The Ed's Up #212
Why Did Two-Thirds of These Weird Antelope Suddenly Drop Dead?
"It took just three weeks for two-thirds of all the world’s saiga to die. It took much longer to work out why. The saiga is an endearing antelope, whose bulbous nose gives it the comedic air of a Dr. Seuss character. It typically wanders over large tracts of Central Asian grassland, but every spring, tens of thousands of them gather in the same place to give birth. These calving aggregations should be joyous events, but the gathering in May 2015 became something far more sinister when 200,000 saiga just dropped dead. They did so without warning, over a matter of days, in gathering sites spread across 65,000 square miles—an area the size of Florida. Whatever killed them was thorough and merciless: Across a vast area, every last saiga perished." (Image: Joint Saiga Health-Monitoring Team)
Blue Planet II Is the Greatest Nature Series Of All Time
"Consider the octopus from the “Green Seas” episode. As it goes about its business, ambushing wayward crabs and hiding in crevices, it becomes suddenly menaced by a pyjama shark—a small and slender predator that yanks it out of its hidey-hole. The two tussle. Even though the octopus finds itself at the wrong end of a shark, it manages to escape by—and major spoiler alert—slipping an arm into the shark’s gill slits to prevent it from breathing. It is released but now finds itself in open water, patrolled by more pyjama sharks. So—and again, spoiler warning—it grabs nearby shells with its suckers and arranges them into a protective dome. As a shark investigates, the octopus explodes out of its ersatz armor, and jets to safety." (Image: BBC America)
A Popular Algorithm Is No Better at Predicting Crimes Than Random People
"Caution is indeed warranted, according to Julia Dressel and Hany Farid from Dartmouth College. In a new study, they have shown that COMPAS is no better at predicting an individual’s risk of recidivism than random volunteers recruited from the internet.“Imagine you’re a judge and your court has purchased this software; the people behind it say they have big data and algorithms, and their software says the defendant is high-risk,” says Farid. “Now imagine I said: Hey, I asked 20 random people online if this person will recidivate and they said yes. How would you weight those two pieces of data? I bet you’d weight them differently. But what we’ve shown should give the courts some pause.” (Image: Anjit Mondal)
‘Least Racist Person’ Is Scared of Great Whites
"It appears that Donald Trump is afraid of sharks. “You could see the television from the little dining-room table, and he was watching Shark Week, and he was watching a special about the U.S.S. something and it sank, and it was like the worst shark attack in history,” Clifford recalls. “He is obsessed with sharks. Terrified of sharks. He was like, ‘I donate to all these charities and I would never donate to any charity that helps sharks. I hope all the sharks die.'" It’s a pity. In an era of fake news, when evidence is treated as a political plaything, and when people try to will things into reality just by repeatedly saying them, here is one, timeless, inarguable, unquestionable, wholly objective statement of pure, unadulterated fact: Sharks are awesome." (Image: Bobby Yip) Friends of the Ed's Up
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Story Collider features true personal stories about science. In the latest episode of the podcast, David Evans starts to feel defeated after three days of searching fruitlessly for fossils, and when cave geologist Gabriela Marks Serrato develops fibromyalgia, exploring caves becomes a challenge. Directors Liz Neeley and Erin Barker also run workshops teaching storytelling skills to scientists. And there are live shows coming up in Los Angeles (Jan 25), Cambridge MA (Jan 30), NYC (Feb 6), and Granville (Feb 28).
Flash Forward is a podcast about the future run by Rose Eveleth. It's part radio drama, part science journalism, and a lot of fun. The latest episode features a round-up of the sensational third season.
Gastropod is a food, science, and history podcast run by Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley. The latest episode is on saffron, the world’s most expensive spice.
Convergence is a live show about the future, hosted by Meehan Crist. The next show, on January 18 in NYC, asks how rising seas will change coastal cities. Tickets are available here. It’s going to be a podcast soon.
More good reads
“They’re the least-known large North American mammal.” And in 2011, an ice tsunami killed 50 of them. Robinson Meyer on the sad musk-ox.Many pieces have been written about Aziz Ansari, and this one by Megan Garber is, I think, the best. It is thoughtful and compassionate. See also Lindy West: "The notion of affirmative consent did not fall from space in October 2017 to confound well-meaning but bumbling men; it was built, loudly and painstakingly and in public, at great personal cost to its proponents, over decades."
Hans Jonatan was born into slavery in the Caribbean. He died in a tiny Icelandic fishing village. Now his genome has been reconstructed from the DNA of 182 of his living descendants in Iceland. Sarah Zhang has the story. She also has a second great piece about the 16th century mystery disease that killed most of Mexico.
"These scenes all add up to give the impression that romance requires a man’s desire, but not necessarily a woman’s. For her, the romance is mined from the fact that she is desired." Important piece by Julie Beck on how pop culture fuels toxic masculinity and dangerous romance myths.
A paper showing how to make a smallpox cousin just got published. Critics wonder why. By Kai Kupferschmidt
Not all oil spills are the same. And experts haven't seen one like the disaster in the East China Sea before.
A resource for science journalists looking for female sources. (Women scientists, sign up!)
White supremacists were responsible for over 70% of the extremist-related murders committed in the US over the decade.
Octopus chokes dolphin to death.
"Many assumed they would die, but sought shelter anyway. They took cover in mall bathrooms, bathtubs, drug stores—even a storm drain." Alia Wong reports on how Hawaii dealt with a false missile warning.
"It’s only natural that as the embodiment of a half-century of backlash, Trump’s only real concrete policies have been negations of King." Essential Vann Newkirk II piece on the week of MLK Day.
And that's it. Thanks for reading.
- Ed
Caution is indeed warranted, according to Julia Dressel and Hany Farid from Dartmouth College. In a new study, they have shown that COMPAS is no better at predicting an individual’s risk of recidivism than random volunteers recruited from the internet.
“Imagine you’re a judge and your court has purchased this software; the people behind it say they have big data and algorithms, and their software says the defendant is high-risk,” says Farid. “Now imagine I said: Hey, I asked 20 random people online if this person will recidivate and they said yes. How would you weight those two pieces of data? I bet you’d weight them differently. But what we’ve shown should give the courts some pause.” (A spokesperson from Equivant declined a request for an interview.)