One of the advantages of living in an area with a warm dry climate is the long growing season. I normally start my vegetable garden with seeds and seedlings in the last week of March, and finish harvesting peppers and tomatoes around Thanksgiving. This year, though, March flew by before I knew it. That actually turned out to be a stroke of luck, because...

When a wood thrush flew by the Trailhead mound carrying a grasshopper to her own nest and dropped part of the crushed insect to the ground, a patrolling worker found it in less than a minute and triggered a chain action. The worker examined the grasshopper, tasted it briefly, then ran back to the nest entrance. On the way, she touched the tip of...

Today is Equal Pay Day. It's not a celebration like Mother's Day or Independence Day or Labor Day, at least for half the US population.  Instead April 12th symbolizes how far into 2011 women must work to earn what men earned in 2010 - it's not an exact date because the 2010 earnings data has not yet been released. If you take a look at the US labor...

Our bodies did not evolve to sit at a desk on a rigid position all day. Our fingers are not designed to move independently. We are graspers, we are killers, our bodies evolved to do particular things. More about Gmail Motion. (I totally want this for real - I could use some increased physical activity as I email)

I've never understood the claim that science somehow detracts from the beauty of the natural world. I think xkcd sums it up the sense of wonder scientists get with a new discovery pretty nicely: The sense of wonder at a new scientific discovery is similar to but not identical with the "sensawunda" you can get reading science fiction. It's an excitement...

Yesterday I posted about the variety of blue and purple wildflowers that have sprung up after the recent rains.  But while the lupines and bellflowers and blue dicks provide spots of color, it was the yellow flowers that brightened the hillsides on an otherwise gloomy evening. (Click to enlarge images) Almost two years ago a fire swept across the hills...