I’m weary of words. Our national discourse has become loud and shrill. Everywhere we go, it seems, we are followed by the strident staccato of Wolf Blitzer urging us towards the edge of our seats.
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A portion of the Ultra Deep Field • NASA/ESA (Public Domain)
Saying yes to the universe
Let me return once again to the Hubble Ultra Deep Field Photo, a document of simply mind-blowing significance.
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Moderate with fog patches becoming good
Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, Forties, Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Dogger, Fisher, German Bight, Humber, Thames, Dover, Wight, Portland, Plymouth, Biscay, Trafalgar, Fitzroy, Sole, Lundy, Fastnet, Irish Sea, Shannon, Rockall, Malin, Hebrides, Bailey, Fair Isle, Faeroes, South East Iceland.
Chet at his father's workbench, 1951 • © Raymo Family Archive
The workbench
Our family home in Chattanooga was built in 1941, and like most other homes in the city was heated by coal. It had a coal bin in the basement, and a big galvanized furnace with cast iron doors and grates and air ducts sprouting from the top like the hair of Medusa.
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Epic, ground-breaking, rocks science to its core…
Let me note the recent passing of Lyall Watson, aged 69, author of the super bestseller “Supernature,” published in 1973, just in time to ride the tsunami of New Age fads that defined the time.
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In the Dreamtime
In early 1986, Sky & Telescope magazine offered me a free place on their Comet Halley tour to Ayers Rock in the Australian outback.
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Welcome to Bioland
On the new acquisitions shelf of the college library I find a little book that almost gets lost among its bigger, bulkier companions — “A Modest Proposal: A Plan for the Golden Years,” by Régis Debray.
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“Incredible” is not “impossible”
Let’s get this straight once and for all: Evolution by natural selection is not a theory. It is a fact!
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Dr. Seuss and Dr. Einstein
Some years ago, when an insect called the thrips — singular and plural — was in the news for defoliating sugar maples in New England, I noted in my Boston Globe science column that thrips are very strange beasts.
Photo by Paul Brady (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
The basic language for the human experience of things
One thing (of many) that my son (and our webmaster) Tom and I share is an admiration for the paintings of Mark Rothko.