Infestations, Microbes & Parasites

Science & TechnologyOne Comment

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Staphylococci, Corynebacteria, Actinobacteria, Clostridiales, and Bacilli. They’re the most common, but they’re not the only ones. Bacteria. Microbes. Yes, even parasites.  Living in your belly button. And on your skin. Your hair. But the belly button flora and fauna fascinate me the most.* We’ve known ever since the microscope was invented that we had a population of hitchhikers living on our skin, scalp – and even inside us. The great Antony van Leeuwenhoek is known as the “father of microbiology” for his explorations through his fledgling, primitive microscope in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. But we are still learning about ……… click below for more ↓

From 7 to 29. Should I be worried? Or just keep monitoring?

Collingwood / Environment / Personal Reminiscences / Science & Technology2 Comments

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Seven cents per hour. That’s what the energy monitor was showing me a moment before I plugged in the kettle. Then it jumped to 29 cents. Wow! And this is mid-peak time, too, my new energy monitor warns. Should I be worried? Better cut back on the tea if I want to conserve energy. It did the same last night when we turned on the microwave at dinner time, but that was off-peak. Still, that’s pretty high, compared to seven cents. Those two devices seem to be the biggest energy hogs we have. I need to do some calculating, however, ……… click below for more ↓

We are Stardust… and Viral Genes

Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Science & Technology / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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In her classic song, Woodstock, Joni Mitchell ended with the chorus: We are stardust Billion-year-old carbon We are golden Caught in the devil’s bargain And we’ve got to get ourselves Back to the garden Which most people assume is merely poetic licence. Well, Joni wasn’t wrong: we – and every living thing on our planet – are made of stardust. As we learn at Physics Central: If we know how many hydrogen atoms are in our body, then we can say that the rest is stardust. Our body is composed of roughly 7×1027 atoms. That is a lot of atoms! ……… click below for more ↓

1927: Ads, Layout and Typography

Arts / Books & Reviews / Culture / Fonts & Layout / Typography / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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As promised, here are the first 20 scans of the ads from the 1927 North American Almanac I recently mentioned. If there is interest, I’ll do another set later this week. There are probably another 40 or 50 pages of ads in the book. I think these ads give us a wonderful window into the daily, household life of the time, into cultural views and medical thinking. As well, they show the state of advertising, layout and typography. It’s fascinating to look at the mix of typefaces and their placement. Click on the image to load a larger version and ……… click below for more ↓

Bread the Old-Fashioned Way

Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal Reminiscences / Social Order & Disorder / UncategorizedLeave a comment

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For all the reading, the reviewing and the researching for the best bread maker these past few days, it’s somewhat ironic that instead I turned back to the old-fashioned method and made a couple of loaves by hand, this morning. Not perfect – I haven’t made bread these past twenty-odd years, and have forgotten the techniques and the tricks I knew back then. More time was needed for the rising, but I grew impatient, and unsure about the timing. Into the oven too soon. But they are tasty nonetheless. Chewy, rich and delicious, especially warm. And reasonably light, but with ……… click below for more ↓

Why Creationists Don’t Win the Nobel Prize

Atheism & Spirituality / Critical Thinking / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

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Looking at the list of Nobel prizes awarded in 2013 for science, we see three prestigious entries: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2013 François Englert and Peter W. Higgs “For the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.” The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2013 Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel “For the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems.” The Nobel Prize in ……… click below for more ↓

Hijack the Starship

Books & Reviews / Personal Reminiscences / Science & Technology / Social Order & Disorder / US PoliticsLeave a comment

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Nineteen seventy. A great year for music, and a sad year, too. The death of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin.* Many of the great acts were kicked off their record labels and would struggle to find new publishers.** The great psychedelic band, Jefferson Airplane was breaking up, but before it did, Paul Kantner and Grace Slick put together a new band, named Paul Kantner and the Jefferson Starship (which would change its lineup before finalizing as the Jefferson Starship a few years later). They released a science fiction-counterculture concept album called Blows Against the Empire in 1970. It would go on ……… click below for more ↓

The Smallest Helper

Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

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While I was pondering the nature of flour in my cogitations about bread machines (I’m still debating which model, by the way – suggestions welcome, but local stores have few options), I turned my grey matter to the business of yeast. Yeast is, of course, important in bread making because it makes bread rise. Why? You ask. Well, dear reader, the answer is simple but not pretty: farts. Yep. Yeast flatulence makes bread rise. Yeast out-gases carbon dioxide after it eats. The gas gets trapped in the gooey dough and, since it can’t escape, the dough expands. Food writer Linda Stradley ……… click below for more ↓

Something so basic, yet so different stands between us

Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / Personal Reminiscences / What I'm Reading Now2 Comments

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You’d think it should be this easy: just take a bread machine, throw in all the ingredients listed in the recipe, push a button, wait, remove loaf and eat. Yum. Nah, of course not. Never is. And there are reasons for this, I’ve been learning. I have an old bread machine – must be 20 years old or near as dammit – and my results were always mixed, using the recipes in the manual. I constantly tinkered with them. The best loaves were qualified successes. I ate them, Susan balked. The worst were, well, inedible, even for a guy who ……… click below for more ↓

1927, a Year to Remember

Arts / Books & Reviews / Culture / Social Order & DisorderOne Comment

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1927. It was the year America sent troops to Nicaragua, forcing a US-supervised election. The year Alfred Hitchcock released his first movie. And the year when Fritz Lang released his masterpiece, Metropolis. Buster Keaton released The General that year, although it bombed at the box office. Clara Bow starred in Wings. Sergei Eisenstein released October: Ten Days That Shook the World. Silent films, all, although the Movietone sound system came out that year at Fox Studios, presaging a new world of talkies in another few months when The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson, premiered in New York City. That same year, the Academy ……… click below for more ↓

Why do so few Canadians get a flu shot?

Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Internet & Social Media / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

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That’s the headline for a recent Toronto Star story. It suggests that as few as one third of Canadians get a flu vaccine, and in some place the number may be as low as 20 percent. This despite Ontario having the world’s first universal free flu shot program, introduced in 2000. The 2013-14 vaccine is on its way to doctors’ offices now. It’s also available at pharmacists’ offices. It’s free, easily accessible, it prevents and helps stop the spread of many kinds of influenza, it can save the life of anyone at risk – so why don’t people get one? ……… click below for more ↓

Poor Lao Tzu: He Gets Blamed for So Much

Atheism & Spirituality / Balderdash & Hoaxes / History & Biography / Memes; Internet & Social / Quotes & Mis-quotes7 Comments

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Poor Lao Tzu. He gets saddled with the most atrocious of the New Age codswallop. As if it wasn’t enough to be for founder of one of the most obscure  philosophies (not a religion, since it has no deity), he gets to be the poster boy for all sorts of twaddle from people who clearly have never read his actual writing. This time it’s a mushy feel-good quote on Facebook (mercifully without kittens or angels) that reads, If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are ……… click below for more ↓

Internet Surveys: Bad Data, Bad Science and Big Bias

Balderdash & Hoaxes / Critical Thinking / Politics / Provincial Politics / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Science & Technology / Social Order & Disorder / US Politics5 Comments

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Back in 2012, I wrote a blog piece about internet polls and surveys, asking whether internet polls and surveys could be – or should be – considered valid or scientific. I concluded, after researching the question, that, since the vast majority lack any scientific basis and are created by amateurs – often with a goal to direct rather than measure public opinion – that, Most internet polls are merely for entertainment purposes. They harmlessly allow us to believe we are being engaged and are participating in the process, and they make pollsters happy to receive the attention. They are, however, ……… click below for more ↓

The Eyes Have It

Education & Learning / Personal Reminiscences / Psychology & Sociology / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

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This summer my mother was diagnosed with macular degeneration. There is no cure. It is irreversible. It simply progresses. Science has some hope for future cures, and has some treatments to slow the progress, but a cure likely won’t come soon enough for her. At 93, one expects that the body will fail, that organs and parts won’t work as well, will lose efficiency, will fail. But this is particularly tough on her. It was clear during our visit today that this diagnosis troubles her. My parents were both voracious readers, and they passed along a love for books, reading ……… click below for more ↓

Digital Attachments

Games & Gaming / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

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It’s tough to lose a solider. Especially one like Dimitri. A fine sniper, with a good kill record. I had trained him for so long, raised him from a lowly private to sergeant, then to lieutenant. He was equipped with the best gear. His accuracy had improved to a deadly asset. He was a cornerstone to my tactical approach. He was also an investment in time and materiel. And as such, he was headed for greatness. Captain, maybe major. Until the aliens got him. That was nasty. Three of them swarmed his position, flanking his protection and taking him down ……… click below for more ↓

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