Rata Weekly

A lunar eclipse at midsummer, on the shortest night of the year, is pretty awesome.  It also doesn't leave a lot of darkness to view the...

"Chladni patterns were discovered by Robert Hook and Ernst Chladni in the 18th and 19th centuries. They found that when they bowed ...

To pass the Bechdel Test , a movie has to fulfill these criteria: 1. It has to have at least two [named] women in it 2. Who talk to each ...

"The hazardous career field of commercial diving was once largely defined by the deep-water saturation divers working the oil rigs in ...

65 million years ago, a meteor at least 10-km wide impacted Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, causing global catastrophe.  The force of the ex...

Thanks Andrew for this wee gem, if gem is the word I want... Ian's shoelace site shows you the many options available to you when lacin...

This is also from the 1886 Goldsmith book, this time the outside back cover. The text reads : Woodhouse's Balsam of Spermaceti or Pector...

Sometimes nature comes up with something so funny-looking you can't quite believe it. Funny-looking to us, anyway. I wonder what we lo...

Ever heard of Nigel Richards? Neither had I, but he's the reclusive Kiwi who's been world champion in Scrabble for the last 12 year...

This is from the inside cover of an edition of Goldsmith's plays dated 1886.

Cult TV series Carnivale is movie-like in its complexity and attention to detail: you need to watch every episode in order to have any idea ...

OK I'm posting this here because I try to describe this to people and they either don't believe me or I can't explain it properl...

The BBC recently had this nice story of a minute waterlily brought back from extinction through stored seed: "Two years ago, this deli...

You'd think that online music sales would be more financially rewarding for artists than traditional music sales involving a physical pr...

Thanks to Andrew for pointing me to this wonderful electrical rendition of the Doctor Who theme. The device used here is sometimes known...