Cover photo by Erich G. Vallery, USDA Forest Service – SRS-4552, Bugwood.org Parasites are a beautiful nightmare. The many lineages of parasites have evolved all sorts of twisted, macabre ways of making a living off their host. Some are content to live on our skin and feed off sweat and dead skin, while others must burrow deep inside to get their …
Challenge Those Assumptions!
Happily, we live in a time where challenging dogmatic ideas about the world is not punishable by being burnt at a stake. We know the earth is spherical, that the Earth revolves around the sun, and innumerable other facts about our tiny place in this immense universe. These breakthroughs have come when thinkers push back at conventional wisdom with careful reasoning to build new …
Space: A Reflection of Ourselves
In late April, Russia’s deputy prime minister helpfully suggested that the United States look into trampolines to get its astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). The threat to stop ferrying US astronauts on Russian ships, delivered cheekily and via twitter, was mostly a childish diplomatic gesture reflecting rising tensions over Ukraine. However, it exposed a telling snapshot of the changing politics and science of …
Soylent: A food alternative?
If you could get all of your vital nutrients and calories by drinking a single liquid concoction, would you do it? A new drink called Soylent purports to help you do just that. Sold as a mixture of powdered ingredients and oil (you just mix it with water), Soylent contains thirty five nutrients, vitamins, and minerals, and provides sufficient calories to be an all-in-one meal. Is this the food of …
Heuristics take flight!
Sitting in an airplane makes me feel more in touch with my own mortality. It’s hard not to feel vulnerable when I think about soaring through the air in a fragile metal tube at 600 miles per hour. Do you remember your last flight? The roaring engines, the seats shaking during take off and landing, and the unsettling feeling in your stomach as …
Reputation, Trust and the “Sharing Economy”
When my fiancée Jen and I went to Chicago a few weeks ago, we stayed at the home of a complete stranger. A decade ago, this would have been seen as a risky and somewhat weird move. But we felt completely comfortable staying with this man, and leaving our luggage at his house for hours in an unlocked room while we toured the …
How to Explain Climate Change to Your Own Mother: An Uncertain Future
Today on How to Explain Climate Change to Your Own Mother, we will be treading into some rather murky territory. Previously, I have covered the physical reality of climate change: greenhouse gases trap in heat from the sun, and human activities spew out more greenhouse gases than can be naturally fixed into non-greenhouse gases. I’ve also shown a bit of …
Risk Misconceptions
Last week, a man peed into the reservoir that housed some of the municipal water supply for Portland, Oregon. In response, the public health officials in Portland, Oregon dumped and flushed the 38 million gallon reservoir. The City Commissioner, Nick Fish, claimed he “didn’t have a choice”, since he doesn’t “have the luxury of slicing it too thin when there’s a potential …
A Changing Earth Day
Happy Earth Day! Today, millions of people around the world will celebrate the natural world and our role as humans in protecting and restoring it. However, science has shown us that the nature of nature is change. How do we protect a changing system? What does Earth Day mean, really? Our role Earth Day represents a moment of unity for those who care …
Seeking a Scientific Education
As someone who came into scientific research from an atypical educational background, I spend a lot of time thinking about the pedagogy of the natural sciences. Regrettably, undergraduate science classes – particularly at large universities – are often taught in a way that rewards rote memorization and does little to cultivate critical thinking skills. This was the topic of Kevin’s …