Tag: science

Sing, sing a song…

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
October 7, 2012
4 mins to read
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I’ve sung all my life, in church, in choirs, and on-stage, both just for fun and professionally. And through all those years, I’ve heard music teachers say anyone can learn to sing…and the occasional person who counterclaims (and through their singing seems to support the statement) that, well, no, they can’t. So…who’s right? In “Singing …

Saturday Special: Lisa Fernando and Canada’s epidemic response team

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
September 30, 2012
13 mins to read
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In view of the announcement this week that Canada will send a mobile laboratory to help stem an outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, I offer an account of a similar effort from Canada to help combat an outbreak of Marburg hemmorhagic fever (closely related to Ebola) in Angola a few years …

Throwing like a girl

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
September 19, 2012
5 mins to read
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[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/09/Throwing-Like-a-Girl.mp3[/podcast] There’s a scene in Huckleberry Finn where Huck is attempting to pass himself off as a girl, but is betrayed, in part, by the way he throws a lump of lead at a rat: “And when you throw at a rat or anything, hitch yourself up a tiptoe and fetch your hand up over …

Chicon 7: the 70th World Science Fiction Convention

By Edward Willett in Blog, Books
September 12, 2012
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(Note: if you’re thinking this doesn’t exactly read like a typical convention report from a SF writer, that would be because this is actually my weekly science column. A slightly different version will be my column for the next issue of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild newsletter Freelance. Never let a convention go to waste! (The …

Let’s go to the tape

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
August 4, 2012
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While I was browsing for another Olympic-themed column idea (as promised last week) one story particularly caught my eye: a Reuters piece by Kate Kelland headlined (in the Regina LeaderPost, at least) “Scientists skeptical as Olympic athletes get all taped up.” It caught my eye, not because it had a picture of female beach volleyball …

Olympic throwing sports

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
July 28, 2012
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Just in time for the Olympics (and just in time for this science column), COSMOS Magazine has run an interesting online piece by Richard A. Lovett on the history and physics of the Olympic throwing sports. It is customary, in the column-writing biz, to be up-front about any direct personal connection you have to your …

Auroral sounds

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
July 28, 2012
4 mins to read
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There are few more awe-inspiring sights in the sky than the northern lights. Probably everyone who lives in Saskatchewan has seen them multiple times, and those who live further north are even better acquainted with them…but that doesn’t mean we know everything about them. One mystery associated with the northern lights is the claim by …

Edison’s Battery

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
July 12, 2012
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[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/07/Edisons-Battery.mp3[/podcast] Thomas Edison gave us many wonderful inventions, mainstays of 20th century life. However, since he died in 1931, you might be forgiven for asking, “What has he done for us lately?” Him personally, not so much, what with being dead and all: but one of his inventions has just taken on new life, thanks …

No need for gas-price conspiracy theories

By Edward Willett in automobiles, cars, Columns, Science Columns
July 5, 2012
5 mins to read
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[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/07/Gas-Price-Conspiracies.mp3[/podcast] There’s a public perception that somebody must be pulling the strings on gas prices, that somewhere in some shadowy secret lair mustache-twirling oilmen are gleefully conspiring to raise prices across the board just in time for summer holidays. It’s such a popular perception that it has sparked any number of public inquiries around the …

Where the germs are

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
June 20, 2012
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[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/06/Hotel-Room-Germs.mp3[/podcast] Ah, vacation time! Relaxing by the beach or in the mountains, retiring at night to a filthy hotel room, crawling with germs… Wait, what? Okay, that might be a slight overstatement of the hygienic challenges of hotel rooms, but the fact remains that hotel rooms are, ultimately, public spaces, inhabited by hundreds of different …

Seeking for life in all the wrong places

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
June 11, 2012
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[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/06/Seeking-for-LIfe-in-all-the-Wrong-Places.mp3[/podcast] “It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it,” was never actually said in the original series of Star Trek (in fact, it’s from The Firm’s popular parody song “Star Trekkin’”), but it still sums up the notion that we might not recognize extraterrestrial life when first we encounter it because it’s so different …

The Transit of Venus

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
June 6, 2012
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I’m writing this on June 4, the eve of one of the rarest events in the solar system: the transit of Venus. In astronomical jargon, a “transit” is what happens when a smaller body passes in front of a larger one relative to an observer…in this case, us. The Sun, Venus and Earth actually line …