Can you match up two differently-sized people by adding more person to the smaller man? If he acquires it the wrong way, he’s creating a liability – it will be less of a gain in strength than it is a blood-sucking cardio drain.
Miscellaneous
*Warning: This post starts with a story, ends with a rant, and has little to do with science. Read at your own risk. In 2001, I joined the Peace Corps and moved to a tiny village in the middle of Bolivia called Chuqui Chuqui. My job description was vague. I taught some English. I gave […]
Being an environment reporter during the sixth great extinction can be a bit of a drag. Sure, there are tons of important, dramatic stories to cover, but they’re all so darned depressing. Oil spills, nuclear accidents, pillaged seas, the whole climate mess? Ugh. A decade or two of that every week can really start to […]
I was teetering along the concrete track at about 5 miles per hour, a pathetic speed that nonetheless significantly exceeded my comfort zone. “Baseball slide,” barked a blonde pixie in a tiny pink skirt and massive black TSG kneepads over leopard-print tights. I tensed my core, gingerly lowered my left knee, and on impact, slipped […]
I’ve been thinking a lot about resilience lately, that ineffable quality of being able to withstand trickling insults and outright catastrophe. It characterizes the Japanese ability to remain civil and calm throughout their ongoing weeks of dread, and the ability of some natural systems to bounce back after even the most egregious of impacts. It […]
On 24 September, 1987, six year old Leide Ferreira threw up ten minutes after eating her egg sandwich. The next day her parents started throwing up too. Vomiting and diarrhea were followed by strange aches and burns. When Leide’s mother Maria went to the public health clinic in Goiás, the doctor ascribed her symptoms to […]
There’s this idea, and I don’t know who started it, but it’s definitely floating around, out there, that science journalists are disheveled, frazzled, socially awkward and overall, just not very cool. That nasty rumor, if I ever believed it, was quickly dispelled the day I met Erika Check Hayden. This woman is polished — in […]
Ann, I see your crows and raise you ravens. With a beak like a Swiss army knife and an intellect to match, the raven is an icon, mascot and pest, as mysterious as it is ubiquitous. For me, as for most people up North, these winged scavengers hover just below my conscious radar. They steal […]
