The same will happen with fossil fuels as with the Decauville trains, which were scrapped when automobiles and roads appeared.

Much of the plastic debris fractures into micro- or nanoparticles called microplastics that can be ingested by marine organisms.

With a completely colonised Earth, we must look after the environment and be pioneers of a new status quo based on climate neutrality.

Today stupid signatures abound. Millions of identifiable, expendable authors clutter the web. What is truly important is not to sign, but to do relevant things well.

The Coast Guards International Ice Patrol monitors Atlantic icebergs and even diverts their course from oil rigs.

[caption id="attachment_119749" align="alignleft" width="500"] Illustration: Anna Sanchis[/caption] The past shapes the future but does not inspire it. Max Planck said that new scientific truths are not imposed by convincing old experts,

The concept of educating city is based on the evidence that space is not neutral, but rather generates, disseminates, and reinforces images and values in an explicit and implicit way. This communicative character is more intense the more complex, diverse, and richer the reference space is.

Oases are what they are, but the desert around them makes us perceive them as lavish. We live in a universe of mental oases and we do not give things the value they have, but the value we would like them to have.

The miasmas – a frightening name concealing a solid lack of knowledge – were supposed vapours carrying particles of «corrupted matter» that caused infectious diseases.

In late-Middle-Age Central European monasteries, nuns like Hildegard von Bingen rivaled monks in intellectual excellence.

We do not know what the science of future will bring, but we can assess that the mythical creation of Zarathustra survives.

Sentences string words together to express universes of related concepts. That is why it is so important to always use the right term to evoke the concept clearly and accurately.

In the eighteenth century, the metre, its multiples and decimal submultiples cornered the cumbersome use of sexagesimal systems, still valid until then.

Els piroclasts són fragments sòlids de roques volcàniques expulsats per la columna eruptiva. Els més lleugers poden arribar a milers de metres d’altura.

Migrating time after time, we reached every corner of the world. Slowly at first. Then, with the invention of boats, quite fast. Today, thanks to motorised vehicles, at great speed. We are the most migratory species in the world.

The work of economists, which is so important, is ascribed to the field of human decisions. These are emotional and, therefore, irreducible to the scientific method.

Religion is usually a rational attempt to explain the incomprehensible. A rational one, based on available information, naturally. Of course, most religions are very old, so their rationalist effort seems

Without growth there is no progress, but without a supporting system (a lift force), it collapses. We need the new Wright brothers of economy. Urgently, I think.

Lucretian inductions, Galilean evidence or Darwinian deductions were attacks against mental laziness, which is more powerful than any dogma can be. Ideological reasons do not explain human resistance to change. Basically, they tend to sloth.

The World Wide Web does not increase polymathy instrumentally. The Internet rather discourages it. Actually, the Internet generation and the library generation have more than a generational conflict. They stage a cultural rupture.

Condorcet was a very remarkable man, who led the French revolutionary thought while it actually lasted, that is, while it subverted outdated ideas and the prevailing reactionary status quo.

At least in villages,our great-grandparents lived almost as the Romans. To reach their standard of living, it took the whole history of civilized humanity.

One fine day I found I had a Mediterranean diet. Just as Molière’s character, who was happy to learn he was speaking in prose, I experienced the satisfaction of right and proper eating. It turns out humankind feeds wrong.

My thingy (a smartphone) is not smart. Versatile and fast, yes; intelligent, not at all. It controls a lot of routines and no reasoning. That is not intelligence.