“The most common of all follies,” wrote H. L. Mencken, “is to believe passionately in the palpably not true.”
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Photo by Vlad Tchompalov on Unsplash
Jupiter, as imaged by the Juno spacecraft • NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill
Heaven beyond
Galileo, OrbView‑2, Terra, Aqua, Lunar Orbiter, Magellan, Mariner 10, Yohkoh, SOHO, TRACE, Mars Pathfinder Lander, Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey, Viking Orbiter, Viking Lander, NEAR, Cassini, Voyager 1 and 2.
Detail of a Hubble Space Telescope mosaic image of the Crab Nebula • NASA, ESA, J. Hester and A. Loll (Arizona State University)
Wonders and portents
It is the morning of July 5, 1054 A.D. You wake to a thin crescent moon between the horns of Taurus the Bull, low in the eastern sky. And nearby — wonder of wonders — a brilliant new celestial object, apparently a star, but shining more brightly than any star you have ever seen, four times brighter than Venus, so bright that for the next several weeks it will be visible even in daylight.
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Embodied soul
Last week CBS’s 60 Minutes did a story on a 12-year-old musical prodigy named Jay Greenberg. Jay has been composing since he was two, and apparently his music is of a professional quality. He is now studying at Juilliard in New York, and his teachers compare him to Mozart.
The "Hall of Flat Beasts" at the Natural History Museum, London • Photo by Fernando Losada Rodríguez (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Swimming in Jurassic seas
Among the fossil hunters who opened our eyes to Earth’s antiquity, none is more justly famed than Mary Anning, who lived in Lyme Regis in Dorset, England, during the early-19th century.
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The big sting
I have my annual physical tomorrow, and I have a list of things to ask my doctor about: Allegra‑D, Ambien, Nexium, Celebrex, Viagra, Lipitor, etc., etc. I’m not even sure what all these drugs are for, but according to the ads I watch on TV, I’m supposed to ask my doctor if they are right for me.
A facial reconstruction of Homo floresiensis • Cicero Moraes et al (CC BY 4.0)
What makes us human?
About fifty years ago, a “stone age” tribe was discovered living in an isolated valley of Papua New Guinea. These people had virtually no contact with the outside world, no metal, no cooking vessels, no hearths.
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In the presence of the sacred
Last week I spent three days in Corvallis, Oregon, as a participant in a gathering celebrating “The Sacred in Nature.” I was invited by two of the conference organizers, philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore and poet Charles Goodrich, friends of nature and writers of exceptional grace.
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Birds do it. Bees do it. Even the blossoms in the trees do it.
Can a primrose be led down the primrose path?
Photo by James Baltz on Unsplash
Frankenfoods?
We don’t hear much about genetically-modified (GM) food in the United States. Farmers produce it, massively. Consumers eat it without complaint. The big agribusiness corporations salt away the profits.