Posts by sarcozona
What we killed Thursday
While I haven’t paid any attention to plant species in the last several weeks, this isn’t at all because they’ve stopped disappearing. This week’s plant is Firmiana major, a flowering tree from China. This is a beautiful tree and I imagine it’s even lovelier covered in flowers. The aesthetic appeal of this tree is why […]
Berry Go Round!
A wonderfully silly 19th Berry Go Round is up at Quiche Moraine. My favorite featured post is about so called “natural” diets.
Classes
Classes started yesterday. I’m always so excited to start each semester. The amount of time I stay excited after they start, however, decreases every year – it’s just the second day of classes and I’m only a little excited. I’m taking a plant ecology class and a “math stats” course that looks at the theory […]
Cultural relativism might be a bad idea
E.O. Wilson in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge: Where cultural relativism had been initiated to negate belief in hereditary behavioral differences among ethnic groups – undeniably an unproven and ideologically dangerous conception – it was then turned against the idea of a unified human nature grounded in heredity. A great conundrum of the human condition […]
Better health care
We desperately need better health care in the US. As a queer woman with a chronic illness, it’s a very personal issue for me. Reforming health care in the US is complex and faces a lot of opposition from people concerned about personal freedom and insurance companies worried about profits. I certainly didn’t expect health […]
Global Warming is Going to Get Us
The Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, is doing his best to get countries to work together to deal with climate change, warning us that “We have four months to secure the future of our planet.” You may think that’s alarmist, and that’s what the oil companies funding “controversy” are banking on. Yes, figuring […]
The real “hard sciences”
E.O. Wilson in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge: Everyone knows that the social sciences are hypercomplex. They are inherently far more difficult than physics and chemistry, and as a result they, not physics and chemistry, should be called the hard sciences. They just seem easier, because we can talk with other human beings but not […]