As I researched this week’s science column, I thought for a moment I had already written it, because as I Googled the phrase “fight like cats and dogs,” what popped up but…a column from the Regina Leader Post. That column, by Christalee Froese, which ran July 7, began pretty much exactly the same way I …
Tag: science
Breaking news about baseball bats
The “crack of the bat” at Major League Baseball games isn’t just a cliché, it’s also a safety hazard. This year alone, a coach in the visitors’ dugout and a fan in the stands, both at Dodger Stadium, have been seriously injured by chunks of broken bat. In both cases, the bat that broke was …
Surveying Saskatchewan
As a kid, I could never figure out what quarter-sections were. Eventually I learned it was equivalent to 160 acres, but why was it a quarter-section? A quarter-section of what? And where did that long string of numbers and letters used to describe it come from? Well, better late than never, they say, and now …
Good news for live musicians
Neuroscientists have found that a piano sonata played by a human being elicits stronger emotional responses than the same piece played by a computer: Senior research fellow in psychology [at the University of Susses] Dr Stefan Koelsch, who carried out the study with colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences …
Scientific evidence reading fiction is good for you AND for society
From the Globe and Mail: A group of Toronto researchers have compiled a body of evidence showing that bookworms have exceptionally strong people skills. Their years of research – summed up in the current issue of New Scientist magazine – has shown readers of narrative fiction scored higher on tests of empathy and social acumen …
"Study: perception of hole size influenced by performance"
This explains why when I golf, the hole appears infinitesimal.
High-tech cooking
If you are my age or older, you still think of microwave ovens as pretty fancy high-tech gadgets. But microwave ovens (like me) have been around for decades. There are many more high-tech gadgets landing in kitchens all the time, and if most of them are currently found in expensive restaurants, that doesn’t mean they …
High-tech cooking
If you are my age or older, you still think of microwave ovens as pretty fancy high-tech gadgets. But microwave ovens (like me) have been around for decades. There are many more high-tech gadgets landing in kitchens all the time, and if most of them are currently found in expensive restaurants, that doesn’t mean they …
The Tunguska centennial
Canada Day and U.S. Independence Day fireworks this week in honour of the countries’ 111th 141st* and 232nd birthdays, respectively, can’t hold a Roman candle to the natural fireworks that erupted in western Siberia exactly 100 years ago. On June 30, 1908, at around 7:17 a.m. local time, natives and settlers near the Podkammennaya Tunguska …
The Tunguska centennial
Canada Day and U.S. Independence Day fireworks this week in honour of the countries’ 111th 141st* and 232nd birthdays, respectively, can’t hold a Roman candle to the natural fireworks that erupted in western Siberia exactly 100 years ago. On June 30, 1908, at around 7:17 a.m. local time, natives and settlers near the Podkammennaya Tunguska …
The remarkable life of Sir Joseph Banks
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 …
The remarkable life of Sir Joseph Banks
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 …
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