Mary Kingsley, intrepid Victorian traveler, was one of the most adventurous of 19th century European explorers of Africa. Untypical of Victorian women, she went where men feared to go. She was also untypical in her sensitive appreciation of African culture and thought. But even she never doubted the racial preeminence of Europeans.
Articles from July 2020
US fighter jets flying over Kuwait • US Department of Defense (Public Domain)
A spring peeper • Photo by Justin Meissen (CC BY-SA 2.0)
The annual spring peeper hocus pocus
The spring peepers are in full fortissimo chorus.
Photo by Brennan Wolf on Unsplash
A whole lot of heaven at a starstruck resort
Looking for dark, starry skies? Drive 60 miles east out of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Get off the interstate at Las Vegas (not the neon-lit casino town, but a place with fewer lights and considerably more charm).
Photo by Brian McCall on Unsplash
Memories were made of this
It’s a familiar story, but I’ll tell it again.
US Department of Energy (Public Domain)
The real story of nuclear winter and the dinosaurs’ demise
Rumors have been flying that paleontologist Robert (Ace) Hayprel has found dinosaur fossils that will revolutionize our views about how those creatures became extinct 65 million years ago.
Photo by Orin Zebest (CC BY 2.0)
The age-old gum ball conundrum
How many gum balls can you fit into a gum ball machine? And does it matter?
Eastern Colorado Great Plains • Photo by Ken Lund (CC BY-SA 2.0)
The square root of our plumb-bobbing obsession
Here is a little lesson about the best and worst of western civilization. It can be summarized in one word: Square.
Hetch Hetchy Dam, Yosmite National Park, California • Photo by tosh chiang (CC BY 2.0)
Lest the tap run dry
In the last years of the 19th century, the thirsty citizens of San Francisco covetously turned their eyes on the Hetch Hetchy Valley of the Tuolumne River in Yosemite National Park. A dam across the valley, a 150-mile-long aqueduct, and the city’s water supply problems would be solved forever.
A plot of Lorenz's strange attractor • Image by Wikimol & Dschwen (CC BY-SA 3.0)
A little loop of chaos
“So what’s this little loop on the back of the shirt?” I pointed to the cloth loop sewn into the yoke below the collar.
Temperature fluctuations in the early universe • NASA / WMAP Science Team (Public Domain)
Bang, you’re not dead
One could say of the Big Bang what Mark Twain said of himself: Reports of its death are greatly exaggerated.