Telling stories is at the center of my world. Of course I still do lots of other things but in this latter stage of my life they have been relegated to the status of planets that revolve around my story-telling sun. As a storyteller I pay a lot of attention [...] Continue reading »
Nature’s Curiosity Cabinet
It’s a rag, it’s a leaf, no, it’s Superbug! Look closely and you may be able to see two eyes at the bottom edge and tiny foot-appendages grasping the branch. When it comes to disguise, this insect makes the gecko look like a rank amateur. The second photo below makes [...] Continue reading »
Rock ‘n Roam on Mars
Roaming around on the surface of Mars yesterday, just like it was hired to do, the Curiosity Rover found this rock. It’s about 10 inches tall by 16 inches wide, roughly the size of the HP printer in my office. NASA has decided that this lump will be the occasion [...] Continue reading »
Our Urge to Explore
Receiving my elementary school education in Florida spashed my early exposure to history with salt water. Explorers such as Ferdinand Magellan, Vasco de Gama and Ponce de Leon captured my young imagination. Key West in the 1950s was an ideal setting to steer a boy’s imagination in the nautical direction. [...] Continue reading »
Curiosity on Mars
A science fiction reader I’ve never been. Nevertheless I’ve always had a keen interest in science and make a consistent effort to keep up with developments. Astronomy is one subject that invariably attracts my interest, perhaps because it readily invites the really big questions – Where did we come? Why [...] Continue reading »
A Global Concern
A report in the New York Times last Sunday was as surprising as it was discouraging: the sales of world globes are in decline. Officials for major school systems – including my own in Seattle – report that most classrooms no longer have them. I would have thought globes were a [...] Continue reading »
Meet Chimpanzees On Their Turf
Entertainment and science can make awkward bedfellows. To support that assertion I offer as Exhibit A the recently released movie Chimpanzee. I started to call it a documentary, along the lines of what you might find on PBS, but that doesn’t really fit, nor is it exactly a work of fiction. [...] Continue reading »
History Writ Big
Quick, when you hear the word “history” how far back does your mind jump? The nineteenth century, Renaissance, classical Rome, maybe even paleolithic man hunting, foraging and painting pictures on cave walls? However far you leap, it’s not likely to be 13 billion years, which is where Professor David Christian [...] Continue reading »
Mixing Really Old Paint
A red ochre powder in a pair of abalone shells is evidence for the oldest art studio. The shells were discovered in 2008 in Blombos cave on the coast of South Africa. A team led by Christopher Henshilwood, an archaeologist at the University of Bergen in Norway and the University [...] Continue reading »
How Tiny We Are
When a month ago I wrote a post marveling at a video of our Milky Way galaxy, a friend on the astronomy faculty at the University of Washington put me onto an equally profound, if not quite as fetching, four-minute NASA video about the Hubble Space Telescope. The narrator explains [...] Continue reading »