Science

Lest We Forget: What We Don’t Know About Animals

Follow @yaleSCIbooks Sarah Underwood— A lot more sheep were involved in my college experiences than is probably typical. Colonial Williamsburg overlaps the College of William and Mary’s campus, so my friends and I had easy access to the reconstructed historical buildings and gardens. Because I’m a nerd (typical of W&M),

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Notes from a Native New Yorker: Jackson Pollock, Naturally

Michelle Stein— As a New Yorker considering nature and the environment this month, I wanted to look beyond the enclaves of nature in New York City parks to the representations of nature—both realistic and abstract—found in the museums and galleries of New York.  For one perspective I turn to Evelyn

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Softly Spun, Hardly Simple: Spider Silk

Follow @yaleSCIbooks There are more than 40,000 spider species on planet Earth, occupying habitats from North America to Africa and from the desert to the rainforest. Yet in spite of their vastly different living conditions, all spiders have a similar body structure. How is this possible? Spider silk. It is

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Greg Lastowka on the Internet Blackout

Greg Lastowka, professor of Law at Rutgers University and author of Virtual Justice: The New Laws of Online Worlds, writes on today’s Internet Blackout and the pending legislation before Congress that could limit our access to certain sites. Greg Lastowka— Today is a great day for cyberlaw.  As thousands of

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Seriously, What Are We Drinking?: Alissa Hamilton on Orange Juice

Follow @yaleSCIbooks With the federal lawsuit being brought against Tropicana on the basis of alleged consumer fraud for their packaging and distribution of “100% pure and natural” orange juice, Alissa Hamilton, author of Squeezed: What You Don’t Know About Orange Juice, has been commenting on the industry practices that are

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Lest We Forget: Killing by the Numbers

Follow @yaleSCIbooks Sarah Underwood— Sometimes, the forgetting of history is accidental and gradual—a lost document, a mistranslation, or the unfortunate lack of a written record in the first place. On other occasions, events do not have to pass into history before they are forgotten. Those are the ones that are

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Joshua Chuang on Robert Adams’ Bibliography of Photography

“I like to think of the way people encounter pictures in books—by themselves, in quiet, at length.” —Robert Adams Joshua Chuang, Assistant Curator of Photographs at the Yale University Art Gallery and co-organizer of the traveling retrospective exhibition of the work of Robert Adams, writes on the gallery’s publication history

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Edward J. Larson on the Explorers of the South Pole

Follow @yaleSCIbooks Published to coincide with the centenary of the first expeditions to reach the South Pole, An Empire of Ice: Scott, Shackleton, and the Heroic Age of Antarctic Science, by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Edward J. Larson, is a riveting biographical and scientific account of Antarctic exploration, restoring these expeditions’

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Lest We Forget: Life with the Moon

Follow @yaleSCIbooks Sarah Underwood— The ancient philosopher Philolaus believed that the Moon was home to humans fifteen times larger than us as well as much larger animals and plants. He decided on the larger dimensions because the Moon’s days are so much longer than Earth’s. Nearly two and a half

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January Theme: Nature & Environment

Follow @yaleSCIbooks We’re starting off the New Year by taking a close look at where we are, how we got there, and what we can do to change. This month we’ll be covering new books like Austin Troy’s The Very Hungry City, examining energy and economic sensibilities for cities and

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