316 pages

The King in Yellow is a collection of short stories written in the 1890s by the author & painter Robert W. Chambers. It is divided in two halves; the first half is a series of horror stories connected to each other by the idea of a fictional play, "The King in Yellow", the simple reading of which causes insanity; the second half is ( Read more... )

Part II: Range & EnvironmentEven today, after all the senseless deforestation of the past century, the tropics are still densely covered with rainforest; and although pristine rainforests are much rarer in the temperate lands, there are still considerable tracts of them, made even more considerable when one counts among their numbers the highly ( Read more... )

OK, let's try this again. New month, new tree. Poor Abies balsamea will just have to wait until I feel like writing about it again if it wants any attention ( Read more... )

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Whelp, I don't have much time to write this, as I've got to get to the RPGS meeting in 10 minutes, but I found this whilst surfing teh intarwebs, and it was just way too awesome for me not to blog about ( Read more... )

OK, so whilst reading Slashdot yesterday, I came across a couple of items which seemed to demand that I, as a Biology Geek par excellence, have an opinion about them. So, here's my opinions:

The first item is that the US Supreme court has decided that the US Navy has the right to use sonar off the coast of California, even at the expense of the ( Read more... )

Part II: Range

As has already been mentioned, Abies balsamea is a tree of North America's Boreal forests. It likes its winters cold and long, and its summers short and mild. As might be expected of such a tree, it is very sensitive to an excess of heat, and if the temperature exceeds 65º F for too long, the tree may become damaged. Which implies, ( Read more... )

Part I: IntroductionMaine is the Pine Tree State, and the White Pine is indeed by far its most spectacular and productive tree. But to the midwestern visitor such as I, far stranger and exotic than the exuberant pine groves are the black boreal forests of spruce and fir which creep down into Maine from the North. For central Maine lies near the ( Read more... )

Q: Why do mathematicians celebrate Christmas on Hallowe'en?

A: Because Dec 25 = Oct 31!

Happy Hallowe'en, everybody! And yes, I will be telling this exact same joke again in two months' time...

--mark

Part V: Uses & SilvicultureThe white ash is one of the most economically important trees of the eastern states. As a timber tree, a component of urban forests, and an important part of the ecology of mature wild forests, it provides multiple, parallel benefits for both the human and inhuman portions of society at large ( Read more... )