Why are there no blue tigers? Come to think of it, there are no blue rabbits or squirrels, either. You’ve probably never lost any sleep pondering these questions, but in case you’re just curious, we’ve got some answers for you! Molecular biologist and science writer Joe Hanson made this 2018 video as an episode in his series It’s Okay To Be Smart, a project of PBS Digital Studios.
Continue reading “Why Is Blue So Rare in Nature?”
We’ve been hearing for a while now that social media can have damaging effects on users’ mental health and sense of well-being. If we’re being honest, we probably have noticed some effects on our own selves that are not so desirable. What’s happening to cause that? Has all of humanity, and especially young people, just gone bonkers for social media? That’s not a very satisfying possibility, is it? Brittney McNamara, Teen Vogue’s features director, offers a better explanation in this November 2021 report.
Continue reading “The Science behind Social Media’s Hold on Our Mental Health”
Do you have a middle name? Not everybody does. Some people have two or more. If you have one, do you use it? Do you shorten it to an initial? In the US, we have some leeway in the ways that we identify ourselves, so you may have encountered these questions already in your own life—what name to put on, say, a job application or an apartment rental contract. Deborah Cameron, a feminist linguist who pays attention to many aspects of language use, wrote this July 2021 post about names for her blog, Language: a feminist guide. (By the way, she writes her blog under the name debuk.)
Continue reading “Women of Letters”
Dogs know the world through their exquisitely sensitive noses, and humans have been relying on dogs’ sense of smell to help with many different kinds of tasks (not always benevolent) for a long time. Dogs are trained to sniff out contraband at airports and international borders; dogs are instrumental in finding black truffles and other valuable wild mushrooms; and dogs are also trained to detect an imminent epileptic seizure before it occurs . Presently, scientists are developing training programs for dogs to sniff out COVID. In this July 2021 Discover Magazine report, science journalist Leslie Nemo analyzes the procedures that trainers and researchers follow to teach the necessary skills to the dogs.
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The Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, has received a lot of national attention for initiating a plan that they’re calling “reparations.” The plan acknowledges and takes steps toward redressing the town’s complicity in a long history of housing practices that have knowingly and intentionally discriminated against Black people, who currently comprise 16% of the town population, according to census data. Arts consultant A. Kirsten Mullen and economist William A. Darity Jr., authors of the 2020 award-winning book From Here to Equality, wrote this March 2021 essay on Evanston’s plan for the Washington Post.
Continue reading “Evanston, Illinois, Approved Reparations. Except It Isn’t Reparations.”
Have you ever made an ironic remark and had it misinterpreted or misunderstood? Us, too. It happens. In a real-time conversation, you might be able to explain and repair the conversation. Indeed, when the context and intention are clear enough, many potential misunderstandings don’t happen in the first place. On social media, though, things can get more complicated, and ironic intent may not be recognized. New York Times technology correspondent Mike Isaac wrote this March 2021 report on Facebook’s ironic irony problem.
Continue reading “For Political Cartoonists, the Irony Was That Facebook Didn’t Recognize Irony”
It’s a tiny detail in writing with huge implications in social reality. Wait. What? It’s tiny and huge at the same time? Really? Well, yes, really. Unless you pay a lot of attention to the inner workings of news media, publishers, and language usage guides, you might not have noticed the extensive recent discussions about the capitalization (or not) of the words black and white when they refer to social identities of people. Kwame Anthony Appiah, author and professor of philosophy and law, details the issues involved in this June 2020 essay in The Atlantic. (And by the way, who makes the ultimate decisions about what is correct? As Appiah notes, “language is a set of conventions, to be determined by the consensus of language users.” In other words, we do.)
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Trees may not get around very much, but they do know a lot about what matters to them. Their very survival depends on being able to extract information from their environments and make appropriate responses. In other words, they make decisions. Science fiction novelist and tree scholar Sue Burke writes about trees and decisions in this December 2019 report for Slate.
Continue reading “Trees of Knowledge”
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