How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction

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Scatter Adapt and RememberHalf way through her book “Scatter, Adapt, and Remember”, Annalee Newitz states that her goal “is to get us off this crowded planet and into space.”  I don’t think she achieves her goal.  I wasn’t convinced we need to get off our beautiful blue world (at least for the next billion years or so), but it’s a fun romp and worth reading.

Newitz starts with a review of the history of mass extinctions in the last 2.5 billion years, such as the Oxygen Apocalypse (which may be unfamiliar to readers), the Permian Great Dying, and the famous demise of the dinosaurs.  She notes that mass extinctions are usually defined in terms of species going extinct.  Even with such a drop in diversity, the number of individual creatures may (or may not) remain high.  Reasons why some genetic lines survived are often speculative, but if you enjoy natural history, this is an interesting section of the book.

In the second part of the book, Newitz gets closer to home.  She discusses the human genus, Continue reading →

Pwog

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In the current age of political polarization, it is important to have slang terms for your opponents.  (Please read that as humor!)  For example, there are leftie loons and righty wing-nuts.

Here is a term I had never heard, from an unlikely source:

“A moment for language lovers to watch for is the appearance out of nowhere of  “pwogs”… – it’s shorthand for “progressives,” is not entirely flattering in that it often is in reference to knee-jerk old wannabe rads who reflexively support anything that smells of far liberal to even socialist ideas. Its origin is the urban northeast. The yiddish-inflected spelling reflecting what one might hear in a New York coffee house in the middle to latter part of the last century. What a great and ambiguous word is pwog. – See more at: http://ksj.mit.edu/tracker  which is one of my favorite places to go for tips on science in the news.

Sugar and Obesity

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There is an extensive article about sugar in the August 2013 National Geographic magazine titled “Sugar Love (A not so sweet story).” It refers to “…a colossal American health crisis. High rates of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease:  the legacy, some experts say, of sugar…” The article describes how the domestication of sugarcane 10,000 years ago in New Guinea began a deadly series of events. Columbus planted the New World’s first sugar cane in Hispaniola and millions of Africans were enslaved and shipped to the New World to work on sugar plantations. The slave trade has ended, but the addiction to sugar continues. The article describes how a time of famine led to evolution of humans who can get by on very little sugar but are addicted to the rush it gives while sapping their energy and “…beaching them on the couch.”  Continue reading →

The Case for Mars

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case_for_marsThis book, which has the subtitle, “The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must” by Robert Zurbin with Richard Wager was recommended by a friend, and I was glad to have been told about it.  The book provides important examples of the power of imaginative and innovative thinking. It gives examples of explorations that failed because they relied on transporting everything needed into inhospitable territory. That is contrasted by expeditions such as the one by Lewis and Clark that succeeded because they used available resources accumulated during their travels. The book presents a case for exploring Mars while the team uses the resources available on the Red Planet to, as examples, build a shelter, grow food, and manufacturing the fuel that will be needed on the return trip to Earth.  Continue reading →

Up to Our Ears in Alligators

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I used a euphemism in the title, and admit that my limited searching did not find an origin. The Phrase Finder observes that the US expression is something like “…When you’re up to your (ears) in alligators, there’s no time to remember you’re there to drain the swamp.” The obvious meaning is that you can’t hope to solve problems if your primary hope is for survival.

Arctic Ice Increases

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NASA-funded National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) image taken from dailymail.co.uk

NASA-funded National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) image taken from dailymail.co.uk

National Geographic has an extensive article titled “Rising Seas” in the September 2013 magazine. The first several pages are about the massive destruction caused by Superstorm Sandy. The article then turns to making dire predictions. “By releasing carbon dioxide and other heat trapping gases into the atmosphere, we have warmed the Earth by more than a full degree Fahrenheit over the past century and raised sea level by about eight inches. Even if we stopped burning all fossil fuels tomorrow, the existing greenhouse gases will continue to warm the Earth for centuries. That report is countered by an article by David Rose that the Arctic ice cap grew by almost a million square miles and increased coverage by 60% in 2012. Continue reading →