by Peter Topolewski

Isn’t it time we talk about you?

You.

A collection in the realm of 4.5 x 10^27 atoms. A portion of your hydrogen and helium atoms originated in the Big Bang, 14 billion years ago. The heavier elements in you, the stuff of life, the carbon and nitrogen, they came from stars. From exploding stars, in fact. The dying blasts of stars in distant galaxies accounted for perhaps a smallish measure of your atoms. Most came from stars exploding in the Milky Way, and above all from a single super nova that preceded the existence of our own star, the Sun. Like all the others, it was a super nova without a name, one we’ll never know, but one we should be especially grateful for. It was amazing wasn’t it, generous, as Thomas Berry would say, giving itself away without asking?

It gave me you.

Extraordinary, those 4.5 trillion quadrillion atoms in you, from across the cosmos, they’re mostly empty space. Take away the space, and all of them together would be no larger than a single biological cell. As far as those atoms have traveled, as large as the universe has grown, there is, as Duane Elgin wrote, more smallness in you than there is bigness beyond you. On our cosmic scale, you are a giant.

In a photo I’m blessed to have, you’re five or six years old, standing near a farmhouse. Anyone who looked at it would say you’re little, but really you’re a giant. Who are you in that photo?

I could believe I came about randomly, through trial and error, but not you.

You are the atoms in that photo, but much more.

In another picture, you are in your twenties, alone on a chair in a living room, pensive and beautiful. All the atoms you contained when you were six and seven and eight years old, they’re gone, given over to the environment, replaced with others wholly new to you. In that frozen moment, your eyes are on a place only you can see, your mind on thoughts, hopes, concerns I cannot reach.

Who were you?

If you can be composed of other atoms and still be, you can be any atoms, can’t you? And if you can be any, can’t you be all?

Who are you?

You are atoms and more. Read more »

by Dilip D’Souza

The autumn equinox – well, autumn in the northern hemisphere – came and went a few weeks ago. I spent it, as I mentioned in my last column here, at the Hanle Dark Sky Reserve (HDSR) in north India. Four nights with some 40 other amateur astronomers, in the open at 14,000 feet, temperatures hovering just below freezing, photographing the splendid night sky.

But on that equinox in particular, I was a fascinated spectator as a young PhD student in Physics from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, Sourabh, channeled his inner Eratosthenes. Maybe mine too.

That’s Eratosthenes the ancient Greek mathematician. But he was many other things too – a historian, an astronomer, a librarian, a musician and, perhaps most relevant to Sourabh on equinox day in Hanle, a geographer. To read about him is to think, this was a Renaissance Man before we knew the term. And at our homestay in Hanle, Sourabh set out to replicate this ancient Renaissance Man’s most famous experiment.

Which is … well, let’s see how Sourabh went about it.

September 22, the equinox: a bright, sunny day in Hanle. Shirtsleeve temperatures by mid-morning even though it had been near zero at night. Cloudless brilliant blue sky augurs well for more stargazing tonight, our last night here. But right now the sun dazzles, casting sharp shadows.

In one corner of the homestay’s yard is a pole stuck in the ground, about 3 feet tall. When we walk over, it is actually a length of grey PVC pipe and it isn’t clear why it stands here. Unless … maybe it’s meant for Eratosthenes-style experiments? It certainly fits the bill. It casts a shadow and it makes a near-right angle with the ground. In fact, the ground right around it is a small expanse of flat concrete, which will shortly prove its convenience. Read more »

by Carol A Westbrook

This is the story of a DNA mutation that profoundly changed the course of human history, and had a major impact on human activities, altering communication, transportation, agriculture, and warfare. This story is about the horse, and how came to be a domesticated, rideable animal due to this DNA mutation.  This genetic change in the horse occurred unexpectedly late, about 4500 years ago, which is almost 5000 years later than the domestication of pigs, cattle, goats and sheep.

The earliest ancestors of horses, known as Eohippus, first appeared in North America about 55 million years ago, where they evolved into Equus, the modern horse ,by the time of the Pleistocene epoch. They spread from North America to Asia and Europe by crossing the Bering land bridge  at a time when the oceans were much lower than they are today, that is during the last ice age. As Eohippus evolved into the horse as we know it today, it continued to be an important source of meat for the humans, and was hunted throughout the Pleistocene epoch (ice age).

The North American horse went extinct at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, about 10,000 years ago, along with most of North America’s large mammals. This period of extinction is known as the Pleistocene megafauna extinction event, and resulted in the loss of mammoths, mastodons saber-toothed cats, dire wolves, giant ground sloths and giant beavers.  The cause of the extinction included climate change—the earth warmed up—over-hunting, change in flora resulting from climate change and the appearance of bison which competed directly with horses for food.

The horse disappeared from North America, but survived in Europe and Asia, particularly the Eurasian Steppes. Read more »

by Thomas Fernandes

To be alive is to maintain a coherent structure in a variable environment. Entropy favors the dispersal of energy, like heat diffusing into the surroundings. Cells, like fridges, resist this drift only by expending energy. At the base of the food chain, energy is harvested from the sun; at the next layer, it is consumed and transferred, and so begins the game of predation. Yet predation need not always be aggressive or zero-sum. Mutualistic interactions abound. Species collaborate when it conserves energy. For example, whistling-thorn trees in Kenya trade food and shelter to ants for protection. Ants patrol the tree, fending off herbivores from insects to elephants. When an organism cannot provide a resource or service without risking its own survival, opportunities for cooperative exchange are limited. Beyond the cooperative, predation emerges in its more familiar, competitive form. At every level, the imperative is the same: accumulate enough energy to maintain and reproduce. How this energy is obtained, conserved, or defended produces the rich diversity of strategies observed in nature.

On the savanna after rain, the sequence of consumption illustrates this principle. Zebras arrive first, grazing vast quantities of coarse grass. Their hindgut fermentation extracts energy efficiently but incompletely, favoring volume over quality. Sixteen hours of grazing may be required to meet their energy needs. Gazelles arrive afterward, targeting smaller, more nutrient-rich shoots. Their rumen, a multi-chambered stomach, allows for regurgitation and thorough microbial digestion. The slower, more meticulous process extracts more energy per bite. Reproduction and survival hinge on the energy accumulated this way. Gestation and nursing occur only during seasons of peak grass growth and only when the gazelle has the metabolic green light of sufficient energy.

This extracted energy inevitably attracts predators. Predator-prey interactions extend far beyond the immediate chase. While roaming for prey, predators exhibit preferential roaming, patrolling region most likely to contain their favored prey and encountering them far above chance level. Even when encountering prey, predators decide to initiate the hunt with calculated strategies. Lions exploit cover, coordinating in groups to ambush large prey like buffalo. Cheetahs, mostly solitary, approach carefully to close the distance before committing to a sprint. Predators weigh energy costs, prey size, terrain, and detection before deciding to pursue. Selecting targets with high probabilities of success is critical.

Prey respond with equally finely tuned adaptations. Gazelles detect predators early through lateral eyes, motion-sensitive retinas, and vigilance. Zebras would stand their ground against a solitary, small cheetah but have evolved rotating ears to detect the more threatening, camouflaged lions’ ambush. Early detection and avoidance are ideal, but when impossible, prey rely on alternative strategies. Read more »

by David J. Lobina

So yet another controversial topic from me, and thus another go at getting cancelled. A long series of pieces on the use and abuse of the term fascism by American commentators (here, here, and here), a dismissal of a dismal “academic” book on inclusion in linguistics (here), and an argument that universality trumps diversity in most respects (here) haven’t done the job, so perhaps a put-down of the current fad on all things equity will finally get me walking.

But isn’t equity an economic thing, a concern of business people, with little to do with equality per se? If anything, equity-qua-stocks would be related to inequality… That was the very reaction of a friend of mine, Italian and philosopher as he happens to be, when I told him I was writing about equality and equity. And no surprises there, for equity is not a common concept in political philosophy, where equality has been most discussed. In fact, the focus on equity is mostly a North American phenomenon, first originating within social justice movements and now very present in business circles too. And such is the soft power of the US (and this is stuff coming from the US) that this sort of social and political discourse can easily travel beyond those shores. But for my money it is really the fault of LinkedIn, that cesspool of naked self-promotion and half-baked ideas and advice.

Interestingly, the original version of the meme heading this post made a different point:

As the original graphic shows (see endnote 1 for more details), the aim was to differentiate between two different ideas of equality, at least from the perspective of what the terms conservative and liberal are taken to mean in North American political discourse (which, as I discussed here, doesn’t necessarily apply elsewhere, certainly not piecemeal). The intent behind the original graphic was not to contrast equality and equity, let alone was it a defence of equity over equality – the very opposite of what I shall argue for here, then. Read more »

Wondering what this contraption on the roof of a neighbor’s house is, I showed this photo to GPT5 and here is what it said:

This is a chimney cowl — a device placed on top of a chimney to improve airflow and prevent downdrafts.

The specific type in your photo is a rotating, directional chimney cowl, sometimes called a “H-shaped” or “dragon” style cowl. The curious shape with the curved metal and the little vertical stub helps the wind create suction, drawing smoke up and out instead of letting it blow back into the house.

Besides preventing downdrafts, it also helps keep rain, birds, and debris from getting into the chimney.

This one seems to be an older, somewhat weathered model with a quirky design, which makes it look almost like a piece of abstract sculpture!

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by Mike Bendzela

It sometimes wrenches my own credulity when I think about it: The sweeping and violent imaginings of a Southern fake war adventurer, college as well as high school drop-out, and binge-drinking, adulterous sometime-screenwriter, whose pissed-off wife once bonked him on the head with a croquet mallet, became encysted, like a wasp’s gall, in the head of a naive, Midwestern closet case as he was meandering through college for five years trying to find a major that suited him. While admittedly selective, this description is true, which I think is hilarious but which my partner, upon my reading it to him, thinks is “not very positive.” William Faulkner could never be accused of being positive, and that was his strength: He could stare down human malignity like no other, all the while maintaining a detached, unblinking vision that refused to look away. As one of his characters, Cash Bundren, says: “It’s like there was a fellow in every man that’s done a-past the sanity or insanity, that watches the sane and the insane doings of that man with the same horror and the same astonishment.”

I had to burrow my way through several sciences (geology, botany), arts (painting and drawing), performing listlessly in all of them, before finding myself in the early 1980s in a course called Early Twentieth-Century American Fiction, taught by a tall, passionate Black woman named Anna Robinson (about whom I can find nothing on the Internet), and thinking I should change my major to American Lit. She promptly shoved the novel As I Lay Dying under our noses. I bridled. What the hell is this? I fumed. Why do we get one character’s point of view on one page and another’s on the next? I seethed. Who are these people? Why do they talk so funny? Why do they think so funny? They do not even agree about what is going on. Over forty years later, I can still hear Professor Robinson quoting Addie Bundren’s line about her listless marriage from the middle of the novel — after she has died! — “And so I took Anse.” The time sequence is out of joint. Characters narrate scenes in which they are not present. What the hell, indeed. It was like hearing Thelonious Monk for the first time. Read more »

by Bill Murray

We humans think we’re so smart. But animals and plants, too, have far more wisdom and abilities than we give them credit for. This is the third in an occasional series of links to the remarkable world of non-human abilities. The first two are here and here.

Zebra finches pick singing coaches based on songs they hear as embryos. The songs that Australian zebra finches hear before they have hatched influence which birds they choose as singing instructors when growing up.

Hammerhead sharks close their gills, essentially holding their breath as they dive more than 2,600 feet from tropical surface waters into the ocean’s frigid depths multiple times every night to hunt for fish and squid.

Giant Tarantulas keep tiny frogs as pets so that the frog can protect the spider’s eggs from insects and the spider can protect the frog from predators.

Bats remember favors and hold grudges; socially distance and go quiet when ill; and use vocal labels that reveal individual and kin identity. Male bats learn territorial songs in specific dialects from their fathers and, much like birds, sing these songs to defend territory and attract mates, which scientists characterize as culture.

Insects in general do not rely on steady flow of air but create controlled turbulence called a vortex at the top of their wings. By sweeping their wings at a sharp angle bees generate “horizontal mini-tornadoes” to carry them aloft.

Penguin huddles move and change shape during cold winds to minimize the heat loss each penguin experiences. Read more »

by Brooks Riley

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by Steve Szilagyi

You don’t need to be told that Halloween yard decorations have gotten tackier over the years. Complaining misses the point. Their jokey vulgarity is the point—as if America in 2025 were so buttoned-up that people need yet another occasion to act out their bad taste in public.

Front lawns have always been small stages where homeowners perform belonging. A generation ago, lawn jockeys did the job; now it’s perfect turf and pruned boxwoods, silent signals of order and disposable income. A good yard says: we’re respectable, we fit in.

So, what do the gravestones, twelve-foot skeletons, and dangling corpses say?

Holiday decorating is contagious. One house hangs Christmas lights, and by next year the whole block glitters. Studies even show that people who decorate for the holidays are seen as friendlier and more community-minded—more neighborly altogether.

David J. Skal writes about Halloween and its customs in his entertaining 2002 book; Death Makes a Holiday. There, he tells of a couple in Des Plaines, Illinois whose Halloween display grew to include a guillotine, a blood fountain, and forty life-size monsters, until traffic jams forced the city to shut it down. “We were just trying to do something fun for the neighborhood,” the wife said as she dismantled the blood fountain. Read more »

Jaffer Kolb. Lake Mývatn, October 13th, 12:08 am.

Digital photograph.

With permission.

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by TJ Price

I did not expect to be watching so-called “reality TV” this weekend. It’s not a habit of mine; I’m not the kind of person who typically consumes that kind of media—at least, not willingly. There’ve been a few exceptions to this: back in the early aughts, I did watch almost all of Jersey Shore, and at some point in the ensuing years, a friend cajoled me into watching one episode of Real Housewives of Orange County. When one of the titular Housewives began to run water from their hyper-stylish tap in order to wash a whole (raw) chicken, I yanked the EJECT lever harder than a fighter pilot in distress. In most reality TV, I find there’s a kind of mise-en-abyme effect, one whose chasm can sometimes echo with l’appel du vide. How endlessly recursive, this construct of hyperreality—especially when those on-screen seem compulsively aware of the media tesseract to which they have surrendered.

This is what led to my fascination with Love is Blind, during a recent visit to my friend Chelsea. Love is Blind, to be brief, is a reality television show predicated on stripping out the vector of physical attraction in the courses of the initial stages of dating. Contestants are limited to adjacent rooms (called “pods”) separated by a constantly-shifting panel of screen-saver pinks and reds—in some moments resembling the walls of a womb. There is no access to personal phones or computers, and when not in the “pods,” the contestants are divided into either the men’s quarters or the women’s quarters. These are only ever shown as communal spaces, with a variety of couches and chairs, and a kitchen area, seemingly used for the sole purpose of beverage preparation.

These beverages are seen constantly throughout the episodes, in uniformly brushed, metallic drinkware of different sizes and shapes. There are mugs, wine glasses, and tumblers, all of which shine dully under the klieg lights: burnished and yet tarnished simultaneously. When in the “pods,” contestants are often seen holding them while perorating blandly on the necessity of authenticity in relationships—either unaware of the irony or willfully ignoring it. (At one point, a contestant even had a total of seven of these vessels grouped around them in the shot, suggesting that quite a bit of imbibing had occurred during the “date.”) Read more »

by Laurence Peterson

The Nobel Prize for Peace was awarded a few days ago. The prizes for peace, economics and sometimes literature have become so discredited in my lifetime–to the point of  inspiring anti-Nobel prizes–that my response to their bestowal every year has usually consisted of a bemused scoffing, rather like when one continues to watch a movie to see how bad it can get. But my reaction to this year’s award was more like what I think I would feel if I witnessed someone run off the road right in front of me; there was a not insubstantial personal sense of violation attached to it, even though it didn’t directly affect me, of course. In terms of the recipient, as well as the circumstances surrounding the affair, I was so struck by an idea of the rottenness of traditional international institutions collapsing under the accelerating moral and intellectual decay of Trump and his aligned political movements that I decided I could justifiably waste one of my humble columns on it.

Most people are aware that Donald Trump has been, for an interminable amount of time, asserting that he deserves the peace prize for a number of things, especially the 7 or 8 wars he claims to have “solved”, including conflicts between states that do not, and never have existed, and involving countries even on different sides of the world that never had, in any case, much to do with each other. The pertinent fact here is that Trump was inaugurated a mere eleven days after nominations for the 2025 prize were closed, so his nomination was always going to be an exceptionally long shot, much as Trump’s jealousy of the pre-inauguration award to President Obama might inspire endless preposterous protestations. But they have made an award to him increasingly likely in 2026 (especially with the mid-term elections taking place a mere weeks after the Peace prize announcement in early-October). Norway is reported to be preparing to respond to tariffs and other measures Trump might impose in response to the Norwegian-based Nobel Peace Committee’s (a non-governmental organization, mind) giving the prize to someone other than himself, which testifies to the potential room for meddling, intrusion and influence-peddling in the seemingly independent deliberations of important and influential organizations operating in a traditional international system that happens to be crumbling. The fact that Norway is now an increasingly important member of NATO, whose ex-president and current finance minister, Jens Stoltenberg, led the organization, serves to increase this likelihood.  Stoltenberg has had an extremely complex and sensitive relation, to put it mildly, with Trump, whose views on NATO (and I do not say this as a fan of NATO, or of Stoltenberg’s), as in so many other things, range from erratic to incomprehensible.

But all this is only a small part of the story. The prize was ultimately bestowed upon Maria Corina Machado of Venezuela for keeping, in the words of the Nobel Committee, “the flame of democracy burning” in that country. Machado has been an opposition leader in Venezuela for a very long time, and when I say opposition leader, I am speaking of someone whose notion of opposition extends to active participation in and support for US-supported coups, that go back to the days of the government of Hugo Chavez from 1999 on, and continues under President Nicholas Maduro, including one as recently in 2018, under Trump himself. Read more »

by Malcolm Murray

I recently finished reading Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government and Citizenship – a book by Bruce Schneier and Nathan Sanders on the effects of AI on democracy. It comes out soon (October 25). It is a good read, worth reading for its myriad examples of AI in action at all levels of the democratic system. Ultimately, though, it seems to be a missed opportunity, failing to engage with many potential larger ways in which AI might affect democracy.

The book’s strength lies in its meticulous and hyper-granular description of all the ways that AI might affect elements of a democratic society, from enabling citizen power, to assisting in court cases, to empowering politicians. It offers many examples of how AI has been, will be, or could be adopted, for good and for ill. It maintains an admirably balanced and neutral stance throughout, detailing both the ways AI can be used to empower individual citizens, as well as how it could empower powerful vested interests. It is thoroughly organized, with separate sections on politics, legislation, administration, citizen and courts, and a starting briefer describing the relevant AI capabilities for each before outlining use cases and providing examples. The book admirably outlines the need for Public AI – AI as a common infrastructure provided by government, akin to water and electricity.

On the whole, however, the book feels like a missed opportunity to take the authors’ highly detailed knowledge and push their conclusions further. These limitations come through on a few different levels. First, the book feels dated in terms of its conception of AI. Although some examples are from this year, such as DOGE’s attempted hollowing-out of government, many pre-date the LLM era and could easily have been included in a book written five years ago, which is an eternity in AI. Many examples relate to models trained on thousands of examples, not billions, and the authors do not distinguish enough between which examples are more relevant for pre-ChatGPT AI models, and which for today’s General-Purpose AI.

Second, the authors pull their punches. The authors make clear that they do not want to engage with the more speculative risks of “AI doomers”, but in staying away from anything that smells of speculation, they stay too close to the world of yesterday, thereby excluding many of the risks from AI to democracy that we are already seeing signs of. Read more »

by Richard Farr

A recent news story about the fate of Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance returns me to some reflections on a failing most of us exhibit to some degree: we find it convenient to invent people. 

If the story of Shackleton’s grandiosely-branded Imperial Antarctic Expedition is not familiar, I recommend Alfred Lansing’s spare and compelling Endurance, followed by Caroline Alexander’s more detailed The Endurance, which is also graced with expedition photographer Frank Hurley’s original pictures. In summary: Amundsen having “beaten” Scott in a “race to the Pole” (see note), Shackleton — also beaten — decided that a transit across Antarctica might be the next big headline. His “exceptionally strong wooden ship” left England in the last days of 1914; the following month at 77°S it became trapped in pack ice. Held fast for eight more months and slowly drifting north, it was crushed at last. Shackleton and his men, unable to reach land, began a desperate fight against cold and starvation culminating in the legendary journey of the lifeboat James Caird across 800 miles of ocean to South Georgia. “The Boss” then organized the rescue of his remaining men from Elephant Island.

In 2022 an expedition using remotely operated submersibles located the wreck, perfectly preserved under 3,000 meters of cold Weddell Sea. One of the expedition members, Jukka Tuhkuri, wondered exactly why it had been crushed — a good question that few had bothered to ask because the answer seemed obvious. (“Wooden ship! Pack ice!”) On examination, a different answer was equally obvious: by 1914 shipwrights knew a great deal about constructing wooden ships so that they would not be crushed by Antarctic conditions; unfortunately Endurance was not one of them. Its hull had been designed for the entirely different sea conditions of the polar north. 

So to the punchline: the record shows that Shackleton knew this. Had the sainted explorer taken the wrong ship, known he was doing so, and covered it up? Was he not the perfectly wise, honest and resolute leader after all? A chink in the myth perhaps?  Read more »

by Mike O’Brien

About two weeks ago, on October 3rd, news broke that the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) was no more. The NZBA was one of several business-led alliances convened by the United Nations Environment Programme Financial Initiative (UNEP-FI), with the goal of helping the financial industry to achieve a net-zero carbon footprint by 2050, with interim goals set for 2030. These various alliances (such as the Net Zero Insurance Alliance, which itself died in 2024, and the Net Zero Asset Managers Alliance, which suspended its activities earlier this year) were themselves grouped under the umbrella of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), founded by UNEP-FI at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow in 2021 and co-chaired by former central banker and current Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney (in his capacity as UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance), billionaire and erstwhile presidential hopeful Michael Bloomberg (in his capacity as UN Special Envoy for Climate Ambitions and Solutions), and Mary Shapiro, former chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). (Acronym-averse readers are in for a rough ride.) Membership in GFANZ was conditional on a commitment (and demonstrable efforts) to align business activities with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5℃ above pre-industrial temperatures.

At its founding in 2021, the NZBA’s membership comprised 42 banks representing about 28.5 trillion dollars. In 2024, membership had peaked at 140 banks representing about 74 trillion dollars. Its insurance equivalent, the NZIA, peaked in 2022 with 291 members representing 66 trillion dollars. How did these initiatives collapse, despite the participation of most of the world’s corporate financial power? American democracy ruined it. More precisely, Republicans gained control of the federal House of Representatives in the 2022 mid-term elections, and signalled that they would investigate companies participating in climate initiatives for anti-trust violations. This emboldened Republican-led state governments to launch their own “anti-woke” intimidation campaigns against financial companies flirting with ecological sustainability. Several Republican attorneys general threatened in 2022 to file anti-trust suits against participating financial institutions, prompting some NZBA member institutions on Wall Street to threaten to leave that alliance unless membership criteria were neutered to placate Republican climate change deniers and fossil puppets (the banks did not use such accurate language in explaining their predicament). GFANZ weakened its requirement that members move to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their funded activities by 50% by 2030.

This would not, of course, be enough to appease the Republican-represented fossil cartels (to be fair, the Democrats are also quite adept and practiced at representing the fossil cartels’ interests against the interests of American citizens, humanity in general, and all extant terrestrial life). Read more »