I went to see Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness this weekend. (There are no spoilers ahead.) This was only my third trip to an indoor movie in 2 years. Part of my calculus was the fact that I'd be going to see my daughter in her first school musical later that evening. I obviously wasn't going to miss that. At the same time, if I were to get sick later, I wouldn't want that to retroactively cloud my memories of my daughter's performance. But with multiple activities in the same weekend, I add plausible … [Read more...] about Science Corner: Magical Multiverse Thinking
Science Corner: When Is a Bed Not a Bed?
Over the past two years, you've probably heard more about hospital bed availability than you may have expected to hear in your entire life. Tracking total hospital beds and ICU beds occupied has helped communities know when to increase mitigation to preserve those limited resources. With expanding SARS-CoV-2 immunity through vaccination and prior infection, we can hope to hear less about strained healthcare facilities; already we saw that the combination of immunity and a less severe strain in Omicron BA.1 meant less … [Read more...] about Science Corner: When Is a Bed Not a Bed?
Science Corner: When Normal Isn’t Normative
Although my public health training focused on infectious diseases, I care about a wide range of public health issues. My job cuts across domains, and also personally I want people to be comprehensively healthy and not merely free from contagions. So when I saw that health-improving and potentially life-saving interventions were being labeled as child abuse and used as the sole grounds for investigating parents, I was baffled and dismayed. I don't understand how providing treatments which have demonstrated health … [Read more...] about Science Corner: When Normal Isn’t Normative
Science Corner: Only They Know the Difference
Maybe you remember the old Far Side cartoon with two jellyfish outhouses featuring (apparently) identical icons on their doors, the caption reading "Only they know the difference." I was reminded of that strip reading this paper about two closely-related goby species. As the paper details, humans can face challenges differentiating them without genetic analysis. The most diagnostic visual difference only emerges once the fish reach a certain size, making the identity of smaller fish more ambiguous. Yet the genetic … [Read more...] about Science Corner: Only They Know the Difference
Science Corner: Don’t Look Up at The Matrix
The release of Don't Look Up around Christmas and Epiphany seems like a gift to sermon writers. The film depicts celestial message of impending doom that too many refuse to look up and see. Well, you know who *did* look up? Some Magi, and what they saw heralded salvation, not doom, for the world. Of course, the film was topical for other reasons. When writer-director Adam McKay scripted the film pre-pandemic, he had no idea that reality was an a collision course with his comedy, forcing him to reportedly alter or cut … [Read more...] about Science Corner: Don’t Look Up at The Matrix