33271CQQ/VNlQKHTSbrI/AAAAAAAAApA/Vp10Wlm9iWs/s1600/histscifi-4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0WP33271CQQ/VNlQKHTSbrI/AAAAAAAAApA/Vp10Wlm9iWs/s1600/histscifi-4.jpg" height="230" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Michael Crichton, sociologist of science?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Joanna Radin discussed the <a href="http://histscifi.com/essays/radin/technothriller.html">fiction of Michael Crichton</a> as a compelling form of scientific speculation in late twentieth-century America. Crichton's hyperrealist morality tales, crafted around events that seem like they could already have happened, presented PR opportunities and challenges for scientists and even galvanized policy makers. His work occupies an ironic position: critiques of the careless use of science for profit or entertainment, presented in immensely entertaining and profitable novels, films, television shows, amusement park rides, and video games. As Radin pointed out, the invented reference lists and ethnographic approach of Crichton's work suggest that we should take him seriously as an author of science studies fiction as well as sci-fi.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Dialectics of determinism</h3>
Does speculative science fiction attempt to channel our present into a particular future or <a href="http://histscifi.com/essays/murphy/dream.html">open up a wider universe</a> of possible futures? Both, suggests Michelle Murphy. She terms the former sort of speculation "firmative," providing the examples of financial modeling and development economics as attempts to mold the future toward particular outcomes. A mode of firmative speculation is at work in development projects that transform girls in the global south into risk pools for investment and back into the figure of "the girl effect," a potent image for promoting this attempt to engineer a future controlled through systems of finance. This mode, Murphy suggest, exists in tension with an "affirmative" form of speculation, which imagines alternative futures rather than seeking to realize a particular one governed by a dominant logic of the present.<br />
<br />
Aït-Touati, too, took up the political imagination in her presentation. Like Murphy, she noted how certain kinds of speculation can foreclose creative possibility. Apocalyptic visions of climate change, she argued, provide a difficult starting point for political negotiation. Alongside strategies of dramatization, strategies of de-dramatization may provide a useful means of bringing alternatives to catastrophic climate change into being.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oHiZSDvAbFw/VNlQMIKumcI/AAAAAAAAApM/zdOUPKAZjHA/s1600/histscifi-5.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oHiZSDvAbFw/VNlQMIKumcI/AAAAAAAAApM/zdOUPKAZjHA/s1600/histscifi-5.png" height="233" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://histscifi.com/essays/benjamin/regeneration.html">"Black to the Future"</a>: speculative fiction as scholarship.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Perhaps the most intriguing contribution to the workshop was that of Ruha Benjamin, who is engaging in her own experiment in affirmative speculation. For her contribution, she is writing <a href="http://histscifi.com/essays/benjamin/regeneration.html">a serialized science fiction story</a> set in a future world in which racial justice is enforced through a scheme of biopolitical reparations. She hopes to use speculative fiction as a means of thinking through and beyond the troubled present - "creating new social facts through narrative," as she put it.<br />
<br />
***<br />
All that, and I haven't even touched upon the fascinating presentations of Oliver Gaycken on <a href="http://histscifi.com/essays/gaycken/xray.html">x-ray vision and the technological sublime</a> and Nikolai Krementsov on <a href="http://histscifi.com/essays/krementsov/valley.html">visionary biology in the post-revolutionary Soviet Union</a>. Check out these and the rest of the essays, and keep an eye on <a href="http://histscifi.com/">histscifi.com</a> for more on the progress of this scholarly experiment.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
Evanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18194354174479536249noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-53841419279169742342015-02-09T11:17:00.000-05:002015-02-09T11:17:02.882-05:00Links for February 9, 2015<style>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://seeingnetworks.in/img/nyc/guide/marking_01.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://seeingnetworks.in/img/nyc/guide/marking_01.JPG" height="427" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">http://seeingnetworks.in/guide/</td></tr>
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<ul>
<li>"Monoglot science comes with a price." Michael Gordin describes how <a href="http://aeon.co/magazine/science/how-did-science-come-to-speak-only-english/" target="_blank">science came to speak only English</a>. </li>
<li>"New
York’s network infrastructure is a lot like the city itself: messy,
sprawling, and at times near-incomprehensible. However, the city’s
tendency toward flux is a strange blessing for the infrastructure
sightseer: markings and remnants of the network are almost everywhere,
once you know how to look for them." Find them using the <a href="http://seeingnetworks.in/nyc/" target="_blank">website</a> and new <a href="http://seeingnetworks.in/guide/" target="_blank">field guide</a> created by artist Ingrid Burrington. (Here's a <a href="http://gothamist.com/2015/02/06/take_the_red_pill.php" target="_blank">write-up</a>.)</li>
<li>A <a href="http://nautil.us/issue/21/information/the-man-who-tried-to-redeem-the-world-with-logic" target="_blank">beautifully written account</a>
of the life and career of Walter Pitts, a logician who worked at the
forefront of computational neuroscience in the 1930s and 1940s. While
Pitts built a model of the brain that was perfectly logical, he
struggled to deal with the messy realities of biology and everyday life.</li>
<li>Cambridge-based couple Sonia Vallabh and Eric Minikel are determined t<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/02/insomnia-that-kills/384841/" target="_blank">o unlock the secrets of the rare genetic condition</a> fatal-familial insomnia (FFI) before Vallabh succumbs to its effects. Their deeply personal <a href="http://www.prionalliance.org/" target="_blank">scientific mission</a> has inspired geneticists around the world who work on rare prion conditions like FFI.</li>
<li>Two years ago <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21591793-legendary-typeface-gets-second-life-fight-over-doves" target="_blank"><i>The</i> <i>Economist</i></a> ran a<i> </i>story
about the Doves type—a metal type face—that was lost in 1913 when one
of the printers who developed it threw it into the Thames
after a falling out with his partner. This weekend, the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31188255" target="_blank">BBC reports</a> that scuba divers have recovered some of the printing blocks. Thanks to designer Robert Green, you can now purchase a <a href="http://www.typespec.co.uk/doves-type/" target="_blank">modern digital font version</a>.</li>
</ul>
<br />David Roth Singermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12841041983824755867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-52244221447308316222015-02-02T19:58:00.001-05:002015-02-02T20:05:53.047-05:00Synchronicity and Scale in the Logic of the Anthropocene<style>@font-face {
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-trBGznmqryU/VNAb1hR2HiI/AAAAAAAAAVM/LzJnb5PnytE/s1600/Black_deepwaterhorizon_L.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-trBGznmqryU/VNAb1hR2HiI/AAAAAAAAAVM/LzJnb5PnytE/s1600/Black_deepwaterhorizon_L.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Still from the Deepwater Horizon video feed, an iconic image of the Anthropocene, according to the recent "Anthropocene Slam" held at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. http://nelson.wisc.edu/ </td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">As I explained in my last post, one of the biggest debates
currently engrossing the geoscientific community concerns the concept of the
Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is a proposed new geological epoch in which the
environmental effects of human activity can be detected in the Earth’s strata
and in the atmosphere on a global scale. The epoch has yet to be officially
recognized as an epoch by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (the
group who has the last word on such matters, at least among geologists), but
many scientists have moved beyond questions of whether the Anthropocene exists,
and are now interested in trying to determine <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">when </i>the epoch first began. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">To determine the boundary between one epoch and another,
geologists look for a “golden spike” (known more formally as a stratigraphic
signal), or a substantial change in the physical and chemical content of
sedimentation from one geological stratum to the next. These changes often
correspond to major events in the Earth’s history – the end of an ice age, a
mass extinction event, or the appearance of new species in the fossil record.
Scientists generally agree, for example, that the Holocene (the epoch in which
we currently live, at least as of this writing) began about 11,700 years ago
when the last ice age ended, manifested as a change in the chemical composition
of layers of ice in the polar ice core.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When they first proposed the idea in 2000, Paul Crutzen and Eugene
Stoermer suggested that the Anthropocene may have begun around 1780, when the
concentration of greenhouse gases trapped in the ice core increased
dramatically. Not incidentally, 1780 was also around the time when humans began
extracting fossil fuels (most notably: coal) on a large scale, and the date
also stands in for the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because of the standards for epochal
boundaries outlined by ICS, however, geologists recently suggested that the
Anthropocene in fact may have begun much more recently, and are looking to the
mid-twentieth century for a potential starting point. Those who favor this more
recent start date are split in their reasoning: The first group, led by climate
scientist Will Steffen, argues that the Anthropocene began with the Great
Acceleration, or the post-1950 increase in human activities whose effects
impacted major Earth systems. (The Great Acceleration could be glossed as
“globalization.”) As evidence in favor of this starting point, Steffen et al.
point to two sets of 12 graphs. The first 12 graphs track rates of change in
particular human activities since 1750 (population, paper consumption, damming
of rivers, foreign direct investment, etc.). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nCJICEenbvs/VNAa1JMRkdI/AAAAAAAAAU8/uzK5mv5skrE/s1600/graphs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nCJICEenbvs/VNAa1JMRkdI/AAAAAAAAAU8/uzK5mv5skrE/s1600/graphs.jpg" height="320" width="262" /></a></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The second set documents changes
in major features of the Earth’s systems (atmospheric composition, water and
nitrogen cycles, tropical forest degradation) that likely resulted from these
increases in human activities. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wDMjPiA4YYY/VNAa6RN1afI/AAAAAAAAAVE/WmqyyZMtDQI/s1600/graphs2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wDMjPiA4YYY/VNAa6RN1afI/AAAAAAAAAVE/WmqyyZMtDQI/s1600/graphs2.jpg" height="320" width="262" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Taken together, these graphs indicate that,
while humans in the nineteenth century may have begun to exploit the Earth’s
resources in a heretofore unprecedented way, it wasn’t until the 1950s that
their impacts were manifested in the Earth’s history. In fact, these geologists
argue that the past 60 years constituted <span style="color: #141413;">“the most
rapid transformation of the human relationship with the natural world in the
history of humankind.”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1030220433025894048#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #141413; font-size: 12pt;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a>
</span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The second group, led by geologist Jan Zalasiewicz, does not
refute the evidence marshaled by the Great Accelerators, and indeed agrees that
globalization gave rise to major changes in the Earth system. They argue,
though, that at least according to the geological record, the Anthropocene
technically began in 1945, predating the Great Acceleration by several years. In
this case, the appearance of manmade radionuclides in soils and in the atmosphere
constitute the golden spike of the Anthropocene, and corresponds to the detonation
of the first atomic bombs.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1030220433025894048#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[2]</span></span></span></span></a></span> </div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">If we follow the Great Acceleration group, then the start of
the Anthropocene is linked not to one exact moment, but rather exists as a
series of closely related events that indicate major global geological and
atmospheric changes when considered as a group. If, however, we look to the beginning
of the nuclear age, the starting point is incredibly precise: July 16, 1945 at
11:29:21 GMT. This is the moment when the world’s first atomic bomb, known as
Trinity, was detonated in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Trinity appeals to geologists
because a) it was a singular event, and b) its effects were synchronous on a
global scale. It thus fits neatly with the standards for a new geological epoch
as defined by the ICS (although, as Zalasiewicz and his group note, it was not
until 1963 that the radionuclides were detectable worldwide). In this context,
Trinity was an event in the Earth’s history on par with mass extinctions or
global warming events—phenomena whose effects were (nearly) immediate and
occurred on a global scale.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">As a historian, what I find fascinating about the proposal
to link the Anthropocene with Trinity is that it casts the history of the
atomic bomb in an entirely new light. It requires a reconfiguration in how we
think about the scale of the bomb’s effects: In the Anthropocene, not only do
we need to grapple with the moral question of the dropping of bombs on the
human level, but also on an environmental one—at the scale of the entire globe.
What’s more, to introduce the nuclear into a conversation about who is to blame
for the Anthropocene is to implicate a set of politics that exist outside of a primarily
capitalist framework. Indeed, these geologists reject the Industrial Revolution
as the starting point precisely <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">because </i>of
these questions of synchronicity and scale: the large-scale extraction of
fossil fuels did not begin simultaneously all over the world, but rather
emanated out from Great Britain and Europe; in other words, the primary
geological evidence of the Industrial Revolution maps onto the trajectory of
capitalism, which was not a globally synchronous event. Additionally, while the
Industrial Revolution had profound impacts on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">face</i> of the Earth, in terms of large-scale shifts in the Earth’s
systems, its effects were negligible. Capitalism certainly engendered a rearticulation
and reformulation of our <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ideas</i> about
our powers as a species over the natural world. In the logic of the
Anthropocene, though, it wasn’t until we became nuclear that we truly became a
force on par with nature itself. </span></div>
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</span><br />
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<div id="ftn1" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1030220433025894048#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a>
Steffen et al., <i>Global Change and the Earth System: A Planet Under Pressure</i>
(Berlin, Heidelberg, New York: Springer-Verlag, 2004), 131. See also Steffen et
al., “The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Anthropocene Review </i>(2015): 1-18. </span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1030220433025894048#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">[2]</span></span></span></span></a>
Zalasiewicz et al., “When did the Anthropocene begin? A mid-twentieth century
boundary level is stratigraphically optimal,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Quaternary International </i>(2014): 1-8. </span></div>
</div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span>leahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05917318456021402017noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-38085667821722729122015-02-02T10:16:00.001-05:002015-02-02T10:21:52.764-05:00Links for February 2, 2015 (updated)<style>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://vrf.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/subway-coral-reef-05.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://vrf.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/subway-coral-reef-05.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.viralforest.com/subway-cars-dumped-coral-reef/" target="_blank">Stephen Mallon via viralforest.com</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
Your bloggers' picks from the past week. <br />
<ul>
<li>The trailer is out for the <a href="http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/sony/merchantsofdoubt/" target="_blank">Merchants of Doubt documentary</a>,
based on the book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway; it reveals how a
small contingent of conservative industry-backed scientists have
contributed to deliberately misleading the public on environmental and
health issues, like the reality of climate change and the risks
associated with tobacco. </li>
<li>Mounting evidence for the biological interactions between <a href="http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/2015/01/humans-and-neandertals-likely-interbred-middle-east?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=facebook" target="_blank"><i>Homo sapiens</i> and Neanderthals</a>.</li>
<li>Before net neutrality, there was <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/01/before-net-neutrality-the-surprising-1940s-battle-for-radio-freedom/384924/" target="_blank">the revolt against radio</a>.</li>
<li>Eric Lander: "The remarkable thing about the scientific enterprise is that we <i>try</i> to reproduce things, and we worry about it." Sometimes, anyway. The Washington Post checks on where we're at on <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/the-new-scientific-revolution-reproducibility-at-last/2015/01/27/ed5f2076-9546-11e4-927a-4fa2638cd1b0_story.html" target="_blank">reproducibility</a> these days.</li>
<li>Do you love watching videos of cross-species animal friendships on YouTube? (Examples: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_sfnQDr1-o" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrudR-kIB1k" target="_blank">here</a>, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1J9hQQXaOY" target="_blank">here</a>). <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/27/science/so-happy-together.html?_r=0" target="_blank">Scientists do too!</a> Evolutionary
biologists are studying what drives affectionate interspecies
interactions, while psychologists weigh in on why humans find unlikely
animal pairings so endearing.</li>
<li>From the upcoming Histories of the Future Conference at Princeton (<span class="aBn" data-term="goog_1701479254" tabindex="0"><span class="aQJ">February 6-7, 2015</span></span>), check out this <a href="http://histscifi.com/essays/" target="_blank">excellent series of essays</a> from a group of #histsci [ed: and #histtech and #histmed] heavyweights. </li>
<li>Stephen Mallon's <a href="http://www.stephenmallon.com/Photography/Next-Stop-Atlantic/1/" target="_blank">photographs</a> of New York City subway cars <a href="http://www.viralforest.com/subway-cars-dumped-coral-reef/" target="_blank">being dumped into the Atlantic</a> to form frameworks for coral reefs. </li>
<li>The new Greek finance minister, <a href="http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/" target="_blank">Yanis Varoufakis</a>, is maintaining the lively and outspoken Internet presence he established as an academic. Go read <a href="http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/" target="_blank">the remarkable blog he wrote</a> as consultant for Valve Software, on the economics of game-worlds like Team Fortress 2 and digital economies in general.</li>
<li>Ethnographer Ben Wurgaft <a href="https://www.beaconreader.com/climate-confidential/future-food-ethnographer-ben-wurgaft-the-fiction-science-of-cultured-meat" target="_blank">on cultured meat</a>. </li>
</ul>
</div>
David Roth Singermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12841041983824755867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-8499834224036473642015-01-26T13:30:00.000-05:002015-01-26T13:46:43.708-05:00In Memoriam David C. Lindberg<style>@font-face {
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David C. Lindberg, the esteemed historian of science, died
on Tuesday, January 6<sup>th</sup>, 2015. </div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nuXOZ0ror24/VMZy1evZscI/AAAAAAAABEs/-QBbJ7wAR2Y/s1600/lindberg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nuXOZ0ror24/VMZy1evZscI/AAAAAAAABEs/-QBbJ7wAR2Y/s1600/lindberg.jpg" /></a></div>
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When I sat down to write this post, the challenge of
summarizing Dave Lindberg’s life inevitably overwhelmed me. I arrived in
Wisconsin’s History of Science department as a grad student about six years after he
officially retired. Dave, however, never retreated from department life and I
got the opportunity to interact with him. His death was, of course, sad to
anyone that knew him—and, no doubt, to the many that knew him by reputation
alone—but there’s something particularly tragic about a brilliant mind
succumbing to Alzheimer’s disease. Given the nature of the disease, I think
it’s especially important for those of us lucky enough to have participated in
the community that he nurtured, to record and share our memories of him.</div>
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Dave lived in the Midwest for most of his life, growing up
in Minnesota, receiving his PhD from the Department of History and Philosophy of Science
at Indiana University Bloomington, and spending the rest of his career in the Department
of the History of Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=David+C.+Lindberg&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3ADavid+C.+Lindberg">numerous publications contributed considerably</a> to our understanding of medieval and
early-modern science, with a special focus on the history of optics and the intersection
between science and religion. At Wisconsin, he was instrumental in developing
the syllabus and textbooks for large undergraduate survey courses, spanning the
classical origins of scientific inquiry up to the development of modern scientific
thought.<span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></div>
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A few weeks ago, Evan Hepler-Smith posted a piece on this
blog—“<a href="http://americanscience.blogspot.com/2014/12/what-is-regional-history-of-american.html"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What
is the regional history of American Science?</span></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">”—that explored the
role of place in American science studies. It got me thinking about the Midwestern
lineage of American history of science, cultivated in the large departments at
Wisconsin, Indiana, and Oklahoma.</span> In my mind, Dave represented a
quintessential example of a Midwestern historian of science: catholic in his
scholarly interests, he brought Midwestern character to his teaching and
mentorship through his generous, patient, and convivial spirit. In my first few
weeks of graduate school, Dave made it clear to me that the
department was not only a place of academic training, but also a community of
friends. He offered, for example, to make me a bookcase one afternoon as I was
on my way to the required seminar on historiography and methods. By this time, Dave
had been emeritus for years, but his enthusiasm and care for incoming graduate
students never diminished. Long before that, he had established the
department’s Friday Brown Bag lunch tradition, an informal gathering for
students and faculty to discuss the field. He regularly hosted parties at his
house with his wife, Greta, and created a fellowship for students interested in
science and religion. Dave believed in an academic community that not only
fostered intellectual development, but one that thrived when its participants
offered each other sincere support in multiple forms.
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">Matt
Lavine—a fellow alumnus of Wisconsin’s History of Science department and
current assistant professor at Mississippi State University—recently shared how
Dave handled his lecture for an undergraduate survey course on September 11<sup>th</sup>,
2001: </span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"> </span>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">… [Dave] decided not to lecture
on the pre-Socratics that day. I'm sure nobody who held classes was really
sticking to the lesson plan. Instead, he gave an impromptu hour-long lecture on
the history and culture of Islam. This was four hours into 9/11; nobody really
knew for sure who was responsible, but you were already hearing talk about
reprisals against mosques or people of Middle Eastern descent or Sikhs mistaken
for Muslims. The content of what he spoke about wasn't terribly deep or
pointed; it was really just a decent overview. Obviously his purpose was to
pour some oil on the waters by reminding his frightened audience of the basic
truths of the situation: that "Islam" covered a fantastically large
and diverse segment of humanity, that the vast majority of Muslims regarded
these kinds of actions as unrecognizable perversions of their faith, that
"terrorism" wasn't the simple result of Bad People and Wrong
Religion, and so forth.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">... I'm
sure he did more good just by speaking calmly and objectively about the real
human experience bound up in the long history of Islam, trusting his students
to put the pieces together for themselves.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">There's so much more that can
and will be said about the good works he did, most of which he wanted no credit
for. He had a lot of truly fine accomplishments. But they happened among hundreds
of little moments like this, and in the end I think they were the greater part
of his legacy.</span></div>
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I think Matt articulated precisely what I want to say about
Dave in this piece. His scholarly legacy is momentous, but he imparted so much
more to everyone who was lucky enough to know him. Perhaps it was a Midwestern thing; maybe it was simply a Dave Lindberg thing. Regardless, it was his generous
character combined with his intellect that made him a truly outstanding scholar
and person. </div>
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Meridith Beck Sayrehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05967423747509065898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-73115382450559697152015-01-26T11:17:00.001-05:002015-01-26T11:18:57.270-05:00Links for January 26, 2015, and the approaching nor'easter<style>
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</style>The best of the week in #histsci #histtech #histmed, courtesy your bloggers.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.amightygirl.com/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/l/o/lovelace-poster-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://cdn.amightygirl.com/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/l/o/lovelace-poster-1.jpg" height="400" width="280" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">www.amightygirl.com</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://pplspcoll.wordpress.com/2014/11/13/saltwatercolors/" target="_blank">Drawings and scrimshaw</a> by whalers from the Providence Public Library Special Collections (h/t @sethrockman).<br />
<br />
<div>
Uber and Princeton economist Alan Krueger <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/22/now-we-know-many-drivers-uber-has-and-how-much-money-theyre-making%E2%80%8B/?hpid=z5" target="_blank">have released data</a> on the company's drivers.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"<a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2015/01/22/history_of_farm_debt_guano_notes_used_as_promissory_documents.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_ru" target="_blank">Guano contracts</a>" helped trap Southern sharecroppers in cycles of debt. Relatedly, <a href="http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo3626534.html" target="_blank"><u>All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw</u></a> appears to be <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/19/books/all-gods-dangers-a-forgotten-autobiography.html?_r=1" target="_blank">the best book people have forgotten about</a>.
It is an oral history of an Alabama sharecropper, and in 1974 it won
the National Book Award. That year, it beat Robert Caro’s “The Power
Broker,” Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s “All the
President’s Men,” Studs Terkel's "Working," and Robert
Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.”</div>
<div>
<br />
Nine facts <a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/1/21/7862165/mathnet-monday-frankly" target="_blank">about the detective show</a> "Mathnet."</div>
<div>
<br />
New intellectual <a href="http://www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/tagungsberichte-5787?title=the-concept-of-the-world-economy-intellectual-histories&recno=2&q=&sort=&fq=&total=5567" target="_blank">histories of the idea of the global economy</a>, from G. W. F. Hegel to zombies. </div>
<br />
Preserving and digitizing cultural heritage under extreme duress: <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2015/01/25/379634318/piece-by-piece-monks-scramble-to-preserve-iraqs-christian-history?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20150125" target="_blank">Dominican monks in Iraq try to save their centuries-old collection of rare books and manuscripts</a>
in fear that ISIS will loot their library and turn it into a prison or
torture chamber.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.amightygirl.com/catalogsearch/advanced/result?amg_manufacturer=Hydrogene" target="_blank">A cool minimalist poster series</a> on women who changed science and the world, featuring Ada Lovelace, Jane Goodall, Rachel Carson, Marie Curie, and others.<br />
<br />
<div>
Another take on the relationship, if there is one, between <a href="http://bostonreview.net/steven-shapin-scientism-virtue/" target="_blank">virtue and the scientific vocation</a>, by Steven Shapin.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The New York Times (acting on <a href="https://twitter.com/ehepler/status/558300083788472321" target="_blank">Evan's suggestion</a>, no doubt) begins to tell the story of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/nyregion/sheldon-silvers-link-to-a-bonanza-and-a-cancer.html" target="_blank">biomedical research funding</a> buried in the Sheldon Silver corruption charges. (Check out pages 24-31 of <a href="http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/silvercomplaint0122.pdf" target="_blank">the complaint</a>.)</div>
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<div>
Jill Lepore on <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/26/cobweb" target="_blank">using the Internet Archive as an archive</a>: "Last year, the Internet Archive made an archive of its .gov domain,
tidied up and compressed the data, and made it available to a group of
scholars, who tried very hard to make something of the material. It was
so difficult to recruit scholars to use the data that the project was
mostly a wash. Kahle says, 'I give it a B.' Stanford’s Web archivist,
Nicholas Taylor, thinks it’s a chicken-and-egg problem. 'We don’t know
what tools to build, because no research has been done, but the research
hasn’t been done because we haven’t built any tools.'"</div>
<div>
<br />
<a href="http://www.immersivejournalism.com/project-syria-premieres-at-the-world-economic-forum/" target="_blank">"Project Syria,"</a> a video game that simulates a day in the life of a Syrian refugee, debuted this weekend at the Word Economic Forum.</div>
<div>
<br />
Researchers are considering <a href="http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/15/researchers-propose-earths-anthropocene-age-of-humans-began-with-fallout-and-plastics/" target="_blank">relocating the origin moment</a>
of the Anthropocene from the Industrial Revolution to the mid-twentieth
century, to correspond to the detonation of the first atomic bombs
(stay tuned for more on this later this week from Leah).<br />
<br />
<div>
An in-depth profile on life with<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/magazine/food-is-a-death-sentence-to-these-kids.html?_r=0" target="_blank"> rare genetic condition Prader-Willi syndrome</a>.
Those who suffer with Prader-Willi have insatiable appetites, and can
literally eat themselves to death. This strange symptom makes the
disease of great interest to both researchers and pharmaceutical
companies, who hope that Prader-Willi patients hold the key to
understanding the mysteries of diet and obesity.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Scientific writing can be described in lots of ways, but <i>beautiful</i>
is usually not one of them. Stephen Heard, an ecologist at the
University of New Brunswick, wants to make the case for "whimsy, jokes,
and beauty" in scientific in prose. His <a href="http://phylogenomics.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-best-writing-in-science-papers-part.html" target="_blank">blog post</a> and <a href="http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/IEE/article/view/5310" target="_blank">recent paper</a>
on the subject have sparked a debate about relative merits of typically
turgid versus poetic scientific writing styles. Nature nicely sums up
the conversation <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/a-call-for-beautiful-prose-in-papers-1.16778" target="_blank">here</a>.</div>
</div>
David Roth Singermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12841041983824755867noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-47694246769078973212015-01-19T17:08:00.000-05:002015-01-19T17:08:05.934-05:00Links for Monday, January 19<style>
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<span style="font-size: small;">The best of the last week in STS across the interwebs, by your crack team of American Science bloggers.</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2015/01/b4/50d2de726.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/posts/2015/01/b4/50d2de726.jpg" height="265" width="400" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Oxygen,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; letter-spacing: 0.2px; line-height: 21.4118px;">A
worker holds a fishing net inside an abandoned department store in
Bangkok January 13, 2015. (REUTERS/Chaiwat
Subprasom)</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: small;">"When you are outside of a
secrecy regime, you can’t always see why it acts the way it does, and it
is easy to see it as an oppositional entity designed to thwart you.
Peeling back the layers, which is what historians can do many years
after the fact, often reveals a more subtle and complex organizational
discussion going on." The newly-released full transcripts of the
Oppenheimer security clearance hearings, with the censor's original
markup, reveal relatively little that historians don't already know
about Oppenheimer himself but a lot about the <a href="http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/01/16/oppenheimer-unredacted-part-ii/" target="_blank">processes and consequences of government secrecy</a>, writes Alex Wellerstein. (Here's Wellerstein's description of <a href="http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/01/09/oppenheimer-unredacted-part-i/" target="_blank">how he discovered the transcripts</a>.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: small;">Bern
Porter's career spanned the Manhattan Project, cultural critique
through collages of found objects, and treatises on the unification of
science and art. Check out <a href="http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2010/lostandfound/" target="_blank">MoMA's digital exhibition</a> of some of his work.</span></div>
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</div>
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<div>
<span style="font-size: small;">City officials in Bangkok, Thailand will remove 30,000 fish living in an abandoned shopping mall, in what has to be <a href="http://www.citylab.com/politics/2015/01/removing-fish-from-a-surreal-abandoned-shopping-mall/384569/" target="_blank">the world's most surreal fishery</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: small;">Remember when the weekly links were dominated by stories about Ebola? Here's a throw back: <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120737/ebola-vaccine-trials-do-less-strengthening-medical-systems" target="_blank">As Ebola vaccine trials get underway</a>
in West Africa this week, it is worth thinking about the relative value
of biomedical intervention versus investments in health care personnel
and infrastructure.</span></div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: small;">Check out this recently released <a href="http://www.shimz.co.jp/english/theme/dream/pdf/oceanspiral.pdf" target="_blank">brochure</a>
for a Japanese architecture firm's "deep sea future city" concept,
called <i>Ocean Spiral</i>. The plans—still in the conceptual
stage—feature a small multistory city enclosed in a 500 meter in
diameter glass sphere, which is sustained on resources like aquaculture
and the exploitation of hydrothermal vents for energy. The designers
also envision a desalination plant and a facility that somehow reuses
carbon dioxide emissions. </span></div>
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</div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://mostlyeconomics.wordpress.com/2015/01/16/example-of-an-economics-exam-from-harvard-university-in-1953/" target="_blank">A Harvard University economics exam</a> from 1953. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: small;">OH—loudly—in a Pasadena coffee shop last week: the following phrases, over the course of a 45-minute interview. </span></div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"> </span><span style="font-size: small;">"Let's have some cognitive ecstasy today!"</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">"I'm a fan of the cyborg anthropologist who coined the term 'technospatial wormhole'—a philosophical thought built on engineering reality!"</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">"'Contact' is one of the best films of all time, bro."</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">"It's a hypothesis, but I think it's beautiful. I made a video about it for AOL." </span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="font-size: small;">Turns out the speaker's name is Jason Silva. He is the presenter of Brain Games on the National Geographic Channel, he calls himself a "performance philosopher," and <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/a-timothy-leary-for-the-viral-video-age/255691/" target="_blank">The Atlantic describes him</a> as a viral-video Timothy Leary.</span></div>
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</div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;">And a C.F.P. from a G.F.O.B.: <a href="https://www.stevens.edu/library/taylorsworld" target="_blank">a conference at Stevens Institute of Technology</a> on the legacy of Frederick Winslow Taylor.</span>David Roth Singermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12841041983824755867noreply@blogger.com0