Until people learned that solar eclipses are caused by the moon blocking the sun, they were scary events. Even today, eclipses are cloaked in superstition and ritual by some cultures. For more than a ...

The drought conditions of recent years have severely reduced the population of many wild animals on our place. The 13.6 inches of rain we've received so far in 2012 has brought back some of these ...

Landfills have a very long history, which is why archaeologists have learned much about ancient cultures by excavating their rubbish. Today's landfills are far bigger than trash-filled recesses in the ...

Some of history's most significant inventions were made by people with little or no formal education. Consider the invention of stone projectile points, printing, pulleys, sewing needles, sailing ...

Summer is the peak tourist season for Galveston Island. Summer also marks the peak of the sargassum season. Sargassum is the genus name for several species of brown algae, two of which invade ...

Those winter visitors known as American robins have arrived in South Central Texas. A few weeks ago I spotted only a few, but flocks of these birds with brown backs and reddish breasts have since ...

A television weathercaster in a city on a river somewhere north of San Antonio often shows photographs submitted by viewers. A few days before Thanksgiving, he showed a nice photo of a bluebonnet ...

Last week two of the world's rarest natural events occurred at our place in central Guadalupe County. The first was the opening of two clusters of devils cigars, one of the planet's rarest mushrooms.

SAN ANTONIO — If you're not allergic to Hill Country juniper pollen, chances are you know someone who is. Folks are rubbing their eyes and blowing their noses between sneezes. These symptoms are ...

The annual summer invasion of Saharan dust has begun. Windstorms across North Africa blow huge volumes of dust from the Sahara Desert high into the sky. During summer, some of this dust blows across ...

For most of human history, men and women with absolutely no formal training served as society's inventors and scientists. While the names of most of these people are unknown, many of their creations ...

My wife Minnie's computer refused to start after we returned from a trip to see the recent solar eclipse. I tried various remedies, and each time, the screen responded by displaying a grid of colorful ...