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“The difference between screwing around and science is writing it down”*…
Quite a feet: Ig Nobel Prize winners took home this statuette, which was designed to celebrate the 2026 ceremony theme, fungi It’s that time of year again: earlier this month, the Ig Nobel Prizes were...
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“When you mix science and politics, you get politics:*…
Agronomist and political operator Trofim Lysenko (left, giving a speech at the Kremlin in 1935) and U.S.S.R. dictator Joseph Stalin (right) purged geneticists who did not renounce Mendelian genetics....
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“Always look on the bright side of life”*…
The estimable economic historian Louis Hyman has been engaged in an on-going “friendly debate” with his equally-estimable friend and Johns Hopkins colleague Rama Chellappa on “what AI means”… … As I...
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“The earth is bountiful, and where her bounty fails, nitrogen drawn from the...
As the Iran War continues to unfold, there is understandably a great deal of concern about energy prices (and the prices of things that depend on energy). We might forget that the Middle East is also...
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“It’s the bell curve again”*…
Joseph Howlett on how the central limit theorem, which started as a bar trick for 18th-century gamblers, became something on which scientists rely every day… No matter where you look, a bell curve is...
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“Where grows?–where grows it not? If vain our toil, / We ought to blame the...
Even as agricultural land is becoming a coveted investment (as manifest in the purchases of billionaires like Stan Kroenke, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos, and by institutions like Nuveen and the Canadian...
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“Where’s the beef?”*…
There’s been some consternation over the FDA’s new food pyramid, with nutritionists arguing that, while the emphasis on “whole foods” (as opposed to processed) is a plus, the guidance overstresses...
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“Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is...
From the piece featured below: “GDP per capita in Madagascar is about the same today as it was in 1950. As a consequence, the number of people in extreme poverty increased in line with the country’s...
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“It’s not a bug, it’s a feature”*…
Blue-stained serpentine Neotyphodium coenophialum mycelia inhabiting the intercellular spaces of tall fescue leaf sheath tissue. Magnified 400x. Anna Marija Helt reports that, as global warming...
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“The duty of a good Cuisinier is to transmit to the next generation...
Five years ago, we marked the passage of Lynn Olver, a reference librarian who pretty much single-handedly created and maintained The Food Timeline: history of human eating habits for 20,000 years....
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“Wheat feeds the West, rice sustains the East”
Tomas Pueyo on why this is so… and what that has meant for culture and history… What’s your staple, bread or rice? This is a momentous fact, for it might have determined politics, culture, and wealth....
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“Who knows whether it is not true that phosphorus and mind are not the same...
Detail from The Alchymist, In Search of the Philosopher’s Stone, Discovers Phosphorus, and prays for the successful Conclusion of his operation, as was the custom of the Ancient Chymical Astrologers,...
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“I tell you, sir, the only safeguard of order and discipline in the modern...
French gunLock (true Flintlock) as that made by and improved upon by Blanc … a sentiment that grates on the indivisualists among us. Still, there’s no denying the enormous impact that standardization...
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“As a work of art, I know few things more pleasing to the eye, or more...
Harvesting muscatel grapes on the slopes of Montaña Diama, Finca La Geria, owned by Familia Hernández for at least five generations. Lanzarote, Spain… That sentiment dates for the middle of the 19th...
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“Aurora had but newly chased the night, / And purpled o’er the sky with...
A tractor at O’Connor Family Farms near Blooming Prairie, MN The solar storms of late have made for some compelling nighttime sky-gazing. But these geomagnetic storms can have serious consequences,...
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“Nations, as well as men, almost always betray the most prominent features of...
Further, in a fashion, to yesterday’s post: assumptions in the developed West were that, as economic development progressed around the world, rising countries would become more liberal– just like us...
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“The lovely flowers embarrass me, they make me regret I am not a bee”*…
… But then, what would it be like to be a bee? In the tradition of Thomas Nagel (bats), Peter Godfrey-Smith (octopuses), and Kristin Andrews (crabs), Lars Chittka explores… Understanding the minds of...
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“No water, no life. No blue, no green.”*…
A sign warning buyers of the water situation is displayed across from a property for sale in Rio Verde Foothills, Arizona, on February 24, 2023 Between AD 1275 and 1300, the Anasazi, a civilization...
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“The public health, ecological, and social impacts of fish meal—which were a...
Fish-meal manufacturing takes small fish or offcuts and processes them into a protein-dense powder used to raise animals like pigs, chickens, and other fish … Those deleterious effects were largely...
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“Hot, Hot, Hot”*…
Chili peppers thrive in hot and dry conditions. But, as Katherine J. Wu explains, even they have their limits… For more than a year, life for many sriracha lovers has been an excruciating lesson in...
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