For centuries, people around the world knew that chewing on the bark of certain willow trees could ease the pain of a toothache or a migraine. By the mid-19th century, scientists in France and Germany had isolated the chemical, salicylic acid, responsible for willow bark’s analgesic and anti-inflammatory qualities, but it proved too harsh on…
The Hidden Ocean Patch that Broke Climate Records
Check out my climate change story in Nautilus: http://nautil.us/issue/23/dominoes/the-hidden-ocean-patch-that-broke-climate-records
Tasty Mutants: The History of the Triploid Oyster
Check out my latest at The Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/09/todays-oysters-are-mutants/380858/
How to Write 225 Words per Minute–With a Pen
In which I combine the 19th Century technology of Gregg shorthand with the 21st Century technology of a smartpen. See my story at “The Atlantic Monthly”
Hibiscus and the Ghosts of Hawaii Past
The other day, I was scrolling absently through the abstracts in a recent issue of Pacific Science, when a paper by Hiroshi Kudoh made me do a double-take. Its subject was the typically modest question of modern evolutionary biology: how to explain the loss of seed buoyancy in Hibiscus glaber, a species of hibiscus found…
Remembering Where You Are
In a fascinating post on smithsonianmag.com last week, Joseph Stromberg explores a company called what3words and its quixotic attempt to replace the old system of geometric coordinates with simple, three-word phrases. For example, I’m writing this post at my lunch hour, from the outdoor sitting area of an office building in downtown Honolulu. If you…
Hawaii: The Most Isolated Archipelago?
It’s one of those things we say: “The Hawaiian Islands are the most remote landmass on earth.” The truth, as usual, is more complicated than that. First, let’s deal with the simplest facts. The Hawaiian Islands, by virtue of being an archipelago, many parts of which are actually within eyesight of one another, simply cannot…
Marine Protected Areas
I see in the latest Hana Hou, Michael Shapiro took the left turn off Mamalahoa Highway on the Big Island, and “went down Milolii”. This hard scrabble community, which many bill as “the last traditional fishing village in Hawaii,” really is a piece of the past. For example, there’s no electricity. That, as Shapiro notes,…
Smithsonian’s Pacific Origins
I’ve always been a binge reader. Sometimes people mistake that for erudition, but if you pay close attention to my ranting, you’ll notice I repeat myself a lot. Not that I say the same things over and over (although my wife may disagree), but I definitely quote the same people with distressing frequency. That’s because,…
C-MORE Images
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, the father of microscopy, famously discovered that even clean, fresh water teemed with what he called animicules. “Some of these,” he wrote, “are so exceedingly small that millions of millions might be contained in a single drop of water.” It was a revelation that astonished and delighted van Leeuwenhoek in the 17th…