In the two weeks since my last post, the US government shutdown has not ended. Federally funded science is slowly winding down as programs spend their last allocations. Less money means fewer discoveries, but exactly how many fewer? How much knowledge will not be created because of the shutdown? It is hard to measure the…

Reading the news after being off-grid for a few days rarely brings pleasant surprises. I just came back from a hiking trip in southern Sweden to find that my country’s government had been shut down until budget and debt issues could be resolved. I understood that the overall impact on our country’s administration and economy…

Cycling home on Tuesday afternoon, the asphalt of the bike path was slick with rain and shimmering with the last light of the afternoon filtering in beyond the clouds. My route home takes me west, so I didn’t have a chance to look east until I was walking to my building – and there, in…

When is the last time you saw a purple organism? Green, brown, grey, these are common – but purple is reserved for an odd leaf, a strange fruit (eggplant, maybe), some algae and bacteria, and the odd marine animal. That’s one of the reasons I so enjoy spending time in the subalpine zone. Purple flowers…