It’s that time of the year and the crabgrass is waiting.
Photo by Rémi Müller on Unsplash
Staphylococcus bacteria • Image by Scientific Animations (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Quibbling about nature’s design
“In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone…” So begins William’s Paley’s “Natural Theology,” first published in Britain in 1802.
Wild columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) • Photo by Tom Raymo
Tearing apart the web of life
It is a condition of the enjoyable that we have neither too much sameness nor too much chaos in our lives.
George Herriman's "Krazy Kat"
Quantum jumps, flying bricks — and relativity
A cat loves a mouse named Ignatz. The mouse’s sole goal in life is to bean the cat with a brick, a villainy welcomed by the cat as a sign of affection, and perhaps it is. A badge-bearing canine, Offissa Pupp, adores the cat and wants the mouse safely behind bars. All of this in a surreal desert place called Coconino County.
Image by Mehmet Pinarci (CC BY 2.0)
Finding mystery in God’s tinkertoy
Forty-one years ago today [in 1953], James Watson and Francis Crick published a paper in the journal Nature announcing their discovery of the structure of DNA.
A preserved street railway car at the Seashore Trolley Museum, Kennebunkport, Maine • Photo by Rene Schwietzke (CC BY 2.0)
Getting there not half the fun it once was
A few weeks ago, I noted the lack of a high-speed travel link between Boston and New York, and proposed several solutions, some serious, some whimsical.
Photo by Stephen Leonardi on Unsplash
Are you reading this, aliens?
Professor John Mack is going big time.
Photo by Lukas from Pexels
Life among the whatchamacallits
What is a fluglebinder? OK, it’s a trick question. There is no way you could know the answer unless you happened to see a Tom Cruise movie called “Cocktail.”
A Japanese bullet train • Photo by Fikri Rasyid on Unsplash
Is this any way to run a railroad?
Bostonians deserve better. They deserve a better way to travel to their bigger neighbor 200 miles away.
Photo by Ning Shi on Unsplash
Natty Bumppo’s early warning
“…the immense piles of snow that, by alternate thaws and frosts, and repeated storms, had obtained a firmness which threatened a tiresome durability.”