How to make a mile-high building

The best of this week’s science and technology long reads, including how to build a tower a mile high, why Japan’s stagnation isn’t all bad and why animals evolve to glow in the dark.

Lessons learned from teaching evolution at the University of Kentucky, where Darwinism is almost “synonymous with atheism”. Evolution comes at the start of the biology course for non-majors; “most semesters, a significant number of students abruptly leave as soon as they realise the topic is human evolution.” The confusion begins with the words “theory of evolution”. Students assume “theory” means “guesswork”. (James Krupa, Slate, 2,200 words)

Nicholas Carr is “the poet laureate of First World problems”. In The Glass Cage he argues that technology is eroding our skills and dulling our instincts. But does it follow that we should begin a radical questioning of technology and the social arrangements to which it gives rise? Apparently not. “The user-producer axis exhausts Carr’s political imagination.” The job of the technology critic is not to change Google, but to write about it. (Evgeny Morozov, Baffler, 5,200 words)

Building a mile-high skyscraper, twice the height of the Burj Khalifa, should present no fundamental technical problems if a developer has the money and permissions and hubris to want such a thing. It would “most likely be a cheerleading squad of three or four towers standing hip to hip with a skinny companion on their shoulders.” A two-mile-high skyscraper would take some work, though: the lifts would be hell on the sinuses. (Justin Davidson, New York Magazine, 2,520 words)

Almost every journalist who becomes a parent writes a column saying the experience has changed their view of the world. But Yglesias finds his views confirmed. “A beloved baby is a miraculous thing, but pregnancy is at times a truly agonising and awful one. In a decent society it would be both safe and convenient for women to terminate an early stage pregnancy on demand without hassles.” (Matt Yglesias, Vox, 1,590 words)

Deliciously funny fake Socratic symposium, with guest appearances by Hypatia, Phryne, Aristokles and Felix Salmon, debating the failure of GigaOm and the future of online media business models. Impossible to summarise, and for my money the best thing Brad DeLong has ever written, a life’s work in economics included. “Is not the publisher correct? Are not Jim Tankersley and Ezra Klein close substitutes?” (J Bradford DeLong, Grasping Reality, 2,380 words)

We talk of Japan as a country in long-term economic and demographic crisis. But travel from America to Japan and you have the strong sense of arriving in a richer and happier place. Japan has better infrastructure, safer streets, a higher quality of life. Technology and social cohesion mitigate the problems of a shrinking and ageing population. “If this is what stagnation looks like, humanity could do a lot worse.” (Roland Kelts, The Long and Short)

Bioluminescence, the scientific name for the capacity which some creatures have to create their own light, fends off predators, lures prey and attracts mates. Generating a glow is such a useful talent that it has evolved independently at least 40 times. The natural light show mostly takes place in the sea where a collection of small creatures with names like ostracods, siphonophores and dinoflagellates shed light on the dark deep. (Olivia Judson, National Geographic, 2,470 words)