nature
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There are a number of words that bother me in common parlance. Let’s begin with Superpredator: The word “superpredator”, now almost exclusively used to report on wolf reintroduction in the American west, originated with a racially charged criminal theory in the 1990s designed to demonize juvenile offenders and imprison children for their entire lives. This…
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I finished Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus a couple days ago. It’s a book I was looking forward to, given how prominent rabies is in our culture and how intensely its intertwined in horror fiction and folklore — ranging from parallels with vampire and werewolf lore to influencing the behavior…
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I have a job that would make the vast majority of the population balk. The less sturdy among us may faint. Even within my own workplace, common occurrences become sources of trauma for individuals of other departments. Because darkest gods forbid someone with a weak stomach walk in while I’ve got a human leg on…
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Four years ago, I trekked through dense pinyon-juniper forests on behalf of the United States Bureau of Land Management (BLM). We were trying to assess plant community recovery and fire management following three thinning techniques: mulching, controlled burns, and selective removal. They had no control plots, but this isn’t about their shoddy experimental design, or…
from the pen of icarus blake 