It is a popular misconception that evolution is “just a theory.”
An example of decentralized self-organization in nature • Photo by Donald Macauley (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Statue honoring Charles Darwin at the Natural History Museum, London • Photo by Hulki Okan Tabak on Unsplash
Imperfect, yes, but the best we have
“In a child’s power to master the multiplication tables there is more sanctity than in all your shouted amens and holy holies and hosannas.”
Comet Hyakutake in 1996 • NASA/Bill Ingalls (Public Domain)
In the beginning there was a comet
We watched the long slide of Comet Hyakutake from the dark southeastern sky, up across the north pole, into the light of the setting sun.
A flock of red knot • Photo by Don Faulkner (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Small bird, big curve
“God loves a curved universe,” said designer and engineer Buckminster Fuller.
“The Triumph of Death” (ca. 1562) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, depicting the chaos that followed the Black Death
Spiritually homeless in the cosmos
I was recently at Grinnell College in Iowa talking with a group of talented young nature writers. They had read a couple of my books, and generally approved of the way I tried to relate science to human values. However, they took me to task for what they perceived as condescension towards astrology, crystal therapy, parapsychology, and other New Age superstitions.
Photo by Tatiana Syrikova from Pexels
It’s smarter to be born in spring?
Are people born in the spring smarter than the rest of us?
Photo by Elia Pellegrini on Unsplash
Deep Blue vs human self-esteem
It was the highbrow face-off of the century: Garry Kasparov, the world’s best chess player, vs. Deep Blue, an IBM computer that can evaluate 100 million board positions per second.
Princess Aura and Flash Gordon as portrayed by Priscilla Lawson and Buster Crabbe (1936)
And they’ll all speak English
If memory serves me right, my first true love was Princess Aura, daughter of Ming the Merciless of the planet Mongo.
Red-winged blackbird • Photo © Tom Raymo
It’s not pretty, but it says ‘spring’
One day this week we’ll hear the red-winged blackbird.
Photo by Paulo O (CC BY 2.0)
Drivers take byte out of computer
The newspaper recently ran a story about a computer traffic model developed by MIT traffic researchers that is being used by the builders of the Central Artery/Third Tunnel project to find trouble spots that may need redesigning.