connected? when I turn my head right before I know you’ll look and you see a window to me? no, you see, I say our relation is fixed! no, i do not take responsibility, because we are both an equal part of a + b = c where a is you, and b is me, and c is what we become from one another or what we take away (i from you, you from me) on our way to solvent, or solve, or possibly dissolve, to see what we can make out of unequal charges. but, if we both hold…
The Science Creative Quarterly
The Science Creative Quarterly (SCQ) is not a quarterly, but instead publishes new material at a non-linear rate. Currently, it is sleeping and in a sort of stasis (turpor?) It used to seek science writing of any genre, and your contribution would have involved checking out our submissions guidelines.
The Science Creative Quarterly (SCQ) has a single print edition so far (half SCQ pieces, and half fake science journal – see here for more details). Also, badges?
Stay safe everyone!
ADVICE ON HOW TO BABYPROOF YOUR MOLECULAR GENETICS LABORATORY
One of the first things that a newborn experiences is not necessarily the warmth and scent of the mother’s embrace, but rather a series of pokes and pricks to ascertain health and mental alertness. It therefore seems to me that a natural progression of this trend is to incorporate the highest medical predictive technology into an infant’s normal surroundings. In other words, it seems obvious to me that sooner or later everyone will have their own molecular genetics lab in their household – most likely adjoining the kitchen. But, of course, with this new standard of living, steps must be…
AGAINST UNWORTHY PEAS
Charles admits that this is a crass ripoff of Yeat’s “Against Unworthy Praise.” He was compelled to write this, after reading “Peas in Space.“ In space, eat no peas, because Your ventilators break And oh two surely pause Being for a pea-freak’s sake. Enough the pea-paste seemed, Which did your strength renew, But dream J. Cohen dreamed Till the astronauts cried aloud, A secret of menu new, For eating above the clouds. What, still you would have their peas! And floats a nastier mess, Persists in the air for days Subjecting the crew to stress; And how what his dreaming…
THE ART OF SCIENCE – THE SCIENCE OF ART?
We started a new unit in my grade 12 biology class yesterday, on the mechanisms of inheritance. I wanted to impress on my students how the recognition of DNA as the code for life pervaded and altered the public consciousness. In a century that had already seen (and would later see) more history-changing events in science than perhaps the previous two or three centuries put together, DNA still stands out. I even suggested that the DNA double-helix might be the most recognizable scientific icon of all time [1]. So, I started out the lesson by telling them about my favourite…
SCIENCE VS. SUPERSTITION
1 Dr. Andrew Fober, geologist, is putting his trash on the curb when a black cat crosses his path. It belongs to the Hennessy girl down the street. He thinks its name might be Pickles. Not ten minutes later, Dr. Fober stumbles down his cellar steps and breaks his collarbone. Twenty minutes after that, Pickles is flattened by a passing Buick. Winner: Science. – – – 2 During their sophomore year at Harvard Medical School, sweethearts Jack Beecher and Wendy Arnold decide they can wait no longer. They make plans for a spring wedding. On the morning of the big…
LARVAE
What Terry was supposed to be doing was researching the anti-bacterial properties of squid eggs. That’s what his master’s thesis was about, and it was also the reason he had received a $25,000 grant from the Teuthis Foundation. But Terry had a side project. He was running the Circus Minimus in his little lab in the BioSci Building at the University of British Columbia. His lab was stuffed with vats full of squid in various stages of their life cycles. Eggs, larvae, and egg-laying adults. Mostly of the California squid, Loligo opalescens, but a couple of other species as well.…
A COLLECTION OF WORTHY SCIENTIFIC EPONYMS (ARRANGED ALPHABETICALLY)
The Science Creative Quarterly is happy to present a growing list of scientific eponyms as first initiated by the efforts of Samuel Arbesman and The World’s Fair. Please feel free to email us if you wish to add to this list (tscq@interchange.ubc.ca). – A – Arbesman Limit (keywords: science, eponym, immortality) … the maximum number of concepts or ideas that can be named after a single person link – D – Drugmonkey Scale (keywords: drugs, reaction to blog post, neuropsychology) link – F – Fox Paradox (keywords: genomics, ethics) Just because we’ve sequenced your genome, we don’t necessarily know your…
IT TASTES AWFUL, BUT DOES IT WORK? A SKEPTICAL PATIENT LOOKS FOR THE RIGHT MEDICINE
“Take one tablet once a day.” The prescription reads like a verdict sentencing me to a life of pharmacy. Tucked away in the top of my backpack hides a tiny pillbox of shame needed to keep me healthy. “Stop being so melodramatic. Lots of people are hypothyroid; it’s one of the most common hormonal imbalances.” My friend Julia brings me back to reality. In the wake of successful chemotherapy and radiation treatments, my thyroid (a gland in the neck responsible for producing hormones that regulate metabolism) became underactive. It happened so gradually it was hard to perceive a change. Probing…
BROKEN PATCH-CLAMP CONFIGURATION SERIOUSLY DISRUPTED BY UNRULY USE OF BRUTE MECHANICAL FORCE – A LAMENTABLE TRADEGY IN NOT SO MANY ACTS*
* Please note; paper previously rejected by “The Royal Victorian Journal Of Contemporary Science” on grounds of questionable style and insufficient use of the semicolon. – – – Samwise S.K. Darius & Colleague Dear Sirs In this preliminary study, conducted after Friday afternoon tea, my esteemed Colleague and myself resolved to investigate whether a stem cell, of origin I am not at liberty to disclose, but which needless to say had undergone a transfer of proteinous nature from a cell of the hairus folliculum variety, would respond to shear stress caused by gravity-mediated lateral flow of extracellular buffer in an…