I found myself trying to explain… … the “how high you have to be above the shore to see the Farallons” SRS Challenge to a friend. You remember the original Challenge about seeing the Farallons. The question there was “can you see the Farallon Isl…
True, or False? Answering these three questions was pretty straightforward. But as I discovered in the comments, our Regular Readers went farther into these topics than I ever imagined. Bravo, Readers! Bravo! Let’s see what we can discover to answe…
True, or False? One of the biggest questions in these slightly strained days of fake news is whether or not something is true. Without getting all epistemological on you, for this week’s Challenge I have a few questions that have come up in my readin…
Zounds!It’s true: some plants DO explode, including ones that look quiet and serene in botanical gardensWaimea ArboretumAs I did this research, the biggest surprise to me was that there are a LOT of plants that explode. Luckily, most of them are reaso…
Crack…. Zing!I’d been walking through a quiet and peaceful botanical garden when it sounded like something blew up not far from me. What’s going on?? A millisecond later I heard something whizzing overhead–an angry bee sound of something passing o…
Even more details… Often, as we do research (especially of the SearchResearch kind), the little details of the Challenge turn out to be important. This is especially the case when you’re trying to figure out where a particular picture has been tak…
Details. Details. Details. Often, as we do research (especially of the SearchResearch kind), the little details of the Challenge turn out to be important. This is especially the case when you’re trying to figure out where a particular picture has b…
Flies, bees, and golf tees… It’s a surprise to things where you don’t expect them. This is always the case, although sometimes you need to know a bit about the context to see the thing “out of place.” For instance, here’s a fairly famous painting …
Every so often you pause and say “What??” This happens to me fairly often, perhaps more often than you’d think. One of those times was a couple of week ago when I was using the “facilities” and saw this in my field of view: “That’s odd…” I thought,…
Travel is broadening. That’s what they say… And I think they’re right. Although, as Dave Barry says: “The major advantage of domestic travel is that, with a few exceptions such as Miami, most domestic locations are conveniently situated right here…
Travel is a great source of puzzlements. Everytime I travel somewhere (and I get to travel fairly often for my job), I come across things that surprise and amaze me.Recently I had the chance to travel to northwestern Europe on business, but I was confu…
Face it: Tracking down quotes was never easy… As I said last week, it used to be that when you heard a quote you liked, you looked for it in one of those big books of quotations (such as Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations or the Yale Book of Quotations)….
It used to be that quotations were pretty easy. If you heard a quote you liked, you looked for it in one of those big books of quotations (such as Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations or the Yale Book of Quotations), and if it wasn’t in there, only the brave…
In 1782…. … the new United States was negotiating for a treaty with Great Britain. But things were moving a bit to slowly for Benjamin Franklin, who took up the fake news strategy writing an entirely made-up, fake letter. The letter, (purportedly f…
This is tricky. This week we’ve been investigating the connection between the weather changing and aches/pains in the body. Is it a real thing when your aged parent complains about the changes in the weather? I’ve often wondered this, and in doing a …