flowerbed Originally uploaded by Edward Willett. This is a flower bed in Central Park. (No, not that Central Park–this one just across the street from our condo complex in Regina.) I’ve walked by it for weeks now meaning to take a picture or two; this morning, I finally got around to it.
Category: Blog
Bee mine
berrybee Originally uploaded by Edward Willett. I took a walk around Wascana Lake this morning taking some “artistic photos,” as I rather egotistically like to call them. One was of a mountain ash (I think) with lots of red berries on display. I took a close-up of the berries–and only discovered when I looked at …
Surgical secrets of the ancients
We in the 21st century have a deplorable tendency at times to look down on those who lived in centuries preceding ours as primitive, ignorant people. No, I’m not talking about those poor benighted souls of the late, unlamented 20th century (especially since I was one of them). I’m thinking of a bit further back—say, …
Comet ‘Armageddon’ less likely than previously thought
Well, this is good news! An astronomer has calculated that there are seven times fewer comets in our solar system than previously thought, and thus the chances of us being wiped out by a collision with a “continent-busting” comet are also less than previously thought; such a thing probably only happens once every 150 million …
Take off those headphones!
I realize it’s just another sign of my advancing codgerdom, but it annoys me to see people walking around wearing headphones or earpods. I gave the original Walkman a try, back in the day, and found I hated being cut off from the world that way. I keep expecting to hear about a huge upswing …
Thunderbolt and lightning, very very frightening…
This cool little device is a handheld storm detector that detects thunderstrom activity up to 75 miles away, calculates the distance, displays warning information, and continously monitors the storm, providing updates every 15 seconds on distance, approach speed, intensity and ETA. Anyone who works or plays in the great outdoors could use something like this. …
A warning to science writers (like me)…
…contained in this article from The Guardian. Science is done by scientists, who write it up. Then a press release is written by a non-scientist, who runs it by their non-scientist boss, who then sends it to journalists without a science education who try to convey difficult new ideas to an audience of either lay …
Here’s a headline you don’t see every day:
Giant walk-through colon tours Canada.
A Katrina photo-essay
Check out this incredible photo essay from someone who stayed in New Orleans during the hurricane and the flooding (and then made it safely out to Texas). (Via By the Way.)
You are your own generator…
…with this high-tech backpack that creates electricity while you hike, and is more comfortable than a regular backpack, to boot.
Why didn’t I think of this?
A new use for unpublished manuscripts and unproduced screenplays. (Via Roger L. Simon.)
"You appear to be constructing a molecule, would you like help with that?"
Here’s an interesting overview of where nanotechnology might take us–sooner than anyone thinks.
My latest live walk and vlog
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