“I have that haunting feeling that spring this year again performed all her old tricks and showed me just how life is made and what it is made of, but her hand has such sleight and she so distracts the attention with waving green scarves and birds let loose from the loft that just when you think it is time now to watch carefully, the thing is done.”
Articles with 1992
The mourning cloak butterfly, a common harbinger of spring • Photo by Benny Mazur (CC BY 2.0)
Illustration from "Popular Mechanics," 1947
On the cutting edge of gimmickry
Recently, in a fit of nostalgia, I purchased copies of “Popular Science” and “Popular Mechanics” from the newsstand.
Louis and Mary Leakey at Olduvai Gorge • Smithsonian Institution (CC0)
Tracking our past with DNA
There was a time, back in the early 1960s, when I was tempted to abandon physics for paleoanthropology — the study of early humans.
Image by NASA (Public Domain)
Can the world survive the daisy-tramplers?
What a winter! The snow shovel never came out of the shed until after St. Paddy’s Day. A few swipes with a broom was almost all it took to keep the driveway and walks clear.
Photo by fauxels from Pexels
Flights of cyber-fancy
It’s spring — officially, at least — and a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of…Cybersex.
Photo by Pedro Martin on Unsplash
The death knell sounds for those old LPs
A friend down in Florida sells high-end stereo equipment. By high end, I mean off the top of the scale. He has music systems in his shop that cost more than my car.
The future that materials scientists want.
In a world of smart ‘things,’ why not self-sorting socks?
Welcome to the age of smart materials.
The oddball ostrich was an anomaly of nature • Photo by Stefan Strebl on Unsplash
Oddball ideas have it tough
Every scientist in the public eye is the frequent recipient of off-beat theories from out-of-the-mainstream amateur scientists.
Photo by Bjoertvedt (CC BY-SA 3.0)
The inside story on adder sex
It is time to present the Second Annual Gullible Gull Award for the most bizarre scientific research of the past year involving experimentation with animals.
Tiger swallowtail • Photo by Scott Carroll on Unsplash
The butterflies’ choice
This is the wrong time of the year to be writing about butterflies. It will be another month or so before the Mourning Cloaks emerge from hibernation to greet the first warm day of spring. And even longer before other species complete their metamorphosis from egg to caterpillar to winged adult.