What is philosophy, the appreciation of manhole and drain covers, how critical the filing cabinet was to the information infrastructure of the 20th-century, what makes a beautiful word, and more.
Arbitrary scientific fashions result in surprising pockets of unstudied material. In arachnology, this used to be whip spiders or amblypygids, known as the "forgotten stepchildren" of natural history. But the discovery of a female-only colony of these creatures — reproducing via "virgin birth" — in a secret Nazi air raid shelter under Trieste has electrified the field. Arachnophobes, beware (3,171 words)
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