If you wish to see submerged rocks ahead, or creatures in a tide pool, you need to wear Polaroid sunglasses. Their ability to reduce glare is a consequence of some very interesting physics. I will demonstrate, for example, that when you see light reflected from a surface, that light did not simply bounce off the […]
Life + Outdoors
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Wars Remembered
“Well, maybe a dream it was / It’s really hard to tell / But if it’s not, I’d just survived / The very depths of Hell.” So ends the next-to-last section of a 15-part poetic rumination on the Vietnam War written by Blue Ox Millworks founder and Vietnam vet Eric Hollenbeck. You probably haven’t read […]
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Task Force
Armed with pie charts, statistics and a pictorial display of the sort of slovenliness the Humboldt County Code Enforcement Unit frequently deals with regularly, interim County Counsel Wendy Chaitin and Deputy County Counsel Richard Hendry began an overview of the controversial unit last Friday at the first meeting of the Code Enforcement Task Force. (For […]
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Fossil Collagen
Collagen is the protein that holds our bodies together. It constitutes our connective tissues. Lampreys, sharks and skates use it instead of bone. It is such a tough protein that some small fraction may have survived 68 million years in a T. rex skeleton excavated a few years ago. A team of six scientists recently […]
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The Cursed Wind
I’ve been getting e-mails from Journal readers all week. Everyone’s freaked out about the blazing heat followed by the rain and the fog followed by the maddening wind. “What’s up with this weather?” people keep asking me. Like I would know. As I write this, it’s the wind that’s making everyone nuts. It’s a forceful, […]
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Pumping Heat
If you own a refrigerator, you own a heat pump, which moves heat from one place to another. Heat pumps can efficiently heat a home by transporting heat from the environment into the home. Rocky Drill and wife Kathy Marshall have reduced their carbon footprint by installing heat pumps which can also serve as air […]
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Straw Report
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about my new experiment in vegetable gardening. The idea was to build raised beds out of rice straw bales, creating a no-dig bed that would basically turn into one giant compost pile at the end of the season. I heard from several people who were interested in trying the […]
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Of Cubs and Men
Last week a reader came into the Journal office with what sounded like a really juicy story tip. It involved a death, a government agency and a cover-up. And it wasn’t an isolated incident. The agency responsible for protecting the victim, it was alleged, had a hidden agenda and a history of past offenses. For […]
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… and Poets and Writers
Last April I was invited to read one of the poems I had submitted to the 2008 Poets and Writers Celebration. This celebration, a performance celebrating original compositions by community members, students, staff and faculty of College of the Redwoods, is held each year at CR’s Eureka campus. A prize is awarded for the best […]