When the Milltown Dam upstream of Missoula, Montana came down in 2008 and the impoundment behind it was drained, a hidden treasure trove of century-old lumber was revealed. Hundreds of logs, buried in sediments, had been accumulating behind the dam throughout its life. The lumber had been cut from the surrounding forests during the early …
The Part that’s Not Funny about Cloning Macaques
On January 25th 2018, CNN.com announced a striking scientific breakthrough in biotechnology with the painful headline “Monkey See, Monkey 2.” A technique known as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) had been used successfully by Chinese researchers to create two genetically identical long-tailed macaque monkeys. This was the first time that SCNT, a technique that arrived …
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When Saving Lives Kills: The Strange Case of Maritime Ship Emissions
Ships large enough to carry cargo across the world's oceans have big engines. In fact, they have really big engines. The ones that power the monster container ships that are the linchpin of global trade stand over four stories high and stretch for most of the length of a basketball court. They weigh over two thousand …
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Riding to School in an Anthropocene School Bus
A year and a half ago, when the University of Montana's student-led transit agency made it the first college campus in the nation to buy its own electric buses, one line delivered by the bus manufacturer’s CEO Ryan Popple at the hand-over ceremony stuck out above all the others. “If parents realized how many diesel …
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Oil Spills and the Unexpected in a Synthetic Age
When U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced plans in January to greatly expand offshore drilling to ninety percent of the U.S. coastline, the condemnation of the move was immediate, vocal, and bi-partisan. The governors of the majority of coastal states – including Republican governors in Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, and South Carolina – immediately objected to …
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Love of Country
Guest author Albert Borgmann is back by popular demand. Borgmann is a world renowned philosopher of technology and culture. He previously wrote on this blog about how Facebook and Apple bring undisclosed costs to society. Here he talks about a possible way of healing the growing political rifts of our tribal time. He puts his …
Christopher J. Preston 