Dust is insidious, yet innocuous, tiny, and indeterminate. We do not see those wriggling bugs or vile toxins; we see only fluff. And so we grow accustomed to the stuff, joking about its presence when an unexpected guest comes to our home.
If one of us goes days without food, the blood drains from our face, and we collapse. Without a meal, soon, we will die. Coral’s widespread bleaching signals the same fate.
New carbon capture technologies may be “a dangerous distraction” from the real reforms needed to wean us off fossil fuels altogether.
Roadkill resides at the end of the spectrum where our adoration for animals ends and nuisance begins.
The deeper problem is not the predatory trickery of planned obsolescence or the high cost of labor in the United States. and the low cost of manufacturing overseas. It is not the closure of that sweet, fusty shop or the stubbornly slow pace of the honey-do list. It is my own impatience, my terror of taking something apart and finding that this half-hour task will take me two weeks.
Tempted as I am to lavish consciousness on everything around me, I was fascinated to learn that tobacco and tomato plants click when they are stressed.
The need to flush is basic and practical, and we maybe should have taught one another better before we handed off such an intimate task. But tech addicts us, and free enterprise lives on.
In some ways, we seem to want AI to replace us. Or at least to replace the people too foolish to fall in love with us or too impatient to adore our flaws.
The Missouri State Medical Association describes Dr. William Beaumont as “beloved by all who knew him.”Except perhaps the man in closest proximity.
Here is the story of how the development of nuclear power that had peacetime possibilities and Hyman Rickover’s personality merged at an essential moment to create a reactor that worked by 1953. Someone else could have developed the nuclear sub, but no one could have done it as quickly and as well as Rickover did.