Of rocks and humans
If you love science, history, and words, it’s not every day that you find a book that addresses all of those interests, and it’s even rarer to find ...
Author: Mary
The seahorse in your brain
I knew about the hippocampus in the brain, but until I started reading The Darwinian Tourist: Viewing the World Through Evolutionary Eyes, by Christopher Wills ...
Politics, personality, and hand-waving
In Washington Monthly, Chris Mooney has reviewed two new books that synthesize what we know to date about how our political outlooks are related to our personal...
On poppies, poop, and newborn babies
In honor of the recent birth of my second grandchild, I thought I’d look at some words related to newborns. Here are a few with interesting stories. Fonta...
Armies of finger bones
I recently finished an editing assignment that had to do with the bones and musculature of the hand. The bones of the fingers (and the toes, as it turns out) ar...
Woolly bears and northern stars
Woolly worm season is upon us. The other day I spotted one of these fuzzy caterpillars behind my car, and I moved it to avoid backing over it. Woolly worms were...
How is a delphinium like a dolphin?
Sometimes it seems like everything is named for a resemblance to something else. This is a story of the similarity-based links among two flowers, three birds, a...
Midnight moths, pollen, and scientists
It’s easy to talk about science or its history in the abstract, especially when you’re thinking about long stretches of time, and to lose sight of w...
The noble genus Vitis
The wine harvest is nearing its end, so this seems like a good time to look at the different species of grapes that are used for wine. When I first began to tak...
Infinitesimal calculus and renal calculus
I ran across the phrase renal calculus, another name for a kidney stone, and wondered whether it was related to the calculus you learn in a math class. It turns...