Clik here to view.
The Very First Forecast
Robert FitzRoy was the captain of The Beagle—yes, that Beagle—and, as a captain, he was particularly concerned about the weather. Who wouldn't be? Judge a barometer reading inaccurately, and your ship...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The New Work of Words
The word is a popular thing. Charismatic, even. Of all the parts of our language, it sticks out grandly. As such, it’s the easiest to tell stories about: The provenance of the word “entrepreneur” is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Finally a Better Way to Text GIFs
GIFs, it must be said, are no fad anymore. A few years ago, it seemed as though the entire Internet was rediscovering the decades-old format all at once. No longer did the Graphical Image Format just...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Man Who First Juiced
Norman W. Walker died in 1985, when he was 99 years old…or 104…or 118. It depends on who you ask. Wikipedia takes a skeptic's view of Walker and says he died at 99. There's some evidence that's...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The High Tech of Small Batch Cheese
In many cities these days, cheeses described as “small-batch” and “artisanal” dot the shelves of farmer’s markets the supermarkets alike. These descriptors probably conjure images of an aproned farm...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Next Year, One Billion Works Will Be Free to Use Online
Sometime in 2015, the number of works licensed under Creative Commons agreements will surpass the one-billion mark, the organization which stewards the licenses announced Thursday. The prediction came...
View ArticleClik here to view.
I Don't Have Babies But I'm Obsessed With Baby Names
Writers are largely preoccupied with words, rolling them around like unpolished rocks in our minds and on the page until smooth, glistening sentences emerge. For some, it can take a painstaking amount...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Secret Life of String Cheese
Brian Baker is obsessed with string cheese. He talks about it poetically, rambling about the string factor, the machines that pump out individual-sized ropes, the flavor profile of the stick. But...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Original Galaxy Quest
One of the amazing things about astronomy is that it mostly involves standing at one distinct point in the entire universe—Earth—and measuring properties of the light that happens to reach us here....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Salmon, Fresh From the Warehouse
If middle-class Americans can afford salmon in 20 years, they might get it through a process like this: The salmon hatch in nurseries. Eventually they are transferred to open tanks. The fish spend...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Scary Merry Mistletoe Drone
According to legend, Alan Stillman had one goal in mind when he founded T.G.I. Friday's, the neighborhood casual franchise that now boasts nearly a thousand outposts. "It seemed to me that the best way...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Time Capsule on the Moon
A decade from now, if all goes well, a spacecraft with a high-tech drill will land in the South Pole-Aitken basin of the moon. There, it will bore 66 feet down into the surface and collect samples of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The New Security Robot Watching Over Silicon Valley Is Less RoboCop and More...
The jobs of security guards—and possibly police, down the road—might be in jeopardy thanks to a new robot that hit the pavement this week in Silicon Valley. Designed by the Mountain View startup...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Blog of Myself
I was looking at the Internet the other day, and I thought, “Wow, there are so many personal essays out here! I should write an essay about how writers are increasingly making themselves part of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Is the Future of Zoos No Zoos at All?
For my bat mitzvah, I adopted a whale named Onyx. They sent me a photo of her tail so that I could recognize her, but I prudently left that at home when I went on a whale-watching trip. Even to a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
FYI, See Below
Email is the worst, but some emails are worse than others. The worst emails are forwards. And the worst forwards? Not the jokes your uncle sends you from his AOL account, but the ones your boss or your...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Sound of a Cosmic Touchdown
If a spacecraft lands on a comet 330 million miles away, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Yes, it does. And now we have a recording of it. Last week the European Space Agency...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Confessions of a Private Eye
“Investigator maintained visual contact of the subject.” I became a private investigator in the 80s. When I started out, I had a pair of binoculars and a 35mm Pentax SLR with a zoom lens. I sat in the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Spatchcocking: The Silly Word Behind the Turkey Trend
Americans have been cooking Thanksgiving turkeys for more than 100 years. But it’s only the last few when a radical innovation in turkey preparation has started to become mainstream: “Spatchcocking,”...
View ArticleClik here to view.
There's a Better Way to Board Planes
‘Tis the season for airplane travel. We may be looking forward to getting where we’re going, but most aspects of the travel itself are merely endured. There’s stressful security, the madding crowd, and...
View Article