In late March, Deborah Birx, one of the top coronavirus advisors in the United States, made a stunning admission: medicine cannot save us from COVID-19; only our conduct can. “There’s no magic bullet. There’s no magic vaccine or therapy,” she said during a briefing at the White House. “It’s just behaviors. Each of our behaviors […]
Originally published in November 1905 Credit: Scientific American Advertisement “The Whitehead torpedo has exercised a greater controlling influence upon naval construction and tactics than perhaps any other single weapon of naval warfare. However, it cannot be denied that the torpedo has, at times, been greatly overrated. Indeed, the experience of the recent war seems to […]
Untreated drug and alcohol use contribute to tens of thousands of deaths every year and impact the lives of many more. Healthcare already has effective tools including medications for opioid and alcohol use disorder that could prevent many of these deaths, but they are not being utilized widely enough, and many people who could benefit […]
If you’re in an airplane and suddenly hear a loud bang or see a flash outside the window, your plane may have just been hit by lightning. When this happens, pilots are supposed to land as soon as possible so the craft can be inspected for potential damage to its skin, structure or electronics. This […]
This may not be the right time to bring this up, but let’s just say it: there’s strong reason to believe illnesses like COVID-19 might become more prevalent in coming years. When we encroach on previously untouched areas—such as wild lands, dense jungles and tropical forests—we unleash unknown viruses that our bodies have no protection […]
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Puerto Rico just can’t catch a break. Since December 28th of 2019, the southwestern coast of the island has experienced nearly four thousand earthquakes of M2.5 or greater. Since being severely shaken and damaged in January by a stout M6.4, plus a handful of M5+ temblors, the seismic sequence had settled into a pattern of […]
Well before COVID-19 forced me into lockdown here in Hoboken, New Jersey, I dwelled in a liberal echo chamber. I read The New York Times and New Yorker and listen to National Public Radio. I chat via email, Twitter and Facebook with other good, decent, Trump-loathing folks. We American liberals share a particular view of Sars-Cov-2. It is a […]
The four-year-old whined as he followed his mother away from his playmates; a brief tantrum failed to convince her to stay with the play group. This scene could conceivably play out between parent and child at any local playground, but in this case the scene took place in Tanzania’s Gombe National Park, and the sulking […]
On the 26th of April 1920, in a bit of canny PR, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D. C. hosted a debate between the astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis. The topic was the question of whether or not the ‘spiral nebulae’ were actually distant galaxies (implying a universe far more expansive […]