gift
esiegel | December 2, 2012"A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting." -Henry David Thoreau
Every day that we have free or leisure time, there's this great conflict as to how we spend it: working to better ourselves and improve our knowledge, and taking the time to enjoy our lives in whatever way we see fit. Sometimes, this goes horribly awry, as the B-52s would attest in their (relatively) new song,
Funplex.
But there's often no better way to combine these two pursuits than by reading a good book.…
sciencepunk | January 15, 2012Toward the end of last year, being in possession of two novelties - a girlfriend and a steady job - I decided to spend my free evenings crafting a very special piece of jewellery. I was inspired by a visit to Barometer World in the late summer, where I discovered the curious material known as storm glass (tragic backstory recounted here).
In short, a storm glass is a weather divination tool so old that nobody really knows where they came from. It's likely they were borne out of alchemy experiments performed during the medieval period. Inside a sealed glass tube, crystals bloom, wither and…
sb admin | November 20, 2011Last week I had a visit from a friend of mine, who was on something of a farewell tour. After several years of planning, he'd packed in his dependable but much-begrudged corporate job, and was setting sail for Asia, to see more of the world. He's already seen much more of the world than most people. Not because he was well connected or rich, but because he made it his life's mission to tour the forgotten, the hidden and the forbidden places of the world. I mention this because if there ever was a man to take life advice from, it is this one, and he put into words something I've been…
bioephemera | June 23, 2009
Clocky sounds like R2D2 and looks kind of like an ATV's single-axled, pastel cub. In other words, it's really, really cute. Which is why when Clocky wakes you with its piercing warbles, crashes to your floor and rolls under your bed, you won't want to smash its little display with your fist. At least, we hope not! Click through for more details.
Clocky is a clock for people who have trouble getting out of bed. When the snooze bar is pressed, Clocky rolls off the table and finds a hiding spot, a new one every day. Clocky began as a class project. After graduating, Gauri Nanda turned Clocky…
bioephemera | June 5, 2009Thanks to SEED's matching Bloggers Challenge funds and some generous donors who gave me DonorsChoose gift certificates for Christmas, I got to push several worthy projects to completion this winter (by "topping off" their funding). That meant that I got real, snail mail thank-you packages from those classrooms.
At first I was a little ambivalent because I didn't really want the kids to spend their valuable classroom time thanking me. But then I realized that while writing those thank-you notes, they spend at least a few minutes thinking about the fact that a complete stranger cares about…