Glimpses of Wonder™

The Penguins’ Open Path — a Glimpse of Wonder entry™ —

The Penguins’ Open Path — a Glimpse of Wonder entry™ — When the beaches fell silent, the penguins began to hurry. Along the southern coast of Africa, the usual tide of tourists and boats had vanished. The noise, the footprints, the engines — gone. In their place, a stretch of sand lay open, smooth as a page waiting to be written on. African penguins — the kind with a dark stripe across their chest like a buttoned v

November 10, 2025

What the Whales Remembered — a Glimpse of Wonder entry™ —

What the Whales Remembered — a Glimpse of Wonder entry™ — There’s a sound most of us will never hear — a note so deep it hums through the bones of the sea. It’s the voice of the humpback whale, carrying across miles of open water. For generations, that language of moans and melodies has been muffled under the constant growl of ship engines. The ocean had become a crowded room where everyone was shouting. The

November 5, 2025

Plant Life

The Wonder That Bends — a Glimpse of Wonder entry™ —

The Wonder That Bends — a Glimpse of Wonder entry™ — Not everyone has seen it — the way the wind rolls across a field of wheat. But if you ever stand there long enough to watch, you’ll see something that doesn’t quite fit into words. The air doesn’t just move the grass; it shapes it. It pushes, tugs, pulls — and somehow, the whole field seems to breathe. You can almost feel the conversation between the earth and the sky.

dljbsp in Plant Life

November 4, 2025

The Quiet Beach and the Sea Turtles — a Glimpse of Wonder entry™ —

When the world fell quiet in 2021, the beaches changed first. For the first time in decades, loggerhead turtles came ashore to nest without dodging crowds, chairs, or lights. The sound of waves replaced the shuffle of feet. Tracks led straight from water to dunes, uninterrupted. According to marine biologists monitoring the coast of Florida, nesting success rose from about 40 percent to over 60 percent during that season of silence. Without beach traffic, the sand held its shape. Wit

October 20, 2025

The Mountains That Reappeared — a Glimpse of Wonder entry™

The Mountains That Reappeared — a Glimpse of Wonder entry™ — For thirty years, the people of Jalandhar could not see the Himalayas. They lived only 200 kilometers away, yet the peaks were nothing more than stories told by older generations. Then, in a quieter spring, the world paused. Engines stilled, factories softened, and for the first time in decades, the air cleared. When the haze lifted, those towering, snow-capped giants reappeared — ex

October 13, 2025

The Silence That Spoke — a Glimpse of Wonder entry™ —

The Silence That Spoke - a Glimpse of Wonder™ entry.mp3 During the global lockdown of 2020, San Francisco, a major bustling city, grew quiet in a way only a few could remember. Streets emptied. Trolleys sat still. The famous fog horns called into a silence that actually answered back, the echo not muted by traffic. And across the bay, the Golden Gate Bridge — that red arch of motion and noise — suddenly sounded alive. Before, the constant hum of engines had swallowed eve

The Wonders of Design in Human Emotion

October 10, 2025

The Song You Can’t Hold — But That Holds You — a Glimpse of Wonder entry™ —

The Boston Pops were on TV, performing the piece that opens 2001: A Space Odyssey. That’s what I call it, because I don’t know how to pronounce its real name. I happened to be walking through the room as my dad was watching the performance, and when they announced what piece they would play, I stopped to hear it. This was not the first time I had heard it, so I stood about ten feet from the television set — this was before stereo TV. The brass crept in — ba… ba… baaaaa… — a pause, then ba, baaa…

dljbsp in The Wonders of Design in Human Emotion

October 4, 2025

Systems of Wonder

The Smallest Tick of Time — a Glimpse of Wonder entry™ —

A lightning bug drifts low over the grass, its glow blinking on and off like a lantern guided by an unseen hand. It hovers for a moment, then dips and lands on a leaf. Another spark, then a slow float to a nearby blade of grass. Another blink, another drift, as though the whole meadow breathes with its rhythm. Glitter and float. Glitter and float. In the distance, a storm gathers. The horizon flickers with lightning, far off at first, just a flash at the edge of the sky. The firefly

dljbsp in Systems of Wonder

October 3, 2025

Perspective

The Wonder of Simultaneity — a Glimpse of Wonder entry™ —

Two lightning bolts strike. To Albert Einstein, this was more than a storm; it was a thought experiment that cracked open our understanding of time. He imagined two bolts flashing at opposite ends of a railway. To a person standing on the platform, the bolts might flare at the same instant. But to someone speeding past on the train, one flash comes first, the other a beat later. Which is correct? Both. Einstein’s lesson was that simultaneity is relative. Two observers can watch the same world an

dljbsp in Perspective

September 27, 2025

Human Design Wonders

As Plain as the Nose on Your Face — a Glimpse of Wonder entry™ —

People have long said that a lie is “as plain as the nose on your face.” Maybe that’s why Carlo Collodi, back in 1883, chose a boy’s nose as the telltale marker of deceit. His wooden puppet Pinocchio couldn’t keep a secret — each falsehood stretched his face farther into a billboard of dishonesty. That was children’s fiction. Yet more than a century later, researchers at the University of Granada in Spain used thermal cameras and found that lying changes facial temperature in telltal

dljbsp in Human Design Wonders

September 21, 2025

Science & Discovery

Elimination of Extra Dimensions — a Glimpse of Wonder entry™ —

Two city-sized stars, each so heavy they bend space like iron weights on a trampoline, circle each other for eons. Think of figure skaters in slow motion — except these skaters weigh more than the Sun, and their rink is the fabric of the universe itself. In 2017, after that long, relentless dance, they finally collided. The crash sent ripples through space-time that traveled for 130 million years before brushing past Earth, where we caught them with our great laser ears, LIGO and Virgo. The even

dljbsp in Science & Discovery

September 20, 2025

Surfing Giants of Loango — a Glimpse of Wonder entry™ —

The Atlantic heaves, rolling out big green walls of water, and riding one of them is a hippo—yes, a hippo—perched as if on a surfboard too small for its bulk. Ears flick like rudders, nostrils flare, and for one glorious instant this half-ton river horse leans forward just right, catching the curl like a pro from a Saturday morning cartoon. Spray arcs around it like confetti, and the sight is so absurd you almost expect it to throw a shaka sign with one stubby leg. By the time your g

September 15, 2025

Sensory Design

The Fingerprints of God’s Precision — a Glimpse of Wonder entry™ —

If your fingertip were the size of Earth, you could run it over a city and know whether you’d just brushed past a house or a car. That’s how sensitive Jehovah made your sense of touch. In 2013, researchers at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden discovered that the human fingertip can detect surface differences as small as 13 nanometers—about the size of a large molecule. Imagine that: something invisible to the naked eye, smaller than a single wavelength of light, yet your bo

dljbsp in Sensory Design

September 11, 2025

The Spiraling Horns of the Markhor — a Glimpse of Wonder entry™ —

High on the rugged slopes of the Himalayas and Hindu Kush, there lives a goat with a crown unlike any other. The markhor doesn’t wear jewels or gold, yet on its head twist horns so elaborate they look as if they were carved by an artisan’s hand. Each spiral rises skyward, winding like a corkscrew. Some of these horns stretch more than five feet long — taller than many people! No two sets are exactly alike. One male’s horns may form a wide, open spiral while another’s are tighter, alm

September 10, 2025

The Scream Beneath the Armor — a Glimpse of Wonder entry™ —

When you picture an armadillo, what comes to mind? Maybe a quiet, armored ball scurrying off the roadside at night. Now imagine picking one up and being met, not with silence, but with a piercing scream loud enough to rattle your bones. That is exactly what happens with the screaming hairy armadillo (Chaetophractus vellerosus). True to its name, this little creature shouts its protest with a squeal so shrill that predators—and humans—are often left stunned. Found in the dry grassland

September 5, 2025

Always Moving, Always Breathing — a Glimpse of Wonder entry™ —

Picture the open ocean. The sun ripples on the surface, light bends into deep blue, and far below, a silver torpedo is on the move. That torpedo is alive — a tuna — and it has a secret: it can never stop. For most fish, resting is simple. They pull water over their gills by expanding and closing their mouths, a process called buccal pumping. That steady motion keeps oxygen flowing whether they’re darting through a reef or lying still under a rock ledge. But tuna are different. Their