Weekend Reads

Love Is the Primary Energy to Amend Climate Change

It my seem odd to look to a colonial Quaker as the model for amending climate change — I say amend because we have already changed the climate; the best goal now is to stop further change and amend our way of live — but his model/witness may be the exact model/witness we need.

Genetically modified crops? Nature got there first

One of the most frequently mentioned issues with GMO foods is a vague concern about bringing genes from distantly related organisms into plants. But an international team of biologists has now found that this has occurred naturally in a major crop plant: the sweet potato.

 You Would Have Never Believed It

Why do we have allergies?

Nudging Climate Scientists To Follow Their Own Advice On Flying

Population could outpace water by mid-century

Data on global water use shows we are currently in a period of relatively stagnant growth, he said. Per-capita water use has been declining since 1980, largely due to improved efficiency measures and heightened public awareness of the importance of conserving Earth's limited supply of freshwater. This has helped offset the impacts of recent population growth.

Your Brain is Primed To Reach False Conclusions

The Side of the Oklahoma Racist Frat Story That Nobody Is Talking About

We've gotten pretty good at spotting racists in America, and we're okay at punishing them too. But the structures and systems that produce the racists still elude us. Instead, they embed themselves in our psyche and masquerade as the natural order. It's why incidents like the SAE debacle seem to come out of nowhere and shock us out of our post-racial revery.

Capital Punishment and Jailhouse Religion

Does Anyone Really Know What a Healthy Diet Is Anymore?

Randomized trials are the gold standard of dietary studies, but as I said above, they're really, really hard to conduct properly. You have to find a stable population of people. You have to pick half of them randomly and get them to change their diets. You have to trust them to actually do it. You have to follow them for years, not months. Virtually no trial can ever truly meet this standard.