Today, when I gave blood, the petite, Hispanic technician informed me that I was now a member of the Gallon Club. She explained that I had made eight visits to the blood center over the years, and, having given eight pints, was now in the ranks. Opening a white file cabinet, she removed a gaudy gold plastic pin in the shape of a drop of blood. It was emblazoned with a red cross on a white field, and in nearly invisible writing below the insignia, it said GALLON (1) DONOR. I graciously accepted the honor. Now, however, I was curious…
The Science Creative Quarterly
From commentary
WHICH CAME FIRST?
There has been some discussion in this venue of that ancient question, which came first – the chicken or the chicken egg. The answer is quite simple. A chicken, by definition, is a bird hatched from a chicken egg. A chicken egg, by definition, is an egg laid by a chicken. It follows immediately that there can have been no first chicken nor any first chicken egg. Ergo, if there is a chicken today, there have always been chickens and chicken eggs in the past. It can be shown that there was a time in the past when there were…
THE THAMNOPHOBIA CRISIS
Because the deadly scourge of thamnophobia moves slowly, many of its social, political, and economic effects have yet to be understood. The impact is hard to overstate. But we must be up to the task. The other day, I was talking to a colleague, a highly educated and intelligent person who is usually capable of insightful logic, understatement, and restraint. When the topic turned to President G.W. Bush. Suddenly, the conversation began to sound like this: “That g@#$#$%&#$%^m@$n Bush #&$#&$%^ !!!! 2#$^@ damn 3 f$%^@k$%^@$%g neocons s#o$n%@of# b$%t@#c%h hitler!!!!! @#$%@$%^#$ Karl Rove a@s#$s%h@ #ol$%e hell in a handbasket !!!!!” What…
PICK A NUMBER BETWEEN ZERO AND INFINITY…
From: dave@cogsci.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) Newsgroups: sci.math,sci.math.num-analysis Subject: Re: call for votes: most & least boring numbers Date: 17 Jan 90 20:40:02 GMT In article <18311.25b44848@merrimack.edu> ain14924@merrimack.edu writes: “Reminds me of a friend of mine who claims that the number 17 is “the most random” number. His proof ran as follows: pick a number. It’s not really as good a random number as 17, is it? (Invariable Answer: “Umm, well, no…”)” This reminds me of a little experiment I did a couple of years ago. I stood on a busy street-corner in Oxford, and asked passers-by to “name a random number…
OF EVOLUTION AND THE BIBLE
In the Beginning… Many people believe that there is a conflict between science and religion when it comes to the question of how life began on Earth. While only a minority of people situate themselves squarely on one side of this debate, the topic tends to draw the attention of everyone. This is because the answer to the question of where we came from serves as the jumping off point for defining our morality and our purpose here on Earth. Quite simply, once we know what brought us into being, we know where to ask for instructions. Consequently, any explanation…
MYSTERY ORGANISM BAFFLES GIRL ADVENTURER.
I’m a girl that likes to know what she’s looking at. I have a degree in biology, and I’ve spent the past few summers exploring Eastern North America, learning about the wildlife there. Those trips left me with an urge to identify every interesting plant, animal, or mineral I see, so that I can play the role of Madame Know-it-all the next time I see it. When I’m on a hike, I want easy access to a field guide, or better yet, an expert naturalist—that way I don’t have to remember how to use those complicated identification keys in field…
AM I EVERYWHERE?
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 by two pretty star icons.…
A SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENT
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 lunch, and I was wondering,…
WHITE LADY
The animal I’ve been working with in my class lately is the beautiful beastie, Drosophila melanogaster. While I was cleaning out some stocks, I found this lovely example, a pale lady. She is a white mutant, and so lacks the normal red pigment in her eyes. In addition, she had just recently eclosed from her pupal case, and although her wings looked neat and pressed, her cuticle hadn’t yet fully tanned. She looked even more ghostly when I first spotted her, and was visibly darkening as I put her under the camera. Here’s a close-up. It’s amazing how every hair…