A meditation on the strange ritual of birthday celebrations and what our obsession with marking time reveals about mortality, meaning, and the human experience.
One Billion Day Funeral for Birthdays
Category: Science & Nature
Essays on biology, ecology, the natural world, science, and humanity’s place within the cosmos.
What Occam’s Razor Can’t Cut
Occam’s Razor is one of those ideas that slipped out of philosophy and wandered into popular culture, shedding its actual meaning along the way. Ironically, the very process that made it famous - simplifying it for wider distribution - also hollowed it out. It’s journey towards accessibility stripped away nuance leaving something simple, catchy, and… Continue reading What Occam’s Razor Can’t Cut
Household Thermodynamics: The 2nd Law
You’ve just stumbled out of bed, slowly emerging from the dark syrup of sleep, your mind a fogged window. In the hall or kitchen stands someone who’s been awake for hours, upright, caffeinated, and burning conversational octane at a high rpm. They greet you with that buoyant, easy cheer that can only radiate from a… Continue reading Household Thermodynamics: The 2nd Law
The Unnatural Animal
Nature: The phenomena of the physical world collectively; especially plants, animals and other features and products of the Earth itself, as opposed to humans and human creations. Oxford English Dictionary 1. At a gathering of the Eden Project in Cornwall a year ago, the foregoing definition of Nature left attendees shocked over our collective exclusion.… Continue reading The Unnatural Animal
Species-Specific Environmental Protein Reactivity in Poultry and Select Mammals: Biochemical Basis of the Zenkha Phenomenon
This proposal investigates zenkha, a culturally defined olfactory and gustatory experience common in Arabic-speaking regions, characterized by a pungent, aldehyde-like sensation arising from specific animal proteins under environmental exposure. The phenomenon is consistently reported in poultry, game birds, lamb, camel, and eggs, but absent in beef, pork, and fish. Unlike spoilage, zenkha appears immediately upon… Continue reading Species-Specific Environmental Protein Reactivity in Poultry and Select Mammals: Biochemical Basis of the Zenkha Phenomenon
The Complexity That Made Us Possible?
Freshly baked by back-to-back meetings in the beige desert boardroom that is my day job, I collapsed onto the couch—equal parts mogul teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and tired toddler whose tantrum ended before it could even begin—when Apple TV served me a drone-shot sermon on why Earth is an anomaly that defies belief… Continue reading The Complexity That Made Us Possible?
Microfractures that Kill
Death by a thousand cuts. I. Your stomach growls as you carry in your groceriesAnd unknowingly step in shit tracking it across your floorWhen the smell registers you look back and see your printsAnd a bag tears open evacuating its loadGlass shatters and your floor is now slickGlazed with extra virgin olive oil that prompted… Continue reading Microfractures that Kill
Covid and the Coke Can
Kit Yates, an associate professor of applied mathemetics at University of Bath, has estimated that the entire world population of Covid-19, could be fit in a coke can. If you google coke can now you'll get the BBC article going into the details of this as your first result….or maybe that's just me; hard to… Continue reading Covid and the Coke Can
The Mask Thing Ain’t Gonna End With Covid-19
Bugs as Drugs
flip.it/nZrRhM Viruses are commonly thought of as a threat to life. However, there are ways in which they protect it. There is wisdom in this. Cancer (rapid propagation of cells that have reached a state of decline) is cellular overpopulation that takes up resources and crowds out the young and healthy segments of that population.… Continue reading Bugs as Drugs
SEÑOR - The Blog 