In the course of writing a non-fiction children’s book on the mutiny on the Bounty, I recently made the acquaintance of someone I’m sure I should have already known about: Sir Joseph Banks. Banks, who died 188 years ago last Thursday, was a remarkable scientist (though the word wasn’t in use at that time) whose …
Category: Science Columns
Monday, Monday
From the Mamas and the Papas’ “Monday, Monday” to the Carpenters’ “Rainy Days and Mondays” to the Boomtown Rats’ supremely creepy “I Don’t Like Mondays,” the first day of the work and school week has been vilified as a day of depression. But new research shows that people’s moods don’t really change that much over …
This is your brain on Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock, James Vermiere wrote in the Boston Herald on the occasion of the centenary of Hitchcock’s birth in 1999, “delighted in terrifying audiences by manipulating them…More than any other filmmaker, he was a master at messing with our minds.” “Wait a minute!” I hear you cry (if I happen to be sitting behind you …
007’s gadgets no longer just fiction
A few years ago, I decided my cinematic education had been sadly lacking and I decided to watch all of the James Bond movies in sequence. (I was single then.) Somewhere in the Roger Moore era I petered out, partly because I was finally running into films I had seen in theatres, partly because…well, some …
Tinnitus: the sound of silence
“The Sound of Silence” is not just a title of one of Simon and Garfunkel’s biggest 1960s hits, it’s also an ironic reality for millions of people who never experience real silence–because they hear noises all the time. It’s a condition called tinnitus, and it’s one of the most common hearing afflictions around. The Tinnitus …
Talking cars: Knight Rider lives!
Remember those 1980s cars that used to tell you “Your door is ajar”? Even aside from sounding like someone who only knows the punchline but not the setup of an old joke (“When is a door not a door?”) those voices annoyed almost everyone. Which is why, for many years, most cars didn’t talk. But …
Try to remember
Ever try to list a series of interesting things you’ve heard or own or read about for someone else, only to end up saying something like, “and…and…and I forget the other thing.” There’s a good reason why we often “forget the other thing”–because our conscious mind, or what is sometimes called our “working memory,” has …
The green fairy loses her mystique
It was called “the Green Fairy” Among the bohemian artists and writers of late 19th-century Paris, it took on legendary status for its supposed ability to enhance consciousness and bring on s inspiring hallucinations. Its strange reputation was only enhanced when, in the early 20th century, country after country in Europe banned its production in …
The science of fairy tales
I have a six-year-old daughter, which means in the past few years I’ve been reintroduced to the wonderful world of fairy tales. I’m as willing to suspend disbelief as the next guy–more so, probably, since I’m a reader and writer of fantasy–but I also have a scientific bent, and every once in a while I …
Molecular gastronomy
The terms “soft condensed matter physics, biochemistry, and molecular biology” are not usually associated by the average person with “bread, cheese fondue, and the mystery of milky sambuca,’ but as Rachel Ehrenberg recently pointed out in Science News, they should be. That’s because (and if you watch the Food Network, this won’t come as a …
Take me out of the ballgame
I have a confession to make: although born in the United States, I’m lousy at that country’s national pastime. I hit not, neither do I catch. If I had a dollar for every fly ball I dropped as kid, I could buy…well, a baseball glove, probably, but what would be the point? So this week …
Milestones in musical technology
I’ve always had an interest in the myriad ways art and science intersect: not surprisingly, Leonardo da Vinci is a hero of mine. Few arts have been altered more by advances in science and technology than music, a point made by New Scientist’s Technology Blog recently when it listed five milestones in music technology (and …
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