White and yolk are not two parts of one thing. They are separate materials with different compositions that behave differently under heat, which is why an egg can be cooked…
There is a useful way of framing biological questions that makes familiar things strange, and sleep is the clearest case.
The framing is to ask what a trait costs, and…
Source: Wikipedia
There is a systematic bias in what the past leaves behind, and it favours hard things.
Bone, shell, wood and teeth survive burial. Skin, muscle, hair, feathers, membranes and…
There is a problem in measurement that comes up whenever something matters and cannot be instrumented reliably.
The problem is that a quantity may be important, variable and consequential while…
There is a category of biological material that outperforms engineered equivalents, and the interesting question is usually not the material but the manufacturing.
Silk is the clearest example. The properties…
There is a class of everyday object where the design solves a problem so completely that the problem becomes invisible, and the pencil is a good example.
The problem is…