Category: Insight
Why Moral Progress Feels Annoying
Daniel Kelly at Aeon: It’s not that you don’t care about animal suffering. In other…
The Enduring Mystery of How Water Freezes
Elise Cutts at Quanta: We learn in grade school that water freezes at zero degrees…
Tiny Beauty: How I Make Scientific Art From Behind the Microscope
Josie Glausiusz in Nature: Cheese fungus, head lice, human sperm, a bee eye, a microplastic bobble:…
Gut Bacteria Slip into the Eye
Rachael Gorman in The Scientist: The retina is layered with photoreceptors, a variety of other neurons,…
The Fault in Our Forecasts
Susan Hough at Asterisk: The reality is that earthquake prediction is hard. “Neither the USGS…
Do Plants Have Minds?
by Rachael Petersen at Aeon: Gustav Theodor Fechner championed the idea that plants have souls…
Bizarre Bacteria Defy Textbooks by Writing New Genes
Ewen Callaway in Nature: Genetic information usually travels down a one-way street: genes written in DNA…
Does Sleep Really Clean the Brain? Maybe Not, New Paper Argues
Sara Reardon in Science: We all need sleep, but no one really knows why. For the…
Real Learning Has Become Impossible in Universities: DIY Programs Offer a Better Way
William Deresiewicz at Persuasion: Higher ed is at an impasse. So much about it sucks,…
Where am I?
From the MIT Press Reader: When Daniel Dennett’s essay collection “Brainstorms” was published in 1978,…
Records of Pompeii’s Survivors Have Been Found – and Archaeologists are Starting to Understand How They Rebuilt Their Lives
by Steven L. Tuck at The Conversation: On Aug. 24, in A.D. 79, Mount Vesuvius…
Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in 5 Key Points
New York Times: Dr. Chan is a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of M.I.T….