Beauty, having replaced her father in the palace of the Beast, sat down to table. The board was spread with dainty morsels of every kind and delicious drinks.
Articles with 1994
Photo by Hadis Safari on Unsplash
Wooly aphid • Photo by Melissa McMasters (CC BY 2.0)
All I want for Christmas is a wooly aphid
Dear Santa, I know it’s late. By now your elves are probably loading up the sleigh. But just in case you haven’t yet gotten around to Zip Code 02356, here’s my request.
Detail from Goya's “The Disasters of War”
The evil that men do
If I remember rightly, I was about 12 years old when I first came across Francisco Goya’s collection of etchings called The Disasters of War.
Excerpt from the Codex Hammer (Public Domain)
Did Gates steal Leonardo’s software?
News Note: Bill Gates, chairman and CEO of Microsoft, the world’s largest supplier of computer software, made the winning $30.8 million bid for a Leonardo da Vinci manuscript called the Codex Hammer. Gates has been described by Forbes magazine as the richest man in America.
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash
Throw the bums out and let the people run science
“Good morning, guys and gals, this is your favorite talk show host, Chet Raymo, with another round of chat with the real people of America. My guest this morning is Ernest Crank, the president of Sensible Americans for a People’s Science. Good morning, Ernest.”
The Hubble Space Telescope • STS-125/NASA
Hubble serves up another paradox
By now, everyone has heard about the Hubble Space Telescope’s new measure of the age of the universe.
Image by Karolina Grabowska on Pixabay
Conversations with my coffee maker
I had been reading Roger Penrose’s new book on the science of human consciousness and wanted to discuss it with my wife.
A fossil ammonoid • Photo by Hectonichus (CC BY-SA 3.0)
The secret life of an ancient stone
My daughter, a geologist, recently returned from a visit to the high Himalayan plateau. She brought me a gift: a gray, naturally rounded stone, of a size that fills the hand with a satisfying heft.
A wooly bear caterpillar • Photo by Amy (CC BY 2.0)
A furry gram of divinity, curled up in your hand
Woolly bears are on the march. Double time. Making tracks. Trucking.
Detail from "The Last Judgement" by Michelangelo (ca. 1541)
Doom prophets have it wrong — again
Already we hear of Armageddon, in supermarket tabloids, popular magazines, and fundamentalist pronouncements — the first tap-taps of a drum roll of superstitious fervor that will grow in intensity as we approach the end of the millennium, culminating in an apocalyptic hullabaloo in the last days of the year 1999.