Today’s read uses a specific example to highlight a broader problem that concerns me: the misleading use of statistics. Ezra Klein’s article from Vox discusses a recent statistic from Oxfam which states that the combined wealth of the richest 1% will be greater than the combined wealth of the remaining 99% within the next year. Taken by itself,… Continue reading
Daily Reads: Everybody Poops
Ok, so maybe an article about poop isn’t the most important or thought-provoking thing in the world, but I thought it was pretty interesting. I definitely learned some things about the process of elimination, so to speak! Joseph Stromberg of Vox talks about 9 different things you may not know about poop. I knew most of these things… Continue reading
Daily Read: Your Brain on Multitasking
Today’s Daily Read is relevant to my latest post in the Technology and Its Discontents series in that it discusses the harm we are doing to ourselves through our addictions to our phones and screens. Daniel J. Levitin writes in The Guardian about the detrimental effects of information overload on our brains. In this new… Continue reading
Daily Reads: Labeling Knowledge
This article in the Washington Post by Ilya Somin proposes an interesting idea about the scientific literacy of the general public: we don’t need to be highly knowledgeable about science – or many other topics, for that matter – to get by in our daily lives. So when a survey comes out such as the… Continue reading
Daily Reads: The Real Cause of Obesity
I do a lot of reading about health and nutrition because I find it to be interesting both anthropologically and personally. I have long come to embrace the conclusion that diet-related health issues such as obesity are linked to social and cultural causes and not (just) to personal decision-making. Thus, today’s Daily Read is about… Continue reading
Daily Reads: Go To Sleep!
Do you wish you could get more sleep? Or do you brag about how you can manage on much less than the standard 8 hours a night? Or both? Then this article from Mother Jones by Indre Viskontas is for you. It summarizes nine main reasons why we should get more sleep. The information comes from… Continue reading