We bought a new car a little over a year ago, and while choosing what make of car to purchase naturally took weeks of research and consideration, it took us almost as long again just to decide on what colour of car we wanted. (We settled on “platinum green.”) Painting an automobile involves many …
Category: Blog
The tick of the biological clock
Before I had a baby daughter to keep me sleep-deprived, I almost always woke up a few minutes before the alarm went off. It’s a common phenomenon, and it’s only possible because we each have an additional clock, not on our bedside tables, but in our heads. These clocks regulate a number of bodily functions, …
Bitterness blocking
Taste is highly subjective. You may like rhubarb, which I regard as mutated celery. I, on the other hand, like haggis, whereas organ meats ground up with oatmeal and boiled in a sheep’s stomach may not appeal to you. And so on. And yet soon we may all be able to agree on what we …
Are bananas doomed?
Canadians eat approximately three billion bananas a year; it’s our favorite fruit. But a recent news story suggests the bananas we enjoy so much could be extinct within 10 years. The villain is a fungus by the ominous name of Black Sigatoka that’s spreading out of control through the banana-growing countries of the world, threatening …
The Saskatchewan Book Award speech I should have given
We’ve all laughed at those actors who win major awards and become completely flustered at the microphone, because they didn’t really expect to win and so they didn’t bother to compose an acceptance speech. I have a little more sympathy with them now, because pretty much the same thing happened to me on November 30 …
Ice
Ice is an inescapable fact of life in Canada every winter. It makes roads and sidewalks slippery, bursts pipes, cracks pavements, heaves ground. It can bring down trees and power lines and even airplanes. And yet, if ice didn’t have the special properties that make it sometimes destructive and almost always a nuisance, two vitally …
Synthespians: artificial actors
In the movie The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, one of the best performances is turned in by an actor who isn’t entirely real. Gollum, the hobbit-like creature who once possessed the One Ring and would do anything to possess it again is the latest and most-impressive-to-date example of a “synthespian”–a computer-generated actor. …
Making miksates…um, mistakes
The holidays are supposed to be a time of rest and relaxation, but if you’re like me, after several nights of parties, you feel pretty much as sleep-deprived as you did before the holidays, if not more so. Also if you’re like me, when you get tired you begin to make more miksates–er, mistakes, ranging …
Robot dogs and the people who love them
Dogs have been man’s best friend in the animal kingdom for thousands of years. They’re loyal companions and can even perform useful tasks like herding sheep and fetching slippers. They are easily attainable, cheap, and come in a variety of colors, shapes, sizes and temperaments. But in the past few years, a new breed of …
The instructive history of Clement Clarke Moore
History is full of artists in various disciplines who are most famous for things which they themselves considered of very little importance. Take Arthur Conan Doyle, for instance. He came to loathe his creation, Sherlock Holmes, going so far as to killing him…only to be forced by popular demand to bring him back again. Sir …
Scientific stain removal
I like to write about the latest discoveries in cosmology and particle physics. But not all scientific research is focused on these frontiers. Some of it is aimed as close as–well, that spot of mustard on your pants. Textile experts at Cornell University have published a pamphlet with detailed, laboratory-tested instructions on how to remove …
Joint replacement: what’s a nice joint like you doing in a dame like this?
“Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology.” So began each episode of The Six Million Dollar Man. Twenty-some years after that TV series aired, we still don’t have bionic people capable of superhuman feats of strength and speed, but we do have lots of people walking around with artificial parts: especially, artificial joints. My …
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