I used to ask the question in biology class: why do we eat? The logical and most common answer, of course, was “because we get hungry.” “But why do we get hungry” I asked them back? “Because our stomachs are empty.”…
Given the phenomenal success of this Kickstarter project (13k backers, $2.76 million pledged towards a goal of $200k) you should be interested in SCiO–a miniature hand-held spectrometer. This, my amigos, changes everything. It will take the guesswork out of buying…
You might [or more likely might not] have noticed a marked shift here at the blog away from content with any hope of lifting environmental, sustainability or human-culture topics up into the radar. The blog readership has morphed far away…
Things come in threes and when they do, I start to see shapes in the clouds. Creativity, after all, is putting together what already exists–often in some other person’s work or thoughts or writings–in novel ways to make them your…
The SkyBox cameras in space will revolutionize how we watch things happen on the surface of Earth from now on. There are some good things that will come from this. We will never NOT KNOW how fast the forests are…
In conversation the other day, somebody told about their increasing reliance on almond flour as a gluten-free alternative to wheat flour. I suggested they stock up and begin looking for alternatives. The cost of almonds is likely to spike as…
Some of you out there–of a certain age–may have experienced some degree of the “Overview Effect” vicariously through the astronauts of the early 70s. Some of them were permanently changed by what they saw from space. I was, too. I’d…
This marks ten years since I taught “Environmental Biology” at Radford University. One of my students chose to write about bird flu. I wondered why he cared if a bird sneezed. I soon learned that avian flu was one of…
I had told myself ENOUGH ice-talk and images on Fragments already. But winter does not relent, and waters winter forms dominate our days. We have a covering of snow to complicate things this morning. Coincidentally, I ran across this article…
But don’t let it go to your head. So is everybody else. Really. But it’s a big place, and getting bigger. “The” Universe is wider across, in fact, than twice distance light has traveled since the Big Bang. I’d seen those…
I was reading again the other day about tentative new plans for “rewilding” the earth with recently–or long-extinct–animals that have disappeared due to the impacts of the human swarm during the age of modern civilization since the last ice age.…
I have once again waded into a quagmire–the occasion, an opportunity to talk with the small group of high school kids as they begin to think about their place in the world–in time and in place. Place is easier to…
We’re talking well-aged water: like for a billion years or more: found trapped in ancient bedrock north of Lake Superior. And that ancient water may contain living organisms that came along long before multicellular life on the surface. Or so…
The word has the harsh consonant sounds of a Slovic swear word. But it’s appropriate in mixed company. (Isn’t this an antiquated phrase, considering what is deemed appropriate–or at least uncensored– in any company at any time and any medium?…