Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

Slugging — The People’s Transit

March 7, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Slugging Benefits

Workers who have come down from the surrounding high-rise offices begin to line up on a sidewalk in downtown Arlington, Va., across the Potomac from the nation's capital, about 3:30 in the afternoon. They stand in a perfect queue, iPods and newspapers in hand, and they look, by all indications, like they're waiting for the bus. Public transit never shows. But, eventually, a blue Chrysler Town & Country does. The woman behind the wheel rolls down her window and yells a kind of call-and-response. "Horner Road?" "Horner Road?" repeats the first woman in line. "Horner Road!" And ... Read More

Bacteria ‘R’ Us

December 2, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Prokaryotes

Today’s revelation in the journal Science that researchers have found a bacterium in California’s Mono Lake that can thrive on arsenic — usually implicated in killing life, not sustaining it — is quickly revolutionizing our conception of what is life and where it might be found. To help in deciphering the direct contribution bacteria make to human life, we’re reposting this story which originally debuted on Oct. 18. A few scientists noticed in the late 1960s that the marine bacteria Vibrio fischeri appeared to coordinate among themselves the production of chemicals that ... Read More

A New Take on Political Ideology

October 26, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

With another contentious U.S. election approaching, opinions predictably have hardened as voters gravitate toward candidates who best embody their particular political position. Partisans — that is, nearly everyone aside from the handful of genuine independents, who tend to be disengaged from the process — habitually divide the world between right-thinking, like-minded people and those fools who just don't get it. As much as we stake our identity on such core beliefs, it's unlikely we emerged from the womb as little liberals or libertarians. This raises a fundamental question: At what ... Read More

The Real Science Gap

June 14, 2010 • By • 111 Comments
July-August 2010

For many decades, and especially since the United States attained undisputed pre-eminence in science during World War II, a parade of cutting-edge technologies has accounted for much of America's economic growth. Countless good jobs now ride on whether the Next Big Thing — and the several things after that — will be developed in America and not, as many fear, in China, India, the European Union, Japan, Korea or another of the powers now producing large numbers of scientists and engineers. Brilliant advances and the industries they foster come from brilliant minds, and for generations ... Read More

Triumph of the Cyborg Composer

February 22, 2010 • By • 136 Comments
mmw_composer_0310

The office looks like the aftermath of a surrealistic earthquake, as if David Cope’s brain has spewed out decades of memories all over the carpet, the door, the walls, even the ceiling. Books and papers, music scores and magazines are all strewn about in ragged piles. A semi-functional Apple Power Mac 7500 (discontinued April 1, 1996) sits in the corner, its lemon-lime monitor buzzing. Drawings filled with concepts for a never-constructed musical-radio-space telescope dominate half of one wall. Russian dolls and an exercise bike, not to mention random pieces from homemade board games, peek ... Read More

The Story of P(ee)

February 10, 2010 • By • 18 Comments

"P" is for phosphorus, the stuff of life, and "p" is for "peak phosphorus" by 2030, ecologists say, unless — presto! — pee can be turned into gold through modern-day alchemy. Unremarked and unregulated by the United Nations and other high-level assemblies, the world's supply of phosphate rock, the dominant source of phosphorus for fertilizer, is being rapidly — and wastefully — drawn down. By most estimates, the best deposits will be gone in 50 to 100 years. Worse, phosphorus production could peak in just two decades, according to new research from Australia and Sweden. That's ... Read More

The Down Side of Self-Control

February 26, 2009 • By • 8 Comments

In "Too Tired to Tell the Truth," published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, a research team led by Nicole Mead and Roy Baumeister of Florida State University describe two experiments in which the exercise of self-control apparently lead to subsequent cheating. They conclude that “when self-control has been weakened by depletion of its resources, selfish and dishonest behavior may readily ensue.” In the first experiment, participants (84 undergraduates) were asked to write a short essay. Half of them were instructed to not use words containing the letters A or N — a ... Read More