There is a category of discovery that arrives sideways, as the residue of an argument about something else entirely.
The argument concerned whether a space containing nothing could exist. The…
There is a category of living thing that is truly difficult to classify, and lichens are the standard example.
The difficulty is not that they are obscure. They are everywhere…
There is a useful question to ask about any everyday object: what did people do before it, and did they think they had a problem?
For most tools the answer…
Texture is not a minor component of eating. It is perceived through an entirely different set of senses from flavour, and it decides more about whether something is acceptable than…
Two facts explain most of this: freezing requires a starting point, and water vapour can turn directly to ice without becoming liquid first. Here are twelve consequences.
1. Freezing Needs…
Everything is built around a solid form, and everything afterwards is a set of conflicting requirements settled in a particular way. Here are fifteen decisions inside any pair.
1. It…