Dog Days

By: | July 17, 2014

374px-Close-up_of_SiriusThese are the dog days. Hot as a dog, lazy as a dog, wanting to curl up and take naps like a dog. Please, let us lie, sleeping like them, on these summer afternoons.

But the phrase didn’t originate from the habits of our earthly canine companions. Instead, it came from Sirius, the dog star. In July and early August, Sirius rises and sets with the sun. People once thought that the combined power of our daytime star and the brightest one in our night sky brought the full heat of summer.

Here below, our own dog star’s light has started to dim. We got him from a rescue group nearly six years ago. He’s a strange brew of Labrador and possibly Great Dane—100 pounds with an enormous head—and somewhere between eight and ten years old. We might be seeing the shine from Sirius, 8.7 light years away, from around the time he was born.

He was not born under a lucky star, it seems. Continue reading →

Union and Reunion

By: | July 16, 2014

UGC 8335Splendid, isn’t it. It’s UGC 8335 — one name, so once it was apparently mistaken for one thing though obviously it’s two. They’re spiral galaxies in the process of running into and through each other. This is a photograph by the Hubble Space Telescope; the galaxies are really there; this is real.  You could think of this photo as a single frame in an extremely long movie.  But you could see the movie only if somebody made it up out of whole cloth, i.e., not real.  Like this: Continue reading →

The Wisdom of a Summer Afternoon, Redux

By: | July 15, 2014

During the summer and fall, my husband and I spend most of our evenings sitting on the front porch, drinking a glass of wine and watching the sun move across the sky and below the horizon. The light show unfolds differently each time and cannot be binge-watched or replayed. It can only be fully experienced in the here and now, and that’s where we sit and savor it.

This time of year, we often have the pleasure of sharing our evening ritual with friends, and today I’d like to take a moment to remember and honor a friend who taught me how to appreciate the importance of these simple moments. I first told the story here in August of 2011, and I’m sharing it again now, because it’s a lesson whose significance never fades. 
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Lately, I’ve been thinking about the nature of knowledge and how we acquire it. My training as a scientist taught me to revere the scientific method, and I continue to hold science in the highest regard. Science can teach us much about the world and ourselves, and as I’ve written elsewhere, it can allow us to see beyond our biases — if we can keep open minds.

Yet I’ve grown to understand that not all knowledge worth possessing can come from a book, an experiment or a Google search. Science is very good at answering questions that involve quantifiable elements — how far away is that planet? Which drug produces the best response? But it’s less helpful at answering some of life’s most vexing questions like, what should I do with my life? Where should I focus my attention?

Continue reading →

Guest Post: How Our Pets Domesticated Us

By: | July 14, 2014

13408372845_b803a279b7_kOne of the most fascinating tidbits I came across while researching my new book, Citizen Canine: Our Evolving Relationship with Cats and Dogs, concerns the 10,000-year-old village of Shillourokambos. Located on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, the site was once home to an early farming community whose inhabitants stored grain in stone silos and corralled livestock behind wood fences. In 2001, archaeologists digging beneath the foundation of what was once a small, circular house made a surprising discovery: a shallow grave containing the skeleton of a human, and next to it, surrounded by carved seashells, the remains of a cat.

That wasn’t the fascinating part. Archaeologists had long suspected that cats first entered human society to hunt the rodents that early farming villages attracted. What surprised me was learning that the Shillourokambians had shipped in foxes for the same purpose. And yet only cats became pets. Dogs, likewise, became treasured companions when plenty of other animals could have theoretically fit the bill. Of all the species on earth, only two have morphed from wild animal to family member. It’s a process that took thousands of years.

And yet, as we were transforming these animals, they were also transforming us. Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | July 12, 2014

Galileo tomb

 

July 7-11, 2014

This week Richard finally lets slip what he was doing on his trip to Italy – communing with the shriveled remains of Galileo’s body parts – and Abstruse Goose sets himself a Sudoku-style plot challenge.

Craig recounts some lengthy discussions with E.O. Wilson, who reminds us that dying species don’t look like a dying individual animals. They’re young and healthy…until they’re just gone.

Michelle uses allometric scaling principles to allay her daughter’s fears of big monsters.

And finally, I present a roundup of children’s books for kids who like inventing, building and figuring out how things work.

Give Me a Heroine Who Invents

By: | July 11, 2014

rosierevereIt’s been a while since we had a roundup of children’s books. So long, in fact, that the last time we had one, I wasn’t yet interested in children’s books. Now, it’s situation critical. My town has one little bookstore, and our library is accessed through several flights of dingy staircase at the back of a mall. The nearest other public library is 482 kilometers away, and it’s even smaller.

I know we’ve found the right book when a reading of it sends my 5-year-old son straight into play or reaching for a pen to design something. Here are a few of our favourites:

Rosie Revere, Engineer, by Andrea Beaty, illustrated by David Roberts

Rosie the Riveter was a feminist icon in the United States during World War II, when women took on traditionally male jobs. Our story’s heroine is her namesake and great-great-niece, who dreams of becoming a great engineer. The book celebrates experimental failure and design iteration in fantastically-illustrated, rhyming form. (Another good one by these authors: Iggy Peck, Architect) Continue reading →

Abstruse Goose: Sudokomic Game

By: | July 8, 2014

another_fun_game_is_comic_tac_toeOh this is just purely awful in so many ways.  Let me count them.  Its humor is dumb & puns are always in the very worst taste.  It’s bloody & I hate that.  It’s not only clever, worse, it’s close to addictive.  The mouseover apologizes, says this is the best he could do on short notice, so there’s that.

The secret title suggests that this comix-word game also works with tic-tac-toe.  Not trying it.  I have stuff to do.

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http://abstrusegoose.com/575