What are England’s greatest gifts to civilization?
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Scientists also lifted our perception of life
This was my third or fourth visit to Westminster Abbey, although the first in almost three decades. I stood in line to buy my ticket of admission with some misgivings. I remembered being disappointed on previous visits, but could not remember why.
A song sparrow • Photo © Tom Raymo
When animals talk, we should listen
I have a friend who talks to birds. When I accompany him on early-morning walks, he’ll stand beside a pond or weed patch and make little tsk-tsk noises that to my untrained ear don’t sound particularly birdlike. Nevertheless, soon a flitter of warblers and sparrows appears seemingly out of nowhere.
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Be thankful today’s rodents are small
I’m not feeling very friendly toward rodents right now. I have mice in the pantry and squirrels in the attic.
Detail of Ottoman astronomers at work from a 16th-century manuscript
Mystery illuminates a cultural shift
Istanbul is the most European of Moslem cities. It sits astride the Bosphorus, traditional boundary between Europe and Asia. It was once the capital of a Moslem empire that reached to India and Spain; today, with all of Turkey, it aspires to be part of the European Union.
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The real mystery of human life
Question: Why does it take 200 million male sperm to fertilize a single female egg?
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.
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Who gets to have the new smart pills?
“I am a little world made cunningly of elements and an angelic sprite,” wrote the poet John Donne in about the year 1609. He meant, of course, that he was a creature of matter and spirit, body and soul. Today, we would amend his lines to read: “I am a little world made cunningly of elements.” Full stop.
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To see stars, let’s turn off the lights
I first became familiar with the stars on the sleeping porch of my grandmother’s house on Ninth Street in Chattanooga, Tennessee, during the early 1940s.
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The spinning Earth keeps time for us
Just back from Europe. I’ve reset my watch, turned the small hand back five hours. Reset the clock in my laptop. There’s one clock I can’t reset so quickly — the one inside my body, the tick-tocking proteins that tell my body when to wake and sleep.