The Ed's Up #201

This'll be a short edition because I've been at Madison for a full week as their science-writer-in-residence. But I wanted to send these stories out nonetheless because one of them--the glowworm story below--is my 2500th piece. Not a bad tally for 11 years of work. Here's to the next 2500. 
 

The Most Beautiful Death Trap

"At first, they look like stars. I see them as I gaze upward at the ceiling of a flooded, pitch-black cave—hundreds of blue pinpricks. As my eyes habituate to the darkness, more and more of them resolve, and I see that they are brighter and more densely packed than any starry field. And unlike the night sky, these lights don’t appear as a flat canvas, but as a textured one. Some are clearly closer to us than others and they move relative to each other, so the whole tableau seems to undulate gently as our boat sails beneath it. These lights are not astrological, but entomological. They are produced by insects called glowworms." (Image: 2ll org)
 

The Absurdity of the Nobel Prizes in Science

"Every year, when Nobel Prizes are awarded in physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine, critics note that they are an absurd and anachronistic way of recognizing scientists for their work. Instead of honoring science, they distort its nature, rewrite its history, and overlook many of its important contributors." (Image: Norsk Telegrambyra AS) 
 

More good reads

• She Has Her Mother’s Laugh is Carl Zimmer’s latest book, coming out soon and available to pre-order now. I can tell you, with great surety, that it is his best work yet.
• Another noted scientist—Antarctic researcher David Marchant—turns out to be a serial sexual harasser. Absolutely horrific story. Not the first, won’t be the last.
• Another noted media figure—producer Harvey Weinstein— turns out to be a serial sexual harasser. Absolutely horrific story. Not the first, won’t be the last. And here’s why it took so long for these allegations to come out.
• Squirrels sort their nuts like you sort your fridge.
• Stunning Buzzfeed investigation from Joseph Bernstein into how Breitbart, Milo Yiannopoulos and Steve Bannon smuggled white nationalism and Nazism into the mainstream
• 15 out of the 500 remaining North Atlantic right whales were found dead on coasts this year. What killed them?
• Read this, by Vann Newkirk II, on how limiting the definition of “white supremacy” to the KKK and other hate groups does the work of white supremacy.
• Photographing the Microscopic: Winners of Nikon Small World 2017
• The triumphant return of the Lord Howe Island Stick Insect
• How the benzene tree polluted the world. Rebecca Altman on how “the organic compounds that enabled industrialization have unintended, long-lasting consequences for the planet’s life”.
• A new history of the first peoples in the Americas—an excerpt from Adam Rutherford's great book, now out in the US
• Civil protests have never been popular—and they’re not aimed at contemporaries. By Ta-Nehisi Coates

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