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POPSThe Earth Will Be Just Fine, Thank You Despite its many flaws, I’m a big fan of human civilization. I marvel at our capacity to organize matter and information, at our ability to learn from mistakes and pass that learning down to subsequent generations. Civilization—writing, cities, trade, the whole lot of it—makes us unique on this planet and, as far as we can tell so far, in our part of the universe.
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POPSThe Crisis is Coming: How Peak Water Could Reshape Civilization With advanced technologies and more prudent water usage, the majority of Earth’s inhabitants will be able to continue to enjoy the luxury of clean water for a long time to come. Yes, we need to fundamentally rethink water usage and plenty of bigger changes are needed, but at least we’re heading in the right direction. With better stewardship and improved city planning, humans will likely be able to avert a good portion of the more disastrous scenarios.
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POPSStep toward man-made lightning reported Lightning still isn’t fully understood, though it been studied since the times of Benjamin Franklin, who famously tied a key to the end of a kite string and flew the kite in a thunderstorm. When sparks leapt from the key, he correctly concluded lightning is an electrical current.
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POPSMODELING THE FUTURE A much more sophisticated question is how much of the climate Ma Earth, a perverse lady, gives us is her own, and how much is caused by us. That's a much more sophisticated, and much more difficult question
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POPSThe evolution of drug abuse "All this shows “our ancestors were regularly exposed to plant neurotoxins,” they added, so the view of our brains as unsuspecting victims of the new chemical threat is untenable. " " One possibility, the scientists suggested, is that animals co-opted some plant toxins and used them for their own defenses against parasites. If this is true, then evolution, the process by which species adapt and change to meet environmental demands, might have designed our brains to encourage some drug use. This could involve shaping our brains to associate drug intake with feelings of reward."
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