Early morning. Coffee simmering. Downstairs the furnace squeaks and rumbles to life, like the tuning-up of a distant orchestra. I settle in an easy chair to read three news stories about the beginning of the world. On the stereo, Joseph Haydn’s Creation oratorio.
Articles from April 2020
Joseph Haydn and William Herschel
Early photograph of Paris by Louis Daguerre (1838)
Optics, chemistry — and images
One day in Paris, in 1827, a certain Madame Daguerre approached the famous chemist Jean Dumas. Her husband was obsessed, she said, with an apparently foolish idea. He believed he could make permanent pictures on metal plates by means of light focused by a lens. Was his dream within the bounds of science, she asked, or was he completely mad?
Photo by James Rajaste on Unsplash
The sadness of captivity
Twenty-five years ago I took my kids to Boston’s Franklin Park Zoo. I swore I’d never return.
Photo by Brian Jones on Unsplash
Winter’s sparse palette
October blew through the trees of New England like a slow hurricane of color. Gone now, all gone, leaving behind more brown litter than Hurricane Hugo. Now the naturalist must seek his color in bits and pieces.
Artist's reconstruction of Burgess Shale animals • Image by PaleoEquii (CC BY-SA 4.0)
The crapshoot of history
Stephen Jay Gould has written his best book yet. “Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History” is the story of some remarkable fossils from the mountains of western Canada, and a sprightlier introduction to the history, methods, and philosophy of science would be hard to imagine.
Soviet Monument to the Conquerors of Space • Photo by L-BBE (CC BY 3.0)
Science’s silent partner
Glasnost! Perestroika! Solidarity governs Poland! The Hungarian Communist Party dissolves itself! These stunning political events will change the landscape of international science as Soviet and Eastern Bloc scientists begin to interact more freely with their Western counterparts.
Photo by Hamid Khaleghi on Unsplash
Touring the zodiac
Why should astrology buffs have all the fun looking up their birth signs in the newspaper horoscope? Herewith, a horoscope (of sorts) for real stargazers, a potpourri of light-hearted zodiac trivia.
Great auk • John James Audubon
A real-life shmoo
This is the sad story of the great auk, a 2‑foot high flightless bird, the original “penguin,” now extinct. The events recounted here happened hundreds of years ago, but the great auk’s fate is a lesson for our time.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
A vanished breed
Whatever became of the Mad Scientist? If you think there have been fewer Mad Scientists in the movies lately, you are right.
Photo by michael podger on Unsplash
Silken snares
On crisp autumn mornings the meadow is a universe of galaxies: spider webs made visible by dew. Star-strung spirals suspended on glistening threads. Tangled silk mats in the grass. Silver funnels, with a spider waiting at each funnel’s black throat.