Inchworms inch. Whirligigs whirl. Sidewinders wind. Grasshoppers hop. It’s called getting around, and the animal kingdom has devised a thousand ways to do it.
Articles from January 2021
One method of getting around • Photo by Steve (CC BY 2.0)
The Coma galaxy cluster • ESA/Hubble (CC BY 4.0)
Does ‘dark matter’ really matter?
The hunt is on. The scent of the prey is in the air. The hunters are working themselves into a frenzy of excitement.
Dictyostelium discoideum • Photo by Usman Bashir (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Sing a song of slime mold
I sing of slime electric. The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them, they will not let me off till I respond to them, and discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.
Ganson's "Machine with Concrete" • Photo by Shervinafshar (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Machines that have a funny bone
Imagine this. A machine made of pulleys and levers that spends its time scooping machine oil from a pool at its base and pouring it over itself. The oil glides sensuously down over the mechanism, back into the pool. Ahhh!
Photo by Zachery Perry on Unsplash
No stuffed moose could get in the way of his story
This is the story of the moose that went to Paris. It is the story of how Thomas Jefferson got stiffed for a stiff.
Chickamauga Dam and Peter Palchinsky (Public Domain)
Martyred by technology run amok
On a cold night in April 1928, Stalin’s secret police knocked on the door of Peter Palchinsky’s Leningrad apartment.
John Tenniel's classic illustration of Alice and the Dodo, along with a modern reconstruction • Photo by BazzaDaRambler (CC BY 2.0)
Survival of the ugliest
The dodo became extinct 175 years before Lewis Carroll introduced his favorite bird to his favorite little girl in “Alice in Wonderland.”
Photo by Al Soot on Unsplash
What most everyone knew in 1492
When I was a kid I had a picture book about Christopher Columbus. One page showed a Spanish galleon sailing off the edge of a flat Earth.
Photo by v2osk on Unsplash
We’re more than the sum of our parts
Charles Sims is in town looking for sperm. Sims is co-founder of California Cryobank Inc., one of the nation’s largest sperm banks.
Photo by Jp Valery on Unsplash
More exciting spinoffs — this time from the Big Ear
Karl Munchausen called the other day. Karl is Public Relations Officer for the Big Ear Project. As usual, he was trying to drum up media attention for the Big Ear.