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I ran across this clever adaption of Dickens' classic story of Christmas redemption a few days ago. The authors use the story's structure to present a resume of Steve Shapin's The Scientific Life: A Moral History a Late Modern Vocation . I love the idea. I also love the acting. Check it out here . If the podcast has a flaw, it's probably that it's a bit of an in-joke: its the sort of thing you might assign a class of upper-level STS majors. It's not a way to convince the unconvinced. For readers of this blog, it's noteworthy where the ghosts of science in the early twentieth century and late twentieth century end up: in US industrial research divisions.

For those doing last minute wrapping, or those just enjoying a few days off, here's a thought. Look up at the moon . What do you see? A future site for human settlement? A reminder of human ingenuity? One more bit of evidence that human experience has barely grazed one nook of the universe? Or maybe you see a big ball of cheese, just begging to be canned: "Cut all the tin plate used annually to make the tin cans of America into a strip one foot wide and you can wind that strip around the earth fourteen times. Or, to visualize it another way, take the five billion odd square feet of tin plate into which we put our fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, beer, paint, oil, candy, cheese and tobacco each year and it would be a simple matter to can the moon. You'd have the biggest cheese can ever made, and still have a lot of tin plate left over." (From: "Romance of the Tin Can" in Modern Mechanix , 1937, via Anna Zeide , who at this moment may be contemplating her recen

I've got my copy of Steve Wolfram's A New Kind of Science  proudly displayed in my living room. Okay, so that's just where my bookcases are. I am proud though: I look at the bright red and yellow on the spine and remember the excitement of 2002. I have even on occasion read some of the words inside. Wolfram positioned himself as the next Galileo, bringing about a fundamental change in the practice of science. Some computationally-minded folks in the science community appear to have taken this seriously. At least, that's what I gather from John Markoff's recent write-up of The Fourth Paradigm  in the NY Times. The editors and contributors to The Fourth Paradigm  take as a given already existing paradigms of 1) experiment, 2) theory, and 3) computation. Now they present a next step forward, which on quick glance appears to be a kind of super-charged empiricism reliant on computer-instrument hybrids. From Markoff's summary: Now, as a testimony to his passion and v

Radio Lab, probably the smartest science show on the radio,---no offense Science Friday, but there is no contest here---aired a show devoted to "Numbers" in October, but I only caught the podcast recently. It's worth a listen. Historians of science might be attracted to a bit speaking about combinatorists' Erdös numbers, via Paul Hoffman . But even more exciting: the show succeeds in making math relevent crucial to humanity and culture. We see math as the catalyst of friendship, math in the midst of a detective story ( Benford's Law! ), and math as potentially a human imperative. I even caught references to log tables. My heart went all a-flutter.

I always look forward to Atul Gawande's interventions in the Health Care Reform debate, but I'm not so certain about his most recent New Yorker article . Gawande sets out to defend the Senate health bill's apparently disconnected string of minor pilot programs by pointing to some government pilot programs that worked: the federally funded agricultural extension system and a slew of other USDA knowledge-gathering and know-how-distributing apparatuses: What seemed like a hodgepodge eventually cohered into a whole. The government never took over agriculture, but the government didn’t leave it alone, either. It shaped a feedback loop of experiment and learning and encouragement for farmers across the country. The results were beyond what anyone could have imagined. Productivity went way up, outpacing that of other Western countries. Prices fell by half. By 1930, food absorbed just twenty-four per cent of family spending and twenty per cent of the workforce. Today, food accounts

Were you at the History of Science Society's Annual Meeting in Phoenix? Why not share a highlight? I'll get us started, but I'm relying on the rest of you to help me out. We don't need essays here. Feel free to submit half-digested thoughts. Based on your contributions, I'll ask paper authors to put together mini-entries for our general edification. Watch while I set the bar low with my own short shout-out: Sadiah Qureshi of the University of Cambridge got me thinking in her Friday morning (20 Nov. 2009) paper about the benefits of talking about nineteenth century nature conservation alongside efforts to create reservations for Native Americans. Often the same people pushing for reservations were also advocating national park lands. Those people spoke in both cases about a vanishing past that would not be preserved without intervention. Why not consider these two apparently separate activities together? I---I think rightly---shy away from any formulation that would

Global warming expert James Hansen rips the roof off the climate crisis Too hot to miss . . . James Hansen , climatologist, Columbia University professor, advisor to Al Gore, and longtime director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has been researching human-caused climate change for more than three decades, and he was the first scientist to testify before Congress on the threat of growing carbon emissions. Now, as world leaders meet in Copenhagen to negotiate a global emissions treaty , Dr. Hansen warns the Earth’s climate may be approaching one of three “tipping points” from which there is no return. In his first book, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity , Dr. Hansen raises concerns that current proposals would do too little to reduce heat-causing emissions and offers bold new strategies for solving the global warming dilemma. Before & After --Groove to earthy, low-impact tunes --Try the

Tuesday, December 8 at 8 pm, FREE! Open the doors of perception with visual neuroscientist Ben Backus You won’t believe your eyes. . . At the back of the human eye, the retina is smaller than a penny and tissue thin. Yet it contains 100 million neurons . When the eye is open, the retina constantly transmits information on edges, angles, motion, and light intensity to more than 30 areas of the cerebral cortex . How does the brain process and interpret all this visual stimuli —and are our perceptions reliable? Cutting-edge vision scientist Ben Backus of SUNY discusses how our brains learn to “see,” whether perception is linked to emotions, and optical illusions that are both illuminating and trippy . Before and After --Groove to synesthetic tunes --Try our cockeyed cocktail of the night, the Parallax View (You’ll see the world in a whole different way . . . ) --Participate in the laser-sharp Q&A -- PLUS , stick around for a live set of holiday melodies with the band LA STRADA T

Thanks to everyone for bringing their creatures , bones, skins, and stories to the 4th-annual Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest. The competition was red in tooth and claw as judges Melissa Milgrom , Dorian Devins , and Robert Marbury viewed dozens of specimens, all vying to be the most beastly of them all. Many were worthy, but these--the fiercest--prevailed. The Order of Carnivorous Knights Grand Prize (Best in Show) went to Ryan Matthew for Felis dancicus fighticus Ian Maher took the Secret Science Club Prize for Best in Bones with his goat-skull-and-crystal chandelier, "Halal." The Rump Ape Prize for Best Hybrid Creature went to Natalie Stevens and her pal, Ralph. Mike Zohn of Obscura Antiques (and 2007 Grand Champion) took the Rogue Taxidermy Prize , presented by the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists (MART), for his automatons --two 19th-century caged taxidermy birds that moved and sang. Check out the amazing video here . The Most Twisted Prize , pr

Announcing the most beastly event of the year . . . • Calling all science geeks, nature freaks , and rogue geniuses • Your stuffed squirrel got game? Got a beaver in your brownstone? Then enter it to win in the Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest! • Show off your beloved moose head, jarred sea cucumber, snake skeleton , raven remains, and other specimens. Compete for prizes and glory! • Eligible for prizes: --Taxidermy (bought, found, or homemade) --Biological oddities (articulated skeletons, skulls—and beyond) • The contest will be judged by our panel of savage taxidermy enthusiasts , including Robert Marbury, co-founder of the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists , and Dorian Devins, WFMU DJ and Secret Science Club co-curator • Don’t miss the feral taxidermy talk by beast mistress Melissa Milgrom , author of the forth-coming book, Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy • Plus! --Groove to taxidermy-inspired tunes and video --Imbibe ferocious specialty drinks! --Meet an

According to conventional wisdom, 40 is the new 30. But how about 80 being the new 20? The search for a proverbial fountain of youth has been the subject of legend for centuries, but today the quest for a medical equivalent is the focus of intense research. Molecular biologist Leonard Guarente pioneered the anti-aging field at MIT with his discovery of genes that control longevity. When activated, these longevity genes cause the body to conserve resources, and they’ve been found to “dramatically boost the life span of yeast, worms , mice and potentially humans.” Specifically, Dr. Guarente studies proteins called sirtuins , which regulate longevity genes and show great promise for developing therapies that slow aging. Dr. Guarente asks: --Could future drugs decelerate the aging process and allow us to stay young longer? --Could diseases of aging—cancer, Alzheimer’s, type-2 diabetes, and others—be prevented by prospective anti-aging medications? --Could we extend not only our life s

Check out these drawings from the Sketchy Science Contest at the October 20 Secret Science Club . . . robots, future evolution, pair bonding, UFOs, and beer . . .

SPECIAL EVENT: Techno noir. Animation. Documentary. Music Video. Join us for a selection of short films from the Imagine Science Film Festival. The brainchild of SSC resident scientist/filmmaker, Alexis Gambis, the Imagine Science Film Festival attracted over 300 international entries this year. We’ll be showing some of the quirkiest and best-est entries at the Bell House, featuring subjects like madness & molecules, time travel & trans-species friendships , and the dwarf planet Pluto . Check out the following films from the USA, UK, Israel, France, Canada, and the Kuiper Belt: Naming Pluto, Animated Minds, The Moth and the Firefly, PCR Rap, Lab Waste, The Exquisite Corpse of Science, A Micrometer from Here, Natural Selection , and more! Alexis Gambis, the festival's founder and artistic director, will be on-hand to answer your brainiest questions and oversee the mixing of the cocktails. Before & After --Groove to tunes from our mixology lab --Participate in our “S

The term “cosmic ballet” has just taken on a whole new meaning. Apparently outer space has a soundtrack. It’s not Tchaikovsky, but … when two spinning black holes orbit each other, engaging in an invisible pas de deux , they create gravitational waves—essentially ripples in the fabric of space-time —that cause the cosmos to “ring like a drum.” Astrophysicist Janna Levin is in hot pursuit of these orbiting drumbeats —and the information they carry about the distant universe. Predicted by Einstein’s theory of relativity, gravitational waves have never been directly detected. But the interstellar search is on, and two far-reaching space-science experiments— LIGO and LISA —now seek to capture and “hear” the beatbox of the universe for the first time. A professor of physics and astronomy at Barnard College of Columbia University, Janna Levin is the author of two award-winning books A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines and How the Universe Got Its Spots , as well as dozens of scienti

Surrounded by the Coral Sea, the Louisiade Archipelago is a volcanic island chain stretching away from the southeastern extremity of Papua New Guinea’s mainland. These tropical islands are home to rare plants and animals found nowhere else in the world. Earlier this year, Dr. Susan Pell led a five-person botanical expedition to the islands’ remote mountains, rain forests, and wet savannahs. The team’s goal? To locate rare and endemic plants and identify endangered ecosystems . A molecular plant scientist at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and blogger (who sometimes sends posts via satellite phone), Dr. Pell chronicles her team’s search as they boat from island to island; hike across swollen rivers teeming with freshwater crocodiles; and encounter creatures such as giant spiders , walking “stick” insects the size of small branches, boa constrictors, and flying foxes. So grab your boots and backpack . . . And don’t miss this hot and steamy, flower-powered adventure! Before & After --

Make your bones at the Secret Science Club. . . Our species, Homo sapiens, is a mere 200,000 years old (give or take). Where did humans come from? How did we evolve? And what were our ancestors like? Fossil hunters have been asking these questions ever since Darwin developed the theory of evolution. And in the last few decades, we've been getting some pretty amazing answers. One find revolutionized the world's thinking about early human origins: I n 1974 paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson discovered the bones of Lucy —a 3.2-million-year-old early hominid—in the Afar region of Ethiopia. With about 40 percent of Lucy's skeleton intact, she represented a new species, Australopithecus afarensis . The founding director of the Institute for Human Origins , professor of paleoanthropology at Arizona State University's School of Human Evolution and Social Change, and author of the just-published Lucy's Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins, Dr. Johanson joins the Secret

The Undersea World of Jack Costello Dive into summer with marine biologist Jack Costello as he lectures on the spineless wonders of the world’s oceans. Cavort with gelatinous and ghostly creatures such as jellyfish (cnidarians) and their comb jelly brethren (ctenophores). Feel the motion of the ocean, and ride the waves with copepods and zooplankton. A professor of biology at Providence College and featured scientist in the PBS documentary The Shape of Life , Dr. Costello asks: --Why do sea jellies have such creepy -seeming body forms? --How do cnidarians and ctenophores kill their prey? --What causes jellyfish invasions and how do gelatinous sea creatures get around? -- Why is so little known about undersea invertebrates when they make up such an enormous part of Earth’s biomass ? Before & After -- Groove to free-floating tunes and video from Davey Jones’ locker -- Try our aquatic cocktail, the Alien Stinger . Looks like liquid… feels like fire! -- Stick around for

Get wet and wild with the surreal underwater films of Jean Painlevé. Sea life has never been this sexy—or strange. Experience The Love Life of the Octopus, The Witches’ Dance, and more—all featuring “The Sounds of Science,” a 21st-century score created specially by indie rockers Yo La Tengo. Marine scientist J. Rudi Strickler will be your guide to the depths . . . (Films from “Science Is Fiction: 23 Films of Jean Painlevé” courtesy of the Criterion Collection.) Before & After --Groove to siren song and liquid video --Plunge into the “Painlevé Periscope,” a cinematic cocktail that will give you aqua-vision --Immerse yourself in the tidal Q&A and soak up some fishy door prizes! This special edition of the Secret Science Club meets Sunday, May 17 at 7 p.m. @ the Bell House , 149 7th St. (between 2nd and 3rd avenues) in Gowanus, Brooklyn, p: 718.643.6510 Subway: F to 4th Ave; R to 9th St; F or G to Smith/9th No cover charge. Just bring your smart self! Please bring ID: 21+

The arithmetic of the brain is staggering. In just 3 lbs. of gray matter , there are 100 billion brain cells —each with branches connecting at 100 trillion synapses . Dozens of chemical neurotransmitters travel through this neural network, creating, storing, and accessing memories—the sum total of our sensations, thoughts, experiences, and knowledge. Currently, the brain’s total capacity for memory-making is beyond calculation. But what happens when the brain loses its ability to remember new things? In his lab at Columbia University, neuroscientist Ottavio Arancio explores the molecular mechanisms of memory formation. He asks: --Why do some people stop remembering? --How does disruption of the brain’s pathways affect our ability to learn? --Can new drugs slow, stop, or even reverse the process of memory-impairing diseases such as Alzheimer’s? --What can we learn from forgetful lab mice? --Can memory be enhanced? Will future medications act as brain boosters? Dr. Arancio is a cellu

Put on your life support suits and set the dial to “extreme conditions” . . . the Secret Science Club is heading for the Red Planet via Antarctica. Recent unmanned missions have revolutionized our thinking about Mars. The Red Planet is no longer known as just a dry dusty desert—but the repository for 2 to 3 million cubic kilometers of ice. Surprisingly, it turns out Mars may have a lot in common with the environment at Earth’s South Pole. Mars expert James Head recently spent his “holidays” in Antarctica, studying the bone-chilling landscape for clues that might help explain the mysterious Martian terrain. Dr. Head asks: Could frigid water below the surface of Mars contain evidence of life—like the microscopic extremophiles surviving such conditions in Antarctica? What’s the latest news from recent Mars missions such as the Mars Express and Phoenix? Will Earthlings send a manned mission to the Red Planet? Professor of Geological Sciences in the Planetary Geosciences Group at Br

For those of you who missed seeing it performed live at Plutopalooza (before astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson’s tour de force talk), listen here and check out the lyrics below. “Secret Science Club” by the Dead River Company I’ve got a secret for you It’s the kind of secret that will split your mind in two Take my hand, I’ll show you wonders The sharpest minds speak clearly Where there’s lightning there is thunder. [Chorus] Hold on to your hats, kids (at the Secret Science Club) Shocking information (at the Secret Science Club) Gonna blow your mind out (at the Secret Science Club) Indulge your science addiction Because truth is stranger than fiction You’ve got a light, I’ll make it brighter You got me feelin’ like a particle in the Large Hadron Collider! Come on girls, I’m no pretender We’re just a ragtag bunch of pencil pushers slash the Universe’s defenders [Chorus] Hold on to your hats, kids (at the Secret Science Club) Shocking information (at the Secret Science Club) Gonna blow

photo by David Gamble COUNTDOWN TO RE-LAUNCH . . . Hold on to your wigs and keys, science scenesters! Union Hall and the Secret Science Club have been overwhelmed by audience demand---so it is now official: The Secret Science Club is moving from Union Hall to Brooklyn’s big new Bell House ! PLUS, the Secret Science Club is debuting its first-ever "theme song," written and performed by the Dead River Company . Check it out LIVE before the Neil deGrasse Tyson lecture. Special Event! Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson blasts off from the Bell House with a lecture on the "Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet," $3 cover The icy little world known as Pluto is billions of miles from Earth. Yet, when the International Astronomical Union demoted Pluto to the status of dwarf planet in 2006, the reaction was out of this world. Defiant T-shirt slogans, and pity-filled songs all raged against Pluto’s sad fate. Hell hath no fury like a planet (and its fans) scorned.

Can conservation succeed with 9 billion people on the planet? Every day the world’s population grows by approximately 200,000 people. That means every 40 days, the planet adds enough new people to replace the entire population of New York City. Mathematician and population expert Joel E. Cohen asks: How many Homo sapiens can the Earth support? How is the exploding human population affecting the Earth’s physical, biological, and chemical environments? What will happen as the population grows larger, older, and more urban? A recipient of the MacArthur genius grant and the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement , Dr. Cohen is Professor of Populations and Head of the Laboratory of Populations at Rockefeller University and Columbia University. His research deals with the demography, ecology, epidemiology and social organization of human and non-human populations and with mathematical concepts applicable to those fields. He is the author of more than a dozen books and over 300 scient

Have you made an original narrative film with a scientific or technological theme? Or a film with a scientist, engineeer or mathematician as its leading character? Then don't forget to submit your science-loving film to the 2009 Imagine Science Film Festival ! Mystery. Comedy. Techno thriller. Animation. And Beyond . . . Click here for a complete set of festival submission guidelines. Once accepted, your film is up for 2 awards , sponsored by the science journal, Nature . The $2,500 Nature Scientific Merit Award will go to the film that most accurately portrays science. The $2,500 Nature People’s Choice Award will go to the film voted the best by audience members. The Imagine Science Film Festival takes place in October 2009 in New York City. For festival updates, click here . And stay tuned . . .

Secret Science Alert: This month, the Secret Science Club meets at the Bell House , the all-new all-awesome venue in Gowanus, Brooklyn, created by the owners of Union Hall (our lovely hosts). Make like a bathysphere and submerge, because the Secret Science Club is going down . Intrepid neurobiologist (and scuba diver) Vincent Pieribone lures us into the depths—where ocean research and brain science collide. Dr. Pieribone uncovers the secrets of the seas and technicolor reefs in his quest for biofluorescent creatures —and then shows how they can be used to create glowing proteins that make cells and neurons light up in the lab. A cellular and molecular biologist at Yale University’s School of Medicine and the co-author of Aglow in the Dark: The Revolutionary Science of Biofluorescence , Dr. Pieribone asks: --What do jellyfish and coral reefs have to do with the human brain and quest for medical cures? --What makes undersea animals glow? --How can biofluorescent technology link t

Step into the great glass elevator . . . the Secret Science Club is heading skyward with microbiologist and ecologist Dickson Despommier , whose ambitious project to create vertical farms in urban skyscrapers could radically re-vision the way we live—and eat. A professor of environmental science and public health at Columbia University, Dr. Despommier asks: --How might urban sky farms reduce global warming , and give “eating local” a whole new meaning? --What technologies and architectural designs are appropriate for vertical farms? --How did studying parasites in underdeveloped countries lead to his concept for living skyscrapers? Dr. Despommier’s provocative ideas for re-thinking agriculture and land use have been the subject of recent articles in the New York Times , Time , New York Magazine , and Scientific American . Don’t miss this tall tale . . . Before & After -- Groove to towering tunes and vaulting video -- Stick around for the lofty Q&A -- And try our stratosp

Leslie Madsen-Brooks, University of California, Davis (An essay in the " What's American About the History of Science in America? " series) Earlier this year, I was undertaking research in the archives of a science museum when a fellow researcher, a senior professor, asked what I was working on. I told him I was looking into the ways a particular woman scientist worked with amateur scientists and botanical enthusiasts. He asked if I had been to the History of Science Society annual meetings. I said I wasn’t interested because I hadn’t seen sufficient evidence in paper titles that panels at the conference were engaging with gender issues in a substantive way. Since I’m a historian of women in science, there were other meetings on which I’d rather spend my lean conference-going budget. He pointed out there have been women on the executive committee of the HSS, and I explained that was great, but that if a critical mass of participants weren’t going to be talking about w