Reading Time: 8 minutes Problems with scientific and political literacy aren’t so different. Bad faith actors in both realms use our shorthand against us, whether for evolution or democracy. The solution is learning to target the material realities underpinning our language instead.
evolution
Posted inEvolution
The evolution of cuteness: Why kittens and puppies beat babies, paws down
Reading Time: 5 minutes I’ve long suspected I have a character flaw: I am far more charmed by kittens and puppies—in fact by any non-human baby animals—than baby humans. It’s a kind of intra-species treason, I suppose. For one thing, kits and pups are far more entertainingly interactive far earlier than Homo sapiens infants. But the connection feels far […]
Posted inEvolution
The first toolmakers
Reading Time: 4 minutes Who were the first hominids to make and use stone tools? A new paper hints at a lineage of the human family long thought to be an evolutionary dead end.
Posted inCritical thinking
‘I want to believe what you believe, Daddy’
Reading Time: 3 minutes Being a secular, atheist parent, and also a philosopher, I take my parenting seriously in how my children’s beliefs develop. The idea for me is that it is important to teach my children the methods and not the conclusion. I don’t want to teach my children that God doesn’t exist, but rather give them the […]
Posted inHealth
COVID-19 now haunts flu season: What other long term impacts can we expect?
Reading Time: 11 minutes It’s been a rough few days for anyone following flu season data. While China has eased zero-COVID restrictions in the face of protests, despite currently experiencing a surge in case count (along with Japan), North American hospitals face what the American Medical Association is openly calling a “tripledemic”: a wave of flu, Respiratory Syncytial Virus […]
Posted inBiology
The startling world of plant intelligence
Reading Time: 5 minutes They don’t sense human emotion, but plants have some surprising talents. They can hear, see, learn, communicate and remember.
Posted inBiology
What do trees say to each other?
Reading Time: 5 minutes The more we look, the more intelligence we find in nature. Even trees are capable of communicating, sharing resources, and responding to their environment.
Posted inBiology
On brain cells, Pong, and a major problem with science journalism
Reading Time: 9 minutes Everything old is new again, in the world of mainstream reporting on scientific progress. That’s why you can be forgiven for déjà vu if you read this week about cells trained to interact in an environment mimicking the video game Pong. Wait a second, you might have told yourself: Didn’t we do this already? And […]
Posted inEvolution
Fish fossils aid the search for human origins
Reading Time: 2 minutes Perhaps the greatest question driving science—and human thought in general—is the mystery of origins. This question has manifested itself in myriad shapes and sizes: our fascination with the Big Bang, the birth of our Earth, the evolution of our own species, and even our own individual genealogies. Especially as many have turned away from religion—the […]
Posted inEvolution
Surprise! The Nobel goes to evolutionary sciences, not COVID research
Reading Time: 4 minutes Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo joined a rare group this morning: not just of Nobel Prize winners, but of “family Nobels”. His father, Karl Sune Detlof Bergström, shared the 1982 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Bengt I. Samuelsson and John R. Vane, for work related to local-tissue hormones, or “prostaglandins”. Forty years later, that award went solely […]