Spruce Knob – West Virginia’s High Point If the state of West Virginia had not presciently decided to move away from the wickedness of slavery during the Civil War, its High Point would be about 250 miles south-southwest at Mount Rogers, near the Virginia tripoint with North Carolina and Tennessee. Instead, the good citizens […]
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Thank You for Being a Friend One of the enduring modern jokes revolves around the continued existence of Keith Richards, the enigmatic and hard-living guitarist of the Rolling Stones. The dude looks like he’s 125 years old, thanks to a lifetime of drugs and rock music. Yet he soldiers on, seemingly an eternal. Believe it
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Moose and Flying Squirrel From 1959 to 1964, Rocket J. Squirrel, affectionately known as Rocky, and Bullwinkle J. Moose taught television audiences to be wary of evil Russians and, anachronistically, Nazis, while instilling a love for Canadian Mounties, all with a dose of wry comedy. The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends, which has
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Draco If you’re a fantasy-phile, you’ve probably encountered the word draco many times. Latin for dragon, it gives us Dracula and drakes and, I’m told, a character from Harry Potter, amongst many others. In our previous exploration, we discovered a monkey that “flies.” Unfortunately, today, I do not have evidence to present you regarding the existence of dragons.
Proboscis Monkeys Today we travel not to Oz but Borneo, the world’s third-largest island. It’s so big that it houses three nations: Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia. On this island lives a bizarre animal that might have you believe Borneo actually is in Oz, not Southeast Asia. Borneo’s location in Southeast Asia The word proboscis more
Lagrange Points When I was in high school physics class learning about gravity, I recall wondering if we could determine the size, or at least the mass, of the universe by calculating how much gravitational pull the planet “feels.” If the planet is tugged more in one direction, could we determine where we are in
James Webb Space Telescope If you’ve followed the newsletter from the early days, you’re well familiar with the Hubble Telescope and its myriad astronomical contributions. Some of the most resplendent images of the universe have come from the famed telescope. One might argue all of the most gorgeous imagery of the cosmos to date has
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NORAD In December 1948, in the interregnum between the end of World War II and the raging depths of the Cold War, the U.S. Air Force provided a bit of levity in the face of growing nuclear tensions. They pushed a notification that their “early warning radar net to the north” had picked up a
The Wandering Meatloaf Chitons are a class of mollusks specific to the oceans of the planet. Unlike some mollusks with which you might be familiar, chitons appear more like blobby flapjacks than the normal shell topographies of a clam or a snail. When a snail feels threatened she can dive into her hard home; when
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Call of the Void Can I confess something? I tell you this because, as an artist, I think you’ll understand. Sometimes when I’m driving on the road at night, I see two headlights coming toward me. Fast. I have this sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly, head-on into the oncoming car. I can anticipate