There’s a method of presenting information that I see way too much of, from writers and educators that really should know better, and I can’t help but believe it’s doing more harm than good. I’ve probably used it a few too many times myself, but now I’m going to be aware of it and try never to use it, at least in circumstances where it is misleading. I refer to “language
Category: Science & Evolution
None of this looks familiar
I’m the middle of a book that will be reviewed here upon completion (well, not right here, but up above somewhere,) and in the meantime, I keep running across thought-provoking content that I want to expand upon. I haven’t been taking notes, preferring instead to keep moving forward on the book, because it’s been taking a while – I’m actually doing much more
Perpetually confusing
Infinity is this curious concept, wide open for misinterpretation, but even in its refined sense, it often suffers from one of the biggest problems of philosophy: we believe that since we’ve put a lot of effort into it, it must be important.
To explain the most misunderstood aspect of it, I’m going to steal brazenly from an article in Science ’82, a now-defunct magazine
It’s a tad humid
I got out the camera to chase a particular subject, which disappeared on me, so while the strobe was still charged I decided not to waste that electricity and went looking for something else to photograph. Yeah, I really do think that way sometimes, though if I do find another subject, I’ll fire off a lot more frames (and flashes) than if I simply discharged the capacitor
Bully for you!
I have a list of topics to address in posts someday, and within them is one about the difference between bullying and criticism. I was reminded of it with a recent interchange between Jerry Coyne and Deepak Chopra, and so…
Deepak Chopra is the shining god of the pseudoscience, new age, mystical reality, mushrooms-lead-to-higher-consciousness crowd, a guy who trades on his MD to try and convince
That’s just your science
An article over at Wired talks in detail about the overblown reputation and fears of the notorious brown recluse spider (Loxosceles reclusa) and, as is so typical of any attempt to impart some needed perspective to the general public, it crashes like a wave against the rock
Seeing is believing. But not necessarily true
Perspective, in the usage of considering some topic from a different standpoint than originally, is a great thing, and something I play with a lot on this blog. In the usage of how things appear to us visually, based on our position, it’s a useful thing to play with in photography as well. But sometimes, it’s hard to override our mental perspective to recognize the visual one.
Crepuscular
So, why should we bother?
In a previous post detailing the difficulties and uncertainties of tracing our hominid ancestors, I kind of led up to a question, expressed now in this post: Why should we bother? It’s a lot of effort to determine something that happened in the past, which is highly unlikely to have much
You can call me Al
Over at the New York Times, Carl Zimmer has an article on the difficulties of pinning down hominid species, which illustrates an interesting perspective in biology, but is unfortunately a little too brief. There are a couple of factors at play, and no easy way to resolve them.
The very first thing to bear in mind is that ‘species’ is an arbitrary distinction in many ways. The word was
Too cool, part 20: Stop it, you’re creeping me out
Lyssomanes viridis, known to those of us who do not speak dead languages as the magnolia green jumping spider, is a lovely translucent green spider that wouldn’t hurt a fly um, is harmless to anything larger than a honyebee and is undeserving of any arachnophobic reactions. Until you get close. Really, really close.
Because, while all jumping spiders have the same equipment, on the magnolia