joe rojas-burke

science writer

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At Crater Lake, ‘exclamations of wonder and joy akin to pain’

January 15, 2018by joerojasburke Leave a comment

This image of Crater Lake, shot with my point-and-shoot camera, doesn’t come close to conveying the numinous power of this place – not even the finest photography can do that. […]

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nature, science

Fickle media drive disaster relief. Guess who loses.

November 30, 2017by joerojasburke Leave a comment

These estimates come from a terrific analysis of the influence of mass media on U.S. government response to 5,000 natural disasters around the world from 1968 to 2002. It shows […]

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health & medicine, journalism

How Mexico’s ‘chicken peacocks’ conquered the world

November 24, 2017by joerojasburke Leave a comment

Note the boy on the left and the dog on the lower right, both seizing the moment to make off with a prized turkey. This engraving was made in 1589, […]

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history, science, srsly?

Imagining the moon

June 7, 2017by joerojasburke Leave a comment

Mare Crisium in a lithograph printed in 1834 from observations at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh. The photograph was made by an amateur astronomer in 2010. The moon “appeared like […]

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science

Polychrome humans: Harwood’s ‘Bust of a Man’

February 28, 2017by joerojasburke 1 Comment

People from Africa were widely present in 18th Century England, which by then had monopolized the colonial slave trade. From slave ships, many Africans made their way into domestic service […]

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history

A robot judges my photos

August 26, 2016by joerojasburke Leave a comment

Over the years, I’ve uploaded thousands of photos into online storage. On a whim last week, I typed the keyword ‘love’ into the search field. Google’s algorithm delivered one result: […]

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language, srsly?, technology

How many scientists does it take to invent a cancer therapy?

August 17, 2016by joerojasburke Leave a comment

I really love this data visualization by scientists at the University of California, San Francisco. Among other accomplishments, it deflates the myth of the solitary genius and shows the foundational […]

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health & medicine, science

What a “game-changing” cancer therapy really looks like

July 1, 2016by joerojasburke Leave a comment

A 55-year-old diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia in 1990 could expect to lose more than 20 years of life as a result of the cancer. By 2010, the loss in […]

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health & medicine

Strangely beautiful visions of cancer

July 1, 2016by joerojasburke Leave a comment

There’s a strange beauty to these technically superb visualizations of cancer. In the image above, a purple label marks lung cancer cells driven by the Kras oncogene in a genetically […]

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health & medicine, science

Erring on the side of excess

April 11, 2016by joerojasburke Leave a comment

Better safe than sorry. That’s how we tend to think about health care decisions. But as a guiding principle, it’s often a huge and costly mistake. Here’s an example. While […]

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business & economics, health & medicine

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Top Posts & Pages

  • Seeing the world at bicycle speed
    Seeing the world at bicycle speed
  • Hunting & human origins
    Hunting & human origins
  • Polychrome humans: Harwood's 'Bust of a Man'
    Polychrome humans: Harwood's 'Bust of a Man'
  • A field guide to pointless medical research
    A field guide to pointless medical research
  • Hidden meanings in a torrent of tweets
    Hidden meanings in a torrent of tweets
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