Tag Archives: best of

this is your year on drugs

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Alternet has a wrap-up of the year in (U.S.) drug policy. To summarize:

  • The opioid overdose situation is still awful even compared to the height of the 1980s-90s crack epidemic, but does not seem to be getting any more awful. Deaths from heroine and prescription drugs have fallen, but fentanyl abuse has increased and kept the overall body count about the same as recent years.
  • Cities including my own are moving forward on safe injection sites under medical supervision, which are the norm in many other developed countries, but the federal government is still against them.
  • Sentencing disparities that used to disproportionately put people of color in prison are being reduced. Even the more blatantly racist of our two major political parties seems to be on board with this.
  • Marijuana legalization at the state level continues to march on, and the federal government continues to look the other way.
  • Industrial hemp became completely legal.
  • Predictably, legalization advocates are moving on to other drugs like pschedelics.

Trends in Ecology and Evolution 2018 Horizon Scan

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Trends in Ecology and Evolution does an annual “horizon scan” of hot topics for the coming year. Below is their list for this year. The article is open access.

  • “Thiamine Deficiency as a Possible Driver of Wildlife Population Declines” – Thiamine is a form of vitamin B. Pollution and subtle changes in algae eaten by fish and birds may be causing its depletion. This is not fatal in and of itself but may be weakening animals so that they succumb to other things.
  • “Thiamine Deficiency as a Possible Driver of Wildlife Population Declines” – It’s affecting deer, moose, and elk in North America, and now reindeer in northern Europe.
  • “Breaks in the Dormancy of Pathogenic Bacteria and Viruses in Thawing Permafrost” – Some viruses and bacteria may be able to lie dormant in permafrost for thousands of years, long enough for populations of animals and humans to lose their immunity. Permafrost is melting.
  • “RNA-Based, Gene-Silencing Pesticides” – Messing with RNA can control pests such as the mites affecting honey bee colonies. The good thing about this form of genetic engineering is that it is not passed down from one generation to the next.
  • “Genetic Control of Mammal Populations” – Islands such as New Zealand are trying to use gene drives to wipe out pests such as rats. Not control them, but completely eliminate them once and for all. There are some obvious benefits, but this is also a little terrifying when you think that we now have the ability to engineer the complete extermination of a particular species in short order.
  • “Use of Lasers in Commercial Deep Water Fishing” – Sounds a little scary, but it’s an alternative to dragging heavy nets that destroy the bottom. 
  • “Use of Metal–Organic Frameworks (MOFs) for Harvesting Atmospheric Water” – This is literally sucking humidity out of the air. Of course, we can all do this with our air conditioners and dehumidifiers, but that takes a lot of energy and this process apparently does not.
  • “Aquaporins Engineered to Increase Plant Salt Tolerance” – This is messing with plants so they can grow in saltier soil. Seems like a good idea, except there is potentially moral hazard here because good farming practices should stop good soil from becoming salty in the first place.
  • “Effect of Culturomics on Conservation Science, Policy, and Action” – This is just processing and analyzing large amounts of text.
  • “Changes in the Global Iron Cycle” – Iron can actually be a limiting nutrient in some ecosystems, particularly in the oceans. Melting glaciers and ice bergs have an effect on this – I won’t pretend to fully understand it.
  • “Underestimation of Soil Carbon Emissions” – Soils contain a lot of carbon, the decay of organic soils may give off more carbon than thought, and there could be an accelerating feedback loop as warmer temperatures accelerate the decay, which in turn cause warmer temperatures.
  • “Rapid Climatic Changes on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau” – This affects the Southeast Asian and Indian monsoons, among other things.
  • “International Collaborations to Encourage Marine Protected Area Expansion in the High Seas” – Okay, I guess they had to throw in something positive.
  • “Belt and Road Initiative in China” – Basically, China talks a good game on sustainability and the potential is there, but the on-the-ground reality is not very sustainable so far.
  • “Potential Effects on Wildlife of Increases in Electromagnetic Radiation” – This is about cell signals causing cancer. In wildlife, because this journal is about wildlife. But it’s a little concerning for us humans too.

best science and technology stories of 2018 (Longreads)

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The first of the “best of” articles for 2018 are starting to come out. Here is the best of science and technology writing from Longreads. A couple topics caught my eye:

  • a review of a book on how computer algorithms are increasingly taking over our lives, called The Death of the Gods: The New Global Power Grab
  • what’s new with transhumanism, also known as really rich people starting to hope against the odds that death may be optional (hey, they have already figured out how to stop paying taxes, so isn’t cheating death the next logical step?)
  • an article on farming practices specifically focused on maximizing carbon sequestration by building soil

The Best of the Best of 2017

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Here’s a little feature I call the Best of the Best of. Basically I’ll link and comment on a few “2017 in review” articles I happen to come across. I’ll let all this rattle around in my brain and do a “best of” my own blog in January.

  • Worst cyberattacks of 2017 (Axios): Cyberattacks are bad, of course. This is an article about the most successfully bad ones, including hospitals, pacemakers, and Equifax. The article suggests, without providing any evidence at least in this short article, that some of these might be government hackers in North Korea, Russia, or China gathering information and probing U.S. vulnerabilities prior to a larger attack in the future.
  • The year in architecture (curbed.com). Not that I particularly care about architectural style, but the architectural press covers some planning and sustainability topics that I find interesting, A few highlights for me include Hurricane Harvey coverage, what Google Citylabs is up to in Toronto, Blade Runner 2049, a new energy-efficient Cornell campus on Roosevelt Island in New York City, timber-framed skyscrapers, and a Philadelphia rowhouse because Philadelphia rowhouses are where all the cool kids live and you don’t know what you’re missing until you buy one.
  • And for completeness, the year in landscape architecture (Huffington Post). A highlight for me was the reopening of the big fountain garden at Longwood Gardens outside Philadelphia. I have fond memories of visiting that garden as a kid and got a chance to see it again with my own children shortly after it reopened this year. The rest of the article is a bunch of park designs and book reviews including some touching on urban ecology.
  • Planetizen urban planning blog’s most popular posts of 2017: a few that caught my eye are a Microsoft smart city development in Arizona, Seattle discontinuing its bikeshare program, “bikelash” from angry drivers, skepticism about self-driving cars, and the never-ending debates about density, gentrification, and New Urbanism. They also have Top 10 lists of planning-related books, websites, and apps. One new website that caught my attention is called “Treepedia”.
  • 2017 MacArthur Fellows: I hadn’t heard of any individuals, but it can be interesting to see the professions and trending specialties. I count 10 artists/writers, 7 social scientists/activists (sorry to lump you guys together), 4 computer/physical scientists/mathematicians, 1 journalist, and 2 landscape architects/planners
  • Stuff that happened in the Middle East in 2017 (Lawfare): Saudi Arabia initiated some social and economic reforms, but also an internal crackdown on political rivals, aggressive diplomatic attacks on some of its neighbors and a vicious, ongoing military attack on Yemen which the U.S. is participating in. The war in Syria is apparently winding down with its government hanging on. ISIS was decisively defeated by the Iraqi and U.S. armies and no longer controls territory politically, but has “gone underground” to plot and inspire terrorist attacks around the world. The U.S. is trying to back out of the Iran nuclear deal. Kurdistan tried to declare independence and the rest of the world basically ignored it. The U.S. has also torpedoed the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and gotten itself condemned by the great bulk of the United Nations. But good news: the U.S. still leads a “coalition of the willing” including “Israel, Guatemala, Honduras, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Togo”, at least until several of those blink out of existence from sea level rise (a slight irony there?).
  • The year in hate crimes (ProPublica): Somewhat unsurprisingly, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic incidents were both up in the U.S.
  • Best political long-form articles of 2017 (Longreads.com): This is a seriously deep dive into resurgent white nationalism in Europe and the U.S. If you take the plunge be sure to come back up for air.
  • Best science and technology long-form articles of 2017 (Longreads.com): The most interesting one here is on artificial intelligence augmenting human intelligence.
  • Jealousy List 2017 (Bloomberg): This is a list of articles Bloomberg writers liked in other publications. There is way too much to read here. A few interesting ones are the decline of public research universities, James Burnham’s “managerial elite”, what is going on at Snopes.com, even more white nationalism, the risk of nuclear war, Elizabeth Warren, chemical industry foxes guarding the toxic hen house at the EPA, the complete dysfunction and failure that is the U.S. health care system, the Bin Laden raid, and octopuses.
  • The Most-Read Business Stories of 2017 (Wired): A lot of these have to do with the effect of automation on jobs. Also, Amazon’s “nomadic retiree army”, guaranteed basic income, and China’s social scoring plan.
  • Best of Wired Science (Wired): Wired Science is awesome. I could spend 2018 just reading these articles from 2017. The most popular commercial species of banana is so inbred it is in serious trouble. (But, one thing I learned when I lived, worked, and traveled in Asia for awhile is that there is a whole universe of delicious bananas out there most of us have never tried. Some have seeds, don’t ship well or don’t keep well, and therefore are not commercially ideal, but are actually quite delicious.) Meat allergies might be caused by a tick. Life-extension pills, fake meat, and robot friends might all become real things.
  • 2017’s Biggest Conspiracy Theories (Snopes.com): Maybe these really were big, but I hadn’t heard of most of them. A few things I didn’t know is that this year’s killer hurricanes either were real and created by the government, or else they were fictitious and created by the government. The survivors of the Las Vegas shooting are being hunted down and murdered. Bitcoin is a creation of an evil artificial intelligence. And Obama is running a shadow government. Now, I don’t automatically discount all conspiracy theories. I figure that for every 100 conspiracy theories, one or two are probably true, so it’s good to keep an open mind, review the facts, and then reject about 99% of them.
  • Wired most-read opinion pieces (Wired): A few interesting ones are about “permanent” drought in California, the idea that a state government could just pull the plug on a private corporation like Equifax, playing the odds in sports, and criminal sentencing using algorithms.
  • Top economics commentary from Project Syndicate: Some top economists wrote about everything from why the U.S. economy, stock market, and/or dollar could be headed for a fall, to the collapses of Puerto Rico and Venezuela, to recognizing the need to compensate globalization’s losers.