Every January, we residents of Saskatchewan ask ourselves the same question: why are we here, instead of in the tropics? There’s a scientific version of that same question: how have humans, who evolved in the tropics, managed to survive in the even-icier-than-Saskatchewan climes of the far north? The January 9 edition of the scientific journal …
Category: Columns
CES 2004: A Gadget Odyssey
I’ve always been a gadget guy, so I would have been in heaven at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where gadgets from the way cool to the way weird were on display. Alas, I didn’t get to attend, but here are some of the highlights, gleaned from the extensive coverage atPCWorld.com. If …
Taste testing (a.k.a. sensory evaluation)
Everyone has different holiday traditions–and almost all of them involve food. You will therefore be as relieved to discover as I was that science is doing its best to ensure that our holiday favorites continue to delight us. The Sensory Analysis Lab at the Prince Edward Island Food Technology Centre has helped insure that islanders’ …
Science gifts for Christmas: 2003
It’s time once again for my scientific gift guide. (No, I don’t mean I have the purchasing of gifts down to a science–if I did, I’d set up in business and be a millionaire before the New Year. I mean, it’s time once again for my guide to scientific gifts.) Not being in a position …
The spice(s) of life
There are certain spices that just naturally come to mind as we approach the holiday season. Cinnamon, for instance. Cloves. Ginger. And, of course, hot peppers. (Hot peppers? Well, when I was growing up, Christmas dinner sometimes featured my mother’s famous enchilada casserole, which could be made mild, medium–or hot.) And unlike many of the …
Man-made life
For as long as I remember, there have been jokes and pop-culture references to scientists creating life in a test tube–usually with the understanding that such a thing was an impossibility outside of horror movies. But last week scientists in the U.S. announced their intention to create the first completely artificial form of life, a …
Making sleep optional
It’s a safe bet that there have been a lot of bleary-eyed people around Regina this week, following last week’s Grey Cup revelry. But then, there are a lot of bleary-eyed people around all the time, since very few of us ever get as much sleep as we really need. That being the case, wouldn’t …
Hot chocolate
Come this Sunday, some 50,000 people will be sitting in the stands at Taylor Field for the Grey Cup, their minds focused on one thing–how much they’d love a cup of hot cocoa. They needn’t worry about indulging, in light of new research that shows that cocoa has an even higher concentration of antioxidants than …
The Ig Nobel Prizes of 2003
May I have the envelope please…it’s time to once again inform my faithful readers of the results of the Ig Nobel Prizes, given annually by the science humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research to those who have done something that first makes people laugh, then makes them think. This year’s winners received a solid gold …
Gorillas
I recently toured the Toronto Zoo, exciting to me because I’ve never seen it, and exciting to our two-year-old, Alice, because currently her favorite story is a short adaptation of Disney’s animated adaptation of Tarzan, in which many of the characters are gorillas–and one of the Toronto zoo’s star features is called the Gorilla Rainforest. It’s …
Log buildings
As I mentioned last week, I recently spent a couple of days at the Chateau Montebello, the world’s largest log hotel. Ironically, that same weekend, another famous log structure, the central building at the Minaki Lodge in northern Ontario, burned to the ground. Both Montebello and Minaki were built more than 70 years ago. But …
The worst jobs in science
Just last week, at the conclusion of the column on the dinosaur extinction debate, I wrote this: “Science is anything but a collection of dull facts: it’s a living, breathing, growing and very human enterprise. That’s what makes it fascinating.” That is, of course, true (would I lie to you?), but the fact is, nothing …
My latest live walk and vlog
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