Science
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This stand of magnificent trees is composed of red pines, pinus resinosa. Each tree is between 60 and 65 feet tall and they are all exactly 51 years old. How can I be so sure about height and age? Height is easy to determine using the Calloway 300 Pro Laser Range Finder. Age? Here's the…
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For many years, we've had to make do with this inferior fly-swatter: It's made of molded plastic and extruded metal wire. It's not handsome — a ghastly inappropriate pink-purple color for the flapper and a small gauge white-coated wire for the handle. Is there a name fpr this styleless style, other than dime-store cheap. Mid-century…
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I've been reading about the origin of spinning and weaving — specifically E. J. W. Barber's Prehistoric Textiles (Princeton, 1991), a comprehensive and exhausting survey of everything that was known about the subject thirty years ago. I'm dazzled — in part by the author, who turns the story into an adventure, but even more so…
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Until this last week, when I read Patrik Svensson's Book of Eels (2019), I had never encountered either of these lovely and mysterious adjectives. I'm delighted to add "anadromous" and "catadromous," along with their cousin "diadromous" to my vocabulary, though when I'll be able to drop any of these words into my quotidian or even…
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What an excellent invention! Imagine life without the blanket. At night, we'd still be keeping warm with hay and leaves. Yeesh, defective insulation. Hay and hayseeds in our noses and mouths. Leaves, leaflets, thick main ribs and petioles poking and imprinting our skin. Constant renewal problems: "Have remembered to fetch the hay for tonight yet?"…
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Most animals, mammals included, sport tails. As well they should. Tails are truly excellent appendages — essential equipment for survival in many cases. Most primates have tails, but alas, the apes, our most immediate cousins, lack these useful "limbs." Some random mutation, way back when, and zap, no more tails. As a result, we humans…
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Last night, I was lying in bed comfortably reading Michael Kulikowski's excellent new book on the last years of the Roman Empire. I was concentrating very hard, because it's difficult for me to retain the decisions made at Nicaea in 325. I can read a paragraph about the Arian or some other "heresy" and five…
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The yips have been big news this week because Jose Altuve, Houston's golden-glove second baseman has made three throwing errors in two games. Glaring, costly errors. He's bounced balls to first base and to second base — throws of twenty or forty feet which he has made successfully thousands of times in his outstanding career.…
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It's called a transplant shovel, and it's manufactured by Sneeboer, a company located in Holland. If you want to buy a garden tool from Sneeboer, you get on the virtual line, and then wait until your number comes up. Worth waiting. I have a weakness for well-made garden tools. This one might be the best…
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It's a commonplace that every one of us is improbable and accidental — a fluke of all flukes. The odds against you or me or any particular person being born, of coming into life, are infinitesimal — a positron's dimension (if positrons have dimension) shy of nothing, of zero. Why is any birth so unlikely? …