BoneWars movie 1500 crop

bone wars, rock-star scientists, and runaway egos

IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES for dis­cov­ering new di­nosaurs! Al­losaurus! Bron­tosaurus! Stegosaurus! Tricer­atops! Bloody rep­tiles with wings and birds with teeth What a heady time it was to be a sci­en­tist! Yet it was ar­guably the worst of times for es­tab­lishing re­spect for sci­en­tists and the rea­son­ably new fields of pa­le­on­tology and com­par­a­tive anatomy. [Read more] “bone wars, rock-star scientists, and runaway egos”

Timneh header3 1500

not your typical african grey parrot

I MET THE GIRL OF MY DREAMS in the last month of the last year of the last cen­tury. I was 47 and Berni was, well, let’s say younger. People who know us now think we’re a per­fect match, a ‘nat­ural’ couple. But it wasn’t al­ways so—especially not in the be­gin­ning, when I was gaga over her but she was con­sid­er­ably less than gaga over me. [Read more] “not your typical african grey parrot”

CaptainMarvel 1500 1

“shazam” with a small “s” and no exclamation mark

FIRST THERE IS A MOUN­TAIN then there is no moun­tain then there is. I had made this walk a hun­dred times be­fore today but today was ex­tra­or­di­nary, but then every day is extraordinary.

So, I walked as I al­ways do and al­ways did.

So, I walked past the many tele­phone poles on 112th Av­enue NE. [Read more] ““shazam” with a small “s” and no exclamation mark”

HorseNebula 800

ken crawford and barnard 33

IF YOU KNOW NOTHING about as­tronomy and galactic for­ma­tion and neb­ulae, you still prob­ably know about the Horse­head Nebula. The gor­geous image of that mass of dirt and de­bris above was taken by Ken Craw­ford in 2011. He took this photo from his back­yard ob­ser­va­tory in Rancho Del Sol Camino, the image taking twenty hours of ex­po­sure and seven dif­ferent filters! [Read more] “ken crawford and barnard 33”