COVID EXIT STRATEGY—THE NUMBERS TO WATCH
“MOST RESEARCHERS AGREE,” Kai Kupferschmidt writes in Science, April 17, 2020, “that reopening society will be a long haul, marked by trial and error.” His article “The Lockdowns Worked—But What … Continue reading
CULTURE—WE’RE ALL ANIMALS OF ONE SORT OR ANOTHER
A NEW BOOK reviewed in Science, April 10, 2020, proposes an expanded view of culture: Rather than Merriam-Webster‘s first definition, “the customary beliefs, social form, and material traits of a … Continue reading
ROYAL HISTORIES RECORDED IN THE ELEMENT LEAD PART 2
YESTERDAY, GRAPHS FROM Science, April 3, 2020, displayed trends of medieval English taxes on silver and lead with those of lead traces found in a Swiss ice core. Today in … Continue reading
ROYAL HISTORIES RECORDED IN THE ELEMENT LEAD PART 1
WHAT A PROVOCATIVE caption for a graph; “The fortunes of kings, written in ice.” The graph, shown later here, accompanied “Lead Pollution Traces the Rise and Fall of Medieval Kings,” … Continue reading
OLD STEAM ENGINES
EARLY ENGINES had their mechanicals exposed for all to admire. An excellent example of this is a beautiful steam engine offered at the Bonham & Butterfields 2010 Quail Lodge automobile … Continue reading
COUNTERING COVID-19—WORLDWIDE TACTICS
COUNTERING COVID-19 HAS become a worldwide challenge. In Science, March 20, 2020, Jon Cohen and Kai Kupferschmidt discussed responses in “Countries Test Tactics in ‘War’ Against COVID-19.” They quote World … Continue reading
COVID-19 AND THE SEASONS—PRELIMINARY SCIENTIFIC THOUGHTS
SCIENCE—NOT “FEELINGS” or hunches—should guide our response to the COVID-19 pandemic. On March 20, 2020, Science, the weekly journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, published “Sick … Continue reading
ASSESSING OUR LADY
THE GOAL OF RESTORING Paris’s Notre Dame cathedral by 2024 has encouraged scientific analyses of this historical building. Science, March 13, 2020, devoted a major article to these endeavors. Here … Continue reading
MOUSER DESCENDANTS MAKE GOOD IN MADAGASCAR
THE ISLAND OF Madagascar in the Indian Ocean has no indigenous cat populations. But it does have an elusive feline twice the size of a house cat. Researchers say this … Continue reading
ON EQUALITY, MATHWISE AND OTHERWISE PART 1
“THE SQUARE OF the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.” Apart from giving us the pun about squaws sleeping on various hides, … Continue reading
