August a couple of years ago I was far enough away from city lights, and the shower was at a reasonable hour, that I did see more than a handful of the Perseids. Exciting though it was, I wish instead I could say that I had seen the aurora borealis. Now there’s a heavenly phenomenon to reckon with....
We got over singing “Blowin’ in the wind” instead of Christmas carols, and amazingly found ourselves on Stubby’s Silver Star Show, where The Man forced us to cut our high-concept version of The Story of Bo Diddley down to 1:45 or less. And when the votes were in and counted, a girl beat us out...
An occasional series:
No big deal. I mean, I was doing it this past summer, when things were too hot indoors, just stretched out on the terrace. Mostly I’d wake up in the middle of the night, cool enough to go back inside and sleep, but once or twice I made it to the dawn. I’ve always preferred waking up with a slow inc...
It isn’t often that a TedTalk provokes actual belly laughter. Snickers yes, sometimes an appreciative titter. But outright guffaws? I can’t remember too many, and certainly not sustained through an entire presentation. Ursus Wehrli managed it, in a talk filmed in February 2006 but only recently u...
