The Last Word

By: | January 26, 2013

DeathRaftShutterstockJanuary 21 – 25

This week, Eric showed us why no one does death quite like Mexico;

Abstruse Goose does the math to tell us where in the universe our televised electromagnetic leaks have gotten to;

Cassie examined the complex relationships between scientific breakthroughs, miracle drugs, and the government programs that allow them to save real people;

Tom considers dinosaurs in the bathtub and ponders that “a few evolutionary contingencies one way or another, and you could have had a giant ground sloth for a pet.”

And Heather described how Jyoti Singh — bestowed with the name Damini, or lightning after her violent death — is changing India forever.

 

 

A Disease, A Miracle Drug, and a Tale of Uncertain Survival

By: | January 25, 2013

phoenixPhoenix is scorching in the summer, and Pat Elliott had been standing for hours. So she wasn’t alarmed one August day in 2009 to find her feet swollen. “It must be the weather,” Elliott thought. But they also ached. The pain was horrendous. So she called her doctor, and he told her to come in. Reluctantly she went.

Several blood tests and a bone marrow biopsy later, Elliott learned she had a type of blood cancer called chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML). Her white cell count was sky high, her spleen was swollen, and her kidneys were failing. Continue reading →

Goodnight, Linnaeus: Bathtub Systematics and the Nature of Scientific Curiosity, Part I

By: | January 24, 2013

diplo_tub150 million years ago in what is now the North American West, mighty diplodocus thundered across the terrain, stripping leaves from branches with its peg-like teeth and lashing away pests and predators with the 80-some vertebrae of its whip-like tail. They were magnificent creatures, as long as three school buses each. And for nearly a year I thought I had one in my bathtub. That’s where the trouble began. Continue reading →

A Very Dark Corner of Indian Life

By: | January 23, 2013

8374363064_e3a854889dYoung Indian feminists have begun calling her “Damini.” We don’t know her real name, but most of us have read about the terrible way she died.  Damini was the 23-year-old woman attacked and gang-raped in New Delhi on December 16 while returning home at night on a bus with a male friend. She died 13 days later, and five men accused of these crimes are now about to stand trial in India.

Damini means “lightning” in Hindu, and her case has sparked major protests in India, shining a stark new light on a very dark corner in modern life there. I had little clear idea, until I began doing some background reading in the Indian forensic science literature, just how prevalent rape is in India.  Continue reading →

Book Review: Several Ways to Die in Mexico

By: | January 22, 2013

Book coverI swear, I am not going to write exclusively about Mexico City. Really, I’m a science writer, not a travel writer. I swear it. But after my initial post, Christie sent me the book, Several Ways to Die in Mexico City, by Kurt Hollander and I just had to read it.

At first, I was actually very excited. Death, after all, is a fascinating topic here in Mexico. Perhaps due to a solid 100 years between 1820 and 1920 of near-constant upheaval, Mexico has developed some fascinating traditions around death – Day of the Dead being just one. A fresh, fun look at the various ways Mexican view death (plus a few Mary-Roach-style details) could be really interesting, if done right.

Sadly, it wasn’t. This book should have been titled “God, I Hate Mexico.” Continue reading →

Abstruse Goose: Electromagnetic Leak

By: | January 21, 2013

electromagnetic_leak originally posted on July 2, 2009You understand this, right?  that the radio-wave part of the electromagnetic spectrum travels, like all light, at one fixed speed.  And since those same radio waves carry television programs, the programs broadcast earliest have traveled farthest.  It’s not complicated but it is appalling:  poor Arcturus, stuck with Happy Days.

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Abstruse Goose took a little break and posted his classics.  Meanwhile, he’s disappeared his archives.  So his cartoon has no number; I know only that it first appeared July 2, 2009.

The Last Word

By: | January 20, 2013

January 14 – 18, 2013


Cameron discovers the etymology of anatomy: know why the top vertebra in the neck is called the atlas?  Sure you do.  “There’s something delightful about coming across unfamiliar words for all the things that move me through the day,” she says.

A swarm of starlings is called a murmuration.  “No other phenomenon has ever stopped me in my tracks quite like this,” says Christie, “made me forget everything else in the world except the brief moment of grace unfolding before me.”  Commenters recommend astounding videos.

Guest Brooke Borel picks up a tiny pee-soaked wooden bird and wonders why.  Because of its eyes and little smile?  Yes, say the commenters, yes, yes, yes.

I swear and declare I’m not writing about women astronomers any more.  Not that they don’t face stupidities that need to be kept public.  Only that I’m declaring astronomy a non-gender science.  Smart commenters argue with me.

The chemicals of sex, love, attachment, and divorce can be made.  The question is, should they be? And if so, says Jessa, by whom should they be used and on whom?  I vote no:  those chemicals cause enough trouble without more of them running around loose.

Anti-Love Biotech, and the Neuroenhancement of Love

By: | January 18, 2013

heart pillsIn my early twenties, I had a really good break-up with someone whom I considered to be part of my chosen family. “Amicable” doesn’t even capture the “Friends forever!” commitment with which we launched into our post-couple bond. The thought of him having a new girlfriend made me excited for him: Nobody had told us differently or handed us a script for what breakups were about. But when that new girlfriend – and future wife, as it turned out – came along, she didn’t see things the same way. Continued friendship represented, to her, a failure to move on. We were to have no further contact.

As devastating as it was at the time, the couples around me since, and in particular their dissolutions, have me wondering whether we dodged a bullet. It seems a fair subset of breakups don’t involve immediate hate; nevertheless, over time the emotional backlash takes its toll. Guilt and sadness fester in the friendship until it, too, dissolves.

It’s all part of the human experience, but would we change it if we could? Perhaps not for the sake of relationships themselves, but enough children are in unbearable post-divorce stand-offs to give one pause.  What if we could ease the break-up suffering just enough so that their parents could rise above it and effectively co-parent? Come to think of it, what if biological interventions could make the love last in the first place? The good people at the Future of Humanity Institute and the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics are working on just that, along with such ideas as preventing oneself from falling in love with somebody else while in a relationship you want to stay in. Continue reading →