Natural History

 This post will also be found in Tehachapi's The Loop Newspaper. 

There are many different ways that science can be done. But basically the idea is that you compare theories of how the world works to observations of the world itself. When the observations do not match the theory, and the observations are confirmed to be true, you have to change the theory.

Diary of a WIMPy Particle

This post will also be found in Tehachapi's The Loop Newspaper. 

The Universe is filled with stuff we cannot see. And humans have been coming to grips with these things and forces since, well, basically since we've been human. 

We see the effects of the wind, but we cannot see the wind itself. So we come up with hypotheses about how winds come about. By using our lungs and mouths we can generate small scale effects that are like wind. We do it when we blow up balloons, or blow out candles. So we can hypothesize that there exist large creatures that cause the winds. Some kind of wind spirit, perhaps.

Wabi-Sabi

 This post will also be found in Tehachapi's The Loop Newspaper.  

 

In art there is often an attempt to make permanent an instant of beauty. I've taken pictures of wildflowers and sunsets. Painters and sculptors do the same. But not all beauty can be made permanent. Photos of sunsets seldom really capture the beauty of the sunset, because part of the beauty of the sunset is that it is transient. It changes. 

Finding Another Earth

 This post will also be found in Tehachapi's The Loop Newspaper. 

Astronomers have made a great deal of progress in finding extrasolar planets. These are planets that orbit stars other than our Sun. The first (starting back in the 90s) were odd planets, most “hot Jupiters”. Very large planets orbiting close to their star. These included huge planets with years (the time it takes to make an orbit around the star) of mere days.

Lost in a Labyrinth

This post will also be found in Tehachapi's The Loop Newspaper. 

On the same trip where I saw the Blythe Intaglios, we visited another California geoglyph. (Recall that this is a form of rock art where an image has been scrathed into the surface rock revealing lighter material beneath.) This geoglyph is the so-called Topock Maze. This is located over near Needles and is just off of the freeway. 

Inconceivable

This post will also be found in Tehachapi's The Loop Newspaper.  

Too often when people don't understand something they turn to something magical as an explanation. “Proof” by personal incredulity is pretty common. Those missing socks... Lawn gnomes hiding in my closet are stealing them. Some think that the pyramids in Egypt were too much for such “primitive” people to create. Therefore ancient astronauts.

snowplant

snowplant a photo by mathnerd on Flickr.

over the moon
reflecting off granite walls
snowplant pushing up
vampire red
sucking the life's blood
of the pine roots
at the mercy
of Spring