Tag: science

The Holy Grail of hemophilia treatment

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2011/12/Hemophilia-Gene-Therapy.mp3[/podcast] Over more than two decades of science writing, I’ve seen a lot of my past writings rendered obsolete by scientific progress. Case in point: the release last week of a research report on exciting new progress in gene therapy for hemophiliacs. Back in 2001, I wrote a book on hemophilia for the Enslow Publishers …

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Snow business

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2011/12/Snow-Business.mp3[/podcast] It’s hard to believe that, in 20-plus years of science column writing, I have (as far as I can tell) only ever written about snow once. After all, snow is as much a fact of life in Saskatchewan as sun, wind, and the Riders losing. Perhaps there is a psychological reason for my avoidance …

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Creative cheaters

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2011/11/Creative-Cheaters.mp3[/podcast] I like to think I’m a fairly creative guy. It’s hard to write a bunch of science fiction and fantasy novels without having at least a modicum of creativity. I also like to think I’m an honest guy. Tell the truth, keep your word, don’t cheat: that’s how I was brought up, and I …

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The doorway to forgetfulness

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2011/11/Doorways-to-Forgetfulness.mp3[/podcast] It’s been a staple gag of TV sitcoms for years: an older character walks into a room and says, “Now, what did I come in here for?” But gags like that are funny because they have a grain of truth in them, and increasingly, I’m finding that grain of truth sticking in my own …

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The Viking sunstone

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2011/11/Viking-Sunstone.mp3[/podcast] The World Fantasy Convention in San Diego, which I attended a couple of weeks ago in my guise as fantasy author Lee Arthur Chane, had as its theme “Sailing the Seas of Imagination.” It’s a shame the topic of this week’s science column didn’t hit the news until after that convention ended, because really, …

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Take that, whippersnapper!

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2011/11/Aging-Scientists.mp3[/podcast] The great Albert Einstein once famously said that “a person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of thirty will never do so.” Normally, I’d be the last to argue with Einstein: but just this once, I’m glad to say, it appears he was wrong. To be fair, his …

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Birds of a feather

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2011/11/Flocking.mp3[/podcast] It’s a familiar sight this time of year: enormous flocks of snow geese, covering a field, then all taking flight at once, whirling and swirling in unison. It’s almost like they’re all under the control of a single mind, but of course they aren’t. In fact, they’re under the control of a multitude of …

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The science of ebooks vs. print books

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2011/10/Ebooks-vs-Print-Books.mp3[/podcast] Once upon a time, the word “book” meant only one thing: a stack of paper printed with text and bound together along one edge. These days, though, the word “book” has developed two meanings. You can still read a bound-stack-of-paper book, but you can also read a book without ever touching anything that was …

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Of mice and man-flu

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2011/10/Of-Mice-and-Man-Flu.mp3[/podcast] As any wife will tell you, men are lousy at being sick. They swear they’re on death’s door when it is quite apparent to their long-suffering significant other that in fact they are suffering from nothing more than a cold, nowhere near as bad as the one she had the week before when she …

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Alcohol on the brain

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2011/10/Alcohol-on-the.mp3[/podcast] Human beings have been using and abusing alcohol for a very long time: roughly 10,000 years, give or take a long weekend. The effects of drinking too much of the stuff have been known for every one of those 10,000 years (although individuals somehow seem to forget them within a remarkably short time frame). …

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The 2011 Ig Nobel Prizes

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2011/09/2011-Ig-Nobel-Prizes.mp3[/podcast] Ah, it’s my favorite time of the year, a time when this column practically writes itself. It’s Ig Nobel Prize time. The Ig Nobel Prizes are presented by the science comedy magazine Annals of Improbable Research, to honour achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” At the ceremony, genuine (and …

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Seeing through someone else’s eyes

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2011/09/Recreating-Brain-Video.mp3[/podcast] Whenever I say anything is impossible, I always think of Arthur C. Clarke’s First Law: “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.” Up until recently, I would have said mind-reading was impossible…but, even …

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