31 OCT 2018 by ideonexus
Insights on Being Well-Read
What is the true point of a bookish life? Note I write “point,” not “goal.” The bookish life can have no goal: It is all means and no end. The point, I should say, is not to become immensely knowledgeable or clever, and certainly not to become learned. Montaigne, who more than five centuries ago established the modern essay, grasped the point when he wrote, “I may be a man of fairly wide reading, but I retain nothing.” Retention of everything one reads, along with being mentally i... 1 
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notes14 APR 2012 by ideonexus
The Zodiacal Light
The zodiacal light is caused by sunlight reflecting from meteoric dust that orbits the sun in the plane of the solar system, remnants of the vast nebula of dust and gas out of which the solar system was born more than four billion years ago. Like the planets, this diffuse stream of particles reflects light, although faintly and rarely seen. Moonless nights of winter are the best time to see the zodiacal light. and nowhere better than here, on the Tropic of Cancer, where the plane of the solar... 1 notes
notesChet Raymo describes seeing the light of our planetary disk of our solar system intersecting the light of the milky way galaxy.
20 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
The Asian Giant Hornet
One of the marvels of evolution is the Asian giant hornet, a
predatory wasp especially common in Japan. It’s hard to imagine
a more frightening insect. The world’s largest hornet, it is
as long as your thumb, with a two-inch body bedecked with menacing
orange and black stripes. It’s armed with fearsome jaws to clasp and kill
its insect prey, and also a quarter-inch stinger that proves lethal to several
dozen Asians a year. And with a 3-inch wingspan, it can fly 25 miles per
hour (far fa... 1 notes
notesEuropean honeybees are defenseless against this predator, but Asian honeybees have evolved an amazing counter attack.
29 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Instinctual Breastfeeding
From an evolutionary point of view, it would seem that last-feeding should be one of the more instinctual behaviors, like eating or sleeping or sex. In most mammals, if mothers don't know how to offer their milk or babies don't know how to suckle, the infant dies. If die purpose of reproduction is to pass on genes, it would seem that feeding would be one of the more hard-wired biological behaviors. In explanation, Wiessinger offered this story: A female gorilla, born and raised in a zoo, gave...
1 Breastfeeding is instinctual, so that separating the mother from the infant can prevent it from happening, but there is a cultural aspect to it as well for primates.
29 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
Cross-Species Milk
Our notions of mother's milk come from what we see, and for most of us the milk we see is cow's milk, a brilliant white liquid. But milk from other species looks quite different—kangaroo milk, for example, is pink. But whatever the hue, breast milk is species-specific; that is, the composition is finely tuned to the particular growth and maturational needs and digestive system of the young of each species.^ ^ For example, cow's milk is higher in volatile fatty acids than human milk, and hum... 1 notes
notesA comparison of the milk produced by females of various species, its nutritional content, and what that tells us about their lifestyle.
