Browsing the archives for the nature tag

Madame Pele Gives and Takes Away

“We stayed until close to midnight, watching a bright orange lava flow as it slowly consumed stubborn trees that don’t yield easily to fire. Walking back to the car, my mother tapped my shoulder and pointed…”

What Ancient Art Tells Us About Pinboards

What do “pin boards,” social media websites designed around sharing pictures, have in common with Stone Age cave paintings and Egyptian funerary art?

Science May Explain Why Egyptians Worshiped Dung Beetle as Sun God

My mother sent me a link to a fascinating Scientific American article about zoologist Emily Baird’s research on dung beetles. Egyptologists give these poo-pushing champions the more dignified name of “scarab,” after an ancient Greek word for beetle. Dr. Baird’s specialty is insect vision, flight and navigation (see her profile at Lund University). She wrote her thesis […]

In Memoriam: The Shoe Tree of Nevada

The Shoe Tree is dead. Long live the Shoe Tree. I learned about Nevada’s Shoe Tree on the “Loneliest Road in the World” from a touching article in the Los Angeles Times. In December 2010, this modern-day sacred tree was cut down by vandals with a chainsaw, after serving as a curious and cryptic symbol in […]