The Ed's Up #200

Earth Had Life From Its Infancy

"The Torngat Mountains in northeastern Canada are full of life. Reindeer graze on lichen, polar bears prowl the coastlines, and great whales swim in the offshore waters. Scientists patrol the land, too, looking for the oldest rocks on the planet, which were formed almost 4 billion years ago, when the Earth was just an infant world. Back then, the landscape would have been very different. The Earth was a hellish place that had only just acquired a firm crust. Its atmosphere was devoid of oxygen, and it was regularly pelted with asteroids. There were no reindeer, whales, polar bears, or lichen. But according to new research, there was life." (Image: Antonio Parrinello)
 

Japanese Animals Are Still Washing Up in America After The 2011 Tsunami

"On March 11, 2011, an unprecedentedly powerful earthquake struck the Tōhoku region of Japan, creating a tsunami that reached 40 meters in height. The tsunami inundated a small blue-and-white fishing boat called the Sai-shou-maru,ripping it from its moorings and casting it out to sea. The boat drifted eastward through the Pacific, never capsizing. Then, on March 22, 2013, a couple weeks after the two-year anniversary of the quake, it washed ashore on Long Beach, Washington. Its hull was encrusted with seaweed and barnacles, and one of its compartments was full of water. And living in that water were five striped beakfish. The fish were youngsters, just four inches long. They had probably been swept into the boat as larvae, and spent their entire lives growing up within this ersatz aquarium. For two years, the boat was their entire world." (Image: John Chapman) 
 

Rescuing Puerto Rico's Monkey Island

"Off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico, barely a kilometer from the mainland, lies the tiny island of Cayo Santiago. Its 38 acres, shaped like a lowercase r, are home to some unexpected residents—a troop of around 1,000 rhesus macaque monkeys. Rhesus macaques typically live half a world away in Southeast Asia. But after 406 of them were shipped over in 1938, they quickly took to Caribbean life, and thrived. So did the scientists who work with them.They are now among the best-studied primates anywhere on the planet. They were also among the first to feel the wrath of Hurricane Maria." (Image: Laurie Santos)

 

Two Ways of Making Malaria-Proof Mosquitoes

"Mosquitoes carry microbes that cause devastating diseases, from the viruses behind Zika, dengue, and yellow fever, to the Plasmodium parasites that cause malaria. But mosquitoes, like all other animals, also harbor a more benign coterie of bacteria. And some members of this microbiome, far from causing diseases, might be the keys to preventing them." (Image: Jim Young)
 

Events

If you’re in Madison, or nearby, come to this event next Tuesday, where I’ll be doing a joint talk on science writing, journalism, communication, and storytelling, with my favourite person in the world, Liz Neeley of the Story Collider. 
 

More good reads in science and technology

• The breathtaking trailer for the upcoming series Blue Planet II.
• "Scientists were awed by the results—especially the rivers of maggots." How a mess of dead pigs transforms a landscape. By Christie Wilcox
• “I was a science journalist and had written about CT scans but I’d never had one before, I told her. So this was exciting.” Liz Lopatto on concussions, and what experiencing a brain injury is really like.
• Emails show how Brain Wansink tried to do damage control for his bogus food science. By Stephanie Lee.
• The real story of an artificial womb: How an innovation aimed at helping premature babies survive spurred wild, dystopian speculation, by Sara Talpos.
• “The people know how to code. The problem is what to code.” James Somers on the coming software apocalypse.
• Rescue networks have been working days on end to save cats and dogs from hurricanes, Sarah Zhang reports
• This is an amazing story about how Allen Gardner got flipped off by a chimp

 

More good reads in politics and society

• “It is often said that Trump has no real ideology, which is not true—his ideology is white supremacy, in all its truculent and sanctimonious power.” I’m late to this, but Ta-Nehisi Coates’s piece—The First White President—is a must-read, as is this excerpt from his upcoming book.
• “The greatest contemporary threat to free speech comes not from antifa radicals or campus leftists, but from a president prepared to use the power and authority of government to chill or suppress controversial speech, and the political movement that put him in office.” Absolutely essential piece on taking a knee, and campus protests, by Adam Serwer.
• This is a wonderful thread from linguist Stan Carey—an A-Z of tedious language usage myths
• How to tell if North Korea and America are actually headed to war, by Uri Friedman.
• A shocking series of photos from Puerto Rico, whose people need help. See also this NYT report: "There will be no food in Puerto Rico. There is no more agriculture in Puerto Rico."
• Ungrateful as the New Uppity. Jelani Cobb on the response to athletes who decided to take a knee. See also this piece from world-class essayist Megan Garber.  

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