Category: Blog

Just in time for the release of my book Genetics Demystified comes a new technique for DNA sequencing that is 100 times faster than current methods. Not only does this render a portion of my book slightly obsolete even before it’s published, it could mean big changes in the near future in how we deal …

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Ambivalent about security cameras? How about a world where just about anyone can be tracked at any time, using tools ranging from cameras that can I.D. you by the shape of your ears to scanners that recognize you by your sweat, body odor and skin flakes?

Several Scottish cities are arguing over which one is really Montgomery “Scotty” Scott’s home town. I dinna have an opinion, tho’ I have a soft spot in my heart for Edinburgh, having lived there for three weeks one summer.

The 2005 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Awards have been presented! Here’s the grand winner: As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil …

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Nestle and Coca Cola have been developing a carbonated tea that will burn calories. I might have to give up Diet Coke! Via By the Way.

The Sage Hill Teen Writing Experience, that is. I just spent a week as the instructor of this terrific program, my first crack at something like that (although I was once the mid-week guest speaker when Alison Lohans was teaching it)….which is why blogging has been erratic for the past few days. It was a …

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NASA grounds its shuttle fleet again (temporarily, one hopes), and the very same day, Richard Branson and Burt Rutan launch The Spaceship Company. Increasingly, it’s beginning to look like private enterprise is more important to getting people into space than government agencies. And about time, too.

That’s the name of my big brother’s blog. It’s full of details abut the making of pottery at Out of the Fire Studio in Edmonton. Why, what did you think it was about? What have you been smoking, anyway?

Summer time is propane time. From backyard barbecues to recreational vehicles to lakeside cottages, propane tanks are everywhere…and yet, we hardly give this remarkable fuel a thought. I’m here to change that. In Canada, about 80 percent of propane is derived through natural gas processing, while the refining of crude oil provides the remaining 20 …

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Listen to the scary sounds of Saturn’s radio emissions…but not with the lights out!

Gene therapy holds great promised, but the viral vectors used to deliver genes have proven problematic. Now researchs have come up with a nanoparticle vector that is just as efficient as a viral vector. And another chapter of my soon-to-be-released book Genetics Demystified slips prematurely closer to obsolescence…

Hurricanes can only exist because water droplets from the surface of the ocean provide lubrication, without which the winds would peter out at about 25 mph…which could mean that a fast-spreading surfactant (think detergent) could actually calm a hurricane. Oil on troubled waters, in other words.