The quest to build a star on Earth
The quest for fusion energy — the clean, potentially limitless source that could end mankind’s power woes — began as an answer to an old question, one we’ve been asking since we first raised our heads toward the sky.
An upstart sport draws big money and crowds
Anna Leigh Waters, a 17-year-old from Delray Beach, Florida, is the world’s top-ranked pickleball player and is widely considered to be the face of America’s fastest-growing sport. But from where she stands, she is still relatively unknown, even among a majority of the racket sport’s fans.
Volcano Watch: ʻAilaʻau or Kualoloa? Hawaiian chants suggest lava flow name change
Native Hawaiian oral traditions record a rich history of the changing volcanic landscape in Hawai‘i. Interweaving cultural knowledge with scientific disciplines can provide a more complete understanding of past events, including the largest known lava flow eruption of Kilauea.
Pompeii: Italy’s frozen-in-time Roman city
I love exploring the world of ancient Rome, with its grand architecture, fascinating culture, and stories of larger-than-life leaders. But since many of the 2,000-year-old empire’s landmarks are reduced to ruins, it can be hard to make sense of the stones and rubble left behind.
Tropical Gardening: Hawaii without palms is like Egypt without dates
We just returned from two months of adventures from Italy to Tunisia and Egypt. It was exploration into the past from the Egyptian Empire to the Roman Empire and everything in between. Many experiences altered the stereotypes we had and others reinforced concerns of how challenges farmers there and Hawaii have in common.
Musk and Trump, a bond made in merch
The bond between Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump is built not only on their shared interests in limited government, social media and golf, but also, it seems, on their common affinity for merch.
Let’s Talk Food: Immunity health
With the coming of cooler and wetter weather, keeping our immune system in check with the right foods could mean the difference between getting sick or not.
Steves: In Berlin, keep your eye on the wall
Whenever I visit Berlin I can’t help remembering my spooky visit to East Berlin back in 1971.
Let’s Talk Food: Potato salads
Most families have a special and possibly secret ingredient for potato salad. It is so subjective and you can decide which is your favorite.
Bookstores are setting up readers on ‘blind dates’ with books
Never judge a book by its cover — even if the cover doesn’t say much at all.
Volterra and San Gimignano: Two sides of northern Tuscany
I’m in Volterra, my favorite hill town in Tuscany, sitting under rustic, noble stones at the base of a palace that made commoners feel small six centuries ago. Bats burst through the floodlights amid ghostly towers held together with rusted iron corsets.
Volcano Watch: How tiltmeters monitor volcano activity
Over the past century, technological advancements have vastly improved volcano monitoring. One key innovation was the introduction of modern borehole tiltmeters, devices that measure very small changes in the inclination of the volcano’s surface.
It’s squash season, and we’re all about delicata
This time of year, as the light slants and temperatures drop, all I really want for dinner is pasta. It’s the key to a luxuriously easy meal when tossed with the robust vegetables of autumn.
Diabetes Quick Fix: Lemon Dill Salmon with Parsley Rice
Lemon juice and fresh dill flavor this quick and easy salmon dinner. The salmon is baked in the oven and the rice is microwaved.
With a simple salad and dessert, this small-batch chili feeds 2 for under $15
Fall is when many of us start to slow down, and at the same time get a hankering for foods that warm us up on a crisp and chilly day while filling the kitchen with wonderful, comforting aromas.
Let’s Talk Food: Offals, the other meat
Offal is also called variety meats or organ meats. The Germanic word “offall” means “garbage/rubbish or off fall,” literally meaning that these cuts have fallen off during butchering. This could mean blood, used to make blood sausage, brain, cheeks, chitterlings, ears, gizzard, gallbladder, gizzards, heart, head cheese, intestines, kidney, liver, omentum, pancreas, trotters, snout, spleen, sweet bread, swim bladder, tripe, oxtail and tongue.
Steves: Taking in the splendor of Granada
It’s sunset, and I’m at the place to be in Granada — the breathtaking San Nicolás viewpoint overlooking the fortress of the Alhambra. Here, at the edge of the city’s exotic Moorish quarter, lovers, widows, and tourists jostle for the best view of the hill-capping, floodlit fortress, the last stronghold of the Moorish kingdom in Spain. For more than 700 years, Spain, the most Catholic of countries, lived under Muslim rule, until the Christians retook the land in 1492.
Navigating this world-record corn maze is a test of the human psyche
DIXON, Calif. — Deep inside one of the world’s largest corn mazes, where the tri-tip sandwiches and soft-serve ice cream purchased at the concession stand have become but a memory and all that can be seen in any direction are dirt paths and dead-end walls of green plants whispering in the breeze, people tend to reveal themselves.
How 7 friends testing a metal detector made Britain’s most valuable treasure find
LONDON — The group huddled together in the farmer’s field, staring at the dozen or so medieval silver coins. They had found one, then two, and a third — Adam Staples knew, then, this was something special.
Seeking ‘warmth and personality’ in the world of high-priced pens
LONDON — When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone by hand? As we entrust our laptops and phones with more and more of our lives, the once-ubiquitous art of handwriting is seemingly in danger of going extinct. But at a London hotel on a recent Sunday morning, thousands of people turned up to demonstrate that the humble pen may be far from meeting the fate of the dinosaurs.
