Drop seed

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been on a seed-sowing frenzy. Last year – my first full-on foray into vegetable and flower gardening – was a great boot camp. This year, after more research and guidance from Jedi Masters, I’ve taken a far more aggressive approach. No tentative Andrew this year. It’s all about…

Creating compost II

My backyard compost is now 6 weeks old. It’s dead of winter right now, so the bin doesn’t reach the very hot internal temperatures that accelerate composting. Something proper, however, is happening because the waste is breaking down at a surprisingly rapid rate. My guess is that it’s still 6-8 weeks away from rich, sweet…

Creating compost I

Today, I set up our new compost bin in the back yard. It’s the first time I’ve ever composted, so — as is my well-known habit — I researched the living hell out of the process. This afternoon, between the late afternoon sun and wee bits of drizzle, I got it all set up. Backstory…

Empty web

Here, I wrote about my little friend, the spider. After many weeks of watching his peculiar and delightful life, I discovered that he was gone. The only trace that he had ever been there is the wreckage of his web. What happened to him? Was he eaten? Did he skedaddle after a moth massacred his…

Evolution TV

The wonderful zoologist and evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, has a central location for video of his visits to the Galapagos, as well as other shorts on topics ranging from Hawaii’s drasofilus fly to the fossil records of diatoms. Good stuff, although not nearly as rich or detailed as his books.

Oh, my God, we’re pussies

The New York Times (sigh) has posted a much-blogged, much-read article about something called — don’t laugh — thirdhand smoke. In short, smokers who aren’t actually smoking at the moment carry molecules of nasty toxins like hydrogen cyanide and arsenic. Oh, my god, arsenic, it’s so famously poisonous, don’t you know? These molecules can transfer…

Tasmanian devilry

I learned many months ago about devil facial tumor disease, or DFTD, a infectious cancer that is wiping out the Tasmanian Devil population so rampantly and dramatically that in only 12 years, the devil population has shrunk anywhere from 62% to 95%. That’s roughly 170,000 scrappy little devils in the early 1990s to anywhere from…

The 44,000

The evidence supporting Darwinist theory is colossal, far more impressive than the text-based portfolio of a supernatural archetype. One tenet of evolutionary theory is the incredibly protracted time frames in which evolution occurs. We humans are are small-minded. We are also — by virtue of our size, function in nature, embryological disposition, and life spans…