Book review: ‘Improbable Destinies’ by Jonathan Losos
How predictable is evolution?
Newsletter No. 8: But is it Art?
iPads · s-town · babylonian astronomy · patti smith · james kelman · star-stuff · golden age of photography · conveying life's wonders · horses · bees · organ donations
Grandma’s organ donation
On the mysterious arrival, and equally mysterious disappearance, of a Wurlitzer organ.
Newsletter No. 7: Hacked and hurt by time
John Tyndall · Galápagos cormorants · why English is so odd · Thoreau & Darwin · anthropological discoveries · mass-extinction hyperbole · WG Sebald · yellow rattle · Inigo Thomas · Mars exploration
Orion’s belt-buckle
In celebration of my adopted star.
Newsletter No. 6: A borrowed dog
woodpeckers · ambrotype portraits · W.G. Sebald · a deserted hamlet · mission creep · prime meridians · W.H. Hudson · podcasts · street photography · bonkers · tapirs · coiners
Book review: ‘The Gallows Pole’ by Benjamin Myers
18th-century Yorkshire meets the Sopranos: intrigue, betrayal, murder, and revenge in the Calder Valley.
Newsletter No. 5: Incongruous owl
dawn chorus · Simon Armitage · the invention of the telescope · huge, sprawling collaborations · Withnail & I · book smells · re-assembling Darwin’s research notes · converting walks into words · Daniel Dennett · writing letters · humanist politics · dentistry with stone tools · analysing penguin poo · Melissa Harrison · Robert Macfarlane · swallows
‘Spiritual’ won’t do
In which I seek a better word to describe a profoundly uplifting sensation.
Book review: ‘Built on Bones’ by Brenna Hassett
15,000 years of urban life and death.