I just stumbled across this news that Comet 17P/Holmes is now visible to the unaided eye: “The comet is exploding and its coma, a cloud of gas and dust illuminated by the sun, has grown to be bigger than the planet Jupiter. The comet lacks the tail usually associated with such celestial bodies but can …
Author: Reid Farmer
Tutankhamun’s Mummy
The mummy of boy Pharaoh Tutankhamun has been moved from its sarcophagus in his tomb and placed on public display for the first time in a climate controlled glass case. Not being an Egyptologist, I was somewhat surprised to learn that this mummy has been kept in the tomb all along. That seemed a little …
Hunting Ban Makes Hunting More Popular
News from the United Kingdom is that the hunting ban enacted there in 2005 has actually increased the popularity of hunting: “Against expectations, hunting has been able to continue, legally for the most part, with little difference in style. As Simon Hart, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, puts it, ‘most people would find this …
Washoe, RIP
Washoe, a chimpanzee who sent the field of primatology into a tizzy by learning American Sign Language, has died at age 42 after a short illness. From the age of 10 months, Washoe was raised by cognitive researchers R. Allen Gardner and Beatrix T. Gardner, who taught her to make recognizable signs in American Sign …
View From the Hubble Telescope
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know a great deal about astronomy – but I found this picture of two galaxies merging taken from the Hubble Space Telescope just beautiful.
Dog Shoots Hunter
On opening day of pheasant season in Iowa. There’s a reason they put a safety on it.
This is the World’s Oldest Living Animal
Or at least it was until recently. Scientists from Bangor University in Wales dredged up this Arctica islandica clam off the north coast of Iceland. After sectioning the shell and counting annual growth rings under a microscope they dated the clam to between 405 and 410 years-old. This breaks the official record of 220 years …
The Bear Whisperer?
Well, if Rebecca O’Connor can be the parrot whisperer, the LA Times thinks that Steve Searles of Mammoth Lakes, California is the bear whisperer. Searles is the local police department’s volunteer wildlife specialist. Marauding black bears are a problem at Mammoth, and rather than tranquilizing and removing offenders, and potentially killing them if they repeat, …
Hot Chiles are Good for You
Us chile lovers all know this, but there is fresh news in chile research. The active ingredient in chiles, capsaicin, may have a future role in replacing some addictive narcotic painkillers. Think back to a time when you bit into a really hot chile: at first it was hot and painful, but then after a …
Turkeys Terrorize Massachusetts
The Boston Globe tells us that the wild turkey population is up in Massachusetts and that residents of Brookline don’t much like it. Assertive turkeys are harrassing people on sidewalks. “The problem, according to some Brookline residents, is that the turkeys can be aggressive at times. Dr. Ruth Smith, an internist from New York City, …