Half way between where I sit and the advance guard of Winter Storm Nemo, sits a bucket that contains a lot of formalin and two large freshwater mussels. Also on that table is two bivalve pairs, cleaned out yesterday after we hacked up the mussels inside them.

It was a messy, disorganized process that hit a snag very early on when I handed the kids ( Read more... )

There is a belief knocking around somewhere in our cultural rhetoric, that “children have favorites,” and by the time we’re adults we have to have grown out of that silliness and show no ridiculous, unfounded partiality. Bollocks to that. My favorite color is purple, my favorite dinosaur is Euoplocephalus and my favorite butterfly is, without a ( Read more... )

Much of this is crossposted from a shorter article on Exhibitfiles. And geez, my language when writing for exhibit developers is overly formal. I’ll work on that. For more information on any of the science I allude to here, check out my post How the Biggest Dinosaurs Became

When I first realised that the latest exhibition at the American Museum of ( Read more... )

This is a representation of the periodic table. Click through for Web Elements: a comprehensive resource on the chemistry of the elements.

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When I woke up at 2.30 this morning with a rush of a panic attack, layered over it were two emotions: annoyance because high stress and panic attacks make it hard to sleep at 2.30 in the morning in a heatwave with a cat on my bed where my knees should be, and relief, because I can use the adrenalin.

If I use it, of course ( Read more... )

Right, shall we try and get back into this habit again? Whyever not.

I've been thinking about getting a tumblr... oh, who am I kidding? I have signed up for a tumbler, but now I'm just squatting on the name while I try and figure out what I want to do with it. I just like the short format and the verslity and the reblogging feature of it. It looks ( Read more... )

THIRTY DAYS OF MEME: 19 A talent of yours.

Tal.ent n.

1. A marked innate ability, as for artistic accomplishment
2. 1. Natural endowment or ability of a superior quality
   2. A person or group of people having such ability
3. A variable unit of weight or money used in Ancient Greece, Rome and the Middle East.

Before I forget to mention it at all:


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Last night, accompanied by davegodfrey and Andrew, I went to the Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People at the Bloomsbury. I missed this celebration last year due to the arrival of Abby, but it was definitely worth going this time ( Read more... )

The reason I opened the floor to questions is because there's something I've been wanted to try for a while - reactionary blogging. Occasionally people ask me something, and I think the best way to answer would be in one separate blog post, but then I forget, or it falls to the wayside or I just convince myself no one cares. And then I want to blog ( Read more... )