I hate climbing, but love having climbed

By: | July 31, 2013

2013-07-27 12.59.52TREE3I was about 50 feet up when I started to freak out. I had agreed to come to this Oregon forest and climb a very tall, very old tree with my mom, because it seemed like a nice mother-daughter bonding experience. Now I was approximately one-fifth of the way up a Douglas fir named Sophia, and all I could think about was her nickname, “the Meltdown Tree.”

As he’d helped us suit up with harnesses and helmets, Jason Seppa, our friendly and very patient guide, had chuckled a little as he recounted how the tree had acquired this sobriquet after a particularly trying outing with some other clients. His unspoken assumption was that neither Mom nor me was in danger of melting down. I wanted to prove him right. Continue reading →

The macabre habits of the butcher bird

By: | July 30, 2013

Dead lizardThe remains of a horned lizard killed by a shrike.

Wandering around New York’s American Museum of Natural History one day in May, I noticed a bird called the fiscal shrike. The small stuffed specimen, black with dashes of white on its wings, was perched on a shrub in a diorama of Kenya’s Kedong Valley. What an awful name for a bird, I thought. It sounded like a new budget-cutting initiative, or a particularly dire stage of an economic meltdown.

It turns out that “fiscal shrike” is not the worst thing this bird has been called*. One of its nicknames is “jacky hangman”; its genus, Lanius, is also called “butcher bird.” Germans have dubbed a related shrike species “Neuntöter,” meaning “murderer with nine victims.” Continue reading →

Guest Post: Me vs Myers-Briggs

By: | July 29, 2013

robinneice“Can you talk to a stranger for an hour?”

Despite coming from a computer, the question felt almost aggressive.  Of course I can talk to a stranger for an hour.  I was a reporter for over a decade; you can’t do that job without learning to talk to almost anyone for an hour.

Still, I wanted to say no. Just like I’d wanted to say no to several other questions the computer had just posed, even though the true answers were all yeses. It was the night before a school-sponsored Myers-Briggs personality workshop, and I was taking the famous test for the first time.  And I was starting to think it was rigged. Every time I admitted that I could make small talk or navigate a party, I knew I was edging one step closer to being labeled an extrovert.  Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | July 27, 2013

shutterstock_14615224722 – 26 July

The “since-you-live-in-Mexico-you’ll-probably-be-dead-tomorrow attitude” is the most frustrating thing about being a Mexican expat, says Erik. The smoky volcanoes? Not so much.

Ann and Abstruse Goose showed us the grave harm that befalls physicists who try too hard to describe reality.

Jessa explored the intriguing new science of awe, and how you can use it to engineer a better quality of life.

Cassie considered the messy realities of end of life decisions.

And Mr. Cosmology returned to answer your burning questions! Some of them even touch briefly on cosmology!

AG: Physicists Are Just Proto-Philosophers

By: | July 26, 2013

quantum_physics_is_a_liePhysicists do say these things about quantum mechanics — a highly-mathematical description of fundamental reality at the bottom of which is the uncertainty principle in which the act of measuring one piece of reality  screws up other measurements.  The upshot is, the whole of reality isn’t measureable all at once.  The more you think about it, the worse it gets.  At some point, physicists say, the whole discussion starts to sound less like physics than philosophy.

Once I heard a physicist say some quantum thing was “highly theoretical” and since he had an accent, I wasn’t sure I heard him right.

“You didn’t say, ‘highly theological?’ did you?” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

Once I went to a talk by a philosopher of physics and I’m never doing that again.

__________

http://abstrusegoose.com/511

Until the Bitter End

By: | July 24, 2013

640px-Hospital_bedsLast night I read Robin Marantz Henig’s beautiful story about Peggy Battin, a bioethicist and advocate for patients who wish to end their lives, and her husband, Brooke Hopkins. A bike accident in 2008 left Brooke paralyzed from the shoulders down and in need of almost constant care. Some days Brooke wants to live; other days he wants to die. And that puts Peggy in a difficult position: “Suffering, suicide, euthanasia, a dignified death — these were subjects she had thought and written about for years, and now, suddenly, they turned unbearably personal. Alongside her physically ravaged husband, she would watch lofty ideas be trumped by reality — and would discover just how messy, raw and muddled the end of life can be,” Marantz Henig writes. Still, Brooke has the ability to make a choice and to communicate that choice. Not everyone has that option. The story made me think of an example from my own life that was both simpler and more complex. Continue reading →

The Most Dangerous Volcano in North America

By: | July 23, 2013

shutterstock_119817784When you live in Mexico, you get used to people in other countries thinking you are in a war-zone sort of apocalypse state. If it’s not narcos, it’s earthquakes, kidnappers, or chupacabras. These days, the thing for Americans to fear in Mexico is the volcano Popocatepetl, lovingly called Popo, which is chucking ash all over the place. Notice that many reports find it necessary to give Mexico City’s population alongside reports that it’s active. As if that number might drop significantly very soon.

Now, for those who live here it all seems silly. I didn’t even notice the ash – though some of these reports make you think it is piling up on the sidewalks. I have noticed the air quality is a little off for the middle of rainy season (when afternoon showers clean the skies). But all in all, the rumblings of our hulking neighbor hasn’t affected me. Far more annoying is the whole since-you-live-in-Mexico-you’ll-probably-be-dead-tomorrow attitude from friends and family.

Continue reading →

Ask Mr. Cosmology

By: | July 22, 2013

Time again to reach into the “Ask Mr. Cosmology” mailbag and see what readers want to know about . . . The Wonders of the Universe! First up, some questions from the comments portion of the previous installment of “Ask Mr. Cosmology.”

Q: Is protest against God morally acceptable?

Mr. Cosmology: Unlike Richard, Mr. Cosmology knows better than to venture into questions about God.

Q: I heard that in certain cases when light is traveling through a medium that slows it down, e.g. water, neutrinos are not so impeded and in these cases they can exceed the speed of light “in that medium.” Is this wrong?

Mr. Cosmology: Yes. Unlike with questions concerning God, Mr. Cosmology is willing to pronounce judgment on neutrinos exceeding the speed of light: not morally acceptable.

Q: I’m really upset about a vicious rumor I heard that Mr. Cosmology’s mailbag is really a big black hole and that questions go into it and never again cross the event horizon! Please, Mr. Cosmology, say it ain’t so.

Mr. Cosmology: Your question went into Mr. Cosmology’s mailbag, yet here it is. So either the mailbag isn’t a black hole, or your question is evidence that Hawking radiation exists. In which case, Mr. Cosmology will find a phone call from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to be morally acceptable.

And now . . . some new questions from the “Ask Mr. Cosmology” mailbag!

Continue reading →