First, if you please, a moment of silence for the thylacine. The Tasmanian tiger, last seen in the wild in 1930, was once Tasmania’s top predator, snacking on possums, wallabies, and the unlucky Tasmanian emu. (Despite persistent rumors, the thylacine did not drink blood. Sorry.) When European settlers arrived, bringing feral dogs, habitat destruction and […]
Curiosities
Yesterday I related the official version of how photons from the star Arcturus triggered an electrical signal that lit up the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago. My research into that event, however, has sent me deep into the weeds. Most historical accounts claim that four observatories — Yerkes, Harvard College, Allegheny, and the University of […]
Arcturus, in the constellation Boötes the Herdsman, is the fourth-brightest star in the sky. It’s visible high overhead in late spring twilight, but you can also find it low in the west after sunset in September. All you need to do is let your eye follow the stars of the handle of the Big Dipper, […]
In the Southern summer of 2004, my then-girlfriend and I were camped in a shelter near a rock climbing area in New Zealand called Flock Hill. It was a gorgeous landscape, sweeping grassy hills made famous as Rohan in the “Lord of the Rings” and glacial erratics from the final battle scene in “The Lion, […]
It’s small, it’s fuzzy, and it hurts like hell. Variously known as the “cow killer,” “mule killer,” and “motherf-ing thing that just stung me,” the velvet ant packs more pain per pound than the meanest great white. Don Manley, a professor emeritus of entomology at Clemson University, recalls his run-in with Dasymutilla sp. as the worst […]
Two weeks ago, for the first time in 15 years, I flushed the toilet inside my house. This — and by “this” I mean the 15 years of non-flushing — was not quite as gross as it might sound. Until very recently, my family and I lived off the electrical grid in rural Colorado, in […]
Yesterday I confessed my fear of magicians. Today I confront that fear by going to the source: Alex Stone, a magician I met at a party who, at my prompting, was kind enough to perform an impromptu set that thrilled me but that also, on the walk home, left me feeling uneasy. I later learned […]
Magicians scare me. Not magic. Magic is cool. I was at a party recently when I asked someone what he did and he said he was a magician and I said I hope he didn’t mind but would he possibly—and even before the request was out of my mouth he had produced a deck of […]