– FROM THE ARCHIVE – I am going to take Science to the people. I will start small with curbside lectures on botany and bus-based displays of electromagnetism, before moving indoors to synthesize acetaminophen in a local Starbucks – perhaps lead a roundtable discussion on nanotechnology in a booth at the back of T.G.I Fridays. The science elite won’t appreciate my de-mystification of their beloved theories and the bourgeoisie, with their fancy pants and complicated shoes, will riot out of sheer terror. But the people will rejoice, for within them all are weak legged, bespectacled science geeks with no aptitude…

– FROM THE ARCHIVE – Last year, I had a decidedly Jungian experience, which is odd for me as a rational scientific sort. This synchronicity event happened at a local bookstore where I was searching for an issue of a Canadian magazine called Maisonneuve, a publication nice enough to print an essay of mine. As I was looking over the rack, my eyes wandered and noticed an issue of The Believer1 , where lo and behold, I saw my name on the front cover – a very observable and clear “by DAVID NG”, written with agreeable font, and even flanked…

– FROM THE ARCHIVE – (A review and/or rebuttal to “A Scientific Experiment” by Jaime J. Weinman) Well, it’s a good thing that science experiments on webpages aren’t subject to the traditional anonymous peer review process. It they were, Jaime would probably get a reply something like this: “Dear Mr. Weinman, “We regret that we cannot accept your manuscript for publication in its current, or likely any, form. The reviewers have pointed out a number of glaring deficiencies and omissions, briefly summarized below. “Although your scientific curiosity is to be applauded, your experimental methodology seems exceedingly limited, and lacks many…

– FROM THE ARCHIVE – Some other people were talking about the silliest things they’d ever done. Their examples beat my own, but then, they’d done more things than I had, silly or no. The one really silly thing I’d done that they hadn’t was — and I swear this is true — I once tried to see if it was possible to cook all the fat out of a hot dog. I’m quite serious about this, though, as you can imagine, it happened on a day when I was really, really bored. I had eaten a hot dog for…