Category: WN@TL Blog

For May 1, 2019         Hi WN@TL Fans,   Painter, engineer, architect, inventor and more: Leonardo Da Vinci put the poly in polymath. As far as I know, as a mathematician he left us no equations, but he did bequeath us unequaled images, including astonishing drawings of the human body and illuminating paintings of …

For April 24, 2019         Hi WN@TL Fans,   Since I bike to work, most of my driving is spent hauling my kids, ages14 and 11, around town to swim practice and hockey or soccer practice.  Plus to the meets or games.  As is the parlance, I am a Daddy Uber.  D’Uber for …

As you know, WN@TL is always on, unless the chancellor closes the university. That has happened only once on a Wednesday, back on February 2, 2011, when David Gamm was our scheduled speaker. We’re on tonight, as usual, every Wednesday night, at 7pm. Tonight: The Environmental Fate of Lampricides in Tributaries of the Great Lakes. …

For April 17, 2019         Hi WN@TL Fans, Last week’s photo of a black hole required a sustained stare by 8 different telescopes at 8 different locations across the globe focussed on a single point a bazillion miles away.  This is a many-eyed approach of Argus.  Then the petabytes of data had to be crunched and …

For April 10, 2019           Hi WN@TL Fans,   The first house I ever owned was on an old farmstead on McGirr Road in DeKalb County in Illinois. The constellation of run-down buildings included a barn, a corn crib, a hog shed, and a machine shed.      There was one more …

For April 3, 2019           Hi WN@TL Fans,   As a longtime subscriber to National Geographic (or rather, as a member of the National Geographic Society, I beg your pardon), nothing is more exhilarating than unfolding a brand new map.     Nothing, perhaps, except unfolding a really old map.   Maps chart …

Hi WN@TL Fans,   My Grandpa Zinnen worked for the Burlington Route, and so I’ve been tuned to the double iron bars since I was a kid.  Railroads run on many things, but one you might not want to overlook is the ballast under the rails and between the ties.  We think of trains as running on iron or …

Hi WN@TL Fans,   The Scotsman Kenneth Grahame spoke for many a Sconnie when he pointed out that “there is nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”   For some of us, it would have been just as true had he sung the delights of messing about in books.  Boats, books: …

For February 27, 2019 Hi WN@TL Fans,   The seal of the University of Wisconsin–Madison features an eye that is receiving (or perhaps emanating?) an arc of rays of light.    The eye is the organ of sight; it is also a symbol of insight and providence. “To see” means not only to form an image of the world, but …

For February 20, 2019          Hi WN@TL Fans,   A few years ago my family and I rode the ferry from Gill’s Rock to Washington Island in Door County.  It was a chilly windy day in early April. I remember big waves, rocky shoals, and a small boat. Once underway, I quickly made …