Matt's Sci/Tech Blog

Sometimes, Westerners may wonder whether there's a living thing left in Cambodia, home of the Killing Fields.  There are, fortunately, b...

I've followed the microsatellite/nanosatellite industry for a long time, and these people are impressing the heck out of me.  First, t...

OK, we know know where the most famous model in the history of cryptozoology is headed. It's going to the Museum of the Weird in Austin...

A Canadian motorcyclist says he was chased by a very big gray wolf.  It might just be another story, except, when he realized he could keep ...

This week, we learn that Iceland is resuming hunting fin whales , an endangered species under the Convention on International Trade in Endan...

Swordfish: A Biolgraphy of the Ocean Gladiator by Richard Ellis University of Chicago Press, 2013 I never thought the billfish, impressi...

The Bountiful Sea Seabrook Hull Prentice-Hall, 1964 Why review a book on the oceans written in 1964?  Well, as I spend more time reading...

A belated salute to Valentina Tereshkova, who 50 years ago became the first woman in space . On the one hand, it was a political stunt. Her...

My dad (a folksinger now living in Seattle) used to play us a tune with the refrain: "Very next day the cat came back Thought he was...

Brazil has a lot of birds. It has, in fact, a lot more than we knew of just five years ago.  In that short time, no fewer than fifteen new s...

I’m browsing a book from 1968 called Under The Sea: A Treasury of Great Writing about the Ocean Depths , edited by Gardner Soule.   I ...

It will soon be June 17, a sad anniversary in conservation. It was on that day in 1987 that the last dusky seaside sparrow died. If God trul...

The nonscientist, the amateur, whatever term you want to use, the role of the non-degreed scientist has not outlived its utility. Sure, it w...

Quite a week for paleontology. First a mammoth with intact blood is found (seemingly raising the odds of cloning, even though that's st...

This is a fun roundup of some aerial creatures that have, at some point, been claimed to exist.  Some, like the thunderbird of North Americ...

This isn't a particular anniversary of much of anything, but an article article by Charlie Petit posted on the Knight Science Journali...

We don't know everything about how dinosaurs protected or raised their young, but we're learning more. It wasn't that long ago w...

I'm watching the 2010 miniseries of Moby Dick , which I hadn't given a thought to when it came out.  William Hurt as Ahab has a nice...

Ever since Charles Darwin coined the term "living fossil," it's been bandied around very loosely.  One creature that desrves t...

A subject I touch on every now and then is my belief that fusion reactors are not the primary way to power Earth's future, but the only ...