Ever since I was a little boy, I’ve wondered something. Somewhere in between the first time I asked myself, “Why is the sky blue?” and the first time I asked myself, “What is the meaning of life?”, I first asked myself, “What the heck is dry cleaning?” The cleaning I knew mostly involved water–lots of …
Here’s a question that has bugged me since childhood. Why does the tooth fairy collect teeth? Why does she want them so much she’s willing to give a quarter or even a loonie for every one she finds under a pillow? Teeth, at first glance, don’t seem very valuable. As any encyclopedia will tell you, …
There’s a scene that’s appeared in so many movies and TV shows that it’s become a cliché. You know the one: it’s where this guy is staggering, eventually crawling, through the desert. Cut to a shot of the sun glaring down at him. Cut to a close-up of his parched lips. Cut to a wide …
With the end of the Cold War, a lot of previously classified military technology is making its way into civilian hands. Spy satellites whose very existence was top secret, for instance, are now being used to survey crops. This post-war transfer of technology from military to civilian use is not new: it happened after the …
An anthropologist who knew nothing about our culture might well be fascinated by our traditional summer folk dance. You know the one: it’s where we jump about from foot to foot, waving our hands in the air and occasionally slapping parts of our body. It’s called the “Mosquito Mazurka.” Our hypothetical anthropologist might also note …
Motion pictures have always been largely illusion: artificial realities convincingly created by assorted designers, craftspeople, cinematographers and actors. But these days, what you see on screen is less “real” than ever. Today special effects rule the movies, thanks primarily to computers. That’s not to say there were no special effects before computers came along. …
Summer is the time for outdoor concerts, but even when 20,000 people gather in a muddy field, they take it for granted that they’ll be able to clearly hear the music…and complain if they don’t. We’re so used to electronically amplified sound the only time we give it any thought is when it doesn’t work …
It’s summer, and the weekend air is full of the sound of sawing, hammering and (occasionally) cursing. Yes, it’s time to break out the tools and build that deck, fix that roof, install that new door–and whatever your renovation plans, you’ll probably use either nails or screws in abundance. The nail is the simplest and …
When I was a small boy in Texas, summer meant more than school holidays: it meant fireworks. As Independence Day approached, from any one of hundreds of roadside stands that sprang up out of nowhere you could buy bottle rockets, Roman candles, sparklers, and, of course, Black Cat firecrackers (50 for $1). One of the …
I’ve sung all my life, and I’m rather good at it–good enough that people sometimes actually pay me to sing. Yet I’ve had friends whom people might very well pay NOT to sing. Why is it that some of us can sing, and some can’t? Physiologically, there’s no reason at all. Singing is really …
“Water, water, everywhere, and all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere Nor any drop to drink.” –Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner It’s one of the ironies of nature that although three-quarters of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, only a very small percentage of that water is drinkable–as the Ancient …
It’s colourless, odourless and ubiquitous, covering 74 percent of the Earth’s surface. But even though water is one of the most common substances on the planet (although it doesn’t seem that way some years in Saskatchewan), in terms of its special properties, it’s also one of the most uncommon. It’s a good thing, too, because …
