Category Archives: Science

Ls&Qs&Cs: Regressive Agendas

Three posts today about versions of the Republican agenda.

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Fareed Zakaria, TEN LESSONS FOR A POST-PANDEMIC WORLD (2020)

Here’s the next book with a numbered agenda up for summary (following Harari’s 21 Lessons). It came out in October 2020, with journalistic promptness just six or seven months after the beginning of the lockdown, though before vaccines became available … Continue reading

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Ls&Qs&Cs: Kids with Lice; Grifters; Moral Panics; USA #1; Backward We Go

Catching up on current links I’ve saved from web-browsing over the past few days. First a Facebook meme: Kids with Lice

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Ls&Cs: Scientific Literacy and Peer Review

Only a whiff of politics in today’s posts, about the current pandemic and public understanding of science, and the practice of scientific pre-prints.

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L&Cs: More Misleading Maps; Piedmont Park

More interesting juxtapositions showing how flat maps, especially Mercator projections, give misleading impressions of the relative sizes of areas on Earth. Plus, an endpiece, about Piedmont Park.

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Ls&Cs: Harari on Climate Change

Yuval Noah Harari has an essay in the current issue of Time Magazine about the cost of tackling climate change.

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Ls&Cs: Engagement with the Universe

Two contrasting perspectives, today, both passages I just happened to read during my morning web browsing. Rival worldviews. One characterizing religious myths, the other about Kim Stanley Robinson.

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Ls&Cs: Misleading Maps

Here’s one of my favorite counter-intuitive facts: how our impressions of the sizes of countries and continents that we get from (flat) maps are wildly inaccurate.

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L&Q&Cs: Neal Stephenson on What Might Save Us

Sunday’s New York Times Magazine had an interview with SF writer Neal Stephenson, whose latest novel is Termination Shock. NYT Times Magazine: Neal Stephenson Thinks Greed Might Be the Thing That Saves Us

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Myths About Science

Another overcast, damp day, with occasional sprinkles. Today was partner Y’s last day at his current job; he signed his severance package, returned his laptop and badge. He’ll be home everyday now until/unless he gets another job; he does seem … Continue reading

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