Hurricanes are tricky things. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Hurricane Center, 26 named storms (hurricanes, tropical storms, subtropical storms, or extratropical storms) have hit New England since 1900. We’ve become much better at tracking them and predicting their effects over that period, however: prior to 1990, the vast majority (over 90% worldwide) of deaths due to hurricanes and other tropical cyclones were drowning deaths due to increased tides and flooding, known as “storm surge.” Today, the majority of deaths are due to high winds, falling trees, electrocution, and other unpredictable hazards, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Continue reading Fun With Maps: Hurricanes and Storm Tides (What If?)

My posts are almost exclusively long-ish essay format things on economics, politics, social justice, or similar topics. But that’s not all I do!

Continue reading And Now for Something (Almost) Completely Different...

The debates are starting, the apple cider is warming, and it’s election season here at Tufts! That means it’s time for me to break myself away from the 2012 candidates (and my homework) and take a long, hard look back at the candidates who have come before. Who was a bad campaigner? Who was simply stupid? Who had an extramarital affair on board a yacht called Monkey Business?

Continue reading A Guide to the Worst Presidential Campaigns Ever

Pop science shows often make the mistake of telling us exactly how lucky it is that the universe, or the galaxy, or the Earth, or humans, actually exist at all. “With just a slight change in X, the world would be a very different place” could be a quote lifted from almost any NOVA hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Robert Krulwich, or Brian Greene. Unfortunately, that often leads to the question and summary answer, “Why did the universe work out the way it did, so that life exists and we exist? Obviously because [insert deity here] made it that way.”

Continue reading The Really Big Questions

I was talking over police violence with a friend the other day, and she mentioned that, to carry mace or pepper spray, all members of the Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) have to be sprayed, point-blank, in the face with it each year. As a result, many officers choose not to carry mace or pepper spray. Apparently that’s a fairly common policy for a police force to have, and I think it makes a lot of sense because it discourages officers from using pepper spray, mace, tasers, or other “less than lethal” weapons to subdue nonviolent offenders if they know what it actually feels like to be on the receiving end.

Continue reading A Note on Pepper Spray