The deep, cold fresh waters of the Great Lakes seem to provide the best environment for the preservation of old shipwrecks. The latest example is the 1780 wreck of the British warship HMS Ontario recently found at the bottom of Lake Ontario. According to this report the ship is the oldest wreck ever found in …
Author: Reid Farmer
Older Dates
Now here’s an odd one. Reports say that a 2,000 year-old date seed recovered from the famous archaeological site of Masada in Israel has successfully germinated. This breaks the old record for an old germinating seed previously held by a 700 year-old lotus seed recovered in China. I have heard apocryphal stories of corn or …
Grease Rustlers
A couple of weeks ago, a post of mine mentioned in passing that demand for biofuels seems to be driving an increase in thefts of used kitchen grease in New York. Today’s Denver Post notes the same phenomenon occurring here in Colorado. In 2000, used fryer oil was trading for 7.6 cents per pound. Recently …
Happy National Pigeon Day
Who knew?
The Atlantic: Is Google Making Us Stoopid?
This article by Nicholas Carr in the current Atlantic Monthly has been engendering a fair amount of discussion around the web, mostly centering on the following passages: “Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My …
Consolation for Pluto
Most of you probably remember the Sturm und Drang a couple of years ago when the International Astronomical Union demoted Pluto from the status of a true planet. Steve even commented on a resolution introduced in the California legislature (you can always count on them!) condemning the demotion as it would cause “psychological harm to …
Friday Feeder Friend
Eurasian collared dove. This bird was new to me, but the species is apparently spreading throughout the continental US at a very fast pace. Steve and I were discussing them a few weeks back, and he said that these doves had gone from absent to the most common bird in Magdalena in the space of …
More From the California Legislature
Introduced in the Assembly, AB 2233 adds a section to the State Vehicle Code that states: A person shall not drive a motor vehicle while holding a live animal in his or her arm or arms, or upon his or her lap.
Another Darwin Award Nominee
Inglewood man recovering after he’s bitten by rattlesnake he picked up. The man was bitten twice at Edward Vincent Park by a snake he thought was harmless
Was Napoleon Poisoned?
I’ve always found this story interesting and my recollection was that the preponderance of evidence indicated that he had been poisoned. But a new analysis of clippings of his hair done by Italy’s National Institute of Nuclear Physics has evidence that points in the other direction: “They conducted a detailed analysis of hairs taken from …