Author Archives: Matthew Moreno

The symptoms of Ebola are terrifying. In its later stages it leads to internal and external hemorrhaging—this includes bleeding from the eyes and ears. It can have a death rate of up to 90% (although the current outbreak kills about half of its victims). In addition, there’s no vaccine against it and no particularly effective treatment. Scary, right? It even LOOKS sinister… but most viruses do. (Source: Wikipedia) Although the disease has certainly takes a terrible toll upon infection, in a transmission-sense the disease is rather mild. NPR’s Morning Edition interviewed Stephen Morse, a virologist at Columbia University, about his opinion on Ebola’s potential Continue reading Ebola: Why is it so bad? (Part 1)→

To open a fresh blog season — and to put astronomical textbook costs into context– I thought it would be fun to scrutinize ALL the money in the world. Or at least sharing the work of someone else who did. Randall Munroe, author of popular webcomic XKCD, has embarked upon two fascinating examinations of this concept. In the first, which you can click here to access, he compares the scale of a staggering variety of expenditures in a highly visual and intuitive manner. Included in the packed infographic: side-by-side comparison of the marginal cost to launch the space shuttle, the Continue reading All the Money in the World→

Newsmedia commonly personify “the market,” announcing “the market climbed today on news of a stellar jobs report” or “instability in Thailand sent shares tumbling.” Perhaps this simplification is a symptom of the unpredictability volatility of stock prices, a result of broad apathy towards the mechanisms behind the loose moniker “market,” or merely shorthand convenience for journalists. Whatever the cause, the market exists in the public imagination as a mysterious, moody beast. B.J. Novak’s short story “The Market was Down” takes this anthropomorphism to its logical extreme. He writes: “Why was the market down? No reason. Well, stupid stuff. Actually, to Continue reading The Market Was Down→