Welcome, friend. I’m writing this juuuuust on time. It’s comforting to me to know that I can stick to a time every single weekend (when I send the newsletter out), and perhaps it’s comforting to you too if you’re a regular reader. Lots of nice things in this week’s pieces; the internet provides much bounty to harvest, as long as you stay on the nice side of it. Write back if anything; I love receiving mail from you and will definitely reply!
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1. Principles of Effective Research
This is another essay by Michael Nielsen, and it’s something he wrote back in 2004. As a PhD student, I find myself referring to this over and over again. It’s a sort of manifesto for how to do research and advance your career. He talks about discipline, creativity, productivity versus personal development and more. If you do any sort of research, this is something you might find useful, and might even bookmark to revisit monthly. That’s what I do.
2. Ten Years left to Redesign Lithium-Ion Batteries
Lithium-Ion batteries are probably powering whatever you’re reading this on. They’re being demanded by the world more than ever now, with ever more electronics and also the new field of electric cars and buses. However, lithium and cobalt (also used in the batteries) are difficult to mine and soon we’ll extinguish the relatively pure ore sources that we have. The call of the hour, therefore, is to either use a non-lithium battery, or begin to use other abundant metals like iron to substitute part of the lithium and cobalt needed. What’s interesting is that this report says that the best solution would be to use silicon, since it’s readily available and we have lots and lots of it. Phew.
3. How the Koch Brothers Are Killing Public Transit Projects Around the Country
The Koch brothers made themselves rich off of petroleum, and now try to further conservative causes in the US. Of course, public transport is something that’s going to dent their fortunes, and thus they actively campaign against letting it happen. It’s sad. In a world where climate change and the human impact of cars is so obvious, it makes me incredibly angry to know that there are people who just don’t care.
4. Real questions posed to the NY Public Library pre-internet are timeless
On a lighter note: “Long before the days when people could get answers to any question under the sun in a moment’s notice, people often wrote down questions and gave them to librarians who would attempt to find and answer their questions after searching through the whole library.”
5. While We Sleep, Our Mind Goes on an Amazing Journey
This is from National Geographic , and it’s really lovely. I’ve said this earlier; for something we do for up to a third of our total lifetime, sleep is a mysterious subject. What happens when we sleep? We know now that there are different stages of sleep, that we can sometimes go longer without food than we can go without sleep, and that sleep can, for all essential purposes, be called essential. One thing I’m doing now is not using any digital screens for at least half an hour before I go to bed at night. I can read a book, or on my Kindle, or I can just lie down and think, but I cannot do anything that involves shining blue light on my eyes.
6. How Doctors Use Poetry
“I’ve changed my mind. Physicians are beginning to understand that the role of language and human expression in medicine extends beyond that horizon of uncertainty where doctor and patient must speak to each other about a course of treatment. The restricted language of blood oxygen levels, drug protocols, and surgical interventions may conspire against understanding between doctor and patient—and against healing. As doctors learn to communicate beyond these restrictions, they are reaching for new tools—like poetry.”
7. The Crane who Fell in Love with a Human: The Unlikely Courtship
A wild crane called Walnut was “imprinted” by humans, which meant that since she grew up in captivity with humans, she looked for human mates instead of male cranes. In fact, she had a habit of murdering her crane mates whenever she got together with them. Chris Crowe, at the International Crane Foundation, “mated” with Walnut in order to get close enough to artificially inseminate her. They are still a “couple”, years after they first met. If this sounds crazy, it is. It’s wild. Instead of man vs. wild, this is man and wild.
Captive cranes can live past 60 years old, which means Crowe’s commitment to Walnut could, in theory, last decades. “If she’s still here when I’m eligible for retirement, I won’t be able to leave,” he says. “I’d feel like a jerk.”
8. African Penguins Get a Little Help from Pretend Friends
Let’s go on with the trend of human intervention to help raise the numbers of wild birds! This time, African penguins. Their population has been decimated, and it’s a good idea now to get them to spread out over multiple colonies so that a single disaster doesn’t wipe them out altogether. A bunch of conservationists have placed small concrete penguins in places they want the existing penguins to go to. Penguins are stubborn with regard to where they will mate and roost, but this seems to be working.
9. The Existential Ennui of Discovering an Endangered Species
Ooh, the theme continues. What do you do when you discover a species but can count only a handful of individuals in the wild? Do you celebrate, or do you feel sad for what humans have wrought?
Is it possible to keep blue-throated hillstar and Willard’s sooty bouboun from the same fate? How do you get people interested in saving a newly recorded species, before most have even heard of it? Gorillas, elephants, and other iconic animals are a comparatively easy sell. It’s harder to convince someone who has never seen one of these birds that they’re worth saving, especially when doing so could impact the local economy.
10. The New Guard
Sweden is still maintaining its compulsory conscription, years and decades afterthe Cold War is over. As a country wishing to be neutral, the option it chose was to fuel its economy via extensive military exports. It stopped its conscription a while ago, but restarted it shortly. I don’t really understand this; international policies and politics form a dance too intricate for me to follow.
Woohoo. You got to the end. Good on you for being with me. See you soon - Kat.