Have you seen our logo? The little feathered friend represented is a storm petrel, one of the world’s most populous birds with some 50 million pairs. Honestly, storm petrels aren't terribly cute. They're about seven inches long, mostly black or brown, with a flurry of white feathers on their flanks and rump. They live rather watery lives, eating lots of plankton. But oh, the majesty of their travels! The storm…

It’s okay if you don’t want to go to Burning Man. It’s okay if you really do want to go, but just can’t make it. It’s also okay if you used to go to Burning Man, but dropped out once it seemed to become an annual offsite for Silicon Valley CEOs. Burning Man has grown from a small San Francisco beach gathering in 1986 to a phenomenon attracting thousands. But…

You’ve probably had pad Thai noodles or a bowl of Vietnamese pho. But have you ever tasted a dish that made fish and mint and chile and lemongrass start a mosh pit together on your tongue? The unique ingredients and intricate flavors of Cambodian cuisine are hard to fully describe and even harder to ignore. Thankfully, the otherworldly dishes of Southeast Asia’s oldest kingdom are finally starting to get their…

Let's Get Serious about Playing Stuart Brown is a man who really wants you to not ask where you can go, but where you can play. That’s why the 80-something psychologist/author/speaker founded the National Institute for Play in 1996 – to help us all tap back into our individualized “play nature” that often gets drummed out by pressing parents, or school, or work. To Brown, and many psychologists, play isn’t…

With Sand, Size Matters Most people think that sand is defined by what it’s made of, but it’s actually just a size. Geologists define sand as any granular mineral substance which a diameter between 1/16 of a millimeter to 2 millimeters. Sand grains are smaller than gravel, but larger than silt, in a continuum which goes from boulders all the way down to clay. Sand is nothing more than grains…