[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/12/Shopping-and-Gender.mp3[/podcast] They shuffle along with blank faces and dead eyes, unseeing, unthinking, lost in some private hell that you as passerby can only pray never similarly engulfs you. You scuttle by, eyes averted, as though they have some horrible contagion against which neither face masks, Tamiflu nor vaccination can defend…and yet the odds are that …
Category: Columns
Measurement
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/11/Measurement.mp3[/podcast] “Inch-worm, inch-worm, measuring the marigolds…” Despite that line from a popular song, the fact is, inch-worms don’t measure anything. Neither to cockroaches, bulldogs, llamas or horned toads…because measurement is the process of counting how much of a sensory signal exists, and so far as we know, no other animals can count. Simply counting things …
My preview of the Regina Symphony Orchestra concert featuring pianist Hung-Kuan Chen…
…is online at the Regina Leader Post. It begins: Pianist Hung-Kuan Chen isn’t one to shy away from a challenge. Neither is Regina Symphony Orchestra maestro Victor Sawa.Which is why Saturday’s Mosaic Masterworks concert at the Conexus Arts Centre features Sergei Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2, which Sawa calls “arguably the toughest concerto ever written.” …
The thrill of victory depends on the fear of the agony of defeat
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/11/Sports-Emotions.mp3[/podcast] The Saskatchewan Roughriders play the Calgary Stampeders in the Canadian Football League’s Western Final this Sunday. That simple declarative sentence contains a novel’s worth of angst for fans of the Riders (and possibly for fans the Stampeders, too, but I can’t speak about that, not being one of those LOSERS!…oops, sorry, did I type …
To sleep, perchance to dream
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/11/Dreaming.mp3[/podcast] Why do we dream? You’d think we’d know by now. Everyone dreams, and people have been fascinated by dreams throughout recorded history. But scientifically, their origin and importance remain uncertain. Do they serve some vital psychological or physiological function? Or are they just meaningless accidents of our brain’s wiring? A few years ago, Finnish …
Do you suffer from gelatophobia?
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/10/Gelotophobia.mp3[/podcast] It’s getting on toward Christmas, which means A Charlie Brown Christmas will soon be on TV…and we’ll once again get to watch Lucy give her nickel’s worth of psychiatric advice to Charlie Brown, listing all the phobias he could be subject to. One she won’t list is gelotophobia, which, though it sounds like it …
The silent majority
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/10/The-Silent-Majority.mp3[/podcast] It’s probably happened to you. It’s certainly happened to me. You’re at some social gathering or public event when someone says something so outrageously extreme that you can’t believe it. The thrower of this verbal bombshell seems to assume everyone agrees with him…and since no one speaks up, except for a couple of people …
My preview of the Regina Little Theatre One-Act Plays Cabaret…
…is in today’s LeaderPost. It begins: Before Angel Genereux became the producer of Regina Little Theatre’s programs of one-act plays in 2007, they were seen strictly as a venue for new talent on and backstage, and traditionally drew small audiences. Genereux thought they could draw new audience members, too. She boosted publicity. The result: last spring’s …
On the scent of odourprints
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/10/Odourprints.mp3[/podcast] You smell. No, I’m not being insulting. I smell, too. So does everyone else. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) human noses are not particularly sensitive, and so we only notice one another’s smells under certain circumstances, which we are all familiar with and I am therefore spared from having to enumerate. But to those of …
A preview of Flamenco Fire, the Regina Symphony Pops concert featuring guitarist Robert Michaels
My preview of this Saturday’s Flamenco Fire Regina Symphony Orchestra Shumiatcher Pops concert, featuring guitarist Robert Michaels, is in today’s Regina LeaderPost. It begins: For every form of music there are purists who say of certain practitioners, “That’s not really (whatever form of music they’re a purist in).” Guitarist Robert Michaels admits Flamenco purists might …
The 2009 Ig Nobel Prizes
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/10/Ig-Nobels-2009.mp3[/podcast] The 2009 Ig Nobel Awards for “research that first makes you laugh, then makes you think,” given by the scientific humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research, were presented last Thursday at Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre. And I think I must begin with the Public Health Prize, which went to Elena N. Bodnar, Raphael C. …
Honeybees in decline
Honeybees, particularly in the United States, are in decline. In 2007-2008, 36 percent of apiaries surveyed by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that some of their colonies had simply…disappeared, a phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD. In the most recent survey, covering September 2008 to April …
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