Some nations are rich, others are poor.
Articles with 1999
Secret of not knowing
Twenty-two hundred years ago, in the city of Alexandria at the mouth of the Nile River, a fellow named Eratosthenes drew a circle on papyrus and said, “This is the Earth.”
Looking for ET online
It is a marriage made in heaven. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) and personal computers.
Fact filtering in the pursuit of truth
Last week this column took note of two explanations for the fossils known as ammonites. These animals in stone look like serpents curled upon themselves, or the tightly coiled horns of miniature rams.
The ammonite’s fossilized legacy
A round gray stone sits on the window sill by my desk. The stone is cracked across the middle. It opens like a jewel box to reveal an ammonite, a fossilized sea creature shaped like the tightly coiled horn of a miniature ram.
Reach out and touch a cellular phone jerk
You have reached the office of Harry Hawker. You may leave a message at the beep.
No cartoon world for leafcutter ants
roots. Matchboxes for beds. Bottlecaps for tables. Thimbles for bath tubs. Postage stamps for carpets.
Can a body meet a body coming through the wire?
There is a now-famous New Yorker cartoon by Peter Steiner that has come to define the age of electronic communication. It shows two dogs sitting in front of a computer. One pooch says to the other: “On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog.”
An unvarnished look at Thoreau
In recent years we have seen a spate of books on Henry David Thoreau — his writings, his life, and the landscape in which he lived. The best of the lot is David Foster’s “Thoreau’s Country: Journey Through a Transformed Landscape (Harvard 1999).”
Finding inspiration in a blue heron
If you have ever watched a jumbo jet take off you will know what I mean.