The Ed's Up #97

I Contain Multitudes,

                            August 12, 2015

                The Ed's Up #97

                        Hi, I wrote a book! This Monday, I submitted the complete draft of my book I Contain Multitudes, about the fascinating partnerships between animals and microbes. It’ll be out next year. But it definitely exists! And without further ado, on to the links...
When Parasites Attack, Flies Diversify Their Babies’ Genes
"Imagine an animal that reproduced by budding off genetically identical clones. This asexual creature doesn’t have to bother with finding or attracting mates: it is a self-contained factory for making more of itself. This sounds like a recipe for success, but asexual animals are far from successful. They exist, but they tend to be rare and precarious twigs on the tree of life—recently evolved, and likely to snap off at any time. By and large, the vast majority of animal life practices sex. The asexual lifestyle falters because it presents a sitting target. If every new generation is genetically identical to the last, then predators, parasites, and rivals can easily evolve ways of outmanoeuvring them all. Sex mixes things up—literally so...." (Image: Poker Photos)

More good reads

Don't Hate the Phone Call, Hate the Phone. A wonderful piece on our changing use of phones, and how the design of mobiles constrains our relationship with them. By Ian Bogost
On Benjamin Libet's famous free will experiment and criticisms of it. By Vaughan Bell.
"It's very entertaining to be Pope." Very much enjoyed the “Pope Francis has a Cold” feature in Nat Geo. By Robert Draper.
Two perfect sentences: “Joy as mathematicians discover a new type of pentagon that can cover the plane leaving no gaps and with no overlaps. It becomes only the 15th type of pentagon known that can do this, and the first discovered in 30 years.”
Helen Macdonald meets a woman who saves swifts, and muses about the futile importance of rescuing wildlife
"It’s a Möbius strip: Stories are life, life is stories." On the narratives we write for ourselves, by Julie Beck.
This stream of tweets (and the paper it links to) is one of the smartest things I’ve read on science communication and the role of storytelling in persuasion. By Liz Neeley.

More good links will be released in tomorrow's linkfest on Not Exactly Rocket Science.
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And that's it! Thanks for reading.

-Ed

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