LINKS - May 22nd, 2024
Welcome to LINKS — my attempt to provide Rhapsody readers with five interesting stories that tell us something about what it means to be human . LINKS is published every Wednesday. Have a link you want to share? Drop it in the comments.
Microplastics found in every human testicle in study
By Damian Carrington, The Guardian
“Sperm counts in men have been falling for decades, with chemical pollution such as pesticides implicated by many studies. Microplastics have also recently been discovered in human blood, placentas and breast milk, indicating widespread contamination of people’s bodies. The impact on health is as yet unknown but microplastics have been shown to cause damage to human cells in the laboratory.”
Scientists may have solved mystery behind Egypt's pyramids
By Malu Cursino, BBC News
“Scientists believe they may have solved the mystery of how 31 pyramids, including the world-famous Giza complex, were built in Egypt more than 4,000 years ago.
“A research team from the University of North Carolina Wilmington has discovered that the pyramids are likely to have been built along a long-lost, ancient branch of the River Nile - which is now hidden under desert and farmland.”
America’s dime-store Nietzscheans
By Sohrab Ahmari, The New Statesman
“This little-understood sociological fact upends the typical understanding that many have of this sort of ideology. According to a conventional account, reinforced by misguided scholarship such as the recent bestseller White Rural Rage, in the US it is the Trumpian-Jacksonian back country that is seething with racial resentment. Rural Americans, to be sure, can sometimes come across as gruff when sounding off on matters racial and cultural. But it was members of the professional and even upper classes who promoted eugenic or dime-store Nietzschean ideologies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Likewise, it is a subset of disaffected or stressed urban professionals today who are developing a counter-culture centred around the worship of strength and the restoration of “natural hierarchies” among large human groups, as supposedly revealed by IQ bell curves.”
When Did Everything Become a ‘Journey’?
By Lisa Miller, The New York Times
“In almost every language, ‘journey’ has become a way to talk abstractly about outcomes, for good reason: According to what linguists call the ‘primary metaphor theory,’ humans learn as babies crawling toward their toys that ‘“purpose” and “destination” coincide,’ said Elena Semino, a linguist at Lancaster University who specializes in metaphor. As we become able to accomplish our goals while sitting still (standardized tests! working from home!), ambition and travel diverge. Yet we continue to envision achievement as a matter of forward progress. This is why we say, ‘“I know what I want, but I don’t know how to get there,”’ Semino explained. ‘Or “I’m at a crossroads.”’”
Humans Are Driving a New Kind of Evolution in Animals
By Lee Alan Dugatkin, Scientific American
“The darkening of the peppered moth is also an example of anthropogenic evolution: evolutionary change caused by alterations humans make to the environment. In recent years scientists have identified many more cases of human-mediated evolutionary change. The full scope and effects of anthropogenic evolution are only now coming into focus. But already we have ascertained that humans are shaping the evolutionary trajectories of animals across the globe, from insects to whales. As a result of our influence, key aspects of animal behavior are changing, including where they live, where they breed, what they eat, whom they fight and whom they help. We are remodeling more than just the environments species live in. We’re altering the species themselves as they evolve in response to our impact on their surroundings.”