Image: Sotheby's International Realty

Castiglione, Capri, Italy
Image: Sotheby’s International Realty

If you’d like to live like a Roman emperor (and really, who wouldn’t?), living in a villa once occupied by an actual Roman emperor might be a good place to start. As luck would have it, just such a villa hit the market a few weeks ago. Called Castiglione, it’s one of twelve villas on the Italian island of Capri built for Tiberius, second emperor of Rome early in the first century AD. The asking price, a mere 45.5 million dollars, includes the 6,921 square-foot fortified villa, a swimming pool overlooking the Mediterranean, a 9.8-acre terraced garden, and slave, er “staff” quarters.

You might be surprised that Castiglione isn’t a museum or a protected monument, given the structure’s cultural and archaeological significance. But as far as I can tell, no one has ever advocated preserving Castiglione as a heritage site. There are a number of good reasons for this, but the greatest contributing factor may be that cultural heritage – the idea that certain places are of such historical and cultural importance that they should be preserved and made accessible to the public – didn’t become popular until the 20th century. And in Europe, where a continuous cultural tradition stretches back thousands of years, many historically significant places like Castiglione remain privately owned simply because they’ve always been privately owned.

The sales listing for Castiglione refers to the villa as “one of the twelve villas of Tiberius” but, to be fair, not much of Tiberius’ original villa remains. It isn’t clear when the villa was abandoned, but at some point between Tiberius’ death and the fall of Rome it was left at the mercy of the elements. By the Middle Ages, the villa had gone the way of indoor plumbing and literacy in Europe – very little of it remained. Centuries of neglect reduced the once-opulent structure to a few crumbling walls and battered marble floors. Adding insult to injury, the site was thoroughly looted by a series of enterprising, medieval treasure hunters. Even the marble floors were eventually sold off to be used in the construction of royal palaces elsewhere in Europe.

Sometime around the year 1000, a small castle was built on top of the original villa ruins. In 1283 Charles of Anjou, a French noble who managed to become King of Naples through an improbable combination of papal grant and military conquest, restored and reinforced the castle. Perched atop a limestone crag overlooking the town of Capri and the Gulf of Naples, the castle remained an important military outpost in later centuries. The British occupied Capri in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars and used the castle in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to defend the island against Murat and his French and Neapolitan troops. The castle was damaged during the battle and was later abandoned. By 1950, when it was purchased by an Italian duke, it had once again fallen into ruin. The duke, who at the time seemed to be more interested in the property’s killer sea views than its history, restored the castle walls and built the modern residence within them that is for sale today.

If someone were to begin the process of designating Castiglione a piece of cultural heritage and preserving it for future generations, they would face a great deal of uncertainty. Who’s to say future generations will value the villa in the same way we do? And what would Tiberius think of all this? Would he want his villa preserved as a monument, or would he rather it continue to be used for its original purpose: as an extravagant private residence? Does it even matter what Tiberius would have wanted? These aren’t easy questions to answer, but these are the sorts of things people consider before conferring protected status on a place.

There’s also the question of resources. Castiglione is one of twelve Tiberian villas concentrated within Capri’s 4-square-mile land mass. There’s only so much money, time, and effort set aside for the preservation of cultural heritage, and in situations like this, governmental and private organizations must use the resources available to them to the greatest effect. It’s not hard to see how Castiglione, a 45-million-dollar mansion, could have escaped consideration as a heritage site.

Several of Capri’s other Tiberian villas remain ruins and are protected and open to the public. The largest and best-preserved of these ruins is Villa Jovis, which is thought to have been Tiberius’ primary residence on the island. Archaeologists excavated the site in the early 20th century, and the villa ruins have been open to the public since 1937. Unlike most of the island’s Tiberian villas, Villa Jovis wasn’t completely covered over with layers of later construction. So if the goal is to preserve structures from the time of Tiberius, the ruins of Villa Jovis offer a more complete picture of an original Tiberian villa than Castiglione, which more closely resembles a heavily modified, 13th-century castle. Of course, the choice to preserve structures and sites associated with the Roman Empire is deeply subjective, and  in a broader sense, the places we designate cultural heritage sites say something about which parts of our history we value most.

History has conspired to make Castiglione a private residence. This means that the property, which has been home to a Roman emperor, a strategic fortification, and a battlefield, among many other things over the last 2000 years, is now owned and maintained by a single person. If I were this person, I would feel a crushing sense of responsibility to maintain the property and honor the history of the place. Tiberius is remembered as a stereotypical, hard-partying-binging-and-orgies kind of Roman emperor. So luckily for Castiglione’s new owner, honoring the property’s history may include an obligation to throw lavish parties.


This short video was created back in 2008 as an advertisement for the European Union’s Marie Curie science fellowship program. It imagines what elements would look like and how they would interact if they were people, and the result is pretty funny. But weirdly enough, this approach to understanding the elements isn’t so far off from how many chemists actually think about chemistry. Chemists often talk about “promiscuous” atoms or molecules when discussing particularly reactive chemicals – even within the otherwise unimaginative text of an academic journal. And chemists are constantly concerned with the emotional wellbeing of atoms and molecules: ‘Is this atom happy or unhappy?’ they’ll think to themselves, and occasionally say out loud, while figuring out how a chemical reaction works. By “happy” they mean stable and by “unhappy” they mean reactive. A carbon atom, for example, is happy when it’s bound to four other atoms. But strip away one of these bonds and the incensed carbon will do whatever it takes to reestablish the lost bond.

In my own work as a chemist, I’m guilty of occasionally imbuing molecules with personalities and other human traits as well. Some molecules, for instance, are wallflowers. They seem shy and sensitive and need to be carefully coaxed into participating in a reaction with just the right set of conditions. And other molecules seem to have a one-track mind, reacting in the same way over and over again, no matter how much you try to persuade them to do otherwise. I imagine them as creatures of habit, like people who order the same dish every time they go out to eat. Still other molecules are extreme extroverts, forming bonds with anything and everything around them. These are the aforementioned “promiscuous” molecules.

It’s not just chemists who anthropomorphize their work. I suspect that most scientists do this to some degree, whether they admit it or not. After spending months or years or even decades studying a single, specific topic, it’s only natural to form a one-sided relationship with a research subject. Humans are social creatures after all, and thinking about the world in social terms is something we’re prone to do. And although this is a very unscientific way to think about things, I don’t think it necessarily prevents scientists from doing good science.

Except when it does. Even though I sometimes invent a personality for a molecule, I know the molecule is really just a non-sentient collection of atoms held together by electromagnetic forces. But when the research subject is a living thing, the situation gets muddier. During the 20th century, scientists discovered that certain species of bacteria produce a wide array of antibiotic compounds. Of course, they then went on to isolate some of these compounds and used them to treat infections in humans, revolutionizing the field of medicine. The flip side to this story is that for decades after these antibiotics were discovered, biologists generally assumed that the bacteria that produce them use them for the same purpose we do: to kill other bacteria. In a 2010 article in Nature, biologist Julian Davies describes how this assumption led many biologists to describe bacterial ecosystems as “battlefields” where bacteria employ “chemical weapons” in a competition for space and nutrients. This view of bacterial ecology mirrored the human world, where resource competition often leads to war.

Davies argues that the idea of “bacterial warfare” made sense to biologists because it matched up well with human experiences. It made so much sense, in fact, that biologists didn’t consider the possibility that bacteria might produce these antibiotic compounds for some other purpose. For some bacteria, the primary purpose of these antibiotic compounds may indeed be to kill other bacteria. But there is now evidence that the compounds may play a role in a bacteria cell’s internal biology as well, regulating physiology and modulating gene transcription. Davies argues that, for years, biologists were blinded to this possibility by anthropomorphic thinking.

Although anthropomorphic thinking can throw a wrench into the scientific process, it can also make science more approachable, easier to understand, and more appealing. It provides a way for us to relate to science on a personal level. In an interview with RadioLab, Oliver Sacks described how, as a shy, socially awkward kid, he felt a keen sense of kinship with the unreactive noble gases, since both he and the gases had “difficulties forming relationships.” This personal, childhood connection to the scientific world helped lead Sacks to a long and prolific career in science.














Sunday, February 10, 2013

30,000 feet above Boston, Massachusetts

A pilot is peering out of the cockpit window of a 777 on its way to London. He looks down through a cloudless sky at the city of Boston spreading out beneath him and the cities of Everett, Chelsea, Revere, and Winthrop beyond it. He sees a whitewashed patchwork of streets and buildings cut up by a deep blue harbor. It’s a city buried beneath more than two feet of snow. He takes a photograph.

image: Reddit

Three days earlier, Thursday February 7, 2013, 6:00 PM

Waukegan, Illinois

Heavy, wet snow is falling. The evening commute has ground to a slow crawl along IL Route 137, running north out of Chicago. This is a fairly routine snow storm for northern Illinois in February. It will leave behind about half a foot of snow in the Chicago suburb of Waukegan. Just a few miles south, the storm is mostly cold rain and wind, inconveniencing Chicagoans on their way home from work.

Friday February 8, 2013, 7:00 AM

Mirlo Beach, North Carolina

A rainstorm is creeping along the North Carolina shoreline. The barometric pressure is dropping, and as it drops humid sea air rushes toward the coast, forming thick clouds and dumping rain as it sweeps inland. Ocean winds gust to 40 miles per hour across the outer banks. Here at Mirlo Beach, sheets of rain wash over vulnerable seaside houses, some of them raised on stilts to protect against the flooding that has become increasingly frequent here in the past few years. The ocean waters, driven toward the shore by the strong wind, are washing across NC Route 12. The small beach town is still rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy, which tore apart the asphalt along Route 12, leaving the road, and the town’s only connection to the mainland, impassable. Within a few hours the seawater will recede, and the damage left behind will be minor. The storm will roll out to sea, continuing along its northeastern trajectory.

Friday February 8, 2013, 7:00 PM

Somewhere off the coast of New Jersey

As the storm pulls away from the North Carolina and Virginia coastline, it moves over the waters of the Atlantic, which are warmed by Gulf stream currents. Here the storm intensifies as warm, humid air from the ocean surface is drawn up toward the storm’s swirling center. As this warm air rises, strong winds force it toward the outer edges of the storm. This process of drawing air up and out of the storm’s center causes the pressure within the storm to drop, which in turn causes more air to rush toward the storm, producing higher and higher wind speeds. As the storm suctions humid air from the surface of the ocean, the amount of moisture it carries, and the potential quantity of snow or rain it could release when it makes landfall, increases. Meanwhile, the snow storm that originated in northern Illinois has swept across the Great Lakes and overland toward the Atlantic coast, pushed eastward by the transcontinental jet stream. The timing and paths of the two storms are perfect as they collide and merge, the northern storm front wrapping around the emerging nor’easter. A single, massive storm now churns northward.

The two storms, on a collision course, as seen by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s GOES-13 satellite. image: NOAA/NASA

Friday February 8, 2013, 10:00 PM

East Boston, Boston, Massachusetts

I’m walking down the middle of the street, shuffling through several inches of slush. The governor of Massachusetts has mandated a state-wide driving ban in anticipation of the approaching storm, so the street is empty. The wind is relentless. Needle-like bits of precipitation sting my face with each gust. I can’t decide whether it’s sleeting, snowing, raining, or some combination of all three. The wind is making it increasingly difficult to walk. Tomorrow I will hear that near-hurricane-force wind gusts were recorded at the airport less than half-a-mile away. I begin to wonder if going outside to watch the arrival of the storm first-hand was a good idea, but I continue on. I round a corner and walk down a side street toward the harbor. At the end of the street, I squint through the driving snow, looking for the water’s edge. I know the land drops into the harbor less than twenty feet from where I’m standing, but I can’t see it. I involuntarily recall stories told to me as a child, of people walking out into a blizzard, becoming disoriented in a whiteout, unable to find their way back, freezing to death just feet from their own front door. I turn around and scramble back uphill the way I came. With the wind now at my back, I pause to take a few pictures.

 Saturday February 9, 2013

Winthrop Beach, Winthrop, Massachusetts

High Tide. Waves driven by a relentless wall of wind are breaking over the top of the 15-foot seawall at Winthrop Beach. As seawater spills over the wall, it gathers into torrents, rushing down streets, contained by snowbanks.

Saturday, February 9, 2013 10:30 AM

East Boston, Boston, Massachusetts

I’m standing knee-deep in snow, looking at my car. It more closely resembles a vaguely car-shaped pile of snow than a car – it’s completely enveloped in a snow drift. I take my phone out of my pocket and check the weather forecast for the coming week: temperatures above freezing every day. The snowfall has tapered off. Only a few snowflakes lazily float to the ground around me. I carefully consider my need for a car. I have enough food for the week, and I’ll take the subway to work. I leave the car where it is and hope that the sun will do the work of extracting it from the snow bank for me. (Update: This plan, despite being inspired by laziness, was largely a success. By this past weekend, the car was surrounded by just a few inches of snow, which I cleared away after ten minutes of shoveling)

A street in my neighborhood the morning after the storm. Each of those piles of snow lining the street contains a car.

Saturday, February 9, 2013 1:00 PM

East Boston, Boston, Massachusetts

The storm has passed. Everyone is outside. Some are shoveling snow, digging narrow passageways along sidewalks, uncovering cars. Others are having fun. A mother pulls her infant daughter down the street on a toboggan. A man cross-country skis through the neighborhood. Kids are sledding down an outdoor staircase covered in two feet of powdery snow.

East Boston residents dig out after the storm

Sailboats in the shipyard are coated in snow and ice, while the Boston Financial District skyline begins to emerge across the harbor as snowfall tapers off.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

22,236 miles above the US eastern seaboard, geostationary orbit

As the nor’easter spins away from the New England coast, out into the north Atlantic, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s GOES-13 satellite takes a photograph revealing that the storm has taken on the appearance of a hurricane – a massive cyclone with a distinct eye at its center.

The storm (upper right) takes on a cyclone structure. image: NASA/NOAA

The clear skies left in the wake of the storm provide the NOAA satellite with a clean view of the storm’s aftermath – the entire Northeast buried in snow.

image: NASA/NOAA

Sunday February 10, 2013

Somewhere over the North Atlantic

As he leaves Boston behind and sets out across the north Atlantic toward England, the pilot is unintentionally following the path taken by the storm just hours earlier. Within a few hours he will catch up to the storm somewhere below Greenland. He will guide his plane south, skirting the edge of the storm system, bypassing it. He will arrive in England three days ahead of the storm.

Wednesday February 13, 2013 5:00 PM

West Midlands, England, UK

As the storm chugs across the North Atlantic, it gradually loses intensity. The cyclone structure quickly dissolves as the frigid ocean waters and dry, arctic air sap the storm’s energy and moisture. By the time the storm finally makes landfall again, here in Great Britain, it hardly resembles the ferocious nor’easter that smothered the northeastern US three days earlier. It manages to drop just over an inch of snow across the Midlands before completely dissipating. The storm ends its 4000 mile journey in much the same way it began: inconveniencing evening commuters with long traffic jams and an unpleasant walk home.

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