Category Archives: Education

How to Explain Reality

Last week’s blog focused on the name change of Facebook to Meta and on the cherry-picking phenomenon of selectively picking reality to fit our biases and trying to recruit more adherents to our views of reality. The borderlines between virtual, … Continue reading

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Meta (Facebook) and Cherry Picking

A recent announcement from Facebook informed us all that “Connection is evolving so are we … welcome to Meta.” While I was not born there, I grew up in Israel, so Hebrew is my “native” language. In Hebrew, “meta” refers … Continue reading

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First-Principle Chemistry: Carbon Intensity

My last two blogs (May 4th and 11th) dealt with the challenges inherent in a new law that mandates carbon footprint reduction within large buildings in New York City, where I live and work. As with many other laws, there’s … Continue reading

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Physics of Reality

Spring semester at my school started yesterday. I have a few senior physics students, each of whom will need to produce a research paper. I want their research to reflect some aspect of the world that we live in. It … Continue reading

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Teaching Moment 2: How Do we Vote?

When we vote in an election, we balance between what we perceive to be good for us personally and what we perceive to be good for society at large. If we are well-off with a good job, we may prioritize … Continue reading

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Can We Reopen Schools? Who Loses Out if We Don’t?

I just read an important op-ed in the New York Times by Nicholas Kristof, “‘Remote Learning’ Is Often an Oxymoron: We need to try harder to get kids back in school.” The essence of the piece is that, while rich … Continue reading

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School Curriculum: The NYT

Why do we send our kids to school? Why did our parents send us to school? People are wondering this more than ever, now that many schools are still closed physically and have moved to an online educational experience. But … Continue reading

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Do-It-Yourself Climate Monitoring: the Weather Report

My wife and I start our day with breakfast and the print edition of The New York Times (NYT). When the paper arrives, we split it between us—she gets the front section and I get the rest. One of the … Continue reading

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Energy Saving on Specific Campuses

There are two branches to making campuses more sustainable: reducing carbon emissions (with the objective of zero carbon by mid-century) and increasing resiliency in the energy supply. We have dealt with both objectives throughout this blog. One campus’ conversion to … Continue reading

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Guest Blog: US Medical Schools Must Train Medical Students for Climate Change

This week, a medical student friend of mine presents a guest blog. As always, we welcome your comments and questions. We’d love to start a discussion about this topic. SA is a second year medical student interested in global surgery. … Continue reading

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