If you’re an astronomer, “Twinkle, twinkle little star” isn’t a cute bed-time song for children, it’s a nightly nightmare. Stars twinkle (and daytime skies are blue) because we live at the bottom of a thick soup of atmosphere that distorts our view of the heavens. Ever since Galileo, this has played havoc with observations of …
Category: Blog
Garlic
There are few foods that can’t be improved with a little garlic. (Ice cream and pecan pie, maybe, but that’s about it.) Its distinctive taste has made it a favorite flavoring for thousands of years…although no doubt the ancient Egyptians and Romans, both of whom used it, also made the first jokes about “garlic breath.” …
Breath analyzers
I’ve never really been sure why New Year’s Eve is considered a good time to have a wild party. Are we celebrating the fact that 1996 is finally over (was it really that bad a year?) or trying not to think about what 1997 will hold? Whatever, December 31 is a day known for parties, and hence …
Christmas Questions II
It’s almost Christmas, and time once again to turn our thoughts from the humdrum concerns of our everyday lives to those eternal questions that have echoed through the ages, such as… What the heck is a “sugarplum”? In Victorian days, neither canning nor freezing were available as a means of preserving seasonal summer fruits in …
Citrus fruits
Never mind carols in the snow, decorated trees and Canadian Tire commercials, for me the real proof Christmas is just around the corner is the appearance of boxes of mandarin oranges. Equating citrus fruit with anything wintry, though, is really rather odd, because citrus fruits are notoriously unsuited for cold climates. Citrus fruits come from …
Hair loss
My two older brothers probably won’t read this, so I can say this with impunity: they’re losing their hair, and so far, I’m not. I’m not saying this to brag, merely to illustrate…oh, who am I fooling. Of course I’m saying it to brag! Holding on to one’s hair, however, isn’t really anything much to …
Neanderthals
If I were to call you a Neanderthal, you’d think I was calling you brutish, primitive, incapable of nobility and the higher emotions, and stupid, to boot. Of course, if we said this about any existing group of humans–expatriate Texans, for instance–we would be accused of being racist. Neanderthals, alas, cannot seek redress for libel, …
Digestion
Like most of you, I ate too much on Thanksgiving, and felt guilty about it afterward. But then I came up with the idea of writing this column on digestion, and presto! No more guilt. You see, I didn’t overeat, I conducted research. You’ll have to find your own excuse. When you sit down to …
Canadian inventions
As a boy in Texas, I learned that Americans invented just about everything worth inventing, from the cotton gin to the steamboat to the electric light bulb to the telephone (more on that later). But, like so many other things I learned in school, it “ain’t necessarily so.” In honor of National Science and Technology …
Marconi
I rarely listen to radio, but many other people (my girlfriend, for instance) listen to it constantly–usually CBC. (Are you listening, Mr. Chretien?) Most people, if asked who invented radio, would tell you, “Marconi.” But very few people know much about Guglielmo Marconi beyond that bare fact. I’m here to rectify that. Marconi didn’t invent …
Tornadoes
The northern plains of Texas, where I lived as a boy before my parents moved (and fortunately took me with them) to Canada, are in “Tornado Alley,” the area of the United States where most of its 770 yearly tornadoes occur. So is Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas, where I went to college. There, in …
Aspirin
Roughly 24 centuries ago, the father of medicine, Hippocrates, urged women in the throes of childbirth to chew on willow bark. The bitter bark contained a substance that eased their pain. (There’s no record of what the women thought of his suggestion.) By the 19th century scientists knew that mysterious substance was salicylic acid. Synthesized …
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