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.
Technology
Chet at his father's workbench, 1951 • © Raymo Family Archive
Gardens by the Bay, an urban nature park, Singapore • Photo by Daniel Welsh on Unsplash
When is enough enough?
Eighteen years ago, Bill McKibben jolted our environmental awareness with a splendid little book, “The End of Nature,” that cataloged the ways human economic activities are rending the fabric of nature.
Photo by Robynne Hu on Unsplash
The end is near?
Ray Kurzweil is back. The in-your-face futurist/inventor from Massachusetts has a new book — “The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology” — that touts the tipping point when silicon, not carbon, becomes the basis for intelligent life on Earth.
Samuel Beckett Bridge, Dublin • Photo by Saad Chaudhry on Unsplash
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
A little over a week ago [in 2005], Thomas Friedman had two op-ed columns in The New York Times about the Irish economic miracle, sometimes called “the Celtic Tiger.”
Photo by James Baltz on Unsplash
Frankenfoods?
We don’t hear much about genetically-modified (GM) food in the United States. Farmers produce it, massively. Consumers eat it without complaint. The big agribusiness corporations salt away the profits.
Red-tailed hawk • Photo by Patrice Bouchard on Unsplash
Realities
Was up Mount Brandon yesterday, Ireland’s second highest mountain, with my friend Maurice. A temperature inversion held the clouds close to the earth, with just the peaks rising above. An island archipelago in a sea of white.
Photo by Ayla Verschueren on Unsplash
Old dog, new trick: a statement of purpose
So here it is, Science Musings on the web, a regular meditation on humankind’s quest to understand the universe, including, of course, ourselves.
The Apple PowerBook G4 from 2003 • Photo by David Hepworth on Unsplash
Ignoring the voice, indulging the vice
OK, I’ll admit it. I didn’t need a new laptop.
The view from above the summit of Mount Brandon in Ireland • Photo by Berx22 (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Early Irish surveyors cast long shadows
On the summit of Mount Brandon, near my summer home on Ireland’s Dingle Peninsula, is a square concrete pillar about 4 feet high.
Photo by Silviu Zidaru on Unsplash
The evolution of technology
Fourteen years ago, Bill McKibben jolted our environmental awareness with a splendid little book, “The End of Nature,” that cataloged the ways human economic activities are rending the fabric of nature. In particular, he drew our attention to changes in the atmosphere, and to the possibility of global warming.