Dear Mr. Computer, I’m thinking about buying a laptop computer.
Photo by Matt Mech on Unsplash
The world's first nuclear reactor was within a pile of graphite bricks • (Public Domain)
Chicago, December 1942
Physicist Albert Wattenberg was poking about in the Chicago branch of the National Archives recently. He was looking for artifacts used by Enrico Fermi and his team of nuclear physicists in achieving the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction in a squash court under the University of Chicago’s football stadium in December 1942.
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
In defense of the dull and boring
This from a correspondent: “I suspect that science makes scientists happier than it does other people.”
Atelopus frogs pondering the universal mystery • Photo by Brian Gratwicke (CC BY 2.0)
What the other half wants
“Ah, women. What do they want?” asks GQ magazine on the cover of the February [1994] issue. The question has been on male minds at least since Valentine’s Day, one million B.C.
NASA astronaut repairing the Hubble in December 1993 • NASA (Public Domain)
Too big, too pricey, too late
The Hubble is out of trouble, NASA assures us.
Photo by Mike Lewinski (CC BY 2.0)
Lighting up your love life
Along the tidal rivers of Southeast Asia, thousands of male fireflies gather in trees at dusk and flash their bioluminescent lights in an attempt to attract the female of the species.
Photo by slgckgc (CC BY 2.0)
It’s no place for grown-ups
“I believe that for his escape he took advantage of the migration
of a flock of wild birds.”
Photo by visuals on Unsplash
In search of the soul
Writing about genetic experimentation in the New York Times, columnist Nicholas Wade says, “The secret of life is out: There is no secret, no black box that protects the biological machinery from manipulation nor a soul undefilable in the chemist’s retort.”
Caenorhabditis elegans • Image by Bob Goldstein, UNC Chapel Hill (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Making a new Methuselah
An Irish proverb describes life this way: “Twenty years a‑growing. Twenty years in bloom. Twenty years fading. Twenty years a‑dying.”
The fossilized remains of "Nari" • Photo by Akrasia25 (CC BY-SA 4.0)
What our ancestors’ fossils don’t tell us
I’ve been living with the kid for three weeks. He stands in the corner of my office, dead still, staring blankly. I call him Nari.