Why Moral Progress Feels Annoying
Daniel Kelly at Aeon: It’s not that you don’t care about animal suffering. In other contexts, you actually care quite a bit – you would definitely do something if you
The Enduring Mystery of How Water Freezes
Elise Cutts at Quanta: We learn in grade school that water freezes at zero degrees Celsius, but that’s seldom true. In clouds, scientists have found supercooled water droplets as chilly
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: scientific photographer Steve Gschmeissner has imaged them all under the probing lens of a scanning
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Gut Bacteria Slip into the Eye
Rachael Gorman in The Scientist: The retina is layered with photoreceptors, a variety of other neurons, and protective and structural membranes, but retinal disorders can tamper with this delicate system. Mutations
The Fault in Our Forecasts
Susan Hough at Asterisk: The reality is that earthquake prediction is hard. “Neither the USGS nor any other scientists have ever predicted a major earthquake,” reads the official statement on
Do Plants Have Minds?
by Rachael Petersen at Aeon: Gustav Theodor Fechner championed the idea that plants have souls – something we might call ‘consciousness’ today. I first learned of him in an interdisciplinary
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 serve as the template for making RNA molecules, which are then translated into proteins. That
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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 past 10 years, a prevailing theory has been that a key function of sleep is
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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, and nothing about it is likely to change. Colleges and universities do not seem inclined
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Where am I?
From the MIT Press Reader: When Daniel Dennett’s essay collection “Brainstorms” was published in 1978, the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science was just emerging. Dennett was a young scholar who
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 erupted, shooting over 3 cubic miles of debris up to 20 miles (32.1 kilometers) in
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. and Harvard, and a co-author of “Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19.” Alina
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