Tomorrow, your kids may be binge-watching some cartoon on some streaming services. They may even do so whilst consuming copious amounts of Chocolate-Frosted Sugar Bombs. But they will not be viewing a network broadcast slate of cartoons like generations of kids have. Why is that? Charles Moss in The Saturday Evening Post has your answers in a article so perfectly titled, I just used it above. He also provides a whole lot more detail about…
Generations of children may feel the world is a bit less colorful as children’s author and illustrator Eric Carle has died at the age of 91. There’s a great piece by Emily Langer in the Washington Post, where I got the delightfully succinct phrase “simply told and radiantly illustrated” from. There’s also a nice 2-minute piece by Neda Ulaby on NPR as well as a remembrance from the BBC. In these remembrances, you’ll get a…
I do not know Olivia Rutigliano, but upon starting to read her exhaustive article on Crime Reads ranking 100 portrayals of Sherlock Holmes, I immediately detected that same sort of insanity that drove me to rank all Star Trek episodes. It’s a delightfully thorough list. I know many of these portrayals, but by Jove, I hardly know all of them. And now, thanks to the assiduous investigation of, one may hope, soon-to-be-Doctor Rutigliano, I can…
I wish I could find the faux PSA from whence this title came, but even though it’s about to be Insect Spring Break where I live, the notion that nature can have healing power is being bolstered by science. Adele Peters writes about a recent U.K. study that points to the health benefits in the usually-not-arboreally-themed Fast Company. In fact, it’s not like you need to suddenly fine time to fit many a day hike…
The CDC announcement last week that vaccinated people could go all maskless all sorts of places has led to the inevitable realization for many of us that, “Oh, yeah. I guess we might be back in an office this summer.” But even before then, I’m sure many of us have been contemplating more about what we want out of a job — along with wondering what is up with Zoom today. So I found this…
I mentioned last month that Brood X, the prodigious cohort of cicadas that emerge every 17 years to mate and be quite loud about it, are coming this year — possibly near you! For those of you who want more of the science behind it all, here’s Mike Raupp, the “Bug Guy” and avowed cicada fan to give you all the details you didn’t know you needed.
What with my biennial Favorite Films sort, I have a soft spot for many an internet film list, especially when it’s clearly crafted with passion (as opposed to, say, the need to fill electronic print space on deadline). So I was totally down with this list from the gang over at The Ringer detailing the top 50 cult films of all time. Now, I would venture that the appear of cult films is often why…
I don’t want ye olde blog to go without updates for too long, but I also gotta take care of some other stuff offline. I confess some of the delay in getting to those offline things has been checking out the many fun articles about all sorts of odd inaugural trivia. Enjoy! (there will be a test Thursday). The Virginian-Pilot The Daily Record WTOP The Seattle Times Perennial favorite Mental Floss
I’d heard earlier that a particular radiation-loving fungus had been observed near Chernobyl, but this article by Stephen Johnson in Big Think explains how they’ve been testing it for SPAAACE TRAVEL. Specifically, they’ve been testing it on the International Space Station with the idea that some form of this radiotrophic fungus could help shield astronauts bound for Mars. So, in other words: really, really cool. And will I work this into some future episode of…
I saw this last week, but decided to hold off, because I didn’t want to dwell on it, but here it is: a metal monolith was accidentally discovered in the middle of the Utah wilderness and although it’s probably made by humans, the level of effort to get it and “install” it like it’s some weird “think-piece” in the middle of nowhere is deeply weird. In other words, it’s peak 2020. I’m not sure what’s…