I recently toured the Toronto Zoo, exciting to me because I’ve never seen it, and exciting to our two-year-old, Alice, because currently her favorite story is a short adaptation of Disney’s animated adaptation of Tarzan, in which many of the characters are gorillas–and one of the Toronto zoo’s star features is called the Gorilla Rainforest. It’s …
Tag: science
Log buildings
As I mentioned last week, I recently spent a couple of days at the Chateau Montebello, the world’s largest log hotel. Ironically, that same weekend, another famous log structure, the central building at the Minaki Lodge in northern Ontario, burned to the ground. Both Montebello and Minaki were built more than 70 years ago. But …
The worst jobs in science
Just last week, at the conclusion of the column on the dinosaur extinction debate, I wrote this: “Science is anything but a collection of dull facts: it’s a living, breathing, growing and very human enterprise. That’s what makes it fascinating.” That is, of course, true (would I lie to you?), but the fact is, nothing …
The dinosaur demise debate
“Everybody knows” that the dinosaurs were killed off 65 million years ago by a giant meteor that slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula. But as is often the case in science, what “everybody knows” may be wrong. The asteroid impact theory has been dominant for 20 years, but there have always been doubters. They admit a …
Pentaquarks
Every branch of science has its pinnacle of achievement, the thing that every scientist in that field dreams of achieving. For an astronomer, it’s the discovery of a new heavenly body; for a paleontologist, a new species of dinosaur. And for a physicist, it’s the discovery of a new subatomic particle. University of Saskatchewan particle …
TorCon3: The 2003 World Science Fiction Convention
See my photos of TorCon3 here. I was sitting at a table at the front of an ordinary room in the Toronto Convention Centre a few days ago, along with three other writers of children’s books. We had just begun a panel discussion on “Writing For Children” when in strolled a massive troll, gray as …
Searching out shipwrecks
Earlier this month, a company called Odyssey Marine Explorations Inc. announced that it has discovered the sunken wreck of the S.S. Republic, a steamer that went down in a hurricane off Savannah, Georgia, on October 25, 1865, carrying $400,000 in $20 gold coins–worth $120 to $180 million today. There was a time when sending a …
Super clothes
Choosing what to wear in the morning is about to become even harder. Should one choose the bullet-proof blouse, the colour-changing cardigan, or the self-heating sari? Clothing is about to be revolutionized by a slough of new technologies. Imagine, for example, fabric that can change pattern or colour on demand. International Fashion Machines, a small …
French fries
It’s Exhibition week in Regina, and while some may sing the praises of the midway, the craft shows or the agricultural displays, let’s face it: it’s really all about food. And not just any old food. No, the quintessential fair foods are deep-fried, from elephant ears and miniature doughnuts to the famous, fabulous French fry. …
Musical preferences
You would think, music being so much a part of almost everyone’s life, that there would be a lot of scientific research on why we choose to listen to the music we do–but you would be wrong. Of the nearly 11,000 articles published between 1965 and 2002 in the leading social and personality scientific journals, …
Animal emotions
Anyone who has ever owned a pet, at least of the warm-blooded variety, knows that animals have rich emotional lives. Dogs whine piteously when left alone; cats sulk when their owners are going out and leaving them at home; horses can develop such strong attachments to each other that they refuse to be put into …
Choosing a mate
How many times have you heard it said that “opposites attract”? From movies to books to musicals, it’s an idea that has been drummed into our heads: Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, for instance, or Liza Doolitle and Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. But a new study has found that when men …
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