Participant in a very large public pillow fight in San Francisco Of course. Who hasn’t? But I cannot remember a specific fight. And until this very moment -- searching Flickr for a picture -- I had no idea that big public pillow fights took place, at least in San Francisco and Paris. I suppose it is all good clean fun, except for the feathers. I did a little b...

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Exhibit A, from The Origin of Species, by C.R. Darwin, 1st edition, 1859, pp73-4:

I am tempted to give one more instance showing how plants and animals, most remote in the scale of nature, are bound together by a web of complex relations. ... The number of humble-bees in any district depends...

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Me, looking out of the window of a sleeper at the early morning light Most recently, just before Thanksgiving last year, the midnight train from Rome to Turin, and what a hoot it was. The cabin, with two bunks, was absolutely tiny. A basin was advertised, but we never did manage to find the space to use it. Simply getting in and out of the cabin, let alone the bunks,...

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Man looking at the Mona Lisa Yes, but the details are sketchy. I know it was some time after the Pyramid thingy opened. And, like most people who have seen it, what I took away was how small the painting is. I mean, really tiny.

Of course one has no way of knowing how big it ought to be, having seen only reproductions, and...

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A bright green Romanesco broccoli, the fractal vegetable Back after a brief Christmas break. The story so far: a while ago, I listed various things I had done in a lazy blog post. Now I’m expanding within the constraint of 100 words.

Where to begin? Yes, I have grown my own vegetables. And saved my own seeds. And sold them, and other peoples’. And wr...

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