Here’s a topic I have far too much experience with: trying to control one’s personal mass. Let me lay out my own history… December, 1979. After two years of university, eating far too many pizzas and far too much vending-machine food, I return to Canada weighing 265 pounds. Nobody calls me “Slim.” July, 1981. After …
Tag: science
Y2K: the Year 2000 problem
The 21st century doesn’t actually begin until January 1, 2001, but for most people, January 1, 2000, seems more significant, just because of the change from writing 19 in front of the year to writing 20. That little change is even more significant for businesses that rely heavily on computers, because computers, too, are used …
Kitchen germs
In my small, elderly house, the bathroom opens onto the kitchen, which has always worried me: I keep picturing armies of bacteria marching out of the bathroom to contaminate my food. It turns out my concern is misguided: a recent study indicates it’s more likely bacteria from the kitchen will contaminate my bathroom.. Scientists from …
The Hubble Space Telescope
If you’re an astronomer, “Twinkle, twinkle little star” isn’t a cute bed-time song for children, it’s a nightly nightmare. Stars twinkle (and daytime skies are blue) because we live at the bottom of a thick soup of atmosphere that distorts our view of the heavens. Ever since Galileo, this has played havoc with observations of …
Garlic
There are few foods that can’t be improved with a little garlic. (Ice cream and pecan pie, maybe, but that’s about it.) Its distinctive taste has made it a favorite flavoring for thousands of years…although no doubt the ancient Egyptians and Romans, both of whom used it, also made the first jokes about “garlic breath.” …
Breath analyzers
I’ve never really been sure why New Year’s Eve is considered a good time to have a wild party. Are we celebrating the fact that 1996 is finally over (was it really that bad a year?) or trying not to think about what 1997 will hold? Whatever, December 31 is a day known for parties, and hence …
Christmas Questions II
It’s almost Christmas, and time once again to turn our thoughts from the humdrum concerns of our everyday lives to those eternal questions that have echoed through the ages, such as… What the heck is a “sugarplum”? In Victorian days, neither canning nor freezing were available as a means of preserving seasonal summer fruits in …
Citrus fruits
Never mind carols in the snow, decorated trees and Canadian Tire commercials, for me the real proof Christmas is just around the corner is the appearance of boxes of mandarin oranges. Equating citrus fruit with anything wintry, though, is really rather odd, because citrus fruits are notoriously unsuited for cold climates. Citrus fruits come from …
Hair loss
My two older brothers probably won’t read this, so I can say this with impunity: they’re losing their hair, and so far, I’m not. I’m not saying this to brag, merely to illustrate…oh, who am I fooling. Of course I’m saying it to brag! Holding on to one’s hair, however, isn’t really anything much to …
Neanderthals
If I were to call you a Neanderthal, you’d think I was calling you brutish, primitive, incapable of nobility and the higher emotions, and stupid, to boot. Of course, if we said this about any existing group of humans–expatriate Texans, for instance–we would be accused of being racist. Neanderthals, alas, cannot seek redress for libel, …
Digestion
Like most of you, I ate too much on Thanksgiving, and felt guilty about it afterward. But then I came up with the idea of writing this column on digestion, and presto! No more guilt. You see, I didn’t overeat, I conducted research. You’ll have to find your own excuse. When you sit down to …
Canadian inventions
As a boy in Texas, I learned that Americans invented just about everything worth inventing, from the cotton gin to the steamboat to the electric light bulb to the telephone (more on that later). But, like so many other things I learned in school, it “ain’t necessarily so.” In honor of National Science and Technology …
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