Sketchy Science!

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

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A Novel History of Psychology

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BOOK REVIEW: Vanessa L. Ryan, Thinking Without Thinking in the Victorian Novel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012) ——————————————— Science and (the study of) literature are growing closer together. From  Stanford's Literary Lab  and a recent New York Times piece on the Digital Humanities  to reading Austen in an MRI machine  and so-called " Literary Darwinism ," there's both controversy and a certain cache (and maybe even a little cash) in bringing scientific techniques and the study of literature closer together. This is your brain on Austen ( http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/september/images/mri_reading_news.jpg ) So what about the study of science and the study of literature? History of science, say, and literary history? The short answer is that it's happening in English departments, but not so much in History. Why? More on that below. Work on the interplay between science and literature has been dominated by scholars of the Victorian novel. G...
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Shotgunning, Inc.

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More thoughts on beer technologies! These should go down just as smoothly as  my post on canning craft beer (written up more fully here ). I'll focus on  MillerCoors, one of the industry's biggest packaging innovators, and  in particular on one of their best-selling beers, Miller Lite .  Look at that pour! The fact that taste isn't the most interesting thing about Miller Lite (as the company itself has basically suggested*) is, I'd argue, not unrelated to the fact that the brand has been on the leading edge of a packaging revolution for the last half-decade.  Consumers have a lot of trouble telling the difference between "light American lagers" by taste ( just listen to these experts !). To distinguish themselves on the marketplace, a lot goes into (big surprise) marketing – but here I think we've got something more. Differences in packaging might in fact be mostly talk, but there's at least a claim to technological superiority – and that's enoug...
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Science in the Streets

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Science in the Streets: A free public engagement event from the History of Science Society Thursday, Nov 21, 3-6 pm, Boston Convention & Exhibition Center [I have asked  Conevery Bolton Valencius , who teaches at UMass Boston, to write a guest post about an event she is helping to organize at this year's HSS.  Many readers of this blog are interested in popular science & science popularization, and I urge everyone to join us for what promises to be a fascinating discussion!] Current newspaper headlines make clear how anti-science and science-illiterate many Americans are, at least about some political issues.  But there are effective and interesting efforts going on all around to engage people in the workings and the wonderings of science.  Further, historians of science are doing a lot of that work – and sometimes have particular insight about what is new or very old about rhythms of scientific skepticism or scientific enthusiasm.  At next week’s annual...
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