Tag: Science Columns

Why men and women shop the way they do

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/12/Shopping-and-Gender.mp3[/podcast] They shuffle along with blank faces and dead eyes, unseeing, unthinking, lost in some private hell that you as passerby can only pray never similarly engulfs you. You scuttle by, eyes averted, as though they have some horrible contagion against which neither face masks, Tamiflu nor vaccination can defend…and yet the odds are that …

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The thrill of victory depends on the fear of the agony of defeat

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/11/Sports-Emotions.mp3[/podcast] The Saskatchewan Roughriders play the Calgary Stampeders in the Canadian Football League’s Western Final this Sunday. That simple declarative sentence contains a novel’s worth of angst for fans of the Riders (and possibly for fans the Stampeders, too, but I can’t speak about that, not being one of those LOSERS!…oops, sorry, did I type …

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To sleep, perchance to dream

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/11/Dreaming.mp3[/podcast] Why do we dream? You’d think we’d know by now. Everyone dreams, and people have been fascinated by dreams throughout recorded history. But scientifically, their origin and importance remain uncertain. Do they serve some vital psychological or physiological function? Or are they just meaningless accidents of our brain’s wiring? A few years ago, Finnish …

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Do you suffer from gelatophobia?

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/10/Gelotophobia.mp3[/podcast] It’s getting on toward Christmas, which means A Charlie Brown Christmas will soon be on TV…and we’ll once again get to watch Lucy give her nickel’s worth of psychiatric advice to Charlie Brown, listing all the phobias he could be subject to. One she won’t list is gelotophobia, which, though it sounds like it …

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The silent majority

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/10/The-Silent-Majority.mp3[/podcast] It’s probably happened to you. It’s certainly happened to me. You’re at some social gathering or public event when someone says something so outrageously extreme that you can’t believe it. The thrower of this verbal bombshell seems to assume everyone agrees with him…and since no one speaks up,  except for a couple of people …

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On the scent of odourprints

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/10/Odourprints.mp3[/podcast] You smell. No, I’m not being insulting. I smell, too. So does everyone else. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) human noses are not particularly sensitive, and so we only notice one another’s smells under certain circumstances, which we are all familiar with and I am therefore spared from having to enumerate. But to those of …

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The 2009 Ig Nobel Prizes

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/10/Ig-Nobels-2009.mp3[/podcast] The 2009 Ig Nobel Awards for “research that first makes you laugh, then makes you think,” given by the scientific humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research, were presented last Thursday at Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre. And I think I must begin with the Public Health Prize, which went to Elena N. Bodnar, Raphael C. …

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The benefits of chatspeak

When it comes to the brave new world of interpersonal communications via electronic networks, I believe I do quite well for a man who is…how can I put this delicately…no longer teenaged. Or twenty-something. Or thirty-something. Or, as of this summer, even forty-something. Despite my advancing years, however, I am still a with-it and happening …

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Arachnophobia

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/09/Arachnophobia.mp3[/podcast] “The itsy-bitsy spider went up the waterspout. Down came the rain, and washed the spider out…” At which point a large percentage of us screamed and ran the other way, because surveys show that one fifth of men and a third of women are frightened of arachnids. It makes sense, right? Spiders can be …

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Guilt trip

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/08/Guilt.mp3[/podcast] Guilt has gotten a bad reputation in recent years. People talk about being “plagued by guilt” as if guilt were some kind of mental illness. But in fact, guilt is a very useful emotion. People who are entirely guilt-free have no constraints on their behavior. They can cheerfully commit all kinds of mayhem, from …

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Liquid fuel from solar power

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/07/Liquid-Fuels-from-Solar-Power.mp3[/podcast] In recent years, scientists and engineers have turned to biofuels—fuels generated from living things, and hence renewable—as a means of weaning us off of fossil fuels in favor of something cleaner, less likely to run out, and less wrapped up in international geopolitics. Fermenting the sugars found in corn or other grains into ethanol …

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The saga of WD-40

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/07/WD-40.mp3[/podcast] For as long as I can remember, we’ve had WD-40 around our house, and I’m quite sure I’m not alone in that experience: most houses contain a can somewhere. But I’d never really thought about it, or even why it was called what it’s called, until this week, when I read the New York …

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