In December, 1990, Galileo began its “Earth-1” maneuver: the first Earth flyby. This happened to coincide with the buildup to the first Gulf War. nasa had to inform the North American Aerospace Defense Command that the blip that would appear on its radar screens on December 8th—an incredibly fast-moving object that might well seem to…
Usually, the bears would come to greet him within a day or two of his arrival, sniffing his scent in the air, nuzzling his footprints and then making contact.|This year, there was nothing. But there were fierce snowstorms and he thought they might be keeping the bears away. He travelled far and wide, looking for…
“On 27th August, Mars will be at its closest to Earth for almost 60,000 years. On that date, the Red Planet will approach to within 34,646,418 miles (55,758,006 km) — 145 times the distance of the Moon. The last time the two planets were so close our ancestors were living in caves and struggling to…
“If you go out this Sunday evening and look up at the Moon, you will see not only our closest celestial neighbor, but a piece of art history as well. The rising full moon will appear exactly the way it did 114 years ago, when Vincent Van Gogh captured the scene in his famous painting…
“One guiding principle of committing the perfect crime is to leave or no evidence of the misdemeanour. | Sadly, the five Texas men who took an axe to an oak tree in Austin completely ignored this criminal tenet when one of them posted a full photo spread of the outrage on his website. Three of…
“I had always rejected the suburban ideal of the carefully clipped and methodically poisoned greensward, with its connotations of Babbittry, mundane middle-class aesthetics, and casual ecological depredation. But somehow, in the verdured acreage behind my home–where lately I have taken to carving crop circles and leaving elaborate paisleys of wildflowers intact–I find myself. | I…
“While visiting my local health food store, I noticed how many non-food products are labeled “All-Natural.” Toothpaste. Dog biscuits. Deodorants. Some of them, like those Carrot-Honey-Ginger soaps, sound good enough to eat. Is it a soap, I found myself asking, or a salad? Recently, I decided to find out….|Grandma’s Old-Fashioned Oatmeal Soap. Oatmeal adds a…
“Paul Hillard, spider specialist at the Natural History Museum in London, said researchers first discovered the effects of psychotropic drugs on spiders during experiments at the end of 1960s.” —Spider Experiments with Drugs (Miss Black Widow) This is just weird. Similar:Visiting the #scienceofpixar exhibit @kaminsciencecenterStudents are trusting software like this to do their work.Sorry, not sorry.…
NASA Planetary CollageAFP/NASA) No image of Pluto? I’m outraged! Disney’s copyright protection schemes have gone too far! Update: I found this image on the AP newswire feed. There was no link or credit, but Rosemary Frezza writes: http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2000-000454.html This is the closest thing I could find on a NASA site so far. I wonder who…
“Who would have guessed, when this New Hampshire YMCA camp was founded in 1905, that anyone would even have to think about an electronics policy?| But in today’s world, where some teens are more tech-savvy than their parents, and they often won’t leave home without their electronic toys, that’s reality. And camp directors are having…
“The hunter-gatherers whose genetic make-up we inherit devoted all their energies to getting food. Labour, danger, stress and companionship attended their provisioning. Having secured their meal through their shared hardship, it is hardly surprising if our ancestors consumed it in a common ceremony, with rejoicing, affection, and gifts to the gods. | That experience of…
“Linguists estimate that there are 6,809 ‘living’ languages in the world today, but 90 per cent of them are spoken by fewer than 100,000 people, and some languages are even rarer – 46 are known to have just one native speaker….By applying the same principles used to classify the risk to birds and mammals, Professor…
“The idea that you should let a fire burn, and destroy valuable forest, was so counter-intuitive that it took the U.S. Forest Service a hundred years to realize the problem and to change the strategy and let the fire burn.” Jared Diamond —Why Do Some Societies Make Disastrous Decisions?Edge) Hit “page down” three times to…
“Whoo whoo whoo oogh oogh oogh oogh oogh oogh oogh oogh ooh ooh oooh oooh.” — Primatologist Jane Goodall imitating a chimpanzee in the U.S. State Department, yesterday. —Notable QuotesABC News) Similar:The Ascent #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 9) Odo and Quark bicker their way up …Things Past #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode…
“The findings prove that the world experienced a Medieval Warm Period between the ninth and 14th centuries with global temperatures significantly higher even than today. | They also confirm claims that a Little Ice Age set in around 1300, during which the world cooled dramatically. Since 1900, the world has begun to warm up again…
“A gentle waterfall pours from the cliff into a large aqua pool. The rocks are molded concrete and the pool reeks of chlorine. Under clear resin, our tabletop bears a colorful design of the Mayan alphabet and calendar. Down one level to the right is an area with carpeted steps and a large video screen…
“In much of the 20th Century, there was a widespread denial of the existence of human nature in Western intellectual life, and I will just present three representative quotations. ‘Man has no nature,’ from the philosopher Jose Ortega y Gassett. ‘Man has no instincts,’ from the anthropologist and public intellectual Ashley Montagu. ‘The human brain…
Worth a thousand words:Bob Gillis —Starting Fire With an Ice Lens (Primitive Ways) Similar:Visiting the #scienceofpixar exhibit @kaminsciencecenterQuick visit to see my mother and siblings.Students are trusting software like this to do their work.A former student working in SEO shared this. I miss Google classic.Googling Is for Old People. That’s a Problem for Google.I’m thinking this…
“The BWCA is a pristine wilderness and a canoeist’s paradise in north-eastern Minnesota. It has over 1,500 miles of canoe routes and more than 1,000 lakes and streams. It has been largely unaltered by human hands since the 1930’s, and is today an official wilderness. You can plan a canoe route to “get away from…
“Almost all the varieties of banana grown today are cuttings – clones, in effect – of naturally mutant wild bananas discovered by early farmers as much as 10,000 years ago. The rare mutation caused wild bananas to grow sterile, without seeds. Those ancient farmers took cuttings of the mutants, then cuttings of the cuttings.” James…