Things I want to write (soon)

  • Why did it take us so long to accept germ theory? Refusal and resistance from practitioners of a recently professionalized branch of study almost certainly led to an excess of preventable deaths.
    1. Some historical examples:
    2. Once the microscope became common place, doctors’ hesitance to change took the shape of one key question: do the germs cause the disease, or are they a result of the disease?
    3. For further reading, I highly recommend the first 3 chapters of Thomas Goetz’s The Remedy: Robert Koch, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Quest to Cure Tuberculosis.
  • [Perimenopausal] women note feeling clearer and sharper after trying out testosterone therapy. I think this is a phenomenon worth looking at closely — can a biological intervention help raise the floor on the QoL for a whole demographic of women?
  • Why is Tuberculosis a hard problem to solve (both from a biotech and public health perspective). Very similar parallels to the HIV story, significantly less advancement.
  • Alfred Loomis and the tour de force that Tuxedo Park became in the WWII years for utilitarian technology
    • Tangentially: interested in biographical lives of European scientists after the moved to America in the wake of WWII [how did this shape contemporary scientific culture?]
  • Re-purposing A History of Thought in Mathematical Aesthetics for an audience outside of academia
    • A tangential angle on Building Beautiful Cities inspired by designers like Colin Rowe and Nikos Salingaros on using mathematics to guide architectural choices