Pregnancy has allowed me for the first time to understand how hard it is to tell good information from bad. As a science journalist, I make my living by being able to decipher the two, but all these warnings bewilder me. As a result, I feel like I can see a bit more clearly how misinformation can become epidemic, leading to collective panic and seriously bad policy making.

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It’s named after the first three digits of most Chicago zip codes and is supposed to connote a connection to the trail’s railroad past. The first I get, even if it’s a bit hokey. But I’m having trouble with the last. Most rail corridors I know are named, not numbered. Plus, “The 606″ makes me think of freeway in Southern California, not a rail trail in Chicago.

(Via Rob Mitchum.)

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What’s more important in these maps than the destination—and what goes unsaid in Yanofsky’s article—are the length and direction of the vectors. I suspect they’re telling us something about real-world international relations. Not the diplomatic sort, but who everyday people are interacting with.

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Since the 2008 economic crash, security agencies have increasingly spied on political activists, especially environmental groups, on behalf of corporate interests. This activity is linked to the last decade of US defence planning, which has been increasingly concerned by the risk of civil unrest at home triggered by catastrophic events linked to climate change, energy shocks or economic crisis – or all three.

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The current world population of 7.2 billion is projected to increase by 1 million over the next 12 years and reach 9.6 billion by 2050, according to a United Nations report launched today, which points out that growth will be mainly in developing countries, with more than half in Africa.

Much of that growth will happen in cities in Africa, many of which are ill-prepared for the influx of people.

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Filmmaker Samuel Orr has been working on a documentary about the 17-year cicadas. What he’s got so far looks pretty impressive. There’s a Kickstarter to help him finish it off.

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Here’s the scam. A Chinese company manufactures hydrofluorocarbons, the refrigerant gases responsible for the ozone hole and climate change. The gases can efficiently be turned into cash, either by using them in products like refrigerators or air conditioners or, more lucratively, by destroying them. In the early part of the last decade, Chinese manufacturers of HFCs made more and more of them—more than necessary for use even in the rapidly growing Communist country—because the international market for buying and selling the right to pollute with greenhouse gases awarded credits for their destruction. The gas could be made more cheaply—and then destroyed—than the carbon credits that resulted from their destruction were worth. All told, Chinese manufacturers netted billions of dollars in profits from an international effort meant to pay for developing countries to reduce pollution via projects such as preventing forests from being cut down or building more expensive renewable energy projects.

So when the Chinese agree to phase out HFCs, as their President Xi Jinping apparently did with U.S. President Barack Obama, they should be applauded—and shamed. Such cons are the most insidious reason why the world is not on track to restrain global warming to just 2 degrees Celsius, and could see average temperatures more than 5 degrees C higher if more efforts are not made.

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(Via Colin Shultz.)

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“Aging happens to everybody else, it doesn’t happen to me,” Waerstad says. “There seems to be this incredible denial, and I think we all share it. It’s this unfathomable possibility that we will ever be the ones to give up our independence in some way because of a physical decline.”

Age-proofing cities will be a cultural challenge as much as an urban design one.

One place that’s had to think a lot about age-proofing is Japan. From long-interval chimes that guide the hard of seeing toward exits—”ding…dong”—to guideways and warning strips in train stations and on sidewalks, they’ve done quite a bit to make life easier for their graying population.

I found this great example in Kyoto’s train station. Notice how they’ve systematized the texture differences between straight paths and intersections and terminuses. You see these throughout the country.

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