The Last Word

24 – 28 September In which Cameron informs us that gull poop carries drug resistant bacteria that infests beaches, lakes and even dumps. Delightful stories abound of the falcons and dogs that have been dispatched to chase them off. But that makes me wonder: after they’re chased off, where do they take their pestilent cargo? [...]

When you’re in Manitoba, you’re never speeding

Something surprising happened last week: I heard a new song, and I liked it. Liked it enough to want to find out who sang it, and how I could hear more. Once, that would have been utterly unremarkable. For a good part of my twenties and thirties, I was a music junkie. I went out [...]

The Last Word

September 3 – 7 Sometimes new technology gives you a person who can only compare the moon to a tart. And sometimes it gives you Galileo, or the Beatles. This week, Richard pondered the connection. For labor day, Ann brought back her famous account of scientists being withering. Tom got irritated about the science lies [...]

How Kid Culture Tells our Children Lies and Destroys the Future of Science

Some parents, especially those with writerly or scientific tendencies, cope with the shock of having reproduced by chronicling every twist and turn as their progeny move from mewling rage ball to drooling tyrant, and beyond. Not for the me the introspection and fearless truth telling of Anne Lamott’s Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s [...]

SCUBA Diving through the Endless Martian Desert

There are a lot of ways to follow the progress of the Curiosity rover as it probes the geological history of Mars. But you could do worse than following one of her drivers, Scott Maxwell, on twitter (@marsroverdriver). Sure, his tweeted celebration of Curiosity’s successful touchdown late Sunday night — “Hey, I still have a [...]

The Last Word

July 2 – 6 This week, Tom wondered why one of the greatest mental capacities our outrageously successful species possesses hardly works at all. Faced with parenting in a region “where a high school diploma confers a solid elementary school education”, Jessa weighed her home schooling options and whether they could guarantee a prodigy. Cassie’s [...]

You’re Not as Happy as You Think You Are, Behavioral Scientists Report

Marriage is like a sweater. A yellow sweater you bought, and couldn’t return. So says Dan Gilbert, a psychologist at Harvard, and one of the 20 outrageously accomplished behavioral scientists who spoke at a 1-day summit at Stanford last week. Gilbert studies happiness, not knitwear. And his main point is that we humans are terrible [...]

The Mystery of the (Not) Missing Fathers

There’s a song we all like to sing along to at our house. “Popcorn” by the Barenaked Ladies is uptempo, wistful, and propelled towards an explosive crescendo by an onomatopoetic beat. There’s much to love, in other words, but I always get tripped up a little by the first line of the lyric:   Mama [...]