Science is not normally in the metaphor business, but occasionally when it crosses the cultural divide between it and the rest of us, it does so via metaphors. Maybe the most common one is black holes. To scientists, black holes are singularities so dense, so gravitationally powerful, that nothing falling into them can return. To the rest of us, black holes are metaphors for closets, the economy, and the end-of-season position of the Baltimore Orioles. I’d like to offer another metaphor not currently in use: violent relaxation. Continue reading
When I’m thirsty, I often fancy a cool drink of green algae, filled with Spirulina, a vitamin-and protein-packed beverage resembling pond scum that’s promoted as an immune-boosting elixir. I think of algae as benign or beneficial: clinging to a damp tree trunk, like the primitive one-celled Protococcus; as a source of biodiesel, aka oilgae; or scattered over the sea shore, like bladderwrack, a rubbery species that I seem to recall dragging home as a souvenir from seaside holidays in Brighton lo these many years ago. (That’s the English Brighton, where the beaches are covered in pebbles, the climate is typically overcast, and the locals spend chilly summer afternoons burrowed in their beach huts, or “chalets” imbibing tea and admiring each others’ poodles.)
