http://modernanachronist.com Sat, 03 Jul 2010 18:58:09 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Charles Darwin's four-year naturalist expedition on the HMS Beagle took him to South America, the Galapagos, across the Pacific, Australia and back to South America. Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle is almost strictly a naturalist's diary. Very little of the journal is devoted to telling stories unless they illustrate a ... http://modernanachronist.com/?p=502 Brooklyn, New York, is undergoing a bit of a Renaissance this past decade and any period of success is going to lead to development for better (superfunding the Gowanus Canal) or for worse (the Ratner complex downtown). Nowhere in Brooklyn are these changes more apparent than the waterfront. Miles and miles ... http://modernanachronist.com/?p=498 The Guardian's Adam Nicholson muses on the bluebell - now in full bloom - and asks users to send in their photos. He writes: But there is another quality that makes the bluebell magical: it is in a hurry. The flowers have to beat the closing over of the tree canopy ... http://modernanachronist.com/?p=490 In woodworking, the dovetail joint is not only a joy to cut, fit and finish but it is one of the sturdiest ways of joining a right angle. The dovetail joint is most often employed with boxes and drawers. The Shakers frequently used the dovetail joints for a wide variety ... http://modernanachronist.com/?p=483 NASA has released images from its new Solar Dynamics Observatory, launched in February 2010. For once, NASA had the good sense to take video of space phenomena - far more elucidating than still photographs (in black and white or false color no less). These videos give us a new understanding ... http://modernanachronist.com/?p=478 Gizmodo's Joel Johnson argues in his "iPad Cases Even a Nazi Communist Cartophile Could Love" that old map cases will make for a perfect iPad case. A map case? Luckily, the article is moreover a thorough introduction to map cases. What's a map case? It's a case for maps, those pieces of paper ... http://modernanachronist.com/?p=467 While io9's "10 Weirdest Urban Ecosystems on Earth" seems to stretch the topic of ecosystems into urban curiosities, Charlie Jane Anders features a few interesting tales of nature's relentless effort to reclaim the land humankind has urbanized. From wild dogs adapting to the Moscow subway system to pollution-resistant microbes in ... http://modernanachronist.com/?p=461 The lines and patterns in leaves are universal in life. While the patterns are easy to describe, their meaning is not. Abstracted rules for survival could include dividing and reaching. The need for food is most apparent in the tree which divides itself into branches upon branches to harvest more ... http://modernanachronist.com/?p=455 Edgar Allen Poe's only novel, 'The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket', familiarly 'Arthur Gordon Pym', was a response to criticism of the unprofitability of his short stories. Poe, with some sarcasm, responded by putting his stamp on the popular American sea adventure. The novel is told from Pym's ... http://modernanachronist.com/?p=450 The vibrancy of the daffodil (or 'narcissus') no matter what the color is, like the robin, one of the first signs of spring. In Brooklyn, the daffodils began to come up on March 18th. A walk in Prospect Park reveals that spring has indeed arrived. The daffodil, like the tulip, ... http://modernanachronist.com/?p=447