Zoonomian

Puzzling over Tyrannosaurs at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles

Tim Jones — Mon, 28 May 2012 06:41:03 +0000

How when we dig up a dinosaur bone do we know it comes from a young animal or a smaller example of a different species? That’s a question the Museum of Natural History of Los Angeles collection of T.rex helps answer. Yesterday, Erin and I visited the new Dinosaur Hall, where for the first time [...]

Grease Ants

Tim Jones — Sat, 26 May 2012 01:58:35 +0000

Meet the Grease Ants (Solenopsis molesta). Smallest ants I’ve ever seen. One or two millimetres long, they look like specks of dust at first glance, but on closer inspection are perfectly formed little ants. This bunch is a minor infestation running around the kitchen surface where I’m staying in California – or rather an ex-infestation, [...]

Annular Solar Eclipse 20th May 2012

Tim Jones — Sun, 20 May 2012 21:24:39 +0000

I’m in Los Angeles at the moment, which means I got a half decent view of this evening’s annular solar eclipse. Projected disc of sun in shadow of my head. Click for large image. (Photo:Tim Jones) The sun didn’t show as a true annulus from where I am, but an off-set 85% coverage is pretty [...]

Medicinal Whiskey

Tim Jones — Fri, 18 May 2012 18:56:23 +0000

Medicinal whiskey? Sounds like a joke doesn’t it. But from midnight on 17th January 1920, this was the real deal in the USA, and one of the very few ways you’d legitimately get your hands on booze until the repeal of Prohibition in December 1933. I found this old (regretably empty) case yesterday in the [...]

Want a Full Spectrum Love Life? Watch This CD

Tim Jones — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 00:43:46 +0000

It’s that candlelit dinner stage of the evening. Soup through nuts, you’ve been your wonderful, genuine, self. And he/she is pretty fantastic too. But why take chances – this is deal clinching time. With the table cleared, quick as a whippet you pull out your Ethereal Collapse CD, and with a flourish Newton would die [...]

Book Review: The Physics Book by Clifford Pickover

Tim Jones — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 17:29:10 +0000

Hardcover: 528 pages Publisher: Sterling (23 Sep 2011) Language English ISBN-10: 1402778619 ISBN-13: 978-1402778612 Product Dimensions: 22.1 x 19.6 x 3.7 cm The Kindle’s supremely convenient, and the iPad’s drop-dead gorgeous. So why do I find Clifford Pickover’s good ol’ fashioned hardback version of The Physics Book so damn attractive. And I do mean [...]

Profiling the Victorian Door Knob

Tim Jones — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 14:40:17 +0000

Those crazy Victorian inventors. What can you do with them? Whenever I research a history project, some totally unconnected but wonderful distraction like this shows up and wants sharing. Maybe that’s how inventor James Wilcox thought about his ‘profile likeness’ doorknob keepsake idea from the Victorian era, reported in an 1838 edition of (take a [...]

The Darker Side (of some) Scientists

Tim Jones — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 02:48:52 +0000

I guess at times we all put up a mask in public. We might even have a bit of a dark side kept under wraps most of the time. But there’s something extra-disturbing when our heroes show a side to them we never knew, especially when it’s at odds with the comfortable stereotype they’ve come [...]

Nesting Grey Herons

Tim Jones — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 21:22:04 +0000

Quite a cold afternoon’s walk today; but the sun was up, the golfers were out, and so too were our local herons. I snapped this one just before sunset. He’s a Grey Heron (Aredea cinerea) and common in the UK. (I keep an eye out for the Blue Heron and super-rare Purple Heron, that [...]

Monkey Brand Comes Clean

Tim Jones — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:11:22 +0000

Like any normal person, I decorate my bathroom with Victorian engravings of anthropomorphised monkeys. These ones depict the kind of half ape / half-monkey used by Benjamin Brooke and Lever Brothers to promote Monkey Brand soap, a super-popular cleaning product at the turn of the twentieth century. There’s an intriguing little strap line at the [...]