Back in the early ’70s I had a student named Kathleen B. who went to live in the woods. She moved out of the college dormitory and set up a tent in a forested part of the campus, in a clearing under white pines. Alone.
Photo by Holly Mandarich on Unsplash
The mating behavior of PhDs
The heart of a scientist is as easily warmed and as easily broken as anyone else’s, and that’s probably why the search for love finally is making its way into journals with names like Technology Review and Science.
Sodium chloride crystals • Photo by Christian V (CC BY-SA 4.0)
The realm of trolls and gnomes
The [1991] Gems exhibit at the Boston Museum of Science begins as gems begin — deep underground.
Photo by Hannah Jacobson on Unsplash
Who’s chasing whom?
Recently, there has been a spate of letters to Ann Landers from moms concerned about sexually aggressive girls pursuing their teenaged sons — little temptresses hanging out on the front stoop, or calling in the middle of the night, that sort of thing. Don’t these girls know, the mothers ask, that it’s a boy’s role to do the chasing?
US fighter jets flying over Kuwait • US Department of Defense (Public Domain)
Delusions of techno-wizardry
Mary Kingsley, intrepid Victorian traveler, was one of the most adventurous of 19th century European explorers of Africa. Untypical of Victorian women, she went where men feared to go. She was also untypical in her sensitive appreciation of African culture and thought. But even she never doubted the racial preeminence of Europeans.
A spring peeper • Photo by Justin Meissen (CC BY-SA 2.0)
The annual spring peeper hocus pocus
The spring peepers are in full fortissimo chorus.
Photo by Brennan Wolf on Unsplash
A whole lot of heaven at a starstruck resort
Looking for dark, starry skies? Drive 60 miles east out of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Get off the interstate at Las Vegas (not the neon-lit casino town, but a place with fewer lights and considerably more charm).
Photo by Brian McCall on Unsplash
Memories were made of this
It’s a familiar story, but I’ll tell it again.
US Department of Energy (Public Domain)
The real story of nuclear winter and the dinosaurs’ demise
Rumors have been flying that paleontologist Robert (Ace) Hayprel has found dinosaur fossils that will revolutionize our views about how those creatures became extinct 65 million years ago.
Photo by Orin Zebest (CC BY 2.0)
The age-old gum ball conundrum
How many gum balls can you fit into a gum ball machine? And does it matter?