Smithsonian articles from December 2006

Smithsonian archives from December 2006

Soft power: some promising endeavors on Pacific islands.
December 1, 2006... PAUL THEROUX, author of the novels Chicago Loop and The Mosquito Coast and numerous travel books, including The Old Patagonian Express and The Great Railway Bazaar, began keeping geese on his six-acre Hawaiian spread because he was sick of...

Geneticist Svante Paabo ("Neanderthal Man") says that discoveries of similarities between our DNA and that of lowly creatures such as worms and flies strike some people as a "blow to the idea of human uniqueness.".(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2006... READERS RESPOND TO THE OCTOBER ISSUE Geneticist Svante Paabo ("Neanderthal Man") says that discoveries of similarities between our DNA and that of lowly creatures such as worms and flies strike some people as a "blow to the idea of human...

Growing pains.(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2006... AUTHOR JOEL GARREAU tells us ("300 Million and Counting") that the world faces "catastrophic population shrinkage" because "nearly half the world's population lives in countries where the native-born are not reproducing fast enough to replace...

Life on Earth.(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2006... IT SEEMS IRONIC we spend thousands of dollars and hours looking for planets that could potentially support life ("The Planet Hunters") while treating our own life-supporting, beautiful and fragile planet with such disdain. What if we were as...

Change happens.(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2006... ULRICH BOSER'S piece ("Say What?"), about American dialects, quotes a linguist saying changing language patterns are "not really like biological evolution," in that that they don't get "better" as they change. Say what! Biologists don't...

Hot rocks dash moon skeptics.(Letter to the editor)
December 1, 2006... AS A FORMER student intern at NASA's Johnson Space Center now serving time for the heist of Apollo moon rocks, I share the frustration expressed by Melody Von Smith in "Moonstruck." Arguing logic with those who hold ignorance as a badge of...

New spin.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(mammal get extinct due to earth's tilt)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... Mammal species rise and fall with a baffling regularity--most survive about 2.5 million years and then go extinct. Now a study led by Utrecht University in the Netherlands offers an explanation: wobbles in Earth's orbit. The scientists analyzed...

Jeepers creepers.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(secretion of sticky substance from tarantulas feet)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... While studying zebra tarantulas, researchers in Germany saw something unexpected: footprints. They were silky secretions left by tiny structures in the tarantula's feet as it climbed up a glass plate. Previously, spiders were thought to produce...

Where'd you get that smile?(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(genetic inheritance)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... Ever notice how a little girl frowns just like her mother? Common sense suggests that her expression is mostly learned, the product of years of mimicking her parents. But a new study from the University of Haifa in Israel shows other forces at...

Free as a bird.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(research on living specimens regulated)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... In the Colombian Andes, ornithologist Thomas Donegan, of the conservation group Fundacion ProAves, discovered a new subspecies (above) of the yellow-breasted brush-finch. The find adds a nuance to avian taxonomy, but the key is what happened...

Observed.(LIFE AS WE KNOW IT)(cuscuta pentagona)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... NAME: Cuscuta pentagona, a parasitic plant better known as dodder RECENTLY SEEN ON: The Agriculture Department's top noxious weeds list NOW KNOWN AS: The plant kingdom's first known sniffer dog ITS NOSE KNOWS? Yes: C. pentagona can...

Beard's eye view: when elephants began dying, Peter Beard suspected that poachers were not entirely to blame.(INDELIBLE IMAGES)
December 1, 2006... FOR A PHOTOJOURNALIST, being in the right place at the right time (usually a bad time) is often a matter of luck, earned by risks taken and obstacles overcome. Peter Beard made that kind of luck. Beard took this haunting image in 1971 from...

Mile-high multiculturalism: the creator of savvy Native American sleuths explains why he cherishes his Southwestern high desert home.(MY KIND OF TOWN)(Los Ranchos)
December 1, 2006... WHY IS LOS RANCHOS DE ALBUQUERQUE my kind of town? First, our mile-high, big-sky, cool-night, dry climate. Second, mountains in all directions, reminding you of aspens, pines and silent places. Next, there's the Rio Grande right behind our...

Interview Margaret Lowman, ecologist, Sarasota, Florida: bugs in trees and kids in labs get their due in a new book by "canopy meg".(Interview)
December 1, 2006... Margaret Lowman, of the New College of Florida, pioneered forest ecology by building the first canopy walkway in North America, in 1991. She recalls her adventures as a scientist and single parent in It's a Jungle Up There. WHY SPEND TIME...

December anniversaries: momentous or merely memorable.(THIS MONTH IN HISTORY)
December 1, 2006... 20 YEARS AGO FUEL'S ERRAND After nine days aboard Voyager, an experimental aircraft, pilots Dick Rutan, 48, and Jeana Yeager, 34, land in California December 23, 1986, completing the first nonstop around-the-world flight without refueling....

Art for nature's sake.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)
December 1, 2006... This past September, seven artists clambered aboard canoes in the backwoods of Quebec for an 18-day, 140-mile river journey supported by the Smithsonian Institution to raise awareness of new threats to the continent's largest uninterrupted...

Eminent domain: the Institution's Regents include the vice president, the chief justice and other national leaders.(FROM THE SECRETARY)(Smithsonian Institution)(Agency overview)
December 1, 2006... JUST ABOUT EVERYBODY has a boss. At the Smithsonian Institution, where the chief executive officer is known as the Secretary, the ultimate authority has been vested by law in its Board of Regents since the Institution's establishment 160 years...

Sacks appeal; Attention shoppers: just what you need--one more seasonal ornament.(THE OBJECT AT HAND)(shopping bags at Cooper-Hewitt Museum )
December 1, 2006... AT THIS TIME OF YEAR, the Consumer Confidence Index--the measure that gauges how we feel about reaching into our pockets and shuffling our decks of credit cards--rises to the point where it could be called the Consumer Irrational Exuberance...

Planet found! Scientists say speedster is like a giant ball of cork.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)
December 1, 2006... Scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have discovered a planet that existing theories can't explain. The planet, HAT-P-1b, is far beyond our solar system, orbiting a star 450 light-years away. Using small telescopes in...

Who's counting?(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(gastropods at National Museum of Natural History)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... 992 predatory marine gastropod specimens from the Pacific coast of Panama join the holdings at the National Museum of Natural History. The three-inch Phyllonotus regius snail devours oysters and clams by drilling into their shells and sucking...

What's up.(SCENES AND SIGHTINGS FROM THE SMITHSONIAN MUSEUMS AND BEYOND)(Brief article)(Calendar)
December 1, 2006... ESCALATE Stairway to heaven? Not quite. A French guildsman crafted this foot-high pearwood-and-walnut spiral c. 1820-40. Exquisite stair models from France and England are at the Cooper-Hewitt until June 3. ASSEMBLYMAN Collagist Joseph...

Living with geese: novelist and gozzard Paul Theroux ruminates about avian misconceptions, anthropomorphism and March of the Penguins as "a travesty of science".(Critical essay)
December 1, 2006... WHEN I FIRST BEGAN TO RAISE GEESE, in Hawaii, my more literate friends asked me, "Have you read the E. B. White piece?" This apparently persuasive essay was all that they knew about geese other than the cliche, often repeated to me, "Geese are...

The treasures of Timbuktu.
December 1, 2006... WHITE ROBE fluttering in the desert breeze, Moctar Sidi Yayia al-Wangari leads me down a sandy alley past donkeys, idle men and knapsack-toting children rushing off to school. It is a bright morning, my second in Timbuktu, in the geographic...

Antarctica erupts! A trip to Mount Erebus yields a rare, close-up look at one of the world's weirdest geological marvels.(Travel narrative)
December 1, 2006... GEORGE STEINMETZ was drawn to Mount Erebus, in Antarctica, by the ice. The volcano constantly sputters hot gas and lava, sculpting surreal caves and towers that the photographer had read about and was eager to see. And though he'd heard that...

Pay dirt: when self-taught archaeologists dug up an 1850s steamboat, they brought to light a slice of American life.
December 1, 2006... ON A STEAMY July day in 1987, David Hawley walked through rows of ripening Kansas corn, listening to chirps coming from a black box cradled in his hands. Somewhere below the cornfield, Hawley believed, lay the steamboat Arabia, which had struck...

Rembrandt at 400: astonishing brushwork, wrinkles-and-all honesty and deep compassion only begin to hint at the reasons for his enduring genius.
December 1, 2006... HAD YOU TRAVELED THROUGH ANY MAJOR CITY in the Netherlands this year, you would likely have met the piercing gaze of a rather startling face. The wild-haired, wide-eyed character (below) who greeted you from street signs, store windows,...

Waging peace in the Philippines: with innovative tactics, U.S. forces make headway in the "war on terror".
December 1, 2006... "THEY'LL SLIT YOUR THROAT ON JOLO," people told Col. Jim Linder, head of a U.S. military task force in the Philippines. He recalled the prediction as we buzzed toward Jolo Island in a helicopter. Linder, a 45-year-old South Carolina native who...

Man of the century; But 100 years after writing his classic memoir, the question about Henry Adams remains: which century?(PRESENCE OF MIND)
December 1, 2006... UNDER A SILVER GRAY SKY, I stared up at a line of elegant 19th-century buildings on the south side of Avenue Foch, a three-minute walk from the Arc de Triomphe. A guide to literary sites in Paris was in my hands. "Can I help you find...

Going up? Some brushes with fame are more uplifting than others.(THE LAST PAGE)(celebrity encounters)
December 1, 2006... MY SISTER MADE HER first trip to New York City years before I did. She saw all the usual sights, but her favorite story was about riding in the same elevator with Brooke Shields' father. Even though he was only related to someone famous, my...