Tag Archives: science

Teatime

Many pages into Daniel Dennett’s latest opus, I’ve Been Thinking—by turns informative, entertaining, and maddening (“an engaging, vexing memoir with a humility bypass,” as the Guardian headline writer puts it)—one encounters a passage answering to the first two adjectives above, … Continue reading

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Tired

You may be tired of Covid, but Covid is not tired of you. Let that sink in. And think about how so many big proud hominids are letting a microscopic bit of pseudo-life outsmart them.

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Terminology

“Please answer me quite frankly. Are you absolutely convinced it’s plague?” “You’re stating the problem wrongly. It’s not a question of the term I use; it’s a question of time.” “Your view, I take it,” the Prefect put in, “is … Continue reading

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Eclipsed

In Washington, DC, the solar eclipse of 2017 was not total, but it was awesome nonetheless. Equipped with safety glasses, we saw the moon obstruct about 90% of the sun, the mostly sunny day became noticeably dimmer as the eclipse … Continue reading

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Warmup

A great way to experience 22,000 years of global temperature fluctuations: Randall Munroe made the timeline, so full credit to him. It is an extremely long vertical strip of great information that is a challenge to fully apprehend. I just turned … Continue reading

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Quantum

Quantum was a wonderful student magazine published by the National Science Teachers Association from 1990 to 2001. Born in the heady days of perestroika, it was a collaboration with the renowned Russian journal Kvant. Sadly, just at its early adopters were graduating … Continue reading

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Chromoconfusion

Remember my blue-green Volvo? Of course you don’t. You remember my green-blue Volvo. In any case, I’m thinking about the problem of color again, so watch out. Blame it on the University of Chicago and its blasted alumni magazine. The … Continue reading

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Bioduress

Just as a neighbor and I began talking seriously about putting up a bat house to attract these amazing mosquito-eating creatures to our mosquito-infested backyards, we learn that, like the honey bee, the bat is in trouble. It may not … Continue reading

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YoKO’d

It’s one thing to be slipshod and sleazy in your depiction of evolutionary science and how it is taught in American schools. You might bore the pants off the general public and piss off a lot of scientists, but you … Continue reading

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CDB

The bees are dying: one quarter of the US commercial colonies collapsed last year, and news accounts indicate that Europe has the same problem. Initial speculation centered on cell phones—supposedly the radiation is at just the right frequency to disrupt … Continue reading

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