But is it art?

It’s funny, now that I think about it, that I haven’t tackled this subject here before. I mean, what’s a blog for?

The photographer part of me has this little hate-affair with the “art world.” While opinions vary a great deal, it isn’t hard to find the prejudice that photography is not art, and this is distinctly noticeable right where I live, in a community that read more

Probably not

Recently, I came across two posts on probability, both of which possessing some serious issues. This is actually a common occurrence, since probability is one of those things that confuses people and is, in many ways, counterintuitive. What’s interesting about both of them is that the answers revealed are misleading in the same manner as the intuitive solutions.

The first is, read more

Quality time!

Okay, this one’s for the parents of children aged, I dunno, four to sixteen or so. Use your own judgment. It stems from some thoughts provoked by another post that will be coming up eventually, and seems to me to be a fun parent/child activity that can spur some scientific and learning interest as well. I’ve never tried it, except for a variation with one of my nieces some two decades read more

Religion has all the answers

If you’re interested in accuracy, however, that’s a whole different story…

Click for the complete comic.

Scenes From A Multiverse should be a regular stop in your browsing, if it isn’t already. Jonathan Rosenberg wields the tongue-in-cheek incisiveness that makes webcomics much better than most read more

Amateur naturalism, part three


Our next topic in the series is reptiles – you can also refer back to the posts about insects and birds if you like.

Reptiles (and amphibians, which I’ll also refer to here but will use the same term for each just for convenience) are perhaps the most misunderstood of animal classes, which is unfortunate because they’re actually pretty cool. They become more prevalent with warmer read more

Drop the ‘Straight’

I used to think the column “The Straight Dope” was pretty good, and well researched. I was first introduced to it about twenty years ago, when it was carried in the local independent newspaper called, for some unknown reason, The Independent (this is a local publication, not the British one.) Many years later, I found it online, and made a habit of stopping by semi-regularly read more

Do you like exploring?


Google Earth is a fun program, allowing the user to examine just about anyplace on earth (and elsewhere) from the vantage of aerial and satellite photos I spend no small amount of time checking out areas of interest, finding places I’ve been and little curiosities.

Along those lines, I finally finished a project I’ve been planning for a while, which is to upload some Google Earth placemarks read more

I wonder why?

Yesterday, I had a visitor, who turned out to be (as most knocks on the door are anymore) someone who wanted to introduce me to god. The last couple of times that this happened, it was some Wally Cleaver types in white shirts and ties, which spells either mormons or jehovahs, and I wasn’t in any kind of mood then to open the debate, so I chased them off with obvious amusement. This time, however, read more

Sylvan Heights continued

And so, our saga resumes where it left off, with our heroes trapped within the confines of a completely non-treacherous and non-threatening bird park…

As I mentioned before, Sylvan Heights Bird Park provides great opportunities for close encounters, and to the photographer, the urge to do personal portraits of the birds is practically irresistible. read more

Book semi-review: Exuberant Skepticism

The book reviews on this blog have been more of a personal recommendation list, rather than a critical review of new releases as one might expect, for a couple of reasons. I don’t go through too many books at a time, and not many new ones, and as one might have noticed, there are certain topics I tend to concentrate on. So what’s been seen here before has been positive. Until now.

Exuberant read more

1 288 289 290 291 292 319