While the election of a woman to what’s arguably the second most powerful position in the country is a newsworthy event, it’s hardly unprecedented. The world has known plenty of powerful female leaders: Queen Dido (Carthage), Cleopatra (Egypt), Boadicea (Iceni, a British tribe that nearly defeated the Romans), Elizabeth I (England), Catherine the Great (Russia), […]
Barry Evans
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Our Social Brains
In order to appreciate this little window into the inner workings of your brain, please cover up the rest of this column, reading just one paragraph at a time. A deck of cards has, on one side, a person’s age; on the other, it has the drink they are holding, either alcoholic or non-alcoholic. They’re […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Our Newest Public Space: Samoa Dunes and Wetlands Conservation Area
You may know it as Dog Ranch or perhaps Dead Man’s Drop Forest, but forget that. The parcels immediately to the west of Samoa Bridge are now officially the Samoa Dunes and Wetlands Conservation Area. “We’re looking to re-introduce this place to our community,” says Mike Cipra, who heads up Friends of the Dunes, the […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Herd Immunity
We’ve been hearing a lot about the holy grail of herd immunity lately, especially with the introduction of vaccines to counter COVID-19 and a general sense of seeing the light at the end of this yearlong tunnel. As soon as we’ve achieved herd immunity, goes the meme, we’re out of the woods (to mix my […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Charon’s Obol and Other Coins
“My luggage is but a flask, a wallet, my old cloak and the obol that pays the passage of the departed.” — Leonidas of Tarentum, third century B.C. Today, we take coins for granted. But there was a time when being able to trade a small disc of metal for a sheep, a bushel of […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Whence ‘Britain’?
“All the Britons dye themselves with woad which produces a blue color, and makes their appearance in battle more terrible.” — Julius Caesar, De Bello Gallico The etymologies of the names of most countries are mostly non-controversial. “America” derives from the Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512), who made two trips to the so-called New World, […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
The Gold Bug
After having proved the metal with aqua fortis, which I found in my apothecary shop, likewise with other experiments, and read the long article ‘gold’ in the Encyclopedia Americana, I declared this to be gold of the finest quality, of at least 23 carats.” — From “The Discovery Of Gold In California,” by “Captain” John […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Of Course We Still Love You, Voyager!
If spacecraft have feelings, little Voyager 2 must have been feeling pretty lonely and dejected out there in the bleakness of space after Earth went quiet in March. The spacecraft faithfully sent regular signals — readings from the few instruments still powered by its ebbing batteries — but received nothing in return. Its loyalty was […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Evolution’s Co-Discoverer
July 1 should be the day on which we celebrate the theory of evolution. That’s when, in 1858, this revolutionary idea was presented to the world — at least to the august Linnean Society of London — in the form of writings by Charles Darwin and a paper by Alfred Russel Wallace. We don’t because, […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Sound Bites
Last time, I discussed Thomas Edison and Emile Berliner, the two main protagonists in early attempts to reproduce sound. Edison invented a machine that could both record and play back sound — his earliest recording of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on a tinfoil-wrapped cylinder dates to 1877. Edison’s phonograph had limited application, mostly as […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
The Sound Guys: Edison and Berliner
Fifty years after the world’s first surviving photograph was taken by Nicéphore Niépce in 1827, Thomas Edison did for sound what the French experimenter had done for light: capture it. Edison made his first recording “Mary had a Little Lamb” in December of 1877 and — like Niépce’s original photo — it was crude, imperfect, […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Are We the World?
According to Roman writer Ovid, the hunter Narcissus was handsome as all get-out, causing the mountain nymph Echo to fall in love with him. When he rejected her advances (the fool!), she pined away until all that was left was a faint sound — hence our word “echo.” This led to Aphrodite, goddess of revenge, […]