MostlyOdd
The Journal
Something to Bragg About: California’s Glass Beach
From a distance it appears to be a normal beach, slightly mottled. As you get closer the sand seems rather large and irregular, it seems to glimmer. This is no ordinary beach. Starting in 1949 the occupants of the city of Fort Bragg, California made a specialty of cheaply disposing of unwanted item. Hauling the […]
Pando: The One Tree Forest
There is the misconception that the largest creature on Earth is the Blue Whale. Measuring in at 180,000kg it is certainly a sizeable beast but it is far from the largest. For the larger creatures we must delve into the world of super-organisms. Many individuals connected to form a single whole. The largest of these, […]
Nuclear Reactors and Bin Bags: The Dangers of Space Junk
Rubbish, junk, and garbage are not words typically associated with space. Space is imagined as a vast, and impeccably clean sphere; but we are making a big mess of it, a mess that is becoming a threat. In orbit around Earth are 10 million unwanted pieces of rubbish, zooming around without a care in the […]
Nail House and Nunchuks
In 2004 a group of developers had found the perfect site for a shopping complex in the Chinese municipality of Chongqing; all they had to do was remove the people living there. In 2004 they set to task, buying the land from the government and evicting everyone from the houses with nothing more than thugs […]
Morgellons: The Non-Existent Epidemic
It spreads like wildfire beneath the skin, the slight prickling sensation of itching. Tiny and innumerable fibres seem to poke through the skin and tiny parasites creep beneath the surface. The urge to pick at the fibres arrives, fingertips reach and simply start to scratch. Later sores appear over the body near where the picking […]
Jumping From Space: The World’s Greatest Fall
The fastest speed ever reached by an unaided human is just under the speed of sound, achieved under the name Project Excelsior. In 1959 and 1960 The United Stated Air Force ran a series of 3 parachute jumps. Jumps so high that they bordered on space, the highest parachute jumps to have ever been attempted. […]
Fact Fragments – Sharks, Cards, Mountains and Spanish
The highest mountain we know of has yet to be visited, it’s on Mars. We call it Olympus Mons. At 27km from its base to its peak, over 3 times the height of Everest, it is the greatest mountain in the solar system. More than just tall, it is 550km wide, and is bent around […]
By the Skin of his Body: The Death of Big Nose George
August 1878, United States of America; a Union Pacific train was screaming through large, and largely empty, rural Wyoming. The day was warm and the steam train chugged along streaming billowing water vapour lazily through the air. George Parrott or Big Nose George as he was also known, was waiting by the tracks in Carbon […]
The Bikini and the Beast
Nuclear means much more than atomic power. Since World War II it has inspired thoughts of Utopia and destruction, but most of all in trying to link objects with the ideas around the atom, popular culture around the world has produced icons. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was enough to have Japan surrender before […]
John Frum and the Cargo Cult
No planes or soldiers were remotely near the islands of Vanuatu, yet airstrips were appearing like scars through the pristine landscapes. World War II had ended, both the Americans and Japanese had left. Slowly the airstrips multiplied, some came with bamboo and rope control towers. The strips were not for the planes of war, they […]
Music, Mathematics and the First Vegetarians: Rise of the Pythagoreans
Pythagoras, mathematician and philosopher, returned from Egypt and Babylon a changed man. At the Greek colony of Croton, he set down roots and brought thinkers to his cause. From its foundation in 530BCE the Pythagorean school was devoted to mysticism, mathematics and music. Their inspiration from Eastern religions set them apart from the world in […]
On The Origin Of Zero
Something, to deliberately show nothing – that is the odd irony at the heart of zero – it is almost unbelievably useful. It makes algebra, computing and Pixar films possible, or at least easier than they would otherwise be. Think of the number 2013, that zero tells us where the other numbers are, and therefore […]