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Orange Juice
about #RichardFeynman playing #bongo Here, after a lecture, Richard Feynman plays his signature "Orange Juice" theme with his friend and fellow drum player, Ralph Leighton.
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Cassini points to a hidden ocean on Saturn’s icy moon
Finding liquid water on a celestial body within the solar system is exciting. The only thing that is probably more exciting is finding an ocean full of it. Today such news comes via Cassini, which has...
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Brian Arthur's vision of Complexity Economics
My friend Daria Roithmayr alerted me to a working paper of Brian Arthur laying out a vision for a new approach to studying economics. Brian Arthur is one of the pioneers of complex systems thought,...
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Raw milk enthusiasts want you to drink a bacterial stew. Yum.
Sometimes it is astonishing how ignorant people can be. Now it's the turn of fans of "raw milk," a new fad that is sweeping the U.S.I still remember reading milk cartons as a kid, and asking my parents...
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Caulerpa: Sea Grapes, Feather Algae and Other Variations on a Tube
Invasive Caulerpa taxifolia in the Mediterranean, from here.There is an observation (it has been dubbed 'Gorton's Law') that any discussion of any marine organism will invariably lead to someone asking...
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Forcing taxonomy
Things are slowly greening up, but my taxonomy class needs more flowering specimens. So TPP will have to resort to more forcing, that is, bringing nearly in flower specimens into the glasshouse to...
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Waiting for the beginning
Following a draft published on arXiv a couple of weeks ago, the BICEP2's observations could be explained not only with the cosmic inflation, but also with another mechanism: The recent claimed...
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Pave paradise, put up a parking lot
What the bloody hell are they thinking? Please understand, far northern Queensland is one of TPP's favorite places, so why does big money interests continue to try to pave paradise and put up a parking...
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Ouch! Things are tough all over, even at Kew.
When people think of botanical gardens, if they know their stuff, they think of Kew. Botanical gardens are not just pretty places, they do lots of what you would generally call conservation biology...
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What a batting average!
.280, a respectable, although not great major league baseball batting average. Oh, but this isn't about baseball, it's about accurate reporting of climate science news on PHLOX News. Yes, that's...
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Colbert is dangerous and bad for our country?
If the big, blustering Bully O’Really thinks Stephen Colbert is dangerous for our country, then TPP is more than certain that Colbert is doing exactly the right thing. In this case, demonstrating...
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Friday Fabulous Future Flowers - the blue lawn
The Phactors' blue lawn is almost upon us (which TPP has reported on before); the peak flowering of the thousands of Scilla bulbs that actually form a major component of our lawn in the spring. Dang,...
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Pragmatic definitions in biology
Biology is littered with concepts that biologists cannot always agree on how to define or where there are special cases where the common definition have to be amended. Species. Complexity. Modularity....
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Eat the weeds?
Generally TPP like the articles posted at Treehugger, but not this one on edible weeds so much. The reasons are the usual ones: dubious advice. OK here's the list of 9 weeds they recommend:...
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Bitter greens of spring
TPP appreciates the anonymous tip to this poetic description of spring greens at Salt and Stone Poetry. Although if you considered TPP's comment in the last blog as anything other than saying dandelion...
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The Harmony of Colors
The first "geological" maps used symbols to characterize single outcrops; later maps introduced shaded areas to display the distribution of specific rock-types, but due the high printing-costs these...
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Jurij Gagarin: a dream during an orbit
by @ulaulaman about #YuriGagarin #space_esploration #Russia #ColdWar He was born in Klušino on the 9th March, 1934; he died on the 27th March 1968, in a plane crash. His death and the controversy that...
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Landscaping challenge
One thing leads to another, and the Phactors done one thing, in this instance, removing several old declining spruces, a big old ugly yew, and a rear-view mirror-removing redbud with no other redeeming...
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New dwarf planet found sneaking through the inner Oort cloud
A new, planet-like body has been found on the outer edges of the solar system. This object, called 2012VP113, is the second body of its class found since the identification of the dwarf planet Sedna in...
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Star-Grass
Common star-grass Hypoxis hirsuta, photographed by Merel R. Black.It does not require a great deal of insight to understand why the plant pictured above has acquired the vernacular names of...
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