To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here. More than six decades ago, an engineer from the Boeing company boarded a passenger plane driven by propellers. After introducing himself to the man sitting next to him, he began to talk excitedly about the project to which he had given much of his life – the development of the Boeing 707… Read more »
America lives in the shadow of 9-11. Japan lives in the shadow of a different kind of national disaster, commonly called 3-11. On March 11, 2011, an earthquake of unprecedented strength rocked the country. The massive tremor, which registered 9.0 on the Richter Scale, generated a tsunami that in places topped 130 feet. It inundated 200 square miles of coastline and traveled… Read more »
Anyone who has ever owned a cat – which is to say, has been owned by a cat – quickly comes to realize they are creatures of deep mystery. And no mystery has been more fascinating over the centuries than the phenomenon of “cat-righting.” How is it possible that cats always seem to land on their feet? Whether falling from… Read more »
One of the charms of the Golden Gate Bridge is that it almost appears to be fragile. That’s astonishing – especially since it sits alongside the San Andreas Fault, one of the most active geological features in North America. But engineers are convinced that the bridge is probably the safest place to be the next time San Francisco is rocked… Read more »