A lot of attention in Canada has been focused recently on the Kyoto Agreement to limit the emission of greenhouse gases. But scientifically, the goal for preventing possibly catastrophic global warming has been set far higher than Kyoto’s modest reductions. An article in the November 1 issue of Science sets out the challenges. Entitled “Advanced …
Category: Blog
Reidel wine glasses
I had the pleasure of attending the International Festival of Wine and Food at the Banff Springs Hotel over the weekend. This event combines gourmet meals with tastings of some of the world’s best wines. But one tasting was very different: instead of tasting wine, those attending tasted glasses. They witnessed a demonstration by Georg …
Yet another column about tea
Tea is not only the most popular beverage in the world, it’s also good for you. Over the past 20 years, scientists have discovered potential benefits from tea against cancer, high blood pressure and infection. Now comes a report that tea may be an effective weapon in the fight against diabetes. First, some basic tea …
Trains
Trains have been on my mind lately, partly because I just completed a two-day trip from San Francisco by train, but also because trains have been in the news lately: Montreal’s Bombardier was in hot water over cracks in the suspensions of Amtrak’s high-speed Acela trains, McLean’s magazine recently ran a front-page story on …
Selling the moon
Humans will return to the moon next year, more than 30 years after the last Apollo astronauts left. Unfortunately, the new lunar visitors will have a large handicap that will hinder their exploration efforts: they’ll all be dead. The humans in questions will arrive in the form of small amounts of ashes from cremated remains, …
The Ig Nobel Prizes of 2002
It’s time again to announce the winners of some of the most prestigious prizes in science. No, not THOSE. I’m not talking about the IgNobel Prizes, awarded annually by the science humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research to those who have done something that first makes people laugh, then makes them think; or, to put …
Space: what’s NExT?
I’m a child of the Space Age, born a year and a half after Sputnik. Apollo 11 landed on the moon on my 10th birthday; Viking landed on Mars on my 17th. There is no doubt in my mind that if the human race is to survive, we must move out into space, to make …
Coast redwoods
Imagine a tree taller than the tallest building in Regina–by several stories; a tree as tall as a 30-story building. Imagine a tree trunk so massive you could easily live inside its hollowed trunk. Now imagine a whole stand of such trees, a valley filled with them. That’s the amazing reality of the Coast Redwoods. …
ConJose: The 2002 World Science Fiction Convention
Every Labour Day weekend, somewhere in the world, thousands of peopld gather for the World Science Fiction Convention. This year they gathered in San Jose, California, for the 60th WorldCon, as fans call it, and I was there. WorldCon covers the whole world of science fiction and fantasy, with particular emphasis, not on TV and …
Geese–and Goosezilla
Canada Geese are among the most identifiable birds on the prairies, but we tend to have a love-hate relationship with them. We love to see and hear them honking overhead on a quiet autumn evening–but we hate what they do to our parks, lawns and golf courses. But if you think today’s geese are a …
Invading Mars
One of the prototypical science fiction novels is H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds, in which invaders from the Red Planet successfully conquer the Earth, only to succumb in the end, not to humanity’s feeble efforts, but to the attacks of Earth’s microbes, against which they have no defense. Wells may have been the first SF …
Air conditioning
If you were fortunate enough to be able to spend last week in a climate-controlled environment, give thanks to Willis Haviland Carrier, whose new-fangled invention, air conditioning, first went into service 100 years ago, on July 17, 1902. Modern air conditioning is an offshoot of an earlier invention, mechanical refrigeration, which is based on the …
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