All posts
-
On unintended consequences.
Drones can keep soldiers safe, but they put everyone else at risk.
A Theory of the Drone, assassination, Chamayou, dope, drone, drone pilot, drone pilot suicide, drone pilots, drone strikes, drone war, drone warfare, drones, drug overdose, drugs, drugs in jail, drugs in prison, grass, Gregoire Chamayou, jail smuggling, marijuana, military, military suicide, military suicides, military violence, philosophy, philosophy of war, politics, pot, pot replacer, prison mail, prison smuggling, spice, suicide, synthetic marijuana, terror, terrorism, terrorist, terrorist attack, violence against civilians, War on Drugs, war on terror
-
On meditation and the birth of the universe.
How we compose ourselves is everything.
anti-matter, big bang, biology, birth of particles, birth of stars, birth of the cosmos, Buddha, Buddha meditating, chaos engines, chaos machines, chemistry, composition of matter, consciousness, cosmology, dark energy, drug chemistry, drugs, emergent physics, emergent properties, energetics of life, entropy, expanding universe, false vacuum, goal of meditation, hallucination, Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, how to meditate, hydrogen fusion, hyperinflation, inflation, Jesus, Jesus meditating, LSD, mantra, mantra meditation, matter, meditate, meditation, meditation function, meditation guide, meditation practice, meditation retreat, metastable, more is different, nuclear fusion, Odin, Odin meditating, organization of matter, origin of consciousness, origin of intelligence, origin of life, origin of planets, origin of structure, origin of the cosmos, origin of the universe, particle physics, physics, practice, practice makes better, psychedelic, psychedelic meditation, psychedelics, quantum mechanics, RNA world, RNA world hypothesis, sat nam, Shiva, Shiva meditating, star formation, statistical mechanics, structure of matter, teaching in jail, THC, thermodynamics of life, transcendental meditation, tsar bomba, uncertainty, vacuum energy
-
On domestication and Sue Burke’s ‘Semiosis’
With every generation, our species changes. If we found ourselves on the cusp of survival, an alien world could easily reshape us to fit its needs.
aggression, alien life, artificial selection, Belyayev, coevolution, conscious plants, directed evolution, domesticated foxes, domestication, evolution, flowering plants, fruiting plants, future humans, human domestication, human evolution, intelligent plantlife, intelligent plants, Russian fox experiment, science fiction, selective breeding, selective pressure, self-domestication, Semiosis, Semiosis review, Sue Burke
-
On education rankings.
Rich untraumatized professors’ kids score well on exams. Poor kids often score worse. Does that tell you how good their teachers are?
doctor evaluations, doctor rankings, doctor ratings, education, education spending, elementary school evaluations, elementary teachers, federal school evaluations, Indiana Department of Education, medical ratings, Saurabh Jha, school disctricts, school districting, school rankings, standardized test, standardized testing, student need, surgeon ratings, surgery, teacher evaluation, teacher evaluations, teacher pay, teacher salary bonus, teaching, testing, value added, When a Bad Surgeon Is the One You Want, when a low rated doctor is the one you want
-
On explaining religion to my child, part two.
In which our little ones just barely avoid making a scene in church …
-
On birds watching.
We humans have massive brains, but will our kind be more successful than the dinosaurs?
animal cognition, animal communication, animal intelligence, animal research, animals, bird brains, bird cognition, bird intelligence, birds, brain soup, chickens, corvids, crow communication, crow facial recognition, crow intelligence, crows, dinosaur, dinosaur brains, dinosaur cognition, dinosaur intelligence, dinosaurs, evolution of birds, evolution of dinosaurs, extinction, facial recognition, how smart are birds, how smart were dinosaurs, jail, lab animals, laboratory animals, neuron counts, neuron density, oncology, pigeon, pigeon diagnosing biopsy, Suzana Herculano-Houzel, teaching in jail
-
On the study of naked mole-rats.
Naked mole-rats: impervious to acid, cancer, asphyxiation, even time itself. But are they impervious to us?
acid, acid resistance, aging, animal research, animal welfare, biological research, biology, caloric restriction, cancer, cancer biology, cancer immunity, carbon dioxide, chemotherapy, climate change, Eliot Weinberger, eusocial, eusocial mammals, eusociality, gas chamber, global warming, hyaluronan, Jennifer Jarvis, laboratory animals, lifespan, lifespan after reproduction, lifespan elongation, naked apes, Naked Mole-Rats, naked molerats, oxygen, oxygen deprivation, pain response, Park et al., Richard Alexander, science, scientific research, starvation, The Biology of the Naked Mole-Rat, Thomas Park, Venus, violence against animals, Weinberger, Xiao Tian
-
On the sacred.
Money isn’t sacred. A person’s reputation is.
backup time, class in jail, debit cards, drug economics, drugs, false charges, honor, incarceration, isolation, isolation tank, jail, marijuana, mass incarceration, money, oregano, pot, price of marijuana, price of pot, probation, prosecution, reputation, Richard Feynman, selling drugs, sensory deprivation chamber, spice, teaching in jail, teaching poetry in jail, War on Drugs, weed
-
On translation and quantum mechanics.
We have so many ways to depict the world – they’re not all equally good for all ideas.
3 body problems, 3-body problem, base ten numbering, Beyond Weird, Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, Chinese, Dance Your Ph.D., Dance Your PhD, decimal notation, describing photographs, Diane Arbus, does God play dice, Eliot Weinberger, God does not play dice, God is a gambler, God is an inveterate gambler, grain size of the universe, Hugh Everette, infinite precision, infinite series, irrational numbers, language, math, math is language of universe, mathematics, meaning of quantum mechanics, metaphoric language, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Ninetween Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, Perry Link, Philip Ball, physics, pi, pixelation of physical space, precision, quantum mechanics, quantum physics, Richard Feynman, Science Olympiad, Stephen Hawking, three body problem, translating, translating mathematics into words, translating poetry, Translation, voxelation, what does quantum mechanics mean, Write It Do It, writing
-
On Jonathan Safran Foer’s ‘We Are the Weather.’
A lot of climate change is caused by cheeseburgers. Killer superbugs are, too.
animal agriculture, antibiotic resistance, antibiotic resistant bacterial, antibiotic use in animal agriculture, antibiotics, antibiotics in animal agriculture, carbon emissions, climate change, climate destabilization, cognitive bias, cognitive biases, concentrated animal feeding operation, cutting carbon, emotional understanding, energy conservation, energy use, energy use in animal agriculture, environmental veganism, environmentalism, ethical diet, ethical veganism, ethics of eating, existentialism, global warming, greenhouse gas emissions, human cognition, human extinction, Jonathan Safran Foer, low carbon diet, meaning of life, moral diet, MRSA, philosophy, plant-based diet, Saving the planet begins at breakfast, vegan, veganism, vegetarian, vegetarianism, We Are the Weather
Frank Brown Cloud 