As I went off to college in 1954 my father handed me a little orange book and said, “Read this. It will be as useful as anything you’ll learn in college.”
Articles with 1993
Photo by Lukas from Pexels
Photo by Viridi Green on Unsplash
Time for a truce with dandelions
“Momma had a baby and the head popped off.” Remember the childhood chant? The dandelion caught between finger and thumb. The flick of the thumb. The yellow flowerhead sent flying?
Image by Finn Årup Nielsen (CC BY 4.0)
Bite-size factoid: Scientists hunger for fame
We are a nation of snackers. We take our sustenance, physical and mental, in bite-sized bits. We crave instant gratification.
Tiger salamander • Photo by Peter Paplanus (CC BY 2.0)
What humans can do that salamanders cannot
On the planet of a yellow star in the outer arms of a spiral galaxy live a race of creatures called Manders.
Starflower • Photo by Matthieu Gauvain (CC BY-SA 3.0)
The miracle that gives life its shape
There is a certain magic moment in the spring woods near my house when the ladyslippers and starflowers bloom together.
Photo by Kyle Gregory Devaras on Unsplash
Astrophysicist’s apocalyptic ideas are 95% meaningless
Associated Press news report: “Repent, The End of the World May be Nearer Than You Think, Astrophysicist Calculates.”
Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash
It’s been 40 years now since Kinsey lit the fuse
When Alfred Kinsey’s “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” came out in 1948, I was 11 years old and just beginning a long fascination with the mystery of mysteries.
Computer visualization of a high-energy particle collision • McCauley, Thomas; Taylor, Lucas; for the CMS Collaboration (CC BY-SA 3.0)
What is the Higgs boson anyway?
American high-energy particle physicists want $10 billion of the taxpayer’s money to build the Superconducting Supercollider, a colossal particle-accelerating machine in a 50-mile-long tunnel under the Texas prairie.
Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam"
Let the poets and artists teach us what science can’t
Quick. Give a brief definition of PCR (polymerase chain reaction). Now do the same for ESP (extrasensory perception).
Photo by Marek Okon on Unsplash
On a voyage 50 years ago, Steinbeck saw nature’s unity
On the afternoon of March 11, 1940, the Western Flyer, a 76-foot fishing boat, prepared to leave Monterey harbor in California. The boat was chartered by a writer who would later win the Nobel prize for literature, and his best friend, a marine biologist.