Science
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On the main street of Estes Park (Gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park), a sign outside the restaurant advertised "deepfried oreos." I was both flabbergasted and thunderstruck, not believing my eyes. But here's the evidence: Just above ice cream and below "funnel cakes" (but that's another story). Is it a hoax, or can there be…
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If you asked me to guess what the word "chalaza" means, I'd say, from its sound, that it would have to be an odd cactus-y looking plant that grows only in the Atacama desert and flowers once a decade, or an extinct language formerly spoken in the southern Caucasus mountains, or perhaps some sort of…
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It's a paraceratherium. Because it was extinct before humans came on the scene and perhaps because it's not cute or disneyesque, it doesn't have a common name but I think "really big rhinoceros" fills the bill. You can see from the illustration that it was enormous, much larger than any of our surviving megafauna.…
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I'm most fond of the gasplant, also called fraxinella or dittany or, when formality is called for, dictamnus albus. It's a beautiful plant. In flower it's an ornament to the perennial garden, and even when it's done blooming, it's neat and orderly and retains a lovely shade of green throughout the summer. Smells good too. It's a…
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Our sun is halfway through its life cycle. Its luminosity increases 1% every 110 million years. Therefore the Earth ineluctably grows hotter and hotter. In a billion years, life on its surface will be impossible. Global surface temperatures will reach 117F and the oceans will evaporate. Water molecules in the atmosphere will be broken apart…
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It's a little late in the day for me to embark on a career in pteridology. Too many ferns, too little time. There may be a backup option: intimate, private pteridophilia or even pteridomania. But in fact, empty enthusiasm is no substitute for knowledge. It's mortifying that after all these years of treading upon, admiring…
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I enjoy good relations with animal — respectful, sometimes even affectionate. I remember with great fondness the many purring, playful cats and kittens of my youth. I was once very taken with a calf named September and, I confess, almost in love with the matriarch of a small herd of Morgans, a lovely lady named Gillian. The twin Nigerian dwarf goats, Orville…
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Egregious Rush Limbaugh, who ranks number three on my list of the people who, in the course of my lifetime, have done the most damage to the United States of America (Dick Cheney and Antonin Scalia are one and two and Dick Nixon only slithers in at number 6) speaks a language that is extraordinarily difficult to parse. His sentences…
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Yesterday, and for the last week, there were two mallard in the pond: a buff-brown female trailed incessantly by a shiny green head. Courting, if not already nesting. But today there's just one, the female, and she's swimming round and round, quacking, quacking. What happened to Mr. Mallard. Where is he? Eaten by fox or…
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Bats originated approximately 50 million years ago. Although warm-blooded, many have "thermostats" that allow body temperature to vary with ambient temperature; they are therefore "heterothermic." There are 1300 living bat species — about 20% of all mammal species. The Long-tongued Fruit bat has a wingspan of 1.5 centimeters; the Spectral Bat a wingspan of a…