Cosmology is essentially a whodunnit but, unlike your typical 600-page detective yarn, this story doesn’t unfold clue by clue until the denouement in last few pages. The puzzle — basically, “How the hell can we explain our presence here?” — is more cryptic than ever. For all the thousands of brilliant minds working on the […]
Barry Evans
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Sunshine Vitamin vs. Skin Cancer
It’s a conundrum: Ultraviolet B radiation from the sun is both the best source of vitamin D — the “sunshine vitamin” — and the the major cause of skin cancer. Get enough sun-mediated vitamin D and your’re courting melonoma; too little and the rest of your body will suffer. Vitamin D facilitates absorption of bone-building […]
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Our Worst Mistake, Part 2
Last week, we looked at anthropologist Jared Diamond’s claim that the Neolithic Revolution, when most hunter-gatherers settled down to become farmers, was “the worst mistake in the history of the human race.” Since Diamond popularized this “revisionist” thesis, sociologists and anthropologists have seized on it to explain everything from the subjugation of women (not generally […]
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Our Worst Mistake, Part 1
The downturn in human nutrition began long before Ray Kroc brought Big Macs to the masses, Coca Cola conned developing countries into buying their addictive sugary concoctions and Nestlé weaseled its way into babies’ bellies with formula milk. Long, long before. Archeologists call it the Neolithic Revolution, the series of events that started in the […]
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Measuring the Meter
We’re spatial creatures. We live in a three-dimensional world, with our fourth “dimension” — time — conceptualized in terms of space. That is, we refer to time as if it were space: We turn clocks “forward” or “back” twice a year; we agree to “move up” a meeting; we wonder “where the time went.” In […]
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No Celtic? Blame the Volcano
Celtic is virtually absent in the English language, despite the fact that almost everyone in what is now England spoke a branch of Celtic before Germanic speakers invaded the country following the departure of Roman legions in 410 A.D., as I discussed in “The Weirdness of English, Part 2” (March 16, 2017). The exception is […]
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Delusion is My (and Your) Middle Name
Quick quiz: Would you rather receive $100 right now or $120 a month from now? Most people take the $100 right now, despite the extraordinary offer of 20 percent per month interest. Let’s do that again. Would you take $100 a year from now or $120 13 months from now? Most people choose $120, even […]
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James Dyson’s Electric Car
“Anyone who can convince people to part with $400 for a hair dryer knows a thing or two about marketing.” — Steve Hanley, CleanTechnica James Dyson built 5,127 prototypes before releasing his innovative “say goodbye to the bag” cyclone vacuum cleaner onto the market in 1983. Since then, you’ve no doubt dried your hands on […]
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Cancer, Part 2: Turtles, Birds and Rabbits
Last week, we looked at some of the many reasons why the diagnosis and treatment of cancer are so difficult and controversial. A common way of illustrating the problem is the “turtle-bird-rabbit” analogy. Although it can equally well apply to breast cancer (the most common cancer in women), here I’ll discuss it in relation to […]
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Cancer, Part 1: The Unwinnable War
Like the War on Drugs, the $500 million War on Cancer was doomed from the get-go. In the case of drugs, you’re fighting human nature. With cancer, the opponent is an even more implacable force: evolution, which, according to British chemist Leslie Orgel, “is cleverer than you are.” We all know about the ravages of […]
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Looking for Aliens
Seems we’re hearing a lot about aliens these days. They’re humans supposedly swarming over the border, snails invading our lakes, plants taking over the dunes. Even cancer cells, those utterly homegrown products of their hosts, are deemed “alien.” The word itself derives from its Proto-Indo-European root *al- (1) = “beyond” via Latin alienus “of or […]
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Eight Tree Myths
I recently — and rashly — accepted an invitation to co-teach a class on trees, bowing to the old saw about learning by teaching. Fortunately, my co-teachers kept me honest and I was able to capitalize on my ignorance. Turned out some of my “facts” weren’t. Like the following: Wood from “hardwood” trees is always […]