Tag: science

Taste

  Taste is highly subjective. You may like rhubarb, which I regard as mutated celery. I, on the other hand, like haggis, whereas organ meats ground up with oatmeal and boiled in a sheep’s stomach may not appeal to you. And so on. Yet our tongues both respond to the same four (and only four) …

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Tears

  There are two kinds of people in the world: those who cry at movies and those who don’t. I freely admit I’m one of the former. I even cry during TV sitcoms. Heck, sometimes I even cry during commercials (only the really good ones, though). Just why some people cry more easily than others …

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Pens

I’m writing this on a computer powered by electricity and connected to a laser printer. For most of the several thousand years humans have been writing things down, though, the only computer in use was the moist gray one inside our skulls and the only printers connected to it to were the penta-digital ones at …

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Skyscrapers

  “One dark night, when we were all in bed, “Mrs. O’Leary lit a lantern in the shed, “And when the cow kicked it over, she winked her eye and said, “‘There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight. Fire! Fire! Fire!’” This famous bit of verse doesn’t mention it, and somehow I …

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Migration

You know what it’s like: the alarm goes off, it’s dark, the wind’s howling, your nose is cold, there’s a snow drift on the windowsill, the radio is talking about icy streets and flesh freezing in 30 seconds, and you just want to pack up and get out of town. Yes, I know I wrote …

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Copernicus

This is not a great month for science anniversaries — but the one really big anniversary is a REALLY big anniversary: the 520th birthday of Nicolaus Copernicus. Copernicus brought forth the radical notion that the Earth was not the centre of the universe: that the Earth moved around the sun, instead of vice versa. The …

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Chocolate

North Americans eat 4.5 kilograms of it apiece per year. The Swiss, Belgians, Austrians and others eat even more. And given unlimited resources and no worries about looking like a blimp, I’d be happy to eat even more than that. “It” is chocolate, and most people agree with taxonomist Carl Linnaeus, who labelled the cacao …

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Hibernation

It’s finally spring (despite the fact that as I write this there’s as much snow on the ground as there has been all winter) and that means that many lucky creatures are just now waking up from their long winter sleep. Deep in burrows or caves, various ground squirrels, marmots, woodchucks, shrews, hedgehogs and bats …

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Antarctica

“So this fingie beaker shows up, first day on the ice. She’s an Antarctic 10, but she’s strictly black tie, no bunny boots, not even diapers. There she is, complaining about the cold while I’m doing the bag drag, listening to all this, and finally I just turn to her and tell her, ‘Hey, it’s …

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Hiccupping, itching and sneezing

We like to think we control our bodies. As I type this, my fingers oblg — er, obEY me pretty well, and if I choose to stand up and walk away, my legs won’t argue. Sometimes, however, our bodies seem to have minds of their own: like when we’re hiccupping, itching and sneezing. A hiccup …

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Weather forecasting

I know this is a sensitive topic, but sometimes it’s necessary to face life’s unpleasantries. It’s time I wrote about weather forecasting. I know, I know, this time of year it seems like anybody could forecast the weather. “Miserably cold this weekend, but springtime’s just around the corner — not!” But believe it or not, …

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Tops and gyros

Frequently I begin my column by delving into my childhood for pleasant memories about some activity or other that just happens to relate to my topic. Not this time. This week, my topic is tops and gyroscopes, and the fact is that as a kid I never saw the point of them at all. Remember …

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