I don’t know about you, but I could spend all day watching nature documentaries. Nature is endlessly fascinating, adaptive and, occasionally, just plain scary.
Take the insect world, for example. You can wax lyrical about butterfly wings all you like, but when it’s time to throw down — or just plain survive — you do not want to mess with an insect. They will end you, and I’ve 10 good reasons why:
The eruption of Krakatau in 1883 is synonymous with cataclysm, and with good reason. Its eruptive power equated to several thousand atom bombs, and it killed around 36,000 people. But compared to the supervolcanoes that nearly wiped out humanity, or that may yet spell global catastrophe, it was a wet squib.
Find out about the magma doom machine buried under America’s oldest national park as I take you on a tour of …
We love dinosaurs, but we never shared the planet with them. Such was not the case with woolly mammoths, which we once hunted, chowed down on, and used for tools and building materials. You don’t see T-Rexes on cave walls, but some of the earliest sculpture and art by human hands depicts these elephantine throw rugs.
Today, their well-preserved remains contain muscle, blood, teeth, bone, tusk and even brain. We’ve recovered and sequenced mammoth DNA, something we’ll never be able to do with dinosaurs. But if all you know about these majestic creatures comes from old Flintstones episodes, then join me as I explore …
Far too many scientists who made major contributions to knowledge and human health go unremarked, forgotten save for the occasional postage stamp or Google doodle. So when I was offered the chance to write about a few of the many outstanding scientists who came from Spanish-speaking lands, cultures and ancestors, I was understandably excited…and a little nervous. On the one hand, combining such a varied assemblage of people under one term – especially the political term Hispanic – wasn’t ideal. On the other hand, it gave me the chance to explore, and raise awareness of, a remarkably diverse array of persons, backgrounds and accomplishments. I hope you’ll find their stories as inspiring as I did.
Fire is frightening and dangerous – that’s why they call it fire. So it’s a little strange that we have laws requiring us to stock canister extinguishers but not regulations requiring that we learn how, if or when to operate them. If you’re like most people, you probably don’t even know what kind of fire your extinguisher is rated for, and you likely have no idea when you last serviced or inspected the device, if ever.
Recently, a few companies have begun marketing new kinds of extinguishers, updated versions of fire grenades intended to make fighting fires as worry-free as possible. Lightweight and easy to use, they rely on the most basic of human skills: throwing. Which raises the question: