Category: Random

Increasing antibiotic resistance in bacteria is a nice demonstration of: The speed and effectiveness of evolutionary change. The Law of Unintended Consequences The danger of hospitals Antibiotics are in effect poisons that don’t happen to affect humans, typically because they interfere with bacterial cell walls that our cells don’t have. It doesn’t take long in…

In the modern industrial food system, a cow is a chemical factory which converts corn into beef or milk. This is inefficient and unsafe in several different ways. Cows can not be maintained in sterile environments, so E. coli and other bacteria from their feces can contaminate the meat. Cows evolved to eat grass, so…

It’s taken me a while to understand the point of the iPad. I can type on a keyboard faster than I can press keys on a screen, so the iPad would not be useful for me as a computer. And it wouldn’t fit in my pocket, so I wouldn’t carry around the way I carry…

The dramatic growth of income inequality in the U.S. over the last 30 to 40 years may mark the end of a long experiment in U.S. society, starting with Teddy Roosevelt and ending with Richard Nixon (things were already changing under Jimmy Carter). Teddy Roosevelt was the first of the progressive presidents, and was a…

Enough about programming for a moment. Here are some questions I have about climate change 1. Temperature measurements clearly show that the Arctic regions are warming up. Atmosphere measurements clearly show that the amount of carbon dioxide in the air is increasing. The physics showing that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can lead to…