

SPIN-YUP
SPIN Four men, two probably in their 40s and two probably in their 50s or 60s, and a child of about seven or eight are sitting at a table...
Mar 121 min read


"SOCCER" is like "OKAY"
OKAY I’m a fan of etymology and semantics and, really, everything to do with language; still, somehow I never gave much thought to the...
Mar 118 min read


DOGBALL and NOFELLOW
DOGBALL A camper was parked with a guy working on it. The man's dog spotted me coming from almost a block away and, like we were old...
Mar 71 min read


RECORD RETURNS
The West Vancouver Streamkeeper Society was established in 2001. Their objective is to restore and sustain local aquatic wildlife...
Mar 31 min read


"PHYLOGENETICALLY DISTINCT"
Somehow I missed obelisks . Well, I suppose everyone missed it — or them . Discovered in human gut and oral bacteria, researchers...
Mar 22 min read


SILLY WHALES
We’ve never really known a lot about blue whales ( Balaenoptera musculus ); yes, despite our long history near and on the sea, blue...
Feb 232 min read


IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S ME
Ziggy : I don't know. Is it just me? Tolga : What? Ziggy : Seems all the same people we all watched dedicating the last decade of...
Feb 221 min read


DODGEY
CONTEXT WHAT IS DOGE? Executive Order - ESTABLISHING AND IMPLEMENTING THE PRESIDENT’S "DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY " "DOGE Teams. In consultation with USDS, each Agency Head shall establish within their respective Agencies a DOGE Team of at least four employees, which may include Special Government Employees" "Each DOGE Team will typically include one DOGE Team Lead, one engineer, one human resources specialist, and one attorney. Agency Heads shall ensure that DOGE
Feb 157 min read


"WE'RE AT WAR!"
After landing in Washington to start his second term, Trump created the Department of Government Efficiency under a temporary contract government organization titled "United States DOGE Service" (a renaming of the United States Digital Service created during the Obama administration.) Inaugurated through executive order , the stated purpose of this service is to eliminate excessive regulations, reduce wasteful and fraudulent federal spending, and modernize federal technolog
Feb 1413 min read


REVENGE OF THE NEO-REPUBLICRATS
Much is being said about this US election and the folks coming to power. The only thing worth noting that I can spot, and something mostly ignored from what I can tell, is that many key Republicans and even lower level appointees are actually lifelong Democrats. Even their key supporters and consultants are not Conservatives but, by almost any metric, actually Liberals. Though I've seen and heard of some party flipping over the years, here and there, I don't think there has e
Feb 92 min read


PERFECTLY UNCLEAR
Nuclear power stations are like stars that shine all day long. We shall sow them all over the land. They are perfectly safe ! — Mikail Styrikovich in Ogonyok , 1980 The plants have safe and reliable controls that are protected from any breakdown with three safety lines. The odds of meltdown are one in 10,000 years. — Ukrainian energy minister in Soviet Life , 1986 I spent my mornings this week reading The Power of Nuclear: The rise, fall and return of our mightiest energy so
Feb 718 min read


WHAT HAVE WE DONE?
A 2021 study out of Denmark estimated the proportion of cases of schizophrenia associated with cannabis use in that country doubled in...
Feb 42 min read


SWIFT
Kyagulani Mutumbo : Swift can't sing. Matudana Kyninyi : Totally. No one in the music industry can sing. Kyagulani Mutumbo : Yeah....
Feb 11 min read


ANOTHER MISNOMER
Previously, I’ve tried to understand the circumstances surrounding our local homeless and overdose catastrophes. And I’ve relayed my...
Jan 247 min read


DANG: MORE FAILURES TO REPLICATE or CONFIRMATION OF OUR LOVE OF FICTION
One famous finding from social psychology is that intergroup contact is the most highly effective tool for reducing prejudice. The more...
Jan 203 min read


NO BRAINER: HOW APHANTASIA IS LIKE ATHEISM
Maybe twenty years ago I was writing about the strangeness of finding myself labelled an ‘atheist’. To begin with, I argued that labelling others was a weird practice, and that gifting someone membership in a group that they themselves haven’t or wouldn’t was a mode of conduct we probably wanted to avoid. (No, I couldn't have imagined the era we were about to enter. And you can imagine my consternation.) But, if you still insisted, then it seemed to me like framing things in
Jan 1210 min read


NEW IN PERU
A team of researchers from Conservation International conducted a survey in the heart of Peru during the summer of 2022. Their rapid assessment bulletin was just now published . In their report, Conservation International’s Rapid Assessment Program team (a kind of biologist Special Forces unit, like the Green Berets but instead of suppressed rifles and thermal goggles they come carrying microscopes and PhDs in butterfly reproduction) revealed a remarkable diversity in Peru’s
Dec 23, 20245 min read


HOW THINGS WERE
So many such odd things these days. So many such things and so very odd that it’s hard to differentiate what is normal and what is...
Dec 23, 20242 min read











































































