I recently participated in a workshop on America’s Geoheritage. What is geoheritage? One definition is that this an area with geologic features with “significant scientific, educational, cultural, and/or aesthetic value.[i]” One form of geoheritage sites is: “places where geologic features or landscapes played a role in cultural or historical events”. Although there is an unofficial list of geoheritage sites maintained by the National Park Service[ii], the naming of such sites is still in its infancy (thus the workshop). Many locations in Chicago and the surrounding region are prime candidates for eventual designation as culturally and historically significant geoheritage sites. …

At the beginning of the Jewish New Year last week I lit candles to mark the day. The candlesticks I used were my maternal great grandmothers, brought with her to America in 1910. These were passed to my grandmother, then to my mother, and finally to me and my family. Staring at the candles connected me to an ancestor I had never met; I only know of her from a single photograph and the stories my grandmother and mother told. Of my other great grandparents, I know even less, just names and photos. But I am connected to them also…

“It’ll start getting cooler. You just watch,” — President Trump

“I wish science agreed with you,” — California official.

“I don’t think science knows, actually,”- President Trump.

It’s nice to know that President Trump understands Milankovitch cycles. In 1976 it was conclusively demonstrated that the multiple advances and retreats of the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets over the last 2.5 million years are controlled by small periodic changes in the Earth’s orbit[i], a hypothesis put forth decades earlier by Milutin Milanković. Over roughly the last one million years, the ice has grown and retreated on a cycle of about 100,000 years…

In 1986, Paul Simon sang of the “Boy in the Bubble.” The real boy in the bubble, David Vetter, suffered from severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) and lacked immunity to infection. He lived in sterile enclosures until he died in 1984 at the age of twelve, following an unsuccessful attempt to cure him.

We all live in different bubbles, designed to keep harm out. Some of these, like family, we are consciously aware of. Others are hidden from us until outside incidents or individuals make us aware of them. In some cases, we may even reject the idea that they exist…

“Is there anybody out there?” — Pink Floyd

Sometimes technology takes a long time to develop. One of my childhood memories is seeing the AT&T Picturephone at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. The technology was also featured in the 1968 film 2001, where a video call was made from a space station. This early promise was never delivered on; almost no one in the late twentieth century had a Picturephone. Now a half-a-century later, being able to see who we are talking to has become a given. Whether it is Zoom, Skype, Facetime, or Google Hangouts, and no…

As most of us shelter in place, many voices have suggested that this is an excellent to time to reflect on and perhaps reform some basic aspects of society, such as the pay of “essential workers” or universal health care. The scientific enterprise is no exception; in particular, the pandemic has hastened an already ongoing movement to rethink a cornerstone of the enterprise, the scientific conference. As I wrote last time, the recent International Association for Landscape Ecology — North America chapter meeting I attended was transformed in an astonishing five weeks from a traditional in-person meeting to fully online…

I have been attending scientific conferences of various kinds over my entire career. Some things have changed over the decades; most notably (and thankfully) PowerPoint has replaced 35 mm slides. But the overall structure has not changed. There are short talks, generally fifteen minutes long, presented consecutively from a podium and illustrated by slides. Often there are competing sessions organized around specific themes. There are sometimes plenary talks, where a distinguished member of the profession speaks at length on a topic of general interest. Accompanying the oral presentations are poster sessions, where anxious presenters, often students, will stand in front…

A number of years ago, my explorations into fractals led me to the amazing concepts of percolation theory and how they could be used as a heuristic tool to explore a whole range of phenomena. The basic concept of percolation theory is easy to explain, using the “forest fire” model. Imagine a square grid, some 100 cells on each side. Now randomly plant a tree somewhere in the grid. Plant another and another until about 10% of the grid cells have a tree on them. Next, send down a lighting bolt down onto the grid. If it hits a tree…