Your cart is currently empty!
Category: science
-
Read More, Live More
My mother used to scold me about reading too much. ‘Go outside!’ she’d say. ‘Enjoy the sunshine!’ when she’d find me curled up with my nose in a book. Later, she’d tell me I was reading too many books. She was worried I was neglecting my schoolwork, but I could point out that my grades…
-
Myth-Busting: Radon
House hunting has all kinds of stresses inherent in it. For one thing, even once you’ve found that perfect place, you still have to get over several hurdles. One of those is the inspection, and as someone asked me, what about radon? What about radon? I had no intention of paying for a ‘radon inspection’…
-
Blinking in the Dark
I have been listening, for my own amusement, to a history of chemistry as audiobook. It wasn’t a history when it was written – it was intended to be a non-technical take on what chemistry could do for mankind to inspire and reduce the fears of the time that surrounded the science. It’s a fascinating…
-
Myth-busting: Calf Cruelty
I don’t usually do a post that is mostly other people’s words, but this is just amazing and wonderful and gives me hope for the future of agriculture. Also, it’s very much true. I grew up on and around small to medium farms, I know what it takes to run one, and it’s not easy.…
-
Captivity, the Butterfly, and the Stars
Rapid adaptation to captivity affects wild animals, and humans, too.
-
Organoleptic
Pertaining to the senses: smell, touch, taste… It’s not a word you’ll see in general reading, but I was reading a paper on the cyanide content of fruit seeds, and they were discussing what those seeds bring to the table as they are used in cooking and making liqueurs. The organoleptic qualities of the seeds…
-
The Link Between Genetic Paucity and Extinction
Consider the dodo. When I asked a bunch of my friends on social media to contemplate it, the conversation ranged from ‘we can extract DNA from museum specimens? Cool! Bring back the dodo!” to “I hear dodos didn’t actually taste that good. Anyone have a recipe?” Which is a testament to human nature and the level…
-
Myth Busting: Bug-B-Gone
The latest and greatest in science hysteria is the new study that came out with a ‘shocking’ insect population decline. Most people are reading only the headlines, and then walking around like Chicken Little screaming their heads off about the sky falling and climate changing and, and, and humans are TEH EVUL. I’m not exaggerating.…
-
Sinal Salute
The human skull is a pretty amazing thing. One of the bits of Anatomy class I enjoyed most while having to memorize the bones was getting to explore what’s called an ‘exploded’ human skull, which is one that’s been taken apart into it’s various parts. The skull, no matter what you might have learned in…
-
Myth-Busting: Ocean Plastic
There’s been a video making the rounds of social media, showing rafts of debris floating in the ocean, most of it plastic. I keep seeing it being shared along with laments about how we humans are a scourge on the face of the earth and we’re killing the ocean. Only… that’s not completely accurate. While…
-
Low-Hanging Fruit
I was talking with the Little Man last night, and he was being gloomy. He told me what he wants to do when he grows up: he wants to get a degree in Electrical Engineering and help design a plane that hovers. But then as we were chatting about that and the Arduino kit he…
-
Zombie Caterpillars
I have to admit, there’s nothing like finding a scientific paper on zombies, mummification, and, er, caterpillars to put me in the Halloween mood. It’s got it all: mind-controlled caterpillars who submit to their fate, controlled by a monster that isn’t even sentient. Then, the mindless monster sparks wars, is used to cheat in races, and scientists…