Nov 17, 2023 | Salon.com
When the San Francisco sea lion named Blonde Bomber made one of his regular appearances at the city’s Pier 39, residents were alarmed at the plastic strap wrapped around his neck. Alarmed, but also not surprised: Plastic pollution is so ubiquitous in the ocean that there are activists who devote hours each week to saving wildlife from such debris....
Originally posted on salon.com
Nov 16, 2023 | Salon.com
Pesticides are commonly used to protect the foods that we eat from insects and pathogens — but, according to a recent study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, they may also be destroying the vitality of sperm in the process. As American and Italian scientists demonstrated, there are two commonly used pesticides linked with plummeting sperm counts: organophosphates and N-methyl carbamates....
Originally posted on salon.com
Nov 15, 2023 | Salon.com
The bird has a mullet. It eats its own feathers with such gusto that it regularly vomits them back up. And — thanks to a British comedian who identified with its awkward mating habits — it is now New Zealand’s Bird of the Century.
Meet the p?teketeke, also known as the Australasian crested grebe....
Originally posted on salon.com
Nov 14, 2023 | Salon.com
Growing up as a child with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), I painfully remember the stigma associated with the condition. For every adult who offered understanding and accommodations, there were others who insisted I was using my ADHD diagnosis as an “excuse” for laziness or that I simply needed to “buck up.”...
Originally posted on salon.com
Nov 13, 2023 | Salon.com
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced on Thursday that so-called “forever chemicals” exist at unsafe levels in the drinking water of roughly 46 million Americans. Specifically, the toxic chemicals known as PFAS (per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances) were present in one out of four public drinking water systems in quantities at or above the agency’s minimum reporting levels....
Originally posted on salon.com
Nov 10, 2023 | Salon.com
When it comes to climate change, everything is trending in the wrong direction. Summer 2023 was the hottest ever recorded in human history. Study after study shows that climate change is warming the planet to unsustainable levels. It has already baked intense storms, extreme heat and desperate droughts into humanity’s future....
Originally posted on salon.com
Nov 9, 2023 | Salon.com
A new report by the nonprofit organization Climate Central reveals that the last 12 months (from November 2022 to October 2023) were the hottest ever recorded. As the organization’s vice president for science Dr. Andrew Pershing said in a statement, “this 12-month record is exactly what we expect from a global climate fueled by carbon pollution.”...
Originally posted on salon.com
Nov 9, 2023 | Salon.com
It is difficult to read about global heating and climate change without being pessimistic. Every new report warning that humanity is entering “uncharted territory” or exceeding our limits as a stable ecosystem can produce feelings of hopelessness and despair. Yet even as Earth roils through unprecedented heatwaves and animals like river dolphins face extinction, there is still hope that climate change can be at least partially mitigated....
Originally posted on salon.com
Nov 8, 2023 | Salon.com
For anyone who cares about their so-called “sleep hygiene” — essentially good, deep, restful sleep — it has become conventional wisdom that blue light will wreck it. Blue light is often the wavelength of light produced by electronic devices like televisions, smart phones and computers. You know, the obsidian slabs we stare into at all hours of the day, even long after the sun has set....
Originally posted on salon.com
Nov 8, 2023 | Education, Salon.com
In her 2022 book “Visual Thinkers: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think In Pictures, Patterns and Abstractions,” animal behavior scientist and autism rights advocate Temple Grandin described how there are different types of intelligence. Some people are gifted mechanically, Grandin pointed out; others at mathematics and abstract thinking; still others at the arts; and so on....
Originally posted on salon.com