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 [...]
Category: science and engineering
Still life with apples
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 [...]
Vacation, Part II. Still thinking about a book.
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 [...]
I’m on vacation but I read a fascinating book …
The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars. Dava Sobel. Viking. 2016. The ladies in question started working at Harvard Observatory in the late 1800’s and some of them continued their work until the 1930’s and 1940’s. These women were not students at Harvard; they were employees [...]
Catholic scientists, a list of women
I started working on lists of Catholic scientists twenty-five years ago. My father, a Catholic scientist himself, had commented for years on people who shared that faith. The worldly belief that you can't be both was strong, even sixty years ago. In 2016 a Society of Catholic Scientists was founded. I had heard of it [...]