The Scale of Things
There are shapes, colors, and patterns everywhere, and I marvel in how the same patterns often exist at vastly different scales. I have found myself looking at a rockface, admiring the small, swirling, black-and-white folds in metamorphic gneiss or migmatite. Looking out at the wider landscape, I often see the swirls echoed. The thick rock layers composing the mountain are folded over and under mu... »
Chocolate-covered fraud
As much as I love chocolate, I had never tried (nor even heard of) Noka, supposedly the world’s most expensive chocolate. Possibly because I can never actually afford the world’s most expensive anything. It turns out, I needn’t feel so bad about it. A Texas food blogger named Scott has conducted an incredible investigation into whether or not all the chocolatier’s claims &#... »
My brain needs exercise.
I just cannot gather up the mental energy to do anything today. Is it the big post-Christmas crash? The pre-New Year’s lull? The fact that I’m a lazy jerk? Let’s just say it’s all of those things together. Reader Rav sent me this article from the New York Times about an upcoming trend in brain exercises, designed to prevent or delay the onset of dementia. I read the article... »
A Peridot is Forever
As a geologist and a skepchick, I’d like to debunk a popular myth: a diamond is not forever. This clever phrase was coined in 1948 as a marketing slogan for DeBeers, but I cry that it’s false advertising. Diamonds, formed at high-pressures deep within the Earth, are metastable in the low pressures at Earth’s surface. Over a few million years, the carbon atoms in the gemstones wil... »
Princess Power?
I just read an intriguing article from the New York Times called What’s Wrong With Cinderella?, written by Peggy Orenstein, a feminist mother struggling with a daughter who is drawn to all the pink, frilly, girly stereotypes once considered damaging to a young girl’s psyche. It’s a well-balanced piece illustrating the struggle I think most of us go through when trying to figure o... »
