Since I’ve been back in the South, I’ve noticed certain regional peculiarities about food. I’d remembered from growing up in North Carolina that pork — specifically barbecue — was big here. There’s something too about fried cuisine: fried pickles, fried mac and cheese, fried brownies and fried Snickers candy bars are all likely to pop up [...]
What a week for noble births! Last Thursday marked the 200th birthdays for both Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln, and today marks the 445th year since the Feb. 15, 1564 birth of Galileo Galilei, the inventor of the telescope, whose controversial astronomy views landed him on house arrest for the final 19 years of his life. Galileo, a devout Catholic, ran into [...]
 Two teams with United States participation are angling to build the next-generation telescope, which will peer at the very edges of the universe, into galaxies that were created immediately after the Big Bang. And as a citizen of a country that’s learning how to tighten its belt, I’m going to suggest they get together [...]