Eclectic Living
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The earliest version of this iteration of the Pledge of Allegiance (which incidentally didn’t include “the United States” or “under God”) was written in... Continue Reading →
In my November 3, 2016, post, "Scientific Policy," I wrote: "It is one week from the U.S. presidential election, and Science magazine has compiled a list of six areas of science in which the new president will need to be well-versed in order to lead our country down the right path." The first area Science emphasized was pathogens. "[N]ew... Continue Reading →
My optimism stems largely from a belief in progress. Progress is the inevitable outcome of accumulated knowledge and enlightenment. As we understand the world better, understand ourselves better, we come to understand how to improve the world and our place in it. The Progressive approach is guided by reason and virtue. In many regards (hunger,... Continue Reading →
Car rights supporters are up in arms about measures that have curbed their freedom. The most egregious of these car controls is speed limits on how fast one can drive. "By imposing these limits on how fast I can drive," Carl, a car rights activist said, "they have taken my freedom to go as fast... Continue Reading →
https://youtu.be/fmghBnJZTLw A few years ago I worked with some colleagues to write a paper about the potential for entomophagy to address undernutrition. We titled it, fittingly enough, "The potential for entomophagy to address undernutrition," and it was published in the Ecology of Food and Nutrition journal. Entomophagy is the fancy word for insect eating. My brother and I... Continue Reading →
Food is a problem for a good chunk of the planet. There are over 800 million undernourished people in the world, and millions more that have other forms of malnutrition. According to Mark Bittman, the problem is more one of poverty than of a lack of food. Maybe this is true, but almost all of the potential... Continue Reading →
As visitors to the Cottage are aware, we like to get dirty. Another thing we like is the potential that crowdsourced science has to rapidly improve our knowledge. Here's an opportunity to combine the two. The Natural Products Discovery Group is offering free soil collection kits, which they will then analyze for fungal compounds that... Continue Reading →
I'm not much of an aural learner, so in college I generally didn't garner much from lectures. In physics, I made it to class about three times (five, if you count the exams), preferring to learn from the textbook. The professor was incredibly dry, but he was a smart guy. At one point, after one of the... Continue Reading →
Poppa's Cottage 