The strange creatures of the deep

The process of evolution produces an extraordinary diversity of species, far greater than we experience in our normal lives. As we become able to explore the Earth in regions that are utterly different to what we normally experience, we discover fascinating new forms of life that are the products of extreme conditions. A team of scientists from Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation have been conducting a month long investigation in a deep rift near the coast of Tasmania and brought up creatures that evolved under conditions of extremely high pressures, little food, almost freezing temperatures, and no light. The depths range from 2500-4000 meters. They have been maintaining a daily blog of what they have found.
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I need this car horn

Have you noticed that in US cities, when you are at a stop light and the color changes to green, sometimes the person behind will honk angrily if you do not immediately take off like a jack rabbit? That annoys the hell out of me and is one reason why I almost never use the horn even when it is the person in front of me at a stop light who has not immediately noticed that the light has turned to green. In such cases, it is often the driver behind me who horns.
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Why do trees grow vertically upwards?

Even a cursory acquaintance of with plants will make one aware that they seek the light and will turn towards it. This phenomenon is called phototropism. But if that is the case, then why is it that plants and tall trees seem to grow vertically upwards and do not lean towards the equator, with the tilt being more pronounced the further away from the equator one goes? Even when they grow on sloping hillsides, trees grow vertically and not perpendicular to the ground.
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Nicaragua – a renewable energy paradise

When we hear of the country Nicaragua, many of us will associate it with the vicious war that Ronald Reagan waged against that country, using the CIA-supported Contra mercenaries an terrorist proxies to destabilize that country by killing people and inflicting damage on schools and hospitals and other soft targets, simply because the Reagan administration did not approve of the Sandinista government led by Daniel Ortega.
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The consequences of US withdrawal from the Paris accords

Donald Trump has finally made good on his signature campaign promise to withdraw from the Paris climate change accords, a move that has been pretty much condemned by everyone except his die-hard base of climate-change deniers, the US fossil-fuel industry, and those business leaders who see this as yet another step in removing all those pesky restrictions that prevent them from squeezing ever more profits at the expense of people’s lives and the planet’s health.
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How correlations can sometimes mislead about causation

Suppose you saw data that showed that people tended to commit suicide just after they started taking anti-depressants. What would you conclude?

The alleged suicide of Chris Cornell of the music group Soundgarden came with the news that he suffered from depression and was on anti-depressant medication. I was listening to a radio program Here and Now where they were interviewing Kelly Posner Gerstenhaber of the Columbia Lighthouse Project at Columbia University about other reports that suggested that anti-depressants could trigger suicidal thoughts and, as a result, some physicians were refraining from prescribing these medications for their patients with depression and some people with depression were afraid to take them.
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The corrosive effect of Darwin

In his 1995 book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Daniel C. Dennett invoked a metaphor that I have found quite helpful. He said that the idea of evolution by natural selection is like a ‘universal acid’, something that cannot be contained in any vessel because it eats through everything. It is so potent and corrosive that once created it cannot be contained or restricted in any way but breaks through all barriers until it reaches into every space. Once you accept the theory of evolution by natural selection as applying in any area of life, there is no way to prevent it being used to explain every aspect of life.
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