Category: Adventuring

Century Plant According to W.H. Barreveld, without the date palm, the human race would not have been able to migrate out of Africa. Dates provided an energy-dense food for journeying across the desert, are mentioned 30 times in the Bible, and 22 times in the Quran. Every part of the palm, its wood, leaves, fruit,…

The Horticultural Gardens in Amsterdam is a suprisingly small garden, however, incredibly rich in biodiversity. Fuchsias And what a fascinating collection of specimens too. There’s the giant rubarb, the southern ash tree grafted onto a northern ash to allow it to survive the colder climate, the semicircle of systematics, the Wollemi pine a living fossil,…

Rainbow Following us Out of the City There are some incredibly progressive cultural values in the Netherlands, as well as demonstrations of enlightenment values. I previously covered the NEMO Science Center, a children’s science center that had sex displays. There were Obama posters everywhere, wind turbines, as well as bicycles, rows and endless rows of…

On a recent canoe trip through what has to be the most exotic state park I have yet adventured through, Vicky and I saw turkey vultures, lily pads, beavers, geese, Spanish moss, two bald eagles, painted turtles, bald cypress, and this fine fellow: Alligator in Merchant’s Millpond State Park Credit: Moi The pond is the…

To understand the success of insects is to appreciate our own shortcomings. —Thomas Eisner They crawl, they fly, they swim. They communicate with dance, chemicals, and sounds. They act alone or gather together into superorganisms. They possibly represent 90% of the differing life forms on the planet. Insect in Amber Credit: Moi Check out the…

With final exams, school projects due, work projects due, and the rest of life, I’ve been stressing and slacking on uploading science photos to my flickr account. I’m glad I took the time to get to it tonight for an hour or so of naturalist zen. Lacking anything more profound, I’ll just say this: Butterflies…

Just a quick post to get the remaining miscellaneous photos from the NEMO Science Center online. There was elecricity, engineering, and water-power exhibits, as well as various displays that didn’t fit into any particular category, like how the center’s roof had some displays that were architectural, but not exactly science-focused. In the below photo, Vicky…

Facial Expression Reader Vicky 85% Happy, 3% Disgust, 2% Fear, 1% Sad It’s amazing that the organ most responsible for the success of our species is the one we know the least about. While we have come a long way, abandoning the cartesian duality and stepping out of the false dichotomy of the nature versus…

I could not imagine the reaction, if an American Science museum were to have a section that dealt with sex as honestly and explicitly as the NEMO science center. From French Kissing displays, to novelty condoms, to pictures of insect genitalia, to dolls in a wide variety of sexual positions… there was plenty of heart-attack…

Elektra the Robot “The medium, or process, of our time – electric technology is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life. It is forcing us to reconsider and re-evaluate practically every thought, every action, and every institution formerly taken for granted. Everything is changing: you, your family, your…

Aesthedes Work Station for Graphic Design (1982) This very small room, hidden in the back of NEMO, virtually ignored, was a little something for Information Science. It runs from the 1940s to the 1980s, bits of history people are going to cherish in the future. The more I get into Computers as my science, the…

There’s a Cabinet of Curiosities at Amsterdam’s NEMO Science Center, the Vrolik Collection. This display is one of many examples of the differences between Science Centers in Europe and America. There are some “gross-out” displays in American Children science centers, but lion penises and elephant clitorii are definitely not something we find in our centers…