– FROM THE ARCHIVE – You are fine, what did you say your name is again? Mm. You got a way aboutcha, no lie. I like the way you cuuuuuuuurve so seductively around massive objects, baby, and I am dying to see how much you curve around this. You give me different looks, I like that, always something new to discover about you. I feel I can dig pretty deep into your mysteries and oh lordy do you have mysteries. You’re charming but you’ve also got depth, underneath the surface there’s something so consistent about you. Dependable. You’re not a…
The Science Creative Quarterly
From archive
A BRIEF HISTORY OF MY ON-GOING LOVE AFFAIR WITH SCIENCE
– FROM THE ARCHIVE – May 8th, 1988 I encounter science for the first time during recess. As my friends and I are busy using the magnifying lens that Billy Stewart had gotten for his eighth birthday to burn some sticks, she breaks off from the pack of girls she usually travels around the schoolyard with to tell me that she likes my shoes. I don’t understand how anyone could possibly dislike my shoes as they are brand new and have little zippered compartments where I have carefully secreted away the coins I will later use to buy myself some…
LOVE IN THE LABORATORY
– FROM THE ARCHIVE – It’s that time of year again, when pie-eyed romantics are wont to wax rhapsodic about the nature, the essence, and the mystery of love. With gilded tongues and dubious poetic license, they fling around flawed analogies and sweeping generalizations like Cupid’s arrows from a rapid-fire crossbow. And anyone with a heart beating within his or her chest is supposed to swell and swoon at the sweet dulcet tones of these tearjerking truisms. I say, ‘Hogwash’. I’m a lover (not a fighter) — but I have a brain nearly as big as my heart, but nowhere…
TO EAT CHEEZIES OR NOT TO (A CHEEZIE COMBUSTION PAPER)
To eat cheezies or not to…spontaneously combust, that is the question. A recent trip to the West Chilcotin for field work elicited a Cheetos™ snack craving and a subsequent binge on Cheetos Puffs™. You know the ones they make your fingers and everything else they come into contact with orange and a pasty orange at that I might add. During this junk food binge (whereby I set out to devour a bag of Cheetos™ the size of my upper body) friends informed me that Cheetos Puffs™ make a better fire starter than a lunch substitute. I was appalled and declined…
FOR THOSE ABOUT TO POST-DOC (WE SALUTE YOU)
You come to hate airports. And the juggling act forced on you by Christmas mayhem. And the thousand other tribulations that you’re heir to when you and your partner have been living apart for more than two years. Two years. The post-doc opportunity of a lifetime took my wife to MIT in August 2005, leaving me in Vancouver with only a couple years of my doctoral degree under my belt. We weren’t even married at that stage. Engaged before she left, we distracted ourselves during our first year apart by planning our nuptials. W-day was in July 2006, including a…
JOURNAL CLUB FIND: CREATIONISM + MICROBIOLOGY = YEAH, RIGHT…
Microbes and the Days of Creation (pdf) (2008) Answers Research Journal 1 (2008): 7–10. In which we learn that microbes were created on Day 3, no wait – Day 4 – hang on a minute, Day 5? – – – – – – ABSTRACT: The world of germs and microbes has received much attention in recent years. But where do microbes fit into the creation account? Were they created along with the rest of the plants and animals in the first week of creation, or were they created later, after the Fall. These are some questions that creation microbiologists have…
TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS EXPLAINED WITH SMURFS
Our Earth is filled with finite resources that we, as the Human Race, exploit for personal gain. Oil, Fish Stocks, Forests, Clean Air, and water are just a few of the resources that nobody “owns,” but everybody needs in order to survive. However, in our current system, nobody who is taking away these natural resources from the whole of us has to pay back into the natural system. Thus, there is a great incentive to consume all of the available resources before somebody else gets to them, Garrett Hardin called this nuance the “Tragedy of the Commons.” Let’s take Smurfs…
THE WIKI HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE IN 200 WORDS OR LESS
Quantum fluctuation. Inflation. Expansion. Strong nuclear interaction. Particle-antiparticle annihilation. Deuterium and helium production. Density perturbations. Recombination. Blackbody radiation. Local contraction. Cluster formation. Reionization? Violent relaxation. Virialization. Biased galaxy formation? Turbulent fragmentation. Contraction. Ionization. Compression. Opaque hydrogen. Massive star formation. Deuterium ignition. Hydrogen fusion. Hydrogen depletion. Core contraction. Envelope expansion. Helium fusion. Carbon, oxygen, and silicon fusion. Iron production. Implosion. Supernova explosion. Metals injection. Star formation. Supernova explosions. Star formation. Condensation. Planetesimal accretion. Planetary differentiation. Crust solidification. Volatile gas expulsion. Water condensation. Water dissociation. Ozone production. Ultraviolet absorption. Photosynthetic unicellular organisms. Oxidation. Mutation. Natural selection and evolution. Respiration. Cell differentiation. Sexual…
THE WIKI HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE IN 200 WORDS OR LESS
Quantum fluctuation. Inflation. Expansion. Strong nuclear interaction. Particle-antiparticle annihilation. Deuterium and helium production. Density perturbations. Recombination. Blackbody radiation. Local contraction. Cluster formation. Reionization? Violent relaxation. Virialization. Biased galaxy formation? Turbulent fragmentation. Contraction. Ionization. Compression. Opaque hydrogen. Massive star formation. Deuterium ignition. Hydrogen fusion. Hydrogen depletion. Core contraction. Envelope expansion. Helium fusion. Carbon, oxygen, and silicon fusion. Iron production. Implosion. Supernova explosion. Metals injection. Star formation. Supernova explosions. Star formation. Condensation. Planetesimal accretion. Planetary differentiation. Crust solidification. Volatile gas expulsion. Water condensation. Water dissociation. Ozone production. Ultraviolet absorption. Photosynthetic unicellular organisms. Oxidation. Mutation. Natural selection and evolution. Respiration. Cell differentiation. Sexual…