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welcome to the conky ride home for fr, March 18th, 2022. I'm Jackson Bird today. Should we be

making a greater effort to reduce light pollution? Plus, scientists are trying to use

murder hornet's own sexual behavior to eradicate them and an app that will help you safely find and

eat roadkill. Here are some of the cool things from the news today.

I once read that before electric light, people could see more in the darkness. Their eyes were

more adjusted for the dim and the blackness

of night. That's part of why some writers' descriptions of the woods at night and the like

don't always make sense to us now or seem extra fantastical. As Paul Bogard points out in his book,

The End of Night, a single 75-watt incandescent light bulb burns 100 times brighter than a candle.

So back in the days when a candle may have been all you had, you still weren't really seeing much.

Quoting Bogard, historian E. Roger Eckertz reports that pre-modern observers spoke sarcastically of candles that made darkness visible, and a French proverb

advised, by candlelight, a goat is ladylike. And continuing from Bogard,

Travelers considered moonlight to be the safest option for nighttime navigation, and lunar phases

were watched far more closely than they are today. End quote. I haven't read Bogard's The End of

Night, but I've read a few chapters of one of his other books, The Ground Beneath Us, from the

oldest cities to the last wilderness, what dirt tells us about who we are. And it is endlessly

fascinating, so I'm sure the end of night is as well. It's been on my TBR for years. But back to

...