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Monthly Archives: December 2019

A globe is worth a thousand maps

Saturday, December 21, 2019

North America at sunset in New York, winter solstice. Click here for high-resolution version. Maps are fascinating. But maps also are highly deceptive. That’s because there is no way to represent the surface of a sphere on a flat piece of paper without distortion. Today is the winter solstice, when the earth’s northern hemisphere is […]

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The center of the universe at 3 p.m. GMT on Dec. 24

Saturday, December 21, 2019

The opening of the 2015 broadcast It’s a saying of mine that the center of the universe is not a fixed place. It moves constantly. Young Luke Skywalker touches on this in Star Wars episode IV, when the says, “Well, if there’s a bright center of the universe, you’re on the planet that it’s farthest […]

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Running cedar

Sunday, December 15, 2019

Running cedar, as far as I know, has no legal protection, and that’s a shame. It’s not nearly as common as it used to be. I see it often while walking in the woods, but never in the large patches that I often saw as a child in the Carolina woodlands. Its ideal habitat is […]

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Now I miss Mrs. Squirrel

Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Click here for high resolution version. I’ve posted a couple of times about Mrs. Squirrel, who gnawed her way into the attic through a ventilation grill, built a nest, and gave birth to four baby squirrels thirty feet up in the abbey’s attic. I quarreled with her often for not staying in the woods where […]

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A video for the 39th anniversary of John Lennon’s death

Sunday, December 8, 2019
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Needed: An honorable calculus of civility and incivility

Sunday, December 8, 2019

Rosa Parks is fingerprinted after she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white person, 1956, Montgomery, Alabama. Wikipedia photo. Here are some sample problems to solve with a calculus of civility and incivility. What do you think?: 1. If a friend of a friend on Facebook trolls […]

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Hastening their own demise

Friday, December 6, 2019

The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, now a museum. Wikipedia photo. The Economist has an article today with the headline “Arabs are losing faith in religious parties and leaders.” The article reports not only a sharply declining trust of religion in politics in the Arab world, but also that Arab young people are losing their religious […]

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Battlestar Galactica

Sunday, December 1, 2019

My shortlist of the best television ever made would include Battlestar Galactica, which ran on the Syfy channel from 2003 until 2009. And guess what: It’s coming back. In September, the Hollywood Reporter and other news outlets reported that NBCUniversal will produce a new take on Battlestar Galactica for its Peacock streaming service. The new […]

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