Hummingbirds and bananaquits at the bird feeders. Can’t help but smile. Can’t help but feel a thrill. Who can be glum in the face of so much animation — so much of what is — packed up in those tiny bodies, abuzz with life, turning sugar into energy.
Chemistry
Photo by Feroze Omardeen (CC BY 2.0)
Photo by Clark Young on Unsplash
Embodied soul
Last week CBS’s 60 Minutes did a story on a 12-year-old musical prodigy named Jay Greenberg. Jay has been composing since he was two, and apparently his music is of a professional quality. He is now studying at Juilliard in New York, and his teachers compare him to Mozart.
A reconstruction of how Ötzi may have appeared in life • South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Chipping away at the iceman mystery
Remember the iceman? A dozen years ago, a couple of hikers found a mummified body in a melting glacier high in the Alps, on the border between Austria and Italy.
Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash
Levi was caught between disciplines
Few working scientists, other than physicians, have achieved Primo Levi’s degree of literary acclaim. Had he lived longer — he died in 1987 at age 67, an apparent suicide — he might have won the Nobel Prize for literature.
Photo by Peter Miller (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Chemistry holds universe’s secrets
How do you make a universe?
Photo by Louis Vest (CC BY-NC 2.0)
Water everywhere — even in space
Years ago, when the big drill rig arrived here to dig our well, the operator jumped out of the cab and marched around with a forked twig, looking for the best place to drill.
Photo by Sourabh Panari on Unsplash
Earth’s big fix is in the bacteria
It’s planting time. Rototilling. Hoeing. Sticking in the seeds. Onions. Radishes. Lettuce. Beans. No real need to do it. We can buy our veggies at the store for a lot less money than we send to Smith & Hawken for all those upscale garden tools.
Silicon • Image by Th. Voekler (CC BY-SA 3.0)
The chemical element’s the thing
“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em,” says Shakespeare’s Malvolio, reading from Maria’s letter.
Photo by Matt Hardy on Unsplash
Life on the water planet
We live on the Water Planet. Nothing confirms this so vividly as a daytime crossing of the Atlantic Ocean at 30,000 feet.
Photo by Nick Nice on Unsplash
Mediocre though it may be, carbon is the stuff of life
“Diamonds are forever” say the De Beers ads. Well, yes and no. Depends on what you mean by forever.