Posts

May 23, 2013

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7:49 AM | The Cataclysm: “From Unbaked Fragments to Vitreous Charcoal”

There’s a fundamental fact one learns about trees when growing up in dry country forests: they’re flammable. Folks in Flagstaff, Arizona can tell what part of summer it is by the smell. If it’s all piney-fresh, it’s May or early June, and everything’s still safely damp from the spring snowmelt; if it smells like warm [...]

May 22, 2013

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7:24 PM | In Post-Tsunami Japan, A Push To Rebuild Coast in Concrete

Winifred Bird, reporting for Yale e360: The roots of the coastal land-use debate go deep. People first began moving from higher elevations down toward Japan’s seashore, which offered rare expanses of flat land, at the beginning of the Edo period (1603-1868), Seino says. “Over a period of 400 years Japanese moved further and further into [...]∞

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5:18 PM | What’s stopping him?

Yale e360: Roughly 70 percent of Americans say global warming should be a priority for President Obama and Congress and 61 percent support requiring fossil fuel companies to pay a carbon tax that would be used to help reduce the national debt, according to a new survey by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. [...]∞

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4:16 PM | Most UK species in decline

Damian Carrington, reporting for The Guardian: An unprecedented stocktake of UK wildlife has revealed that most species are struggling and that one in three have halved in number in the past half century. The unique report, based on scientific analysis of tens of millions of observations from volunteers, shows that from woodland to farmland and [...]∞

May 21, 2013

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4:07 AM | In Limbo

I’ve been on medical leave for almost a year now, which is an odd sort of limbo that’s hard to explain unless you’ve experienced it. At first I didn’t want […]

May 20, 2013

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9:00 PM | VIDEO: Radiolab Behind the Scenes

If you've ever wondered how the podcast comes together, or what it's like to work at Radiolab, here's a peek into our process.

May 19, 2013

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1:52 AM | 33 Years Ago Today…

… Mount St. Helens exploded with a fury that surpassed expectations. Things have calmed down considerably since that day. Even the trees are growing back. To quote myself, “This is the view of Mount St. Helens from Elk Rock Viewpoint. In the center left, you’ll see Mount Adams peeking over a ridge. In the center, [...]

May 14, 2013

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9:00 PM | The Septendecennial Sing-Along

Every 17 years, a deafening sex orchestra hits the East Coast -- billions and billions of cicadas crawl out of the ground, sing their hearts out, then mate and die. In this short, Jad and Robert talk to a man who gets inside that noise to dissect its meaning and musical components.

May 09, 2013

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5:27 PM | Vacation

It’s been nearly a year and a half since I’ve taken a break from near-daily blogging, and we all need some time off eventually. I’ll be spending a little over a week in Japan, where nearly 130 million people live along thin slivers of coastline. I’m very much looking forward to it. When I return, I’m sure [...]∞

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5:54 AM | Exclusive Sneak Preview of Metamorphic Madness

Oh, my darlings, will I have treats for you! Lockwood and I are in the midst of our geoextravaganza tour down the Oregon coast and across the Josephine Ophiolite. Lots of hot volcanic action round here, but there’s a huge metamorphic story to be told. There’s going to be a lot to absorb and process [...]

May 08, 2013

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6:55 PM | European and Asian languages traced back to single mother tongue

Ian Sample, reporting for the Guardian: “Everybody in Eurasia can trace their linguistic ancestry back to a group, or groups, of people living around 15,000 years ago, probably in southern Europe, as the ice sheets were retreating,” said Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at Reading University. Linguists have long debated the idea of an ancient [...]∞

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5:40 PM | The Hidden Geography of America’s Surging Suicide Rate

Richard Florida, writing at the Atlantic Cities: Wyoming tops the list with an increase of nearly 80 percent. North Dakota is second and Rhode Island third, both with increases of roughly 70 percent. Hawaii, Vermont, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Oregon, and South Dakota round out the top 10. There’s a surprising link between overall suicide rates [...]∞

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4:41 PM | Segregation Is Bad for Everyone

Emily Badger, reporting for the Atlantic Cities: Segregated regions – by race as well as skills – have slower rates of income growth and property value appreciation. And this isn’t just true for minority families stuck in segregated pockets of inner-city poverty. It’s true for everyone, the suburbs and city alike. ∞∞

May 07, 2013

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3:30 PM | ■ We all want to live in small towns, and it’s killing cities

A bunch of economists and a blogger are trying to dissect the riddle of why metropolitan population density has fallen in the United States. Robert Shiller (yes, that Robert Shiller) seems to have unknowingly kicked off the whole thing when he wrote an essay a few weeks ago in which he said housing prices have [...]

May 06, 2013

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4:56 PM | China’s bizarre architecture

Lily Kuo, writing for Quartz: Bizarre buildings have increasingly been piercing China’s skylines, earning the country a reputation for being “a playground for bad design.” Unattractive Chinese buildings have become so commonplace that a Chinese architectural firm, Archcy, has started surveying residents on what they believe are the country’s 10 ugliest buildings (article in Chinese). [...]∞

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4:53 PM | Lost in the Geometry of California’s Farms

Verlyn Klinkenborg, writing about California’s Central Valley for the New York Times: It’s easy to let yourself be overwhelmed by the agricultural geometry of the valley, all those rows seeming to rush past as you drive. But to understand its true immensity and capacity for transformation, you have to drop down off the interstate and [...]∞

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1:57 PM | Does more money = greater research impact?

A month or so ago, Alex from The Lab & Field got in touch with me about writing a joint blog post evaluating some of the finer points of the [...]

May 03, 2013

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6:49 PM | The Human Dimension of Thetford Forest

NASA Earth Observatory: Thetford Forest, at least as it appears today, would not exist were it not for human intervention. The forest was created after World War I to prop up sagging timber supplies. Authorities planted stands of lowland pine in uniform rows in place of thorny evergreen shrubs (gorse) that grew naturally amid the [...]∞

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5:30 PM | The Life Story of The Oldest Tree on Earth

Peter Crane, being interviewed by Roger Cohn for Yale e360: When we think about flowering plants, there are about 350,000 living species. And in an evolutionary sense, they’re equivalent to that one species of ginkgo. They’re all more closely related to each other than they are to anything else. But the ginkgo is solitary and [...]∞

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3:45 PM | Egypt’s Birthrate Rises as Population Control Policies Vanish

Kareem Fahim, reporting for the New York Times: After two decades of steady declines and modest increases, the birthrate in 2012 reached about 32 for every 1,000 people — surpassing a level last seen in 1991, shortly before the government of the longtime president, Hosni Mubarak, expanded family planning programs and publicity campaigns to curtail [...]∞

May 02, 2013

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7:54 AM | The Woman Who Crossed the Cascades and Inspired Batman

I’m rather a bit in love with a dead woman. I met her in a moment of desperation, when I was running low on Dame Agatha Christie and had finished all of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stuff, and still had a yearning for turn-of-the-last-century detective literature. There she was, one of the helpful [...]

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2:36 AM | Divide and conquer: Canadian environmental protection

Earlier this week, I joined many Canadians in celebrating the Ontario government stepping in to support the Experimental Lakes Area for a year. Stephen Harper claimed the federal government didn’t [...]

May 01, 2013

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6:31 PM | What does an average human look like?

It turns out Wikipedians have had a very detailed discussion on the topic. Their current selection on the article for “Human” is of a southeast Asian man and woman, both farmers, who are not wealthy but not destitute, either. Given population demographics, that’s probably about right. But what’s interesting to me is the background—a rolling [...]∞

April 30, 2013

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9:00 PM | 23 Weeks 6 Days

When Kelley Benham and her husband Tom French finally got pregnant, after many attempts and a good deal of technological help, everything was perfect. Until it wasn't. Their story raises questions that, until recently, no parent had to face… and that are still nearly impossible to answer.

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6:30 PM | San Gabriel Valley, California

Jennifer Medina, reporting for the New York Times: “This is kind of ground zero for a new immigrant America,” said Daniel Ichinose, a demographer at the Asian Pacific American Legal Center. “You have people speaking Mandarin and Vietnamese and Spanish all living together and facing many common challenges.” ∞∞

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4:20 PM | AIA Top 10 Green Buildings

Guess what’s not on the list? A building with trees on the roof. ∞∞

April 29, 2013

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7:34 PM | Illegal Districts Dot New Delhi as City Swells

Jim Yardley, reporting for the New York Times: India is often demarcated along lines of caste or class. But many of India’s rapidly growing cities are also delineated by the legal status of where people live. For years, as migrants have poured into Indian cities in search of work and opportunity, illegal settlements, often slums, [...]∞

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5:33 PM | Who Rules the Street in Cairo? The Residents Who Build It

Michael Kimmelman, reporting for the New York Times: A struggle — and also a race — pits the forces of collapse against the halting emergence of a new urban class, born in the aftermath of the revolution. Egyptians have long been experts at fending for themselves in a top-down system where the president ruled by [...]∞

April 26, 2013

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7:36 PM | Happy Arbor Day

Photo by flatwordsedge. ∞∞

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3:35 PM | When Algae on the Exterior Is a Good Thing

David Wallis, reporting for the New York Times: A new apartment complex in Hamburg, Germany, intends to generate heat, as well as revenue, from growing the micro-organism. The five-story Bio Intelligent Quotient (B.I.Q.) building, which was expected to become fully operational on Wednesday, has a high-tech facade that looks like a cross between a Mondrian [...]∞