So Hard Core

By: | October 27, 2015

shutterstock_187066352Many years ago, before I was a science writer, but after I tried being a scientist, I spent some time in the outdoor industry. It’s a weird phrase, I know, but it covers anything related to activities like skiing, backpacking, kayaking and generally avoiding getting a real job.

We did a lot of guiding and working at summer camps while selling outdoor gear to make rent. And all the while, planning our next adventure into the wilderness and parts unknown. Occasionally, very rarely, one of us would be sponsored to have a truly epic adventure in Antarctica or an African rainforest. But those were only the seriously hardcore.

If you work in this field long enough, you find there is a certain kind of bravado that goes along with the outdoor industry – a sort of one-upmanship about who is the most outdoorsy.

Hardman one: “Yeah, so last year when I was trekking in Nepal with a community of Sherpas, I just couldn’t handle all the tourists.”

Hardman two: “Oh yeah, when I was walking the Inca trail with nothing but my sandals and leatherman tool I had the same problem.”

Hardwoman: “Oh, I never have that problem. Because where I go, there aren’t any tourists.”

Continue reading →

The dark crystal

By: | October 26, 2015

blackphThe electronics of the future could be made of a material you leave in your toilet.

If you’re up on your electronics of the future, you’ll recall that they were supposed to be made of graphene. Remember graphene? It was supposed to be better than silicon, because it lets electrons go really fast. That’s great, but researchers are still scratching their heads looking for a way to make those fast electrons stop (arguably the more important mechanism in our electronics). But then, last year, researchers discovered that black phosphorous – shaved into a 2-dimensional layer called phosphorene – has both zippy highways and stop lights. Researchers have gotten very excited about this material. It’s been under two years since phosphorene was discovered, but already this paper has been cited in the literature over 400 times. Things are moving fast. Early this year, one of the material’s big remaining problems – the difficulty of making it in bulk – was solved. This wonder material is making fast advances into the real world.

Phosphorus, you say? Isn’t that the stuff that’s in agricultural fertilizer? Why yes, astute reader. Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | October 24, 2015

shutterstock_89634064October 19-23, 2015

Doctors think in narratives, not computerized drop down menus, says Ann. Let them be truly present in the examination room.

On Helen’s morning walking commute, all kinds of stories are possible – growth, recovery, even a shared moment between a gourd and an ape.

Craig’s quest for a portal to the Pleistocene takes him to Oregon, where ancient human feces provides an archaeological lynchpin.

Christie is a counter. So are a surprising number of other people. The post is a redux, but she’s still collecting comments. Are you one of her people?

Guest poster Robin Marantz Henig eagerly plays her role as a raiser of life prospects in the Grandmother Hypothesis.

 

Image: Shutterstock

Guest Post: the Grandmother Hypothesis

By: | October 23, 2015

robin with grandparentsRecently I’ve started seeing examples of those much-mocked New York Times trend stories that are not about Millennials, the way the trendiest trend stories usually are. In the articles I’ve been noticing, the trend-setters are Baby Boomers — who are, according to the Times, relocating to New York City to help raise the grandkids.

Now that’s a trend I could get my own 62-year-old head around.

The most recent of these pieces appeared just last weekend, a story about a young woman on the Upper East Side who was about to have a baby, and was delighted that her parents wanted to find a place to live in her neighborhood so they could help out with child care. There were a few hitches; the parents, for one thing, lived in Minneapolis, so they would have to be willing to relocate to Manhattan. (Willing they were; they were both physicians, but they were both retired.) Another hitch struck me as an even bigger obstacle: they were divorced, and they were talking about renting a one-bedroom apartment together. But good feelings for their daughter predominated, as did enthusiasm about becoming grandparents for the first time, and in the end, the Minnesotans found an apartment they liked just a mile away from their daughter and her new baby Tessa. They are taking turns living in it.

This story followed by just a few weeks another Times piece, which revealed itself as a trend story right away, with the telltale phrase “a growing number” right in the lede. (Other clues to “bogus trend stories,” according to media watcher Jack Shafer, include overuse of “weasel words” like “some,” “few,” and “seems.”) The Times piece began:

Instead of spending their golden years baking in the sun, a growing number of grandparents are choosing a grittier spot to play out their third act . . . they come for the children but stay for the city.

Cue the Monocle Meter.

Biologists have an explanation for why this trend, if it really exists, would be good for the grandkids: they call it the Grandmother Hypothesis. Continue reading →

Redux: The Compulsion to Count

By: | October 22, 2015

 

Back in 2012, I wrote about my compulsive counting habit. I’m revisiting it now, in hopes of collecting stories from other counters. If you count too, I’d love to hear about it. Leave me a comment.
For as long as I can remember, I have counted. If I’m on a train I might count the electric lines we pass or the rows in my car or the number of windows on each side of the aisle. When I’m bicycling, I count pedal strokes. It’s not something I do deliberately; I’ll just suddenly catch myself doing it. It feels like my mind doodling.

I’d never really thought about it, until once, years ago, my aunt Sandy, my mother and I were driving by a string of power lines on the Kansas prairie and somehow Sandy mentioned that she’d been counting the power lines. Big deal, I thought. Doesn’t everybody do that? Mom didn’t know what the hell we were talking about.

My dad does though. As I was writing this just now, I called him and asked, “Dad, do you count?” He knew immediately what I meant. He does it just like I do, and he says that his mom, my grandma Friesen, counted too. So did her dad, my great-grandpa Neufeld. “It has no purpose, I’ve just always done it,” Dad says. Continue reading →

Seeing Through Time

By: | October 21, 2015

shutterstock_271332755In the bespangled Pioneer Saloon in Paisley, Oregon, hangs a picture on a wall of a fit, gray mustached archaeologist out in the field. Written in pen, the name at the bottom of the photo is Dr. Poop.

Dennis Jenkins is his actual name, a senior archaeologist at the University of Oregon. Jenkins leads paleo digs in the high sage desert around Paisley. They know him well at the bar.

Jenkins’ crews work a chain of caves standing over a sea of sage beneath the parapets of the Eastern Cascades. They have been finding layers of stone tools, megafauna bones, and, in particular, dried human feces dating back as far as 14,300 years ago. This is from deep in the Ice Age, remnants of the first people. It is the oldest human fecal artifact recorded in the Americas.

Thus, Dr. Poop.
Continue reading →

A Hug From a Plant Friend

By: | October 20, 2015

A tendril of a plant wraps around an index finger.

The other day I made a plant friend.

My plant friend is some kind of squash. Pumpkin, maybe. It grows along the edge of a community garden that I walk by on my way to work. Like many of those squash-like plants, it uses tendrils to anchor itself, clinging in tight spirals to the fence wires. With no respect for boundaries it spilled its way well outside the garden and onto the sidewalk.

When I walked by it on Thursday morning, the plant was exploring for new territory. One new tendril stuck out several inches, straight as a ruler, with just the tiniest curl at the very tip.

Continue reading →

Redux: Inputing Narratives

By: | October 19, 2015

 

My husband’s in the hospital (he’s going to be ok) for the foreseeable or the next couple of days, whichever comes first, and I’m there with him.  In a hospital, you give up control — for excellent reasons — and you haven’t a clue about what’s next.  Even if I were granted a clue, I wouldn’t know what to do with it: there should be an essay in the effects on the brain of stress but my brain’s under stress and the neurons aren’t speaking to each other, let alone operating well enough to think through an essay.  Another time, maybe.  Meanwhile, I’m reduxing a medical-world post about doctors and computers, so click on it if you’d like.

After that post was published, I sent it to my husband’s doctor and she sent it to other doctors and after that, nothing more was heard.  But ever since, I’ve continued to ask doctors informally whether they like using those computers and the responses vary from “I’m getting used to it,” to “I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.”

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illustration: 1915 By: Frederick Henry Townsend, via Wellcome Images