When I was in school back in the 1940s and ’50s — parochial schools — materialism was thrown up to us as the bugbear of bugbears. Not even “Godless communism” offered a more perfidious peril for our souls.
Articles from April 2022
Photo by S Migaj on Unsplash
Duckweed • Photo by Patricia Barden (CC BY 2.0)
Under magnifier, scum is beautiful
“The angiosperms are the superstars of the plant world,” says Lynn Margulis in her ‘Five Kingdoms: An Illustrated Guide to the Phyla of Life on Earth.’
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
By nature, man can turn it off
The teaser on the cover of the August [2000] issue of Scientific American was irresistible: “Men’s Sexual Circuitry.”
The Aran landscape • Photo by Herbert Ortner (CC BY 2.0)
The endless journey with ‘adequate steps’
Tim Robinson is an Englishman who went to Ireland’s Aran Island in 1972 to write, think, and otherwise jolt his life out of a London rut. In 1984, he moved across Galway Bay to Connemara, where he remains. His long sojourn in those rocky landscapes has led to several wonderful books and maps of surpassing loveliness.
Photo by Mehmet Turgut Kirkgoz on Unsplash
The joy of life after the Big Bang
“In the beginning, there was not coldness and darkness: there was the fire,” wrote the Jesuit mystic, Teilhard de Chardin, in his The Mass on the World. He added: “The flame has lit up the whole world from within…from the inmost core of the tiniest atom to the mighty sweep of the most universal laws of being.”
The skeleton of a Megaloceros giganteus • Photo by Momotarou2012 (CC BY-SA 3.0)
The great Irish elk: Under ice or overkill?
The Irish love their turf — poet Seamus Heaney’s “kind, black butter.” Sliced and dried, it makes a lovely, aromatic fuel. The turf bogs are also wonderful repositories of Irish history.
Photo by Laura Ockel on Unsplash
Building machines from the atoms up
The pop star physicist, Richard Feynman, had lots of clever ideas in his lifetime, including a few that won him a Nobel Prize, but what he might be best remembered for 100 years from now is something he tossed off almost in passing back in 1959.
Mars Global Surveyor image showing evidence of recent water flow on the surface of Mars • NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems (Public Domain)
Mars photos give us something to drink in
We thrilled to the recent photographs from Mars showing what appear to be relatively recent water channels on the red planet.
Photo by Naja Bertolt Jensen on Unsplash
Can the hard or soft get us machine green?
Environmental liberals and conservatives are bashing each other in print. They have the same ostensible goal — saving the planet from despoliation — but very different strategies for doing it.
Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash
Genome is not a map to the human self
“Today we are learning the language in which God created life,” gushed President Bill Clinton. “The first great technological triumph of the 21st century,” purred British Prime Minister Tony Blair.