I am surprised at the fascination that Americans have with food and the number of my friends and acquaintances who avidly watch cooking shows. Food is one of the great pleasures in life and I like it as much as the next person but watching it get made carries with it as much interest as watching a carpenter make a cabinet. Once you have admired the skill of the expert, interest wanes, at least for me. I would never have guessed that one day there would be entire TV channels devoted to just food. [Read more…]
Dr. George Murray Levick was a member of the ill-fated Scott expedition to the South Pole in 1910 where he observed penguin behavior, including necrophilia, that so shocked him that he recorded his observations in Greek so that others would not be able to read about them accidentally. [Read more…]
There has been quite a bit of publicity about watching the transit of Venus across the Sun. Apparently for a few hours earlier this week, you could see a small black dot move across the face of the Sun. [Read more…]
In my review of the futuristic novel Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart, I mentioned one element that the author envisaged which was an iPod-like device that people carried with them that would immediately calculate your attractiveness, informing everyone nearby both of your absolute score as well as your ranking in a room full of people. It sounded a little disconcerting, even creepy. [Read more…]
A lot of outrage has been expressed at the behavior of the school administrators and the school nurse who did not allow a student suffering an asthma attack the use of his inhaler. The question naturally arises as to how anyone could be so callous as to not respond to an immediate visible need. This was especially so with respect to the nurse whom one would think would put medical needs first and bureaucratic niceties second. [Read more…]
Anyone who is even minimally aware of how climate science works knows that you cannot use any one weather event or one anomalous season in any single location to argue for or against global warming. But some of the most vociferous opponents of the global warming hypothesis tend to be scientifically naïve and parochial and think that way (“Look at that snow! So much for global warming! Ha! Ha!). Maybe such people in this area of Ohio will be sobered up by the fact that the last winter was the warmest on record (it was barely a winter) and that we are predicted to have a warmer than normal summer. [Read more…]
Contrary to the popular American belief that it was Columbus who discovered that the Earth was round, that fact was not only known a long time before, the circumference of the Earth had actually been calculated to high accuracy 2,200 years ago. [Read more…]
(Note: I accidentally posted a draft of this yesterday before it was ready for publishing. I deleted the draft and am reposting it today with some additional editing and new material. I apologize for any confusion.)
I myself do not routinely swear. But when I accidentally do something stupid and hurt myself, I will find myself involuntarily swearing. I am sure that many people have had that same experience or at least being strongly tempted to swear when experiencing pain. But why do we do that? [Read more…]
It is quite extraordinary how the Catholic Church seems to go out if its way to alienate women. Fresh from their assault on nuns (see here and here), the US Conference of Catholic Bishops is now targeting Girl Scouts. Both my daughters were girl scouts and it would be tough to find a more wholesome or inoffensive group. But the old men of the Catholic Church seem to see it as a gateway to evil. [Read more…]