A virtual tour of Regina’s art galleries

My wife and I share an interest in art–we make a point of visiting galleries wherever we go. And now, thanks to the Web, we can visit galleries even in places where we don’t go, as more and more of them make their presence felt online. Regina’s art galleries are no exception. Visiting them online …

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The Journal of Mundane Behavior

I work at home, which, contrary to popular belief, does not mean I watch television all day. (I prefer computer games.) However, when, on occasion, I do turn the TV on, I’m immediately confronted with bizarre behavior, outlandish personalities, and just plain weirdness, on every program from talk shows to news. As a whole, our …

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Solar maximum

  Our sun is perturbed. It’s throwing off huge flares and erupting with spots like a teenager. That’s because this year marks the “solar maximum”–and that could mean trouble on Earth. The discovery of sunspots coincided with the invention of the telescope. Galileo was quick to turn his on the sun, focusing the image on …

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Art and science at the Saskatchewan Science Centre

Art and science are too often thought of as opposites, when in fact they are anything but. What is science, after all, but an attempt to make sense of the world, to detect the order lurking in apparent chaos (and sometimes, the chaos lurking in apparent order)? And what is art, but exactly the same …

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Leap year

This week saw, not just a once-in-a-lifetime event, but a once-in-four-centuries event: the first February 29 to fall in a year ending in 00 since 1600. The three basic elements of the calendar are the day, month and year. The day is the time it takes the Earth to rotate once: 24 hours. The month …

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The McIntyre Gallery turns 15

What could be more natural than artwork hanging on the walls of a house? At the McIntyre Gallery, that’s exactly what you get: outstanding work by Canadian artists, hung on the walls of an old house in the Transition area, so that a visit to the gallery is a lot like visiting the home of …

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Composer David McIntyre

Regina composer David McIntyre, whose first symphony was premiered by the Regina Symphony Orchestra February 12, set his sights high from the moment he began writing tunes. David, who is originally from Calgary, started piano lessons with his uncle when he was four. “I heard my uncle talk about the big names, like Mozart and …

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Longevity

Centuries ago, Ponce de Leon sought the Fountain of Youth in Florida. Today, his quest lives on in laboratories around the world. The discoveries are coming thick and fast, too. Just last week Leonard Guarente and scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced they have figured out how a gene found in yeast controls …

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The chemistry of love

Men have always suspected it, but now there’s scientific evidence: chocolate makes females more interested in sex. OK, so maybe that’s oversimplifying. What the study announced just before Valentine’s Day (appropriately enough) really said was that a “messenger protein” called DARPP-32 makes female rodents more interested in sex. But even the study’s lead author, Dr. …

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Artificial muscles

It’s not often that a three-year-old makes a significant scientific contribution, but one did recently–inadvertantly. Ron Pelrine, a senior research engineer with Stanford Research Institute International, wanted to keep his toddler out of the refrigerator, so he and his wife purchased a latch which attached to the side of the refrigerator with a special adhesive. …

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Alison Lohans

When Regina author Alison Lohans was four, she spent hours pretending to read to her little sister. At five, she discovered that just because you stop dreaming when you wake up, the dreams don’t have to end: she’d lie awake continuing the dreams in her head. When she was seven, her father let her use …

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The Assiniboia Gallery

The Assiniboia Gallery is 23 years old this year. So is its new owner Mary Weimer, who took over from the founders John and Monica Kurtz, in September. Running one of the city’s best-known, established art galleries was hardly what Mary had in mind when her mother called her one day in 1998, while she …

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