Category Archive

Growing tall gives a tree the edge on capturing sunlight before some other tree shades it out. But the taller it gets, the harder it is for water to get drawn up all the way to the top.

With the exception of the Inuit and other hardy souls of the Far North, the deep Arctic stood as a formidable outland for centuries and even the bravest non-natives only utilized its periphery for fish and furs from the resident four-legged or flippered animals.

A hundred years ago those familiar drought conditions were plaguing San Diego. In 1915, San Diego was a small but growing city and its water needs were also growing. The rainfall records of that year don’t indicate severe drought conditions, and in fact by year’s end there was even more rain than average. But the city fathers were concerned about future needs and were looking for ways to increase the amount of stored water.

The project was informally called The Third Straw. All it took was drilling a 24-foot diameter tunnel through three miles of rock underneath the bottom of Lake Mead. Piece of cake. It did, however, take three years to eat it. The hydraulics of this scheme are, of course, complex, but they went more or less as follows.

There are residents of the exclusion zone who never left. Those would be the plants and animals whose ancestors had lived there for thousands of years and didn’t get the memo that the place was now glowing with radiation.

Get the corkscrew! Twist the cap! Unseal the spigot! Let’s have a glass of wine right now!

There really is a place no more than 28 miles off the coast of Great Britain where not only do palm trees grow, but actual white sandy beaches and azure waters do a pretty fair imitation of the Caribbean tableau.

Which country has the least population density? The answer to this question turned into a muddy mess of questionable statistics and bad math.

Lascaux cave was open to the public for 15 years before it became apparent that the body heat and mere breath of visitors was causing chemical reactions with the pigments of the drawings.

A lot of people have contemplated that question and more than a few have whittled the number of key destinations down to their list of “100 places to see before you die.”