Sahara! Rolling dunes, sun-bleached rocks. Camels and date palm oases. Salt caravans and shimmering mirages. Bedouins in flowing robes. The hidden city of Timbuktu. The French Foreign Legion.
Photo by Fabian Struwe on Unsplash
Galileo under house arrest • Painting by Solomon Alexander Hart (1847)
Creationism’s prison
“In the city of Pisa, a little boy was born with stars in his eyes. His parents named him Galileo.”
Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash
Under the spell of the sensuous
You may have heard about the public library brouhaha in Seabrook, N.H.
A sculpture honoring Alan Turing • Photo by Steve Parker (CC BY 2.0)
A giant of logic lost to the irrational
“Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash
A mystery long ago and far away
When we are standing under the stars, the sky seems unmistakably two dimensional — just up there, like the light-flecked ceiling of the terrestrial ballroom.
Photo by Juliane Liebermann on Unsplash
There’s no order like birth order
Frank Sulloway thinks he has discovered the driving engine of history: birth order.
Photo by Joshua Newton on Unsplash
A matter of mind over mind
For you, dear readers, I put my foot in the fire. But more about that in a moment.
Photo by Külli Kittus on Unsplash
The skulking grave robbers of fall
A fabulous autumn for mushrooms. More mushrooms than I can ever remember, particularly impressive after last year’s drought. In the woods, the meadows, the garden paths. A Halloween bounty of fungal spooks, eating the detritus of summer.
Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash
What’s progress got to do with it?
We’ve all seen the familiar image of a fish waddling onto the shore, preceded by a quadruped rising onto its hind legs, a knuckle-dragging simian, thick-browed Neanderthal, and — leading the parade of progress — bright-eyed Homo sapiens striding erect.
Photo by Thanhy Nguyen on Unsplash
No thanks, Ma’am, to ‘spam’ ban
Remember the Fuller brush man? The Avon lady? There was a time when a knock on the door might be the unwelcome intrusion of a salesperson into the privacy of our homes.