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 …
Category: Blog
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 …
Volcanoes
You probably didn’t notice, since nobody but me has bothered to point it out, but August 27 was the 103rd anniversary of the eruption of Krakatoa, an active (obviously) island volcano located in the Sunda Strait, south of Sumatra and west of Java. In 1883 it blew apart in the most violent explosion on Earth …
Computer viruses
There’s a virus going around. In fact there’s more than one. But don’t worry; these viruses don’t infect people–they infect computers. Just a couple of weeks ago there was a flurry of excitement surrounding one such virus, a flurry that may be repeated in a few more days. This virus, called Hare, activates itself on …
Sleep revisited
“To sleep, perchance to dream…” So, did you sleep in over the long weekend? Chances are, you did. And maybe, if you’re like me, you felt guilty about it. After all, the summer’s almost over. We should all be outside enjoying the beautiful weather, or painting the house, or exercising, or spending time with …
Car sound
One of my earliest childhood memories is of sitting in the front seat of my father’s Studebaker, listening to the Beatles. Since those early days in Lubbock, Texas, I’ve listened to a great deal more music in many more cars. In the Studebaker, and in the ’63 Plymouth that followed it, if you wanted to …
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