Not long ago, on a walk through southern England, I visited Down House, sixteen miles south of London, for forty years the family home of Charles and Emma Darwin.
Articles from December 2022
The North Downs • Photo by Clem Rutter (CC BY 2.5)
"Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee" by Ludolf Backhuysen (1695)
Gladdening smiles, mournful tears
The stained glass window above the altar of St. Andrew’s Anglican Church on the island of Exuma shows Christ stilling the waters of the Sea of Galilee. However, the waters in the window do not seem particularly threatening, nor do the apostles seem anxious.
Photo by Robina Weermeijer on Unsplash
Making a mind
Francis Crick, the codiscoverer of the DNA double helix, writes in his book The Astonishing Hypothesis: “To understand ourselves, we must understand how nerve cells behave and how they interact.”
Photo by Annie Niemaszyk on Unsplash
Winter stars
The drama of the night sky comes in two acts, as the Milky Way sweeps overhead in summer, then again in winter. These are the seasons when our evenings are posted with bright stars and constellations.
Photo by Vlad Tchompalov on Unsplash
The meaning of life?
“The most common of all follies,” wrote H. L. Mencken, “is to believe passionately in the palpably not true.”
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.
Photo by Clark Young on Unsplash
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.
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash
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.