Welcome to The Coin Toss, where I make bold predictions about your favorite professional sports.First a recap of last week. I had the Browns over the Raiders, but Oakland took that game by three in overtime. I correctly picked the Texans over the Colts in Indianapolis. I also predicted a bounce-back ...
The arguments in favor of nuclear power are strong. We need plentiful low-cost, carbon-free energy to power our society and combat global warming. A shift to nuclear energy would tilt geopolitical power structures away from oil-producing nations and allow us to more easily address human rights abuses ...
Last week, I explored the value that Halligan and the computer science community has for me. It’s a space where I find supportive women. The undergraduate teaching assistants (TAs), students with more experience in the computer science department, proved essential to a computer science and international ...
I’ve only watched one new movie since starting college. That's the beginning of an incredibly asinine anecdote, but allow me to muse on my earlier statement.Those of you who are long-time readers will remember my first column, from a whole three weeks ago, in which I talked about the sentimentality ...
When Jacinda Ardern took over the leadership of the New Zealand Labour Party (Labour), her chances of leading the party into government seemed small. She faced sexist questioning from the media about her life plans. The National Party’s (National) center-right government, led by Bill English, seemed ...
Minnesota State Representative Ilhan Omar has already made history as a millennial legislator, as a person who came to the U.S. as refugee and the first Somali-American legislator in U.S. history. Omar was first elected in 2016 to serve a central Minneapolis state house district. This November, she, ...
The Price is wrong? Or maybe it’s just not on Sale?While you can sue me over the puns, blaming an overly aggressive columnist is not an antidote to Price and Sale's poor postseason outings. In the playoffs, the duo has been polar opposites. No, not that one has been monumentally stellar and the ...
Zachary Hertz (ZH): For our Homecoming installment, we have esteemed alumnus Juan Castañeda (LA '18), who can be found asking Siri to download Grubhub every weekend. Our sticks are from Pinky’s, a local restaurant with somewhat of a reputation: Its owner was sentenced on federal tax charges ...
Put simply, a niche is the ecological role a species plays in its environment. Think about the classic backyard birds and the niches they occupy — American robins hop around on the ground hunting for worms, downy woodpeckers drill holes in trees extracting insects and house finches crack thick seeds in their powerful bills. If you live somewhere like the tropics, the increased availability of resources leads to a higher quantity of occupiable niches. With more available niches, more species can coexist. And once two species start to utilize the same resource, they attempt to avoid competition by specializing on one part of that resource over years of evolution, effectively dividing — or partitioning — that niche. (For example, a hummingbird eats the nectar of a flower, while a tanager eats the insects on or around the flower.) This is one of the leading theories explaining the marvelously diverse array of species present in these ecosystems. Twenty species of shorebirds can happily coexist on the same mudflat because their unique bill lengths and foraging strategies target different invertebrates living just below the surface. Mixed flocks exceeding 30 species of Amazonian songbirds can hang out in a fig tree together gulping down insects, flowers, berries, fruit and lizards, among other things. It makes me wonder — do we, in our modern, civilized world, partition niches too?
You’ve been working at the deli for three years now. The pay is garbage, but the hours are decent. An older man comes up to the counter and puts in his order. “No problem,” you reply. Suddenly, disgust. A snarl erupts across the man’s face. He begins to berate you for your poor manners. You ...
This is a follow-up to a column published on March 14, in which I wrote about Tiger Woods in the Valspar Championship, where he placed second after a great round of golf. I wrote then of comebacks, but now I have more to write about: redemption.Tiger had a spectacular fall from grace in both his golfing ...
Tech billionaires are your worst enemy. There is nothing progressive in the commodification of all your time, attention and information. In fact, growing sectors of the digital economy are at the forefront of authoritarian, anti-democratic politics in the United States.This form of politics includes ...
I have been a casual zoo-goer since I was a child, so when I learned of the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston, I was filled with curiosity and nostalgia. Located a mere seven miles away, the zoo is reachable by public transportation in approximately an hour. Although the trip was nothing like I expected, ...
With all the stories coming out on a daily basis covering NBA injuries, potential trades and drama, you’d find it hard to believe that the NBA season still hasn’t even begun. It’s felt that way for nearly the entire summer, to be honest, as the NBA continues to prove why it’s the best sports ...
I seem to like being in introductory courses. My first semester at Tufts, I took EC 5; I don’t understand graphs. This semester, I’m taking BIO 13. Last semester, I took COMP 11. I was interested in the course in a curiously-peeking-around-a-corner way, in part because of the large number of computer ...
Welcome to The Coin Toss, where I make bold predictions about your favorite professional sports.To quickly recap last week's predictions: I had the Jets beating the Browns,Blake Bortles as a top ten fantasy quarterback again and the Chargers upsetting the Rams. None of those came true! This will ...
The Beto O’Rourke campaign has been a big energizer in national politics, especially in Texas where he mobilized a large supporter and donor base. While his charisma, grassroots campaign style and unabashedly progressive platform are unique, Rep. O’Rourke is part of a larger group of Democrats running ...
The French have an incredibly rich filmic history — some may argue a richer one than the United States — yet many amazing modern French films are overshadowed by their black-and-white, cigarette-heavy, slow-moving '60s predecessors.I am not going to sit here and deny the importance of films ...
Former Congressman Mike Espy is no stranger to the people of Mississippi. The three-term legislator-turned Secretary of Agriculture won four elections in one of the most conservative states in the United States by positioning himself as a Blue Dog Democrat willing to put Mississippi above the sport of politics. And he might just be the first Democratic U.S. Senator from The Magnolia State in almost three decades.
“Tom vs. Time” is reaching an untimely pinnacle for Patriots fans. As in, is it time to worry about Tom ... for good ... like really start sounding the alarm ... and realizing there’s no backup plan. Uh oh.Brady’s arm unremarkably expired on a fourth quarter heave to Phillip Dorsett in the dying ...
