It’s just plastic! Oh really?
Image from https://www.brusselstimes.com/. I came across this fascinating article today about microplastics. Specifically, the effects of micro-plastics on the human body – how we ingest them, how we excrete them, and what happens in between. Shout out to Nautilus, a fantastic science news magazine. If you don’t subscribe, I highly recommend that you consider doing so.
Cool, discreet environmental magazine
Hakai Magazine mast head. Image from https://www.hakaimagazine.com/. This past weekend, I was catching up on some reading and came across an interesting story about St. Matthew Island in Alaska. I was originally reading another article published in the digital version of Smithsonian Magazine where I found a pointer to the St. Matthew Island story. I clicked on the link to the article and discovered it was published in an obscure little resource called Hakai Magazine.
More (Better?) new sources
Non-Profit image from https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/. ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, NBC are all networks that carry mainstream news. Without going into the flaws each of these possess, suffice it to say that they may not be the best news channels for viewers to seek out science and environmental news.
So what channels are? That’s a difficult question to answer because you first have to define what is meant by the word “best.” That’s a superlative adjective that can carry a different meaning to different people.
Telling it like it is….
I intended for my initial post here on the renewed blog to be something profound. However, I stumbled across an article on the EcoWatch website that resonated with me for two reasons.
First, the EcoWatch piece discusses a journal article published last month in Frontiers in Conservation Science. That article is a perspective article titled “Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future.” Authored by 17 scientists from the United States, Mexico, and Australia, it is quite interesting. It renounces bad politics and inaction with respect to climate change.
Second, the independent newscenter Common Dreams interviewed several of the journal article co-authors. For that interview, co-author Daniel T. Blumstein stated in an e-mail that
“By scientists’ telling it like it is, we hope to empower politicians to work to represent their citizen, not corporate, constituents.”
Furthermore, the next to the last sentence in the published journal article states the following:
It is therefore incumbent on experts in any discipline that deals with the future of the biosphere and human well-being to eschew reticence, avoid sugar-coating the overwhelming challenges ahead and “tell it like it is.”
So why are those two quoted sentences significant to me? The title of my PhD dissertation was “Telling it like it is: A qualitative excavation of the factors that impel natural/physical scientists to serve as mass media news sources”.