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Field Notes

Field Notes / By Barry Evans

Doubting Shakespeare, Part 1: Stratfordians vs. anti-Stratfordians

(April 25, 2024) On April 26, 1564, 460 years ago, the baptism of one "William Shakspere" was recorded in the provincial town of Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England. According to the conventional story, this...

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

A Brief History of Dildos

(April 11, 2024) "Thou ... madest to thyself images of men, and didst commit whoredom with them." — Ezekiel 16:17, KJV Along with notable human achievements such as the invention of the plow...

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

Eclipse!

(March 28, 2024) Science started around dusk on May 28, 585 B.C. Don't take my word for it, that's the opinion of the late polymath/sci-fi author Isaac Asimov. On that date, the Iranian...

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

The Little Drone that Could

(March 14, 2024) Ingenuity, "Ginny" to its friends, will never fly again. The little Mars-based helicopter-drone landed badly on its 72nd flight on Jan. 18, 2024, damaging all four of its carbon...

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

Multiverse

(February 29, 2024) "... at a time when our world, the real world, faces serious problems, [scientists] dwelling on multiverses strikes me as escapism — akin to billionaires fantasizing about colonizing Mars." John...

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

Why Two Sexes?

(February 15, 2024) "The biological definition of sex wasn't designed to ensure fair sporting competition, or to settle disputes about access to healthcare." — Paul Griffiths, professor of Philosophy of Biology, University of...

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

A Not So Boring 2024

(February 1, 2024) At first blush, the number of the year we're living in, 2024, sounds pretty uninteresting. First off, it's obviously not prime (a prime number being only divisible by 1 and...

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

Cosmic Crisis

(January 18, 2024) There are crises and crises, and unless you're an avid science buff, you may not realize that cosmologists — the few thousand researchers whose lives are dedicated to understanding the...

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Field Notes

Nicotine: Not So Benign

(January 4, 2024) Smokers trying to quit say they feel like they're giving up a friend." Scott Leishow, professor at the College of Health Solutions, Arizona State University Even since the 1950s, when...

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

The Awesome Dumbbell Nebula

(December 21, 2023) Charles Messier (1730-1817) was a French comet hunter. Today, scattered around the globe, hundreds of amateur astronomers follow his lead every night, each striving to be the first to discover...

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

Putin Moments

(December 7, 2023) A year ago, lying in bed at 3 a.m., I had what I think of as my "Putin Moment": I couldn't remember the name of the Russian president. Not...

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

Light Pollution

(November 23, 2023) "The thought of light traveling billions of years from distant galaxies only to be washed out in the last billionth of a second by the glow of the nearest strip...

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

Entropy and Order

(November 9, 2023) "You can find many different diagnoses in death certificates, but they're just details. What really kills us is entropy increase." — Sabine Hossenfelder, Existential Physics Along with the Big Bang,...

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

Rocket Science

(October 26, 2023) If you've ever watched the launch of a rocket, perhaps a Space Shuttle or one of SpaceX's Falcon 9s, you'll have heard the phrase "Max Q." About a minute after...

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

Humboldt Bay Timeline

(October 12, 2023) Humboldt Bay (Wigi, to the Wiyot people) is actually a lagoon, the largest protected large body of water between San Francisco and Puget Sound. It's about 14 miles long and...

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Field Notes / By Barry Evans

Darwin's Bulldog

(September 28, 2023) "I was the most popular man in Oxford for full four & twenty hours." — T.H. Huxley, following his debate with Bishop Wilberforce At 25, Thomas Henry Huxley returned from...

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