Ice is the Worst

By: | March 6, 2015

A sheet of ice

I am on the record as loving snow and cheerfully tolerating cold. So you’d think I would love winter. And I do, mostly. But as of this week, I am very much ready for winter to pack up its bags and leave the D.C. area.

The reason: ice. Ice is the worst.

Ok, it’s good in drinks and I don’t mind skating on it. But it refuses to stay confined to ice rinks where it can be Zambonied into shape. It has a cruel habit of forming on sidewalks and other places where humans need to walk. And it’s out to get me. Continue reading →

Losing Control

By: | March 5, 2015

14281758292_295749f210_kWhen you’re carrying a child, you make certain sacrifices. I knew I’d have to give up Tanqueray and the occasional guilty cigarette. I was even prepared to forgo sushi. But I soon learned that the list was far longer than I imagined. No hot tubs, the experts advised. No queso fresco. No Advil. No deli meat. Limit the caffeine. These losses, so numerous and unexpected, were harder to bear. Still, I knew I could handle them. But then the doctor took away something even more precious: my autonomy.

I have lived my life largely outside the medical system. Sure, I’ve been to the clinic for pap smears and the occasional physical. But I’ve never had any serious illnesses or accidents. I’ve been lucky. On December 23rd, however, when I had my first ultrasound, it seemed like my luck had run out. I expected to see the flutter of a heartbeat, but the grainy screen revealed no movement. Everything was still and black. The technician couldn’t even find the embryo.   Continue reading →

The Language of Change

By: | March 4, 2015

49009713_ff2998eb05_zThe nature writer Robert Macfarlane is so skilled—so precise, so observant—that he can make an unsuspecting reader long for mudflats. This careful selector of words is also a collector of them: Macfarlane has just published a lovely essay (and a book) about his hoard of “place words,” terms gathered over years of travel in Britain and Ireland. He’s learned that zwer is the sound of partridges taking flight; smeuse is the gap in the base of a hedge made by the regular passage of a small animal; pirr is “a light breath of wind, such as will make a cat’s paw on the water.” A kestrel is a bell-hawk—or, more memorably, a wind-fucker.

Most of Macfarlane’s words are old, rescued from obscurity, but he also collects new ones. His young son suggests currentbum for the shiny hump of water that rises over a boulder in a stream; a little girl describes soft grass seeds as honeyfur. “We have forgotten 10,000 words for our landscapes, but we will make 10,000 more,” he writes.

How true, I thought. As the climate changes, so will our vocabulary.

Continue reading →

Abstruse Goose: Technical Assistance

By: | March 3, 2015

technical_assistanceI’ve just been through several bouts of technical assistance and I have to say that 1) the ESL problem still exists but is much better than it used to be; and 2) a new sentence in their checklist is “Why yes, we can fix that;” 3) the last one thanked me for being such a pleasant customer which 3a) didn’t sound like a sentence on the checklist and 3b) made me wonder just how non-pleasant their customers usually are; and 4) given that tech assistance is so unremittantly polite, I’ve resolved to save all telephonic unpleasantness for the rat bastards who say they’ll take you off their list but who have an infinity of lists.

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This Abstruse Goose is http://abstrusegoose.com/136.  But I have worrying news:  AG hasn’t added any cartoons in a number of months.  Come back, Abstruse Goose, we love you.

Science Needs Cool Kids

By: | March 2, 2015

shutterstock_127994624I was not cool in high school. I think it would be a stretch to say I was a nerd, but I wasn’t cool and I certainly wasn’t getting laid.

No, like so many scientists and science writers in the world, I mostly kept my head down and waited for college. You see, it’s in college (or maybe even grad school) that most science-loving students come into their own, go to parties and have sex. We have to wait for an environment where understanding game theory or the Krebs cycle makes for engaging conversation rather than a reason to shove us in our lockers.

Now, I’m not complaining, it all shakes out pretty well in the end. The nerds create billion-dollar companies and win Nobel prizes while the high school cool kids occasionally become action stars but mostly fizzle out. But here’s the thing. The rise of popular pseudoscience in society has convinced me that we need to change all this.

As a nation, we need to recruit the cool kids into science, technology, engineering, and math. Our very future depends on it. Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | February 28, 2015

running-muskox-790x527February 23 – 27, 2015

One time my mom did something with the innards of a chicken that made me rethink my bad attitude.

The Bad Science Poet reminds us once again: the science isn’t bad but the poetry sure as hell is.

Digging out an American camel in the back of a cave, Craig slides into the Pleistocene.

Having a tan protects you from cancer but getting the tan gives it to you; so get tan without tanning, right?

An LWON quiz, which says I got a C- but honest, really I flunked it flat. The muskox is entirely gratuitous but still, a delight.

Quiz Time

By: | February 27, 2015

running muskox

The utterance, “There will be a quiz on this” is notorious for striking panic into a roomful of students, but for me it holds the key to my strongest motivation. I am so much more likely to read a textbook chapter that will be followed by a pat on the back in the form of smug circling of correct letters. Not a test, mind you – not an essay, not an exam – but a quiz. Preferably of the multiple-choice variety.

Perhaps it’s the comparative ease of recognition – identifying the correct choice – over recall (coming up with the right technical term to fill in a blank) that provides what enigmatologists have identified as a primal reward. Behavioral game designers schedule these rewards optimally – a bonus round here, an achievement unlocked there – so that the brain never suffers the frustration of dopamine withdrawal during game play, and that iPad becomes nigh on impossible to put down. Continue reading →

Plan UVB

By: | February 26, 2015

You may have read last week that you should start wearing sunscreen at night. This was bad news for me: I’m already a hopeless victim of sunscreen marketing, slathering the stuff in rain or shine, in London fog, at dusk. I just can’t stop, despite mounting evidence that regular sunscreen may be less protective than advertised, and may even help cultivate a Vitamin D deficiency. And then, last week, Yale researchers found that UV rays keep wrecking skin cells up to three hours after the last photon has hit the skin. This implies that in addition to the SPF 45 I use during the day, I should stock my night table with an “ex post facto” overnight sunblock. With ingredients like vitamin E and antioxidants, this hypothetical cream would act like the Plan B of sun protection, undoing damage after it had ostensibly already been done.

While “night-time sunscreen” was an arresting image, though, that product (which is probably more like an aftersun) wouldn’t solve the fundamental problem: how do I get enough sun to be healthy without getting enough sun to give me cancer? What I really want is something that amps up my skin’s natural sun defenses 24-7 from the inside out. Many different ideas are knocking around various labs, and some might be on the market soon. The best ones manipulate melanin, so in addition to letting me ditch the goopy creams, they’d give me the Mediterranean glow I’ve always been so careful to avoid. Continue reading →