Clik here to view.
Far out, man!
Consider TPP's mind blown! One mighty strange nostalgia trip that came from reading the Chi-town Trib this fine Sunday AM, and that doesn't happen very often. This was a time machine instant trip to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Dr. Ruth L. Elder - July 22, 1954 – Nov. 4, 2014
Dr. Ruth L. (Jessie) Elder passed away earlier this month at the age of 60. Dr. Elder is best known in the vertebrate paleontology community for her work on the Triassic vertebrate fauna from the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The top five cold remedies that do not work
A cure for the cold, from ThadGuy.comOne of my daughters caught a cold last week, and now she's given it to me. We’re giving ourselves the best treatment known to science: rest. But to judge from the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Molecular modeling and physics: A tale of two disciplines
For its development physics relies both on time for understanding and on multiple other disciplines that make tools like the LHC possible (Image: Universe Today)In my professional field of molecular...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Water, fire, & insects
These are three primary worries of herbarium curators. The collection TPP curates is small, only 50,000 or so specimens. Some of them date back 200 years, some were collected by famous people, and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Retirement project for the garden
Somehow the Phactors managed to accumulate a few hundred green wine bottles all cleaned up nicely. The idea was to commission a glass artist to do something for our garden with all those bottles, but...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Oppenheimer’s Folly: On black holes, fundamental laws and pure and applied...
Einstein and Oppenheimer: Both men in their later years dismissed black holes as anomalies, unaware that they contained some of the deepest mysteries of physics (Image: Alfred Eisenstaedt, LIFE...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Religious and paranormal believers are high in empathy – but confused about...
There’s a strand of thought that says that belief in the supernatural is founded upon a misunderstanding of how the world works (see: You either believe in it all, or you don’t). On the other hand,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Snow snow snow
Western upstate New York is getting some snow, like 77 inches of snow with another foot or two on the way. This is the stuff of lake effect snow storms. These storms pick up moisture as they move...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Gotta get one of these! Starry, starry bike path
TPP often blogs about bicycles; always liked them. But never before has there been a reason to blog about the bike path. This is just super duper, although it has been years since TPP road a bike at...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Friday Fabulous Flower - Tea
The best thing about having a glasshouse at your disposal, more or less, is that things are always happening in there plant-wise. The glasshouse plant collection is support of teaching and research, so...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The globe of Galileo
video by @ulaulaman #levitation Published by Gianluigi (@ulaulaman) in data: Nov 11, 2014 at 4:41 PST It's just a little Earth, turns and levitates above its base, reminding those who contributed to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ken Ham wants to return to whatever we once were
Ken Ham delivers an awesome summary of the decline of religion's influence in his Answers Magazine. It reads really well, mostly, if you forget for a moment that it's written by Ham. Otherwise, you can...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A brief history of video game graphics
Part 1: Pixel PioneersPart 2: Sprite SupremePart 3: Polygon RealmPart 4: Voodoo BloomPart 5: Future Crisis
View ArticleClik here to view.
Philosophy begins where physics ends, and physics begins where philosophy ends
Richard Feynman - philosopher (Image:WashU)A few months ago, physicist Sean Carroll has some words of wisdom for physicists who might have less than complimentary things to say about philosophy. The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Great seasonal garden decorations
This little garden just wowed TPP when he noticed that the grasses in the center of this little traffic island had been bundled for the winter, a practice not all that unusual, but then enhanced by...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Teasels and Scabious: the Dipsacaceae
Scabiosa cretica, copyright Ori Fragman Sapir.As recognised plant families go, the Dipsacaceae is not a particularly large one. It includes only a few hundred species, of which the majority are found...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Black Yeasts, Black Lichens and Rotting Wood: the Chaetothyriomycetidae
Pyrenula cruenta, copyright Gary Perlmutter.There is no denying that the advent of molecular phylogenetic analysis has been a boon for fungal systematics. It has allowed a much greater resolution of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Silesaurid-Herrerasaurid-Neotheropod Assemblage from the Late Triassic of Poland
This is currently free from the Palaeontology Online website.Niedźwiedzki, G., Brusatte, S. L., Sulej, T., and R. J. Butler. 2014. Basal dinosauriform and theropod dinosaurs from the mid–late Norian...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Squirrel olympic training
The primary training season for the squirrel olympics is underway. The primaryevent is always the same: get into the bird feeder and hog down all bird seed. So far this year the event has mainly...
View Article