Category Archives: Fun Facts

Goal-setting in a New Year

One of the rituals of a new year is to plan self improvement in the form of a resolution, then ultimately slip back into your former habits. There’s got to be a better way. Actually, there is. In an article entitled “How to Set Goals You’ll Actually Achieve,” Amanda Loudin lays out a plan to

Read More

A Coat as a Shelter?

What is your trigger point, the moment when you see a wrong and feel you just have to do something about it? For Dutch clothing designer Bas Timmer, it was in 2014 when a friend’s father succumbed to hypothermia after being unable to find adequate shelter. Bas had started his own outdoor, cold weather clothing line,

Read More

Weighing More Than Nature

The end of the year is always a good time for reflection, and it’s the perfect time to note milestones and measure progress. As such, I’ve found a very unusual milestone in the history of our planet. The year 2020 saw the total weight of man-made materials overtake the weight of biomass made by Mother

Read More

Is Hypnosis Real?

I have never understood hypnosis. Its use in numerous TV shows and movies over the years hasn’t really explained to me what actually happens. So a recent article entitled “Is Hypnosis Real? Here’s What Science Says” by Markham Heid caught my eye (https://time.com/5380312/is-hypnosis-real-science/?). “There are many myths about hypnosis, mostly coming from media presentations,” says

Read More

One Way to Fight Drought

First, the bad news — Ladakh, a plateau on the northern tip of India, has a major problem. With only four inches of rain a year, this area depends upon winter snow and mountain glaciers for most of its water. But due to climate change, the snow is melting earlier and the glaciers are receding.

Read More

What Has Been The Loudest Sound?

What is the loudest noise you can imagine? The human ear’s pain threshold is near 130 decibels. For comparison, a jackhammer puts out about 100 decibels, and a jet engine comes in at about 150 decibels. Yet there was a sound that was measured at least 172 decibels 100 miles from the source. This source

Read More

Announcing the Color of the Year

The Pantone Color Institute has just announced the color of the year for 2021, and as befitting leaving the chaos of 2020, it has chosen two colors. This is only the second time in 22 years that two colors have been selected. As explained on the Pantone website (https://www.pantone.com/color-of-the-year-2021), their selections for next year are —

Read More

Can Indoor Plants Purify Air?

Along with pets, some nice plants really brighten a homestead. You may have heard that houseplants can also improve air quality. But is it really true? Well, maybe. Some supporting evidence comes from NASA, which was wondering if living greenery could help clean the air aboard a space station. A 1989 NASA experiment found that

Read More