[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2010/06/A-Treatment-for-Ebola.mp3[/podcast] A few years ago I wrote several books for Enslow Publishers in New Jersey for a series called Diseases and People. I covered meningitis, arthritis, hemophilia…and Ebola. My most recent book for Enslow, Disease-Hunting Scientist, also talks about Ebola, and some of the scientists who travel to the sites of outbreaks to help with …
Category: Columns
Ball lightning
Now that we’re finally starting to see some hot weather, it won’t be long before we begin to see something else: thunderstorms and lightning (very, very frightening me! Galileo, Galileo…sorry, just a little Queen flashback). It’s the lightning, of course, that makes thunderstorms thunder. If I may quote myself from a previous column, lightning “is …
The laser at 50
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2010/05/Lasers-at-50.mp3[/podcast] You know you’ve been writing a column a long time when the 50th anniversary of a major scientific discovery comes along and you realize you wrote a column celebrating its 30th anniversary. But that’s exactly what’s happening this month. Next week (Saturday, May 15, to be precise) marks the 50th anniversary of the invention …
The uselessness of celebrity endorsements
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2010/05/Celebrity-Endorsements.mp3[/podcast] I don’t have much use for celebrity endorsements of, well, anything. Oh, sure, it’s conceivable you could be a talented entertainer and also have an informed, thoughtful opinion that adds more light than heat to the debate surrounding a contentious issue, but just because something is possible it doesn’t mean it’s likely. And let’s …
The ebb and flow of curvy cars
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2010/04/Curvy-Cars.mp3[/podcast] In the 1940s and 1950s, cars had curves. From the 1960s through the 1980s, they tended to have sharp angles. But since then, they’ve tended more toward the curvy again…although I’m seeing signs of angularity one more. Have you ever wondered why? A German researcher at the University of Bamberg with the unlikely-yet-oddly-appropriate name …
Wooden bones
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2010/04/Wooden-Bones.mp3[/podcast] It’s easy to not think very much about your bones. After all, they’re securely hidden away inside your body; not visible, except as hard lumps beneath your skin. Funny thing, though: once you break one, it’s hard to think about anything else. When first I wrote about bones, back in a 1993 instalment of …
The Mpemba Effect
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2010/04/The-Mpemba-Effect.mp3[/podcast] For all that we know about the physical world, there are a few phenomena that, though seemingly simple, continue to baffle us. And one of the most baffling is the Mpemba Effect. You may not know it by that name—I didn’t until I read an article on New Scientist’s website last week—but you’ve probably …
Morally malignant magnets
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2010/03/Morally-Malignant-Magnets.mp3[/podcast] One of the things that distinguishes humans from animals is moral judgment, our ability to judge other people’s actions in terms of our own sense of right and wrong. Our moral judgment feels so integral to who we are, so much a part of our personality, that it’s a bit disturbing to discover, as …
A half-billion years of irritation
Just a couple of years ago, I wrote a column about the advent of tearless onions that included some background on why onions make us cry in the first place. Ordinarily I wouldn’t revisit a topic quite so soon, but you know how it is with science: things change fast, and just this week there …
Boredom
Everyone is bored sometimes. You find yourself at loose ends, with nothing to read, nobody to talk to, and maybe not even anything interesting to look at…driving alone from Regina to Saskatoon, for example. Yet science has carried out relatively little research on boredom. About four years ago, Richard Ralley, a lecturer in psychology at …
It’s on the tip of my tongue…
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2010/03/Tip-of-the-Tongue.mp3[/podcast] How often has this happened to you? “So I was talking to…to…oh, you know, that guy, the one in the head office, big hair, bad teeth, only listens to Perry Como records…geez, why can’t I remember his name? It’s on the tip of my tongue!” It’s a common phenomenon, and it’s not just people’s …
Terra Insegura is an Aurora Award finalist!
Just heard this morning that Terra Insegura, my sequel to last year’s Aurora Award-winning science fiction novel Marseguro, is a finalist for this year’s Aurora Award for best science fiction or fantasy novel in English. Sounds like they had a record number of nominations, too, so that makes it even sweeter. The other finalists are …
My latest live walk and vlog
Buy Autographed Books
