It seems particularly fitting to congratulate a Swedish colleague who announced the world’s first successful uterine transplant the same week that the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine is announced from Stockholm. Not that the transplant will earn him the
After another dietary study giving refined carbohydrates a bad name and confirming that saturated fat is good for us, a post in praise of bread seems poor timing. I was already coming round to thinking the official doctrine over the
There was one lobster left in the tank when I left the restaurant. I felt sorry for the lonesome crustacean, but sadder for its late companions whose carapaces lay empty on customers’ plates. I had no reason to feel guilty because
Butterfly numbers are down this year in Tidewater Virginia. Since 1999 when local naturalists began annual surveys there have been large fluctuations from year-to-year, but the numbers recorded this year on a hot July day were almost half the reckoning
Some years ago while following a wide trail through a Yorkshire wood I came across a bunch of roughnecks in muddy boots who were offloading shovels and pickaxes from the back of a rusty van. Terriers were barking furiously in
The gleam of a great idea often glows first and fiercest in an unknown eye and out of a dark corner. How many college dropouts and loners tinkering in their garages have become celebrated silicon entrepreneurs? How many great writers,
Consider the consequences if your largest blood vessels were coursing under surface of the skin instead of deep inside the body. I know it’s hard to imagine. But if the aorta ran the length of your back, branching out to
When a gray cat started prowling around our yard I assumed it was a new neighbor. I was wrong, she was a new resident! I stumbled on her nest by chance a few days later. It was sheltered against the
Beekeeping is like farming. All livestock—whether large animals with four feet or tiny ones with six—need food, water, shelter, and sometimes medication. Like an old farmer checking his herd in a meadow, I watch our ‘girls’ flying back and forth between
A snake has taken up residence in one of our bluebird boxes. Every morning three feet of coiled and blackened steel hose sunbathe on its roof. Four species of snakes call our yard home. This one, the Eastern ratsnake, is
At one time all scientists were amateurs. Most were gentlemen with private incomes like Charles Darwin or clergymen like the Rev. Gilbert White whose church stipend enabled him to spend spare time rambling in the Hampshire countryside. There was a
There’s an Isle, a green Isle, set in the sea… If you guessed Jean Blewett wrote this poem for Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day you are right. But the first line is also a good fit to New Zealand’s green