WIRED, February 7, 2008

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Modern life means small families. Starting about two centuries ago, families in Western Europe began to shrink, and then – country by country, continent by continent – the rest of the world followed suit. The trend is so big that it may rein in the world population’s exponential growth, perhaps even causing it to stop growing altogether over the next century.

But exactly why families are shrinking is a mystery. Rising living standards seem to have something to do with it. It’s certainly true that as living standards rose in England – as children died less from diseases, as the country overall became richer – the size of the English family shrank.

Continue reading “The Natural History of the Only Child” →

WIRED, January 24, 2008

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Yesterday the news broke, and it broke big: genome pioneer Craig Venter and his team of scientists at his eponymous institute had created a microbe’s genome from scratch. Massive stories ran in newspapers and magazines, tingling with the sense that we were on the edge of a revolution. Time’s piece was accompanied by a foreboding picture of Venter in a forest, wearing a dark coat and scarf, his beard giving his scowl a particularly dire look. The picture matched the story’s ominous mood: “He has gone beyond merely sequencing a genome and has designed and built one. In other words, he may have created life,” the article intoned.

Continue reading “Artificial Life? Old News” →

Discover, January 21, 2008

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A few days ago, my family was wandering the ruins of the Roman Forum. I explained to my daughters that the fragments of pillars around us were very old. Veronica, who is four, wanted to know how old.

They were made before she was born, I explained. Before her sister Charlotte was born.

Before Charlotte was born? she asked.

Actually, before I was born, I said. They were built before I was born, and fell down before I was born.

That last part was a bit too much for her.

Continue reading “Wandering the Past in Rome” →

Science, January 18, 2008

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In 1494, King Charles VIII of France invaded Italy. Within months, his army collapsed and fled. It was routed not by the Italian army but by a microbe. A mysterious new disease spread through sex killed many of Charles’s soldiers and left survivors weak and disfigured. French soldiers spread the disease across much of Europe, and then it moved into Africa and Asia. Many called it the French disease. The French called it the Italian disease. Arabs called it the Christian disease. Today, it is called syphilis.

The sensational debut of syphilis inspired centuries of debate.

Continue reading “Isolated Tribe Gives Clues to the Origins of Syphilis” →

Time, January 17, 2008

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 There’s nothing like being in love. Minutes seem to creep and fly at the same time. We get lost on the way home, thinking of the next date. Music cries out to us alone, and the full moon winks our way. Long after other memories fade, the recollection of love lingers. It’s pure magic. Or at least that’s what we like to tell ourselves.

For all the advances scientists are making deciphering the biology of love–for all the circuitry appearing in brain scans and the chemistry emerging in blood and scent studies–we still want to believe that science will never tame romance. We’re sure that it will always remain utterly separate from the cells and organs and reflexes that biologists study. And indeed, how could anything that so moves us to poetry and song be so reducible to behavior and chemicals?

Continue reading “Romance Is An Illusion” →