Myths and folk tales sometimes… … have their origin in reality. This week we take up one of the most persistent of all folk stories–the connection between weather changing and aches/pains in the body. You’ve probably heard this before from your …
Masses of animals fascinate… Birds, bugs, mammals–when they all get together in vast quantities, they amaze us. This week we want to search out two particular kinds of swarming animals to get a sense for how many of them move en masse together, an…
A large number of any living creatures moving together is always a sight to behold… It could be the vast rivers of wildebeests that annually migrate in Africa, or millions of passenger pigeons that once darkened the skies of North America, or the mo…
Travel is an endless source of SearchResearch… While in DC I found this fountain that seemed so out-of-place and unlike other fountains that I had to wonder what the backstory was. As you can see below (look at the very plain fountain two pictures d…
While wandering through DC… … I came across a most remarkable water fountain. While there’s no water running in the fountain now, it clearly used to be a fountain. But what an unusual form! How fantastically decorative! As I walked around the f…
Simple really is best. The key getting really good at searching is to keep a very open mind about what works–because what works best will change over time. And sometimes, the simplest approach often works. Let’s take a look at how I searched for the…
Simple really is best. This perhaps most true in your SearchResearches. And yet one of the most common search mistakes I see in my studies is people using WAAY too complicated terms to search for simple things. Here are a few quick Search Challenges …
Every so often… … one gets reminded of what they don’t remember. In this week’s case, Regular Reader Fred Delventhal left a really nice comment on yesterday’s post. He wrote (minor edits are mine): Youtube filtering allows you to limit your searc…
How do you get immersed, if you can’t find what you want to be immersed in?There are lots of “immersive” videos out there. Here’s a nice example from David Hsieh: ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OzlksZBTiA ) And we know about the NYTimes VR stori…
Getting immersed in your topic is usually a great idea… … and in the past couple of years, a number of different technologies have emerged that let you record and view 360-degree “immersive” videos. Here’s a nice example from David Hsieh: This is…
So… what’s the story here? Why did all of the NASA missions land on the side facing the Earth? It struck me the other day: ALL of the NASA landings on the Moon were all on the side of the Moon facing towards the earth. Why did they neglect the other…
A while ago we had a… post about whether or not one could see the Farallon Islands from the shore (they’re 27 miles to the west off the coast from San Francisco)… We answered that yes, you could see them, but your eyes would have to be 489 feet in …
On January 1st, the moon was glorious on the horizon… … there it was… a beautiful slender crescent that hung in the western night sky just after sunset. Not my photo, but very similar to what I saw on Jan 1, 2017. P/C NASAI spent a bit of time i…
SearchResearch is often a process… You start with an observation–maybe you notice that something doesn’t quite fit, or maybe there’s a missing bit, or a strange misalignment. I often write these observations in my notes, and when I have a bit of t…
As I read, I take notes. I take so many notes that by the end of the year, I have a few hundred pages of them. Some of those notes are questions that I’ve read about, or small curiosities that have occurred to me as I read. I try to frame those curio…