June’s solstice has just passed and I find myself where I usually am each year at this time—37,000 feet in the air and winging off to the field. One of the great joys of my job is to set out armed to the teeth with notebooks, cameras and voice recorder, and join an archaeological crew in […]
Nature
A cow fell out of the sky and crushed me flat. I pushed it aside with all my might, but then – boom! another cow came barreling out of the blue. Again, I shoved it aside, to no avail, because, hey, yet another cow was falling in its wake. After a while, I thought it […]
The last time I wrote about the evolution of language, scientists’ theories sounded like contradictory Just-So stories. Some said language began with gestures, like pointing at the food you want. Others said language began with talking, like “look out!” or “hey you, get over here.” Nobody had much solid evidence: language evolved, after all, without […]
On a hot summer day, I like to watch a rat or two foraging on the tracks of the New York City subway system. No-one is entirely sure how many of the whiskered beasties live in the city, although, thanks to New York’s electronic rat map, a catalog of rat hot spots such as lived-in […]
Ian McEwan’s entertaining new novel, Solar, contains one of the best descriptions of a bag of potato chips (or “crisps” to the Brits) that I have ever read: “It was a plastic foil bag of finely sliced potatoes boiled in oil and dusted in salt, industrialized powdered foodstuffs, preservatives, enhancers, hydrolizing and raising agents, acidity […]
When I’m thirsty, I often fancy a cool drink of green algae, filled with Spirulina, a vitamin-and protein-packed beverage resembling pond scum that’s promoted as an immune-boosting elixir. I think of algae as benign or beneficial: clinging to a damp tree trunk, like the primitive one-celled Protococcus; as a source of biodiesel, aka oilgae; or […]
