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Basically Everything is Worms
I was reading a piece by Melissa Hogenboom on the currently-recognised 35 different…well, let’s call them kinds of animals. A few years back I’d have been happy calling them phyla, but a phylum, like...
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Ducks and Horses
A certain amount of nonsense has been written about duck-sized horses and horse-sized ducks, and it’s time to set the record straight. In an online Q&A session back in August, President Obama was...
View ArticleNine Problems with Looper (that Aren’t Brain-Melting Time Paradoxes)
Director Rian Johnson does his best to head off the complaints of those paying attention. “If we talk about [time travel] we’re gonna be talking about it all day, making diagrams with straws,” protests...
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Relieving Tension
I stumbled across the following short story in my archives and thought it was worth sharing. It’s actually an assessment task from my BIOL 139 (Biomechanics) class back in 2002, which was taught by the...
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Extra Credit Biology Questions
Which king died from eating too many lampreys? Which Roman emperor saved a slave from being thrown to the lampreys? What’s the green stuff in the yolk of hard-boiled eggs, and how do you stop it...
View ArticleThe Unbearable Sadness of Apostrophes
We give a short quiz as part of the Essay Writing course I help teach at the Learning Skills Centre. As you read it, see if you can guess how well a class of 20 students would do. It’s tricky. Put...
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What, if Anything, is Big Bird?
Years ago, when I was in the early stages of my PhD, I gave a joke presentation at a graduate student conference on the taxonomy and evolution of Big Bird. It was the sort of thing you’d see at any...
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Wincing Whirligigs, Batman!
The Canon Natalie Angier Houghton Mifflin, 2007 ISBN: 0618242953 A whirligig tour of the beautiful basics of science. The subtitle says it all. Natalie Angier provides a one-chapter crash course on...
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Motherhood Handwaving
In the New York Times Magazine on March 4, Sharon Lerner argued that “making it easier for women to work may be the best way to increase birthrates.” Certainly most European countries think so; all...
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The World’s Population in a Big Box
How big a box would you need for everybody? Well, how much space do people take up? Assuming an average human mass of 65 kg, and a density of close to 1 (since we only just float), a person occupies...
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Spotting Fake Critters
Astonishing Animals Tim Flannery; illustrated by Peter Schouten Atlantic Monthly Press, 2004 ISBN: 0871138751 Why do biologists find the aliens of science fiction laughable? Because we know a little...
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