A Bit About Bias Now that both the Canadian and the American elections are over, it’s time to ask ourselves a serious question: How on Earth could so many people be so pig-headed and blind as to have disagreed with you and me (I’m assuming, of course, that you agree with me) about the best …
Category: Science Columns
The Bloodhound SSC
It’s no secret that people occasionally speed between here and Saskatoon. At the speed limit, 258 kilometres should take about 2 1/2 hours. But by doing (in the immortal words of The Dukes of Hazzard theme song) “just a little bit more than the law will allow,” some people cut that down to, say, 2 …
Faces
Faces, both metaphorically and in reality, hold real power–which has made them a fruitful area of research over the years. Much of that research into faces has focused on attractiveness–because, as Lisa DeBruine and Ben Jones, experimental psychologists at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, put it, “people preferentially mate with, date, associate with, employ, …
The science of what I’m doing right now: music
I’m currently in the middle of a Saskatchewan tour with the Canadian Chamber Choir. In fact, we have a joint concert with Juventus in Regina on Friday at 7:30 p.m. at Westminster United Church. Because my brain is currently stuffed full of music, it’s hard for me to come up with a scintillating new science …
Male managers as animal show-offs
I’ve been a freelance writer for 15 years now, so the world of office politics is something I know about only through second-hand accounts and television shows. I say that just so you know I can’t personally vouch for the accuracy of the study that caught my eye this week. The study, authored by Jeffrey …
The 2008 Ig Nobel Prizes
It’s October, which means not only that I am now getting up in the dark, but that it is time for the Ig Nobel Prizes, given annually by the Annals of Improbable Research “For achievements that first make people LAUGH then make them THINK” (apparently IN CAPITAL LETTERS). The 2008 prizes were handed out last …
Car faces
Every once in a while my seven-year-old daughter will watch a car go by as we’re driving and comment, “That car looks angry,” or “That car looks sad.” It’s something we’ve all thought at some point or other (or at least I have) regardless of age: the fronts of cars look just enough like faces …
A taste for cooked meat
It’s not very often you come across new science related to the history of cooking meat, possibly because it’s such a widespread human activity–especially in the summer–that everyone takes it for granted. Also, we’ve been doing it a very long time. As I wrote in a column four years ago: “Evidence…suggests our hominid ancestors were …
The Large Hadron Collider
You would have had to work very hard last week not to have heard that the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, has just started operating on the Swiss-Franco border. Superlatives abound in any discussion of the LHC. It’s the largest machine in the world, 27 kilometres in circumference, 100 metres underground. …
The cold facts
We are, alas, heading into winter, which is not only the cold (Brrr!) season, but also the cold (Ah-choo!) season. We all get colds. That’s not surprising, because, as the Common Cold Centre at Cardiff University in the U.K. likes to point out, we breathe in some 15,000 litres of germ-laden air every day. Which …
Why flies are so hard to swat
Michael Dickinson is a genius. At least, in 2001 the University of California, Berkeley, professor received one of the $500,000 “genius” grants given annually by The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to creative individuals “who provide the imagination and fresh ideas that can improve people’s lives and bring about movement on important issues.” …
Books, movies, reality are all equally disgusting–and that’s a good thing!
I write nonfiction (obviously), but I also write science fiction and fantasy. We who write such stuff are occasionally asked (and occasionally wonder) if our works can continue to compete in a media universe in which “science fiction” and “fantasy” conjure up for most people Hollywood special-effects extravaganzas first, and the written word second (if …
My latest live walk and vlog
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