The Ed's Up #165
Giraffes Edge Closer to Extinction
"This is a recurring theme in the natural world: Fragmentation brings disaster. It’s as if the cause of the giraffe’s downfall has been painted onto its hide. In just 30 years, the giraffe population has fallen up to 40 percent, from between 152,000 and 163,000 animals in 1985 to just 98,000 in 2015. This dramatic decline is reflected in the latest edition of the Red List of Threatened Species—the ever-depressing inventory in which the International Union for Conservation of Nature classifies the world’s wildlife into various shades of screwed. Giraffes used to be in the safest bracket: “Least Concern.” As of this week, they’ve been shunted into “Vulnerable”—a two-step demotion, and four steps away from total extinction." (Image: Christian Hartmann)
Self-Control Is Just Empathy With Your Future Self
"Empathy depends on your ability to overcome your own perspective, appreciate someone else’s, and step into their shoes. Self-control is essentially the same skill, except that those other shoes belong to your future self—a removed and hypothetical entity who might as well be a different person. So think of self-control as a kind of temporal selflessness. It’s Present You taking a hit to help out Future You." (Image: Archi Trujillo)
The Scientific Discovery That Began at a Wedding Table
Born in the Bahamas to a family of lobster fishermen, Nicholas Higgs spent much of his childhood diving in Caribbean waters, working on boats, and collecting shells on the beach. That connection to the sea stayed with him. He moved to the UK and became a marine biologist. He studied whales and marine worms. And on his wedding day, he asked his parents to bring some shells from the Bahamas to decorate the dining tables. Those shells, which symbolized his past, would also define his future. At the wedding, his former boss picked one up and identified it as a lucinid clam—a group that feeds in a strange way. (Image: Steven Bedard)
Beating Alzheimer’s With Brain Waves
"When a crowd starts to applaud, each person initially does so to their own rhythm. But in some cases, those claps can synchronize, with hundreds or thousands or millions of hands striking in unison. Something similar happens in the brain. When a single neuron fires, it sends an electrical pulse down its length. But large networks of neurons can also fire together, creating regular cycles of electrical activity that resemble the synchronized applause of a rapturous crowd. Formally, these are called neural oscillations; more colloquially, they’re brain waves." (Image: Picower Institute)Book news
I'm delighted that I Contain Multitudes is now on several end-of-year lists, with NPR, QI, Economist and Brain Pickings joining the NYT, Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus, Guardian, Times, Smithsonian, ScienceFriday, and Mother Jones.Two recommendations
Story Collider brings you true, personal stories about science, both in live shows around the US and in a weekly podcast. I believe that now, more than ever, these stories matter. At turns witty and moving, but always captivating, they show the human side of science. They change it from a parade of discoveries and papers into something we can all relate to—full of success and failures, silliness and fun, plot twists and foul play. Some of the storytellers are scientists and science writers; others are writers, actors, patients, and comedians who haven’t had a connection to science since high school. To start you off, here’s a playlist of heartwarming stories to cheer you up after a long hard year. You can also donate here; they're worth your support.Flash Forward is the brain child of the immensely talented Rose Eveleth. Every episode visits a new possible future, and then considers the present science that might inform that future. Part radio play and part science journalism, it’s an exceptional, hilarious, illuminating look at the world around us, through the lens of the worlds ahead of us. It was recently named one of iTunes’ best podcasts of 2016, which is incredible when you realise that it’s a one-woman job. Rose single-handedly produces, writes, records, and edits the show, and it’s incredible. From the last season, I loved the episodes where everyone knows when they’ll die, where all the volcanoes explode, and where all drugs are legal. And here’s their latest episode about a future in which there's so much fake news no one can tell what's real. So… now?
More good reads on science and technology
- “A virus, fished out of a lake and put in a man’s chest, may have saved his life.” Carl Zimmer on phage therapy
- ““The mind evolved in the sea,” writes Godfrey-Smith, but if water is our origin, it may also be our destiny.” Meehan Crist on octopuses, consciousness, and climate change.
- How do 20,000 birds simply vanish, what’s up with the black-ops helicopters, and why are snakes eating each other? By Brian Kevin
- “When Waffle House is closed, it’s time to panic.” Maryn McKenna on the supply chains that keep us fed.
- Environmentalism was once a social-justice movement—here's how it can return to its roots. By Jedediah Purdy
- Peer review post-mortem: how a flawed aging study was published in Nature. Great investigation by Hester van Santen.
- Tardigrades have sex for an hour—and there’s video. By Brian Resnick
- “In fact,” Glenn later wrote about the experience, “I found weightlessness to be extremely pleasant.” An obituary for John Glenn.
- “We’ve heard about immunotherapy as the cure for cancer. We haven’t heard much about the collateral damage.” By Matt Richtel
- Before the CRISPR fight, these were the patents that kicked off the DNA-editing gold rush. By Sarah Zhang.
- Michelle Nijhuis on our stagnant tech for delivering babies.
- How High Schoolers’ Hacks Fixed a Whale Snot-Collecting Drone
More good reads on politics and society
- "What won this victory at Standing Rock? The answer is indisputable." Great analysis by Robinson Meyer.
- “The main thing that this debate could use is a discussion of the effects of rigorously calling out racism on people who suffer from the effects of racism.” Stunning piece on Vann Newkirk II: there are more important things than civility.
- “There was something especially disturbing about a United States in which bigotry’s appeal had become so public and widespread that it could be taken for granted.” A must-read piece by Joshua Rothman on the 1920s KKK, which doubles as a warning for today.
- Scott Pruitt, Trump's EPA pick, repeatedly sued the EPA—and he’s skeptical about more than just climate change, as Robinson Meyer learned. Meanwhile Brad Plumer writes about all the obstacles that might stop the dismantling of the EPA
- “So why can’t you call Taiwan?” David Graham on the history behind Trump’s disastrous call. Evan Osnos, who wrote the definitive book on modern China, also has a great analysis of the call. And the Washington Post reveals that Trump lied; the call was planned for months.
- Believing a fake news story, a man walked into a DC restaurant with an assault rifle. We can expect more of this.
- “Journalists have long had a tendency to get enamored of repackaged racism.” Nicole Hemmer on what the media missed about white supremacy
- Woman who faced off with neo-Nazis named one of year's most inspiring by BBC
- On the 21 young people suing the government over climate change, by Chelsea Harvey
- “Donald Trump Is the Result of White Rage, Not Economic Anxiety”, by Carol Anderson, the author of the exceptional book, White Rage. If you haven’t read it yet, you should.
- Trump’s lies about voter fraud are already leading to new voter suppression efforts in several states.
- History classes are our best hope for teaching Americans to question fake news and Donald Trump. By Marie Myung-Ok Lee
- Trump transition team for Energy Department seeks names of employees involved in climate meetings. By Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin
- A little Twitter story about why representation in fiction matters.
- Here's what can happen when the president-elect gets inadequate intelligence briefings. By Rebecca Friedman Lissner
- Algorithms Can Help Stomp Out Fake News, by Kaveh Waddell.
- “An indifferent public sees evidence of outrageous actions but chooses not to believe it in order to preserve its world view.” Jelani Cobb on the Walter Scott mistrial
- Trump's potential FDA Commissioner wants the agency to approve drugs without any evidence of effectiveness. From Bloomberg.
- What happens when a President-Elect starts targeting individual citizens on Twitter. By Danielle Paquette
- Stop calling everything fake news, says Will Oremus.
You can also follow me on Twitter or find my writing at The Atlantic. My New York Times-bestselling book, I Contain Multitudes, is out now. If someone has forwarded this email to you, you can sign up yourself.
And that's it. Thanks for reading.
- Ed
Don't miss what's next. Subscribe to The Ed's Up: