You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make – Jane Goodall, English anthropologist The hustle and bustle of the Christmas season is already upon us. Various different traditions …
350 is just a number with no real significance than any other number, unless it holds some relevance in your own personal world. It could be the price you paid for that leather jacket you’ve always wanted, your cherished 350 engine, or for biblical historians, it is the number of years Noah lived after the …
When the well is dry, we know the worth of water. – Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac, 1746 H2O is a simple chemical symbol – two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen in each molecule. H2O – water – without which life would not exist. We have such an abundance of water, don’t …
“Christmas is the day that holds all time together.” — Alexander Smith Who doesn’t appreciate a warm embracing smooch? Especially this time of year. The pleasure for puckering up is as simple as placing yourself under that sprig of fauna known as mistletoe. A parasitic plant Mistletoe is not a single plant but rather a …
Climate change is what we expect, weather is what we get — Mark Twain These are not words spoken by a present-day climatologist or environmentalist. In fact, they were uttered in the 1800s by one of America’s most inspiring writers, Samuel Clements (alias Mark Twain). The present-day truth of his words would have him bemused. …
The carving of pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns has long been a creative and spooky Halloween tradition. But few understand how the mutilation of produce came to be a common October custom. Carving pumpkins during Halloween is derived from an Irish myth recounting the story of a man known as Stingy Jack. Stingy Jack tricked the devil for monetary …
Do elephants use names to communicate? Animals can communicate with other individuals to attract, alert, or dominate, which plays an important role in their lives. Communication between animals occurs when a sender organism does an action or signal perceived by a receiver organism, which likely would alter its behaviour pattern in an adaptive way to …
Say My Name! African Elephants Might Communicate with Each Other Using Personal Names Read More »
“Sweet flowers are slow and weeds make haste” – William Shakespeare Weeds. You either like them or you don’t. Unarguably, some weeds are a beauty to behold. Who would cringe upon seeing a field of yellow dandelions or a flowering swamp of milkweed? It all depends on your perspective – how one defines beauty. As …
“The wildest and richest gardens that we have” – Henry David Thoreau So wrote Henry David Thoreau when speaking of wetlands. This 19th-century philosopher, poet, and essayist loved wetlands, particularly swamps. He wrote about them often in his poetry. For him, they were a source of intricate beauty and life: nature in its purest, untamed …
Pesticides. They’ve been around for a long time. People have used pesticides before 2000 BCE. In ancient Mesopotamia, about 4,500 years ago, crops were protected and dusted with sulfur fungicide. Toxic chemicals, such as arsenic, mercury, and lead became the norm by the 15th century. Non-essential or “cosmetic” pesticides (herbicides) came much later in the …
