Coming soon to a theater near you: “Attack of the Killer Transgenic Microchip Mice.”
Articles with 1993
Mus musculus (Public Domain)
Fontana Dam, North Carolina • Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (Public Domain)
Industrial age artifacts need not be eyesores
In the autumn of 1728, Samuel Johnson, future author of the famous dictionary, rode with his father from his birthplace at Lichfield in the English Midlands to the university town of Oxford. He was 19 years old.
Image by rafluxeloy from Pixabay
When nature’s clocks tick out of tune
A wind in the willows. Not just any wind and not just any willows. It was a warm spring wind, full of the flavors of the south. And the willows were pussy willows, in the first soft flush of catkins.
E. coli bacteria • Photo by Janice Haney Carr, National Escherichia, Shigella, Vibrio Reference Unit at CDC, USCDCP on Pixnio
Some bacteria sniff their way through life
Bacteria have noses. Well, not noses exactly, but scent-sensitive spots where a nose should be, up front, heading into the wind.
Photo by Donald Giannatti on Unsplash
Searching for alien beings is like playing the lottery
Are we alone in the universe? Answering this question is the goal of the scientific project called SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Photo by Reymark Franke on Unsplash
What makes your place special? Take a look
“As time went by, I realized that the particular place I’d chosen was less important than the fact that I’d chosen a place and focused my life around it.”
The new computer-controlled Charles Hayden Planetarium • Photo Credit Museum of Science, Boston © Michael Malyszko 2010
Zooming through the heavens for a picnic on Mars
Sputnik! America’s rude awakening. When the Soviet’s hurled their beach-ball-sized satellite into space on October 4, 1957, this country’s vaulted illusion of scientific and technological supremacy came crashing to earth.
The dung beetle at work • Photo by Andi Gentsch (CC BY-SA 2.0)
In praise of nature’s small sweeper-uppers
A new television commercial contrasts the fun of drinking Pepsi with the boredom of attending college classes. In the classroom sequence, a tweedy professor drones on about “dung beetles.”
Photo by Miguel Discart (CC BY-SA 2.0)
On aggression, wimpy fish and professional wrestling
My flight was delayed. I slipped into a booth at the airport lounge and ordered a beer to pass the time. Pro wrestling was on the big TV over the bar. A half-dozen men perched on bar stools watched the action, whooping it up with each eye gouge or knee to the groin.
UGC 12158, an example of a barred spiral galaxy • ESA/Hubble
For a new generation, the Milky Way beckons
Gather round, children, and listen to my tale of coming of age in the Milky Way.