Banging out a quick chart with Google Chart Tools was pretty easy, but tweaking it to look just right seemed to be beyond me. I’m more likely to use Google’s chart for the first draft and touch it up in some other editor. For example, I found it difficult to align the tick marks, grid, [...]

Steeping the perfect cup of tea is a science. Most important of course are the tea leaves (or tips and/or stems), then the water, then temperature, then time. However, whether due to laziness or to ignorance, emphasis is too often precisely backwards. For example, let’s take a typical but hypothetical New Jersey suburbanite. She uses [...]

Once upon a time, long long ago, a fluffy snow flake fell gracefully from the heavens and landed softly somewhere on the ice sheet of Greenland. Inevitably, more snow fell on top of him. And more snow, and more snow. He was happy to have so many friends. It was crowded but cozy. And day [...]

Capsaicinoids produce a burning sensation when the seeds and fleshy fruits of capsicum plants are eaten by mammals. The irritants protect the seeds from destructive mammalian digestive tracks. However, birds are not sensitive to capsicum and disperse the seeds without damage. Capsaicin does not cause a chemical burn, but by binding to a vanilloid receptor, [...]