Tag: PostADay2011

  • Goings On

    A Photo roundup of the week in these parts:   Crocodiles in the pie plates   Penguins on patrol:   Cat on patrol   Next to our favourite rock:   And everything is A-OK.      

  • The Economics of the Laundry Line

    If you are a dedicated environmentalist, but you still find yourself buying back your own time by using convenience foods and labour-saving devices, this is an article for you. I find myself making these choices almost every day: I currently have a frozen lasagna in the oven so that I can have back the 2…

  • The Recurring Cow Conversation

    “Do we want the local (conventional) milk, or the large-scale organic (shipped 2500 km) milk this week?” In case you were wondering, we’re not actually planning on getting a cow. We only have an acre and a half cleared, and the cow would need most of it for pasture. It’s swampy and we’re near a…

  • Coal and Wind

    Where we went when he asked for the beach on a blustery day: The rail car in the front is an old coal car. The windmills in the background adjoin the Lingan coal-burning power plant, the largest power plant in Nova Scotia. The old schoolhouse is now the visitor information centre, at least in the…

  • A Litany for Agnostics

    In the beginning… We start as a DNA blueprint, a set of instructions for how to construct the magic of consciousness from nothing more than the molecules that surround us. The environment is not just a soup that we swim in. It’s what we are made of. We are built entirely from materials that we…

  • My Exact Words Were…

    So I said, ” As long as the peas are staked by the time I get home, I don’t care if there is a giant pair of pants in my front yard…”  

  • High tech/low tech

    After I wrote my very long post extolling the virtues of cake (1), I went out to obtain ingredients for supper (2) and arrived home to discover that the power was out. After a couple of minutes (3), I realized that there was an easy solution to this problem, picked up the not-cordless phone (4)…

  • Weekly Photo Challenge: Ocean

    Oooh! Ocean! I have one of those! (You know, the same way that one can have a sky, or a constellation, which is that I can look at one with a reasonable expenditure of energy) Our ocean is moody and cold: There is honesty in naming in action, at the Polar Bear Beach. I didn’t…

  • More different YouTube

    Well, I’ve written 1700 words so far, but I’m not finished and it’s 11:56. So, in lieu of a MASSIVE post, an argument: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y&feature=player_profilepage#t=53s] What’s different about it is that it is NOT a copyright infringement. That’s right. It’s the honest to goodness Monty Python channel! On YouTube. With links on which they encourage us…

  • Review: Keeping the Bees

    Why is that young man serenading the blueberries with his guitar? Why are cactus spines as likely as stings for many bee researchers? What can each of us do to improve the situation for pollinators in our world? What I didn’t know about bees could fill a book. Fortunately, Laurence Packer has provided exactly that…

  • On Pickles, Particle Physics, and Work-Life Balance

    When I started writing this post, I felt pretty good. I had a great day. I made the pickles that have been sitting in brine for the last 5 days. I wrote about nuclear physics for 2 hours, refreshed my memory on alpha and beta decay, and came up with a good analogy. I had…

  • The books that haunt me

    Can’t write, reading! Books on the desk… Books on the wee table next to the desk: The books I removed from the end table that have no shelf to go to: The books I added to the end table: And to finish it all off, the blank books that await filling: