One place science and society frequently interact is within the courtroom. Seldom has that interaction been more dramatic than in the past few days, with the exoneration of Guy Paul Morin, who had served 18 months in jail for a murder he didn’t commit, and with the start of the murder trial of a certain …
Category: Blog
Space stations revisited
Forget cosmic radiation, the solar flares, meteorites, re-entry: the real danger facing space exploration today is red ink. As governments drown in it, some space projects have had more narrow escapes than Luke Skywalker. Consider International Space Station Alpha. A space station is a permanent inhabited base in orbit. People have been talking about …
Wood
“How much wood would a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?” asks the familiar tongue-twister, to which the reply would have to be, in parts of southern Saskatchewan, “Not much.” The prairies just aren’t known for their abundance of trees. Northern Saskatchewan, however, is an entirely different matter. My continuing travels around the …
Alcohol
Yeasts, rather dull life forms in most respects, have one endearing trait: provided with sugar, they produce carbon dioxide…and an interesting chemical called “alcohol.” Nobody knows who first discovered that yeast could turn ordinary grape juice or grain brew into something quite different, but by 1500 B.C., beer and wine-making were well-established in the Middle …
Skiing
I’ve written about the skating, tobogganing and curling, but there’s a major winter sport I’ve yet to explore (and no, it’s not competitive car-boosting). That’s probably because, while I’ve skated, tobogganed and curled, I have yet to strap two long, skinny pieces of fiberglass to my feet and go careening down a mountain or …
Christmas songs
So Christmas is over for another year, and as we head into 1995, only one question remains to haunt us: Just what are frankincense and myrrh, anyway? Here come “We Three Kings,” bearing gifts from afar. The first king brings gold; a fine present, indeed. But then the second king starts singing, “Frankincense to offer …
Rudolph the red-nosed reindeerigible
Another Christmas Eve, another lonely rooftop vigil for aerotarandusdynamicists around the– What’s an “aerotarandusdynamicist”? Perhaps a recap is in order. I have written before about the under-funded field of aerotarandusdynamics. The word, like all good scientific words, is a Latin amalgam: “aero” (air), “tarandus” (part of the scientific name for reindeer, “rangifer tarandus”) and “dynamics” …
Christmas shopping
“A scientific Christmas is a memorable Christmas,” I wrote last week in my column on scientific gifts. But it occurred to me, post-column, that shopping for Christmas gifts involves science even if all you’re buying is a tie for Dad. Consider, for example, the music playing in the store. The best known source for store …
Science gifts for Christmas: 1994
As a kid, I only wanted “fun” gifts for Christmas. I didn’t want anything “practical,” like (horrors!) underwear. And “educational” was way down my list, too. Yet my favorite gifts of all were actually very educational: I just didn’t notice, because I was having so much fun with them. These were the gifts that involved …
Curling
I’ve written about the science of skating, and before that about the science of tobogganing. Now let’s look at a third winter sport, the one that’s hardest to explain to your relatives in Texas: curling. Curling apparently originated in Scotland, probably starting with people tossing small rocks at targets on frozen lakes and rivers, like …
Cattle
My niece collects cows. Well, images of cows, anyway. And she’s not the only one. Apparently, cows are hot right now. Personally, I’ve never been all that enamored of them. My encounters with cows have generally been unrewarding, from the time I tried to milk one (an experience neither of us enjoyed) to the time …
Ice ages
I like ice. When I order a drink at the movie theatre, I always ask for “more ice than you think anyone can possibly want.” At home, I drink iced tea. When I finish my drink, I eat the ice. But I prefer that ice keep to its proper place–which is not on the roads, …
My latest live walk and vlog
Buy Autographed Books
