I know Mother’s Day is over for this year, but… I’ve been catching up on some favorite podcasts recently, and happened to hear about a tremendous feat of mothering. We all know that octopuses are remarkable animals. But in 2007, a robot submarine stumbled across an octopus settling in to brood her eggs at the
Just before school ended, one of the permanent teachers asked if I’d ever seen anything like this pandemic before in my lifetime. At first I was a bit taken aback, but when I realized I was (by far) the oldest person in the room, I said no, I hadn’t. This crisis is going to upend
My first memory of my uncle’s workshop was a dirt floor. It was tacked onto the side of his dairy barn, so it was no big deal. I think it stuck in my memory because it was my first natural floor that wasn’t intended for animals. Such floors are fine for barns, but problematic for
I know this is ferociously bad timing, but once we get past this pandemic, what will be the next problem to hit us? There are many ways to approach this, depending upon which experts you listen to, but here is one viewpoint, under the catchy title “Experts Knew a Pandemic Was Coming. Here’s What They’re
The coronavirus pandemic is causing a serious reexamination of our lives, including our priorities. At times the need for medical supplies has become so acute we’ve been forced to deal with some very uncomfortable questions. For example, if the curve isn’t flattened and the hospitals are overwhelmed, who gets priority treatment? Should it be the
It’s not unusual to regret one’s actions; in my life, it’s a semi-regular occurrence. But how many people actually come to regret their inventions? You might be surprised. One invention we’d all be better off without is the atomic bomb. Two of the principal figures in its creation were Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer.
One part of our language we all take for granted is numbers, beginning with Sesame Street’s Count von Count. Numbers play a critical role in virtually every aspect of our civilization. But what if there were no words for numbers in English? Believe it or not, some languages do lack words for numbers. When you
There is a term for everything. For example, that little plastic sleeve on the end of your shoelace is an aglet, probably invented by Harvey Kennedy in 1790 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aglet). So yesterday when I was reading about astronomy, I found a word that piqued my interest — gnomon. According to Miriam-Webster (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gnomon), it’s “an object that
I realize this is not a good topic for the middle of a quarantine, but is it possible to show too much love? Apparently so. Our bodies are very complex and anything can go wrong. For example, the current PBS show “The Gene: An Intimate History” by documentarian Ken Burns (https://www.pbs.org/show/gene/) is exploring some genetic
It’s April Fool’s Day as I write this, and for the first time in memory I didn’t find any celebrations of this day of pranks until 10 pm tonight (although the main reason is quarantine). This is more proof that the coronavirus is having a profound impact on our society. We shouldn’t let an opportunity
