TWOWEEKS of PEACE 2011 • September 21 – October 12
Allevents listed at: http://www.cmu.edu/uls/october/two-weeks.html
Remembering Hiroshima, Imagining Peace 2011 exhibit
Exhibitlocated in Hunt Library, 4th floor
Thursday,October 13, 2011
4:30pm • Porter Hall 100 (Gregg Hall)
Fixing the Sky: Rube Goldberg meets Dr. Strangelove
James Rodger Fleming, Colby College
JamesRodger Fleming, Fixing the Sky (Columbia University Press, 2010), has beenchosen as the winner of this year's Sally Hacker Prize by the Society for theHistory of Technology. The Sally Hacker Prize is awarded to recognize the bestbook in the history of technology directed to a broad audience of readers,including students and the interested public.
Withgeoengineers proposing to “fix” the climate system to reduce global warming,the number of wild proposals in this field has been proliferating. Shade theplanet by launching a solar shield into orbit. Shoot sulfates or into the upperatmosphere, turning the blue sky milky white. Fertilize the oceans, turning theblue seas soupy green. Some proposals are idealistic, perhaps hopelessly so;others are quite humorous, many that use military equipment are quite ominous;but are any really feasible?
In this presentation I examine the history of geoengineering sincethe late nineteenth century and its role in public policy. In addition tofixes proposed and actually attempted, I pay special attention to visualsemiotics of imaginaries—William Gibson’s phantasmagoric “fragments of the massdream”—as mediated today through the not-so-rosy lenses of climate angst andapprehension.
Friday,October 14, 2011
4:30pm • Adamson Wing, Baker Hall 136A
TheHumanities Center Lectures, 2011-2012: Imagining Planetarity
TheEcology of Everyday Life
TheEcology of Everyday Life
Joshua"Sha" LaBare, Humanities Center Postdoctoral Fellow
Thinking ecologically is perhaps the mostimportant skill of our times. Drawing on theoretical tools from sciencestudies, animal studies, feminist theory and science fiction, the project Icall “The Ecology of Everyday Life” asks how we can make a difference in anincreasingly science fictional globalizing situation, one in which globalwarming, mass extinction, and a forever war on terror inform the texture andtenor of day-to-day existence. The global challenge we are facing todayrequires not so much a technical solution – for we already have thetechnologies required to modernize and industrialize otherwise – as aphilosophical one, an orientation that can be translated into a large-scaleshift in human consciousness. Specifically for the context of “ImaginingPlanetarity”, I focus on the science fictional themes of first contact andsense of wonder in an effort to think beyond human exceptionalism and imaginealternatives to this world that is, alas, the case.
Receptionto follow
Monday,October 17, 2011
4:30pm • Porter Hall 100 (Gregg Hall)
Bayes’ Rule: The Theory That Would Not Die
SharonBertsch McGrayne, author
Fromspam filters and machine translation to the drones over bin Laden’s compound,Bayes’ rule pervades modern life. Thomas Bayes and Pierre-Simon Laplacediscovered the rule roughly 250 years ago but, for most of the 20th century, itwas deeply controversial, almost taboo among academics and theoreticians. Mytalk will range over the history of Bayes’ rule, highlighting Alan Turing whodecrypted the German Enigma code and Jerome Cornfield of NIH and GeorgeWashington University who used Bayes to establish smoking as a cause of lungcancer and high cholesterol as a cause of cardiovascular disease. The talk willbe based on my recent book, The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes’ RuleCracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines & Emerged Triumphantfrom Two Centuries of Controversy (Yale University Press).
SharonBertsch McGrayne is also the author of Nobel Prize Women in Science, biographiesof 15 leading scientists, published by the National Academy Press. Her book,Prometheans in the Lab, a history of pollution and the chemical industry, waspublished by McGraw-Hill.
Booksigning to follow lecture
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