“Theory can be very useful as a way of piecing together what is unusual … It can help us interpret what we are finding. It can also lead to dead ends and wasted time and resources.” https://almatcboykin.wordpress.com/2025/04/14/making-bog-bodies-dull/ Two Catholic scientists from the 1400’s spent their lives working on a celestial problem using theories based upon [...]
I remember my mother telling me that objects don’t really have color. The blue I see on a street sign is really just light bouncing off the sign and entering my eyes. My brain interprets those particular rays as blue because of the way they bounce. The blue is in my eyes not on the [...]
Some time ago I was wandering through the website Ravelry. It’s a place where knitters and others can show off their work or make patterns available to others, either for free or for money. The patterns are incredibly varied and Ravelry is a nice place to go if you like to knit. On this occasion [...]
While looking up apples on the Internet earlier this week I came across a discussion of mealy apples, and why it’s worth cooking with them. I was fascinated and let the information percolate for a bit, but here is the deal. Being living matter, apples are made up of cells. And being plants they have [...]
Tuesday I wrote about a book by Dava Sobel from 2016. The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars. Dava Sobel. Viking. 2016. I’ve been rereading it. Sobel is a remarkable writer, able to explain scientific concepts clearly. This can deceive the reader into thinking a topic [...]
Janey's blog 