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The beasts are back! Calling all science geeks, nature freaks, and rogue geniuses! Your stuffed squirrel got game? Got a beaver in your brownstone? Bring your beloved beast to the Bell House and enter it to win!  Eligible for prizes : Taxidermy (bought, found, or homemade), biological oddities, articulated skeletons, skulls, jarred specimens—and beyond, way beyond. The contest will be judged by our panel of savage taxidermy enthusiasts, including Robert Marbury of the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists ; Dorian Devins , co-founder and curator of the Secret Science Club; and beast mistress Melissa Milgrom , author of Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy . SPECIAL GUEST : Purveyor of scientific wonders and star of the inimitable new show Oddities  on the Discovery Channel , Mike Zohn joins the judging panel and presents an illustrated lecture on (yes!) taxidermy. Plus!   -- Groove to wildlife-inspired tunes -- Imbibe ferocious specialty drinks ! --More secrets and surpri

I had no idea how developed our historiography of the American power grid has become. That is, until, I finished reading this week's H-SCI-MED-TECH list-serv digests. The highlight of the discussion is this beautiful little website , aimed an undergrad/general reader, courtesy of Wisconsin-Madison's Center for Culture | History | Environment. I'll list below the other books or articles mentioned in the many valuable replies. Read more... (I'm aggregating quickly here and apologize for not crediting the contributors to this list, and for duplications---check out the h-net message archives for details): Richard F. Hirsh, Technology and transformation in the American electric utility industry (Cambridge, CUP, 1989) Richard F. Hirsh, Power Loss: The Origins of Deregulation and Restructuring in the American Electric Utility System (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999 [paperback, 2002]). Charles D. Jacobson, Ties that bind: economic and political dilemmas of urban utility network

Step into liquid with ichthyologist and explorer Melanie Stiassny as she plunges into the heart of darkness. Described by Joseph Conrad as an “immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea . . . and its tail lost in the depths of the land,” the Congo is the deepest river on Earth, home to raging rapids , and hidden submarine canyons . Such mysterious depths shelter astonishingly strange creatures , ranging from blind fishes to truly monstrous needle-toothed carnivores . Axelrod Research Curator of Fishes at the American Museum of Natural History, a New York Times blogger, and featured scientist on The Colbert Report , Dr. Stiassny researches the evolutionary biology of fishes, focusing on freshwater conservation and Old World tropical systems. She discusses her recent fish-finding expeditions to the Congo and plumbs the river’s amazing biodiversity. Prepare to go deep . . . Before & After --Groove to siren song and the murmurs of mermaids --Imbibe the wet and wild cocktai

SPECIAL EVENT: The Secret Science Club is teaming up with the Imagine Science Film Festival to present a selection of science-inspired short films, plus “Dance Your Ph.D.” and live music by neuroscientist rockers, the Amygdaloids , and Balún . Techno noir. Music Video. Animation. Don’t miss some of the festival’s quirkiest and coolest entries, featuring subjects like murder and meteorites, particles and prescription drugs, and the dark nature of fear. Check out the following films from the USA, Australia, France, Thailand, Canada, Portugal, and the Future: Mind Over Matter, Velvet Cell, Origin of Mass, Breu, Skhizein, and more! When : Monday, October 18, 8 pm Where : The Bell House, 149 7th St. (between 2nd and 3rd avenues) in Gowanus, Brooklyn. FREE! Just bring your smart self. Doors open at 7:30 PM. 21 and over. The Imagine Science Film Festival runs from October 15 to 22 at a whole host of venues around the city. Visit here for a complete listing of events.

No more monkeying around . . . The Secret Science Club goes ape! The order Primates represents more than 400 living species , including the Pig-Tailed Macaque, the Golden Lion Tamarin, the Mountain Gorilla—and yours truly, Homo sapiens . We primates all share certain characteristics, but humans are the only ones that live on all seven continents, question the meaning of life , and conduct DNA analysis. Dr. Todd Disotell of NYU’s Center for Human Origins is an anthropologist and molecular primatologist who uses DNA to study the evolution of Homo sapiens . He also uses DNA analysis to throw a monkey wrench into “evidence” of cryptozoological primates, such as Bigfoot, and has appeared on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show , National Geographic’s Naked Science , and Monster Quest . The author of scores of scientific papers and recipient of numerous grants from the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, Dr. Disotell asks: --When did our first primate ancestors evol

Below (after the "read more" bit), you will find a listing of all papers from the upcoming History of Science Society's Annual Meeting that have something to do with American history, broadly construed. I'm working off of titles here, so I may have missed some or added too many. Please don't interpret this as a plea to be too parochial. We can and ought to cross national borders in our study of the history of science. This is an act of curation , meant to show off the diversity of Americanist work at HSS and to bring your attention to panels and papers that you might otherwise miss. Friday 9-11:45 Genes and Mechanisms in the Case of Cystic Fibrosis: Philosophical, Historical and Social Perspectives. Chair and Commentator: Miriam Solomon, Temple University Organizer: Susan Lindee, University of Pennsylvania 1.    A Disease About to Disappear, Susan Lindee, University of Pennsylvania 2.    Mechanisms, Mutations, and Rational Drug Therapy in the Case of Cystic Fibros

One of my fondest hopes for this blog---and for the Forum for the History of Science in America generally---is that it will help us build a community of scholars. I recognize that this has long been the Forum's purpose. Yet I think our means of community building have been changing, out of necessity. The "What's American about the History of Science in America" series of essays ---a brilliant collection that you can peruse on this blog, thanks to the editorial work of my predecessor (and fellow Dan) Dan Goldstein---showcased the changing nature of the forum. Founded as an advocacy organization for Americanists trying to break into a field dominated by Europeanists, the Forum now finds itself surrounded by Americanist historians of science. The earlier forum sought to bring together Americanists to support one another in a difficult environment. It defined success as increased attention to the history of science in America. Forum policies were necessarily expansionary

I spent some time teaching elementary school before heading back to grad school. One of the favorite games at our after-school program was "Guess Who"---the game where each play selects an individual card and then has to ask yes or no questions about the appearance of the person on the other player's card in order to figure out who that person is. Guess Who came to mind when I saw the layout for this terrific and informative site giving biographies of black scientists in the U.S., hosted by the HistoryMakers. Just imagine that game, using biography instead of appearance: Was your scientist inspired by reading Benjamin Banneker's biography as a child? --Yes. Was your scientist a particle physicist? --Yes. Did your scientist ever become a high-level administrator? --Yes! You're Shirley Ann Jackson ! --That's right. In all seriousness, though. This is a nicely done site that students and scholars alike can enjoy if they are looking for reliable sources of biogra

There's a new arrival on the scene and it looks promising for our crowd. The Bubble Chamber traces the thought lines (and decay paths?) of a handful of historians and philosophers of science at the University of Toronto. Here at Americanscience, we aim to talk to a pretty limited audience. We want to build a community of professor historians of science as it has developed in and around the United States. Still, we applaud the Bubble Chamber's ambitions to create a Web equivalent to the public lecture series.

A colleague shared this podcast with me earlier this summer. In it, Louis Menand gives the short version of his pulitzer prize-winning The Metaphysical Club . I've long been a fan of the book, but what struck me in hearing the short version was the centrality of Darwin and the comparative unimportance of what seems like the main argument (the impact of the Civil War). I've long felt that the Civil War argument---that the generation that experienced the war learned from its experience a deep distrust of universal truths and unwavering belief---did not hold up to much scrutiny. For one thing, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. seems to have remained quite a fan of martial valor, despite the horrors of war. I would expect someone so deeply scarred by war that he gave up belief in Truth to also be skeptical of war itself. Darwin, however, makes a very convincing predecessor to pragmatism. Don't take my word for it, though. Listen to the podcast . I've also been thinking about the

Can time move backwards? Is the future different on different worlds? Are meetings of the Secret Science Club forbidden in a parallel universe? Singer-songwriter Mark Everett of the band Eels grew up not knowing that his father, Hugh Everett , was a genius —to him, his dad was the chain-smoking guy who didn’t say much at the dinner table. The fact that Hugh Everett was one of the world’s pre-eminent quantum mechanics , the physicist who came up with the Theory of Parallel Universes was just one more thing they didn’t discuss. Sadly, Hugh Everett’s theory was so revolutionary—so trippy in fact—that its elegance and importance were not recognized until well after his death. (Mark Everett was just 18 when he found his father lying dead at age 51 on the family’s couch.) Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives chronicles the journey of the musical-but-math-challenged son to learn more about his father’s profound contributions to science and the “Many Worlds” in which we all—for better or worse

For those young scholars among Americanscience readers, take note of the opportunity to benefit from HSS veterans' wisdom at November's History of Science Society Annual Meeting. Seasoned scholars, take note that the mentorship programs needs your wisdom. And everyone, take note that you have to get involved by September 15, 2010.

Historians of science in America, what have you been reading? What was worth the effort so far this summer? Share some recommendations. I just finished Louis Menand's _The Marketplace of Ideas._ Don't be fooled: this is really a book of lectures about the university only loosely tied to the "marketplace" or tied to one another. It did have its moments, however. Read more... Chapter two struck me as most worth reading, especially for those who teach or research the Cold War university. Menand takes a story we know best for the sciences and applies it to the humanities. In the process, he provides a new way of thinking about the culture wars---or the "crisis of the humanities." His presentation rejects one structural explanation and posits another. First the rejection: a diversified student body did not force multiculturalism and deconstruction on the humanities. "It is wise to avoid the following narrative," writes Menand: "when more women and

This may wrap up our "Scuttling the Shuttle" series. Historian Roger Launius puts in his two cents on his terrific blog. He's taking a Baltic cruise and giving a bunch of fascinating lectures for the Smithsonian Journeys program. Where do I sign up? At any rate, Launius describes a lecture called "Whither the Space Shuttle?": This presentation reviews the history and legacy of the Space Shuttle program after thirty years. It suggests that while the shuttle was not an unadulterated success, on balance it served a venerable role in spaceflight and deserves an overall positive assessment in history. Additionally, the Space Shuttle provided three decades of significant human spaceflight capability and stretched the nature of what could be accomplished in Earth orbit much beyond anything envisioned previously. Most significantly since the American human spaceflight program has always been focused in national prestige, the Space Shuttle served well as a symbol of Amer

Or who knows, maybe it does. At any rate, our History of Science blogging friends at Ether Wave Propaganda are on vacation. That provides us the perfect opportunity to point back to a terrific, recent post on the history of science in America that you might of missed. Will Thomas offers a vivid and engaging reading of Paul Lucier's 2009 Isis article, "The Professional and Scientist in Nineteenth Century America." I recall my own astonishment at learning (as a fresh graduate student) the recent origin of the label "scientist"---who could imagine a world without scientists, as such, I wondered. As Thomas relates in his post, Lucier gives us plenty more material about the recent origins of apparently natural labels and distinctions that should similarly astonish our students in years to come. Historians of Science in America have probably already taken note of Lucier's 2008 book, Scientists and Swindlers . Forum steering committee member David Spanagel wr

The world of pleasure is mysterious and murky. Seafood lovers glory in devouring raw oysters. People slow their cars to look at gory accidents, and enjoy going to movies that make them cry. Abstract art can sell for millions of dollars. Countless men and women like being spanked. Yale psychologist and cognitive scientist Paul Bloom delves into the remakable realm of desire , discussing how new research shows that simple pleasures like sex and food are far more complex than scientists ever imagined. The author of How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like , Dr. Bloom challenges longstanding explanations of human pleasure as a simple sensory response, arguing that pleasure is linked to our beliefs about the "true nature," or essence of things. He asks: --What is at the root of our attachment to sentimental objects? --Why do people pay top dollar for items owned by celebrities? --Why would most people rather be kissed by a movie star than by his or her i

Seriously, laserfest ! I'm digging this fantastic history of the laser , courtesy of the American Institute of Physics . You should too. Lets Amplify the press for this Stimulating feature on Emitting coherent beams of Radiation for 50 years.

While we anxiously await a closer telling of the geologists in Afghanistan tale, there are some fascinating moments of science in action to be found in this gripping tale of Deepwater Horizon's last hours and immediate aftermath. I had no idea how ridiculously huge and complex these drilling rigs are. I know that the federal government pitched deep sea exploration as a kind of parallel to space exploration in the second half of the twentieth century: exploring inner space. Sean Flynn draws on a similar metaphor: "Deep-sea drilling is a risky and complicated process, of course—the oil industry's equivalent of a moon shot—and it's vulnerable to all sorts of delays." The scientists, as opposed to the engineers and technicians, only make a cameo here and they are set up against BP's official pronouncements on the volume of the leak. The problem of knowledge becomes: how do we settle on a measurement of oil flow at a mile and one half (8,000 feet) below the Gulf&

I glanced over the scientific/medical dichotomy in my last post. Now I see that Atul Gawande has attacked it head on . Science has made medicine effective, he says. It's also made it into a budget-bending Frankenstein. In Gawande's words: When we talk about the uncontrollable explosion in the costs of health care in America, for instance—about the reality that we in medicine are gradually bankrupting the country—we’re not talking about a problem rooted in economics. We’re talking about a problem rooted in scientific complexity.

That's right: we live in a world with scanning pods . How magical. Those scanning pods are doing good work, too. The Center for the History of Medicine at Countway Library's terrific blog reports on the library's efforts to digitize their nineteenth century French works in obstetrics and gynecology. Those worried about corporate hegemony will be happy to hear that those books will land at the Internet Archive. Lest our readers wonder what this has to do with "science" in "America," the Center's blog notes that "John Collins Warren, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and other Harvard Medical School luminaries completed post-graduate studies in Paris."I suppose we could quibble that medicine ≠ science, but does anyone really want to have that argument?

Thomas Edison may have only come in ninth on the Atlantic's list of the top 100 most influential Americans , but amongst Victorians enshrined with their own museums or historical sites he takes the cake. Five North American sites, including Vienna, Ontario, lay claim to Edison's memory. Check the full list of "shrines" , which may serve many purposes, but clearly would serve well a geek planning her summer vacation.

The New York Times gives the barest outline to a truly momentous piece of archival work, albeit one done by historians of another sort than usually reads here at Americanscience. This document digging will certainly raise the stakes for the US military, the Afghan government, and perhaps the Taliban as well. Cell phone battery manufacturers may be holding their breath too: In 2004, American geologists, sent to Afghanistan as part of a broader reconstruction effort, stumbled across an intriguing series of old charts and data at the library of the Afghan Geological Survey in Kabul that hinted at major mineral deposits in the country. They soon learned that the data had been collected by Soviet mining experts during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, but cast aside when the Soviets withdrew in 1989. During the chaos of the 1990s, when Afghanistan was mired in civil war and later ruled by the Taliban, a small group of Afghan geologists protected the charts by taking them

Our Scuttle the Shuttle series continues with a fortuitous offering from Asif Siddiqi, whose wide-ranging, thoughtful historiographic essay in the most recent Technology and Culture speaks to a debate we've already witnessed on this blog: can and should historians write histories of space exploration that do not privilege national narratives or boundaries ( here , and in the comments )? It's fascinating to see historians of science innovating in the growing field of transnational history (especially in justifying such an approach in thinking about the last century and a half, where the great and growing power of the nation-state encourages nation-bound histories). This essay provides a fine example of such historiographical innovations. The question remains, though: how would this advice give us a new way of thinking about the decision to scuttle the shuttle? I include a few highlights from Siddiqi's piece in the extended entry. In his essay, Siddiqi considers the dominan

The Lloyd Library and Museum in Cincinnati has posted a wonderful little exhibit full of illustrations from ornithological illustrators. It isn't unusual to see images from Audubon or Catesby, but it's refreshing to see a panoply of images of a single species from a variety of popular observers and illustrators. I think it would be a wonderful use of internet-space to construct a database of changing bird images over time. Check out the feature on the passenger pigeon for a hint of what I'm imagining. Be sure to check out the " Birds for Children " section too. After all, as one steadfast supporter of the Forum could certainly remind us, a key to understanding science in America is understanding how it came to be taught. Also, the pictures look neat.

We began our "Scuttle the Shuttle" series with the question: how can we use history to better understand the recent decision to end shuttle missions? Robert MacGregor kicked us off with a long set of suggestions in an e-mail to me. He suggested we should think about the peculiarities of 1960s politics, about the jobs created by aerospace spending, and about the narrative of the "space race." Instead of exploring these bigger narratives, I chose to highlight a side note that Bob made, in which he attempted to explain how naive narratives of colonization with a decidedly progressive bent may encourage Apollo conspiracy theorists. Erik Conway , historian at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, took a moment out of his well-deserved celebration over the release of Merchants of Doubt ---co-written with Naomi Oreskes---to take me to task in the most productive of fashions. Erik shows exactly how many fascinating angles I passed over. Consider this bit from the end of his comm