The New Age began, as far as I was concerned, in the spring of 1970. Fresh in the Americas, I was completely captivated by woo — the more some phenomenon seemed ridiculous, the more likely I was to believe it. “Credo quia absurdum,” wrote the Christian apologist Tertullian around 200 A.D. “I believe it because […]
Field Notes
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The Shape of Zoophilia
The Shape of Water, an Oscar-winning romance between a latter-day Creature from the Black Lagoon and a mute cleaning lady, can be summed up in a word: bestiality. The stuff of countless jokes, Puritan laws and erotic art, bestiality comes with its own morality playbook and taboos. Like prostitution (supposedly the oldest profession), bestiality was […]
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Magnificent Frigate Birds
Frigate birds are a surprising study in contrasts. On the one hand, I admire them gliding effortlessly high overhead, following the updraft above a Pacific beach in southern Mexico. On the other hand, here’s a male “magnificent” frigate bird on the Galapagos, perched clumsily with his ungainly red gular pouch inflated. It’s a chick magnet: […]
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April Quiz
They say — someone says — eating blueberries, salmon and avocados is good for the brain. So is solving puzzles. Here’s your annual IQ-increasing set of teasers. Nothing too difficult, a couple of trick ones thrown in. (See the answers below.) 1. What’s the connection between the Basque language and the name of our county? […]
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The E.T. Equation
“… there must be extraterrestrial civilizations … because the laws of nature that led to the development of life and intelligence on Earth must be the same as those prevailing elsewhere in the universe.” — Robert Zubrin Astronomer Frank Drake proposed what became known as the Drake Equation in 1961 to provoke discussion on how […]
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The Voynich Manuscript
“The mysterious Voynich manuscript has finally been decoded.” — Ars Technica headline Sept. 8, 2017 And here we go again. Every two or three years, ever since the so-called Voynich Manuscript resurfaced from obscurity in 1912, professional researchers and amateur decipherers announce they’ve decoded this 15th century book. This time around it’s Greg Kondrak, professor […]
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Perpetual Motion Machines
Around the year 1180, an Indian mathematician, Bhaskara II, invented what is generally claimed to be the world’s first perpetual motion machine. It was a vertical wheel with mercury-filled tubes attached to the rim; as the wheel turned, mercury flowed to the lowest parts of the tubes, maintaining the rotation indefinitely — you can see […]
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M. Sax’s Brass Clarinet
Adolphe Sax, were he alive today at age 203, probably wouldn’t be surprised that Macklemore’s 2012 hip hop hit “Thrift Shop” featured the saxophone because he designed it for versatility. By combining the agility of woodwind with the projection of brass, Sax created an instrument that is at home in virtually every musical genre. With […]
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Panspermia and SETI
The last time I saw Bob Zubrin, at a conference of the Mars Society of which he’s president, he was, as usual, passionately advocating for manned missions to Mars. “If we send robotic machines ahead of humans to synthesize rocket fuel from the planet’s soil and atmosphere, we can cut NASA’s $400 billion cost estimate […]
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Long Distance Voyager
You decide to store your car in a garage, return to it 37 years later, jump in and turn the ignition key. If it starts right away, you deem it a small miracle, right? So let’s give credit where it’s due, to not one but four ignition starts on small engines — trajectory correction maneuver […]
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Take Two Aspirin
It’s a geezer thing. We old dudes typically start losing hair in our 60s, the crowns of our heads being the first to go — hence the monks’ tonsure look. In my case, beyond the narcissism issue (“Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity”), I developed a scalpful of dandruff not seen since […]
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Nobel Sexism
Cover up the next paragraph and take a guess at how many women have won the Nobel Prize for Physics, awarded to 206 people since its inception in 1901. And the answer is … Two. Less than 1 percent of the total. Marie Curie received one-quarter of the prize in 1903 for her work on […]