Amateur beekeeper Gita Nandan began to suspect something wasn’t right about mid-summer. That’s when her bees’ honey, normally amber, turned the color of cherry cough syrup. After a day of foraging, her bees would return to their Brooklyn hives, their distended bellies glowing bright red. She posted photos on the Facebook page of the New […]
Each year my mother asks for my Christmas list. No, I’m not eight. I’m more than two decades older than that. Yet she still asks. And I still send one. (I also cc Santa just to be on the safe side.) This year, I’m inclined to ask for a kitchen thermometer. It’s not that I […]
Cameras are nifty. They take a slice of the hustle and bustle of real life and dip it in liquid nitrogen, preserving it for eternity (or as long as our hard drives last). But they can’t do everything. Try taking a picture of the moon or the stars or a particularly lovely sunset. If you’re […]
Yesterday I shared a room with 3,000 buzzing tsetse flies – the bugs that carry the sleeping sickness parasite. Tsetse flies live in Africa, but these guys are Yalies. They buzz and breed in racks of mesh cages on the 6th floor of Yale’s School of Public Health. (They also recite some Goethe – it’s […]
The procedure, developed in the late ’50s, is called fecal transplantation. Those of you who watch Grey’s Anatomy will have heard of it. And, yes, it is what you think it is. A physician takes poop from one person, and then he puts it into another. Don’t worry. The recipient doesn’t have to swallow the […]
You feel lousy. Some old lady sneezed on you in the subway. Now you’re achy and tired and feverish. Face it, Bud. You’ve got the flu. Better just crawl back into bed. What’s that? You have to fly to London? You’ve got an important meeting with a client? Well, I guess I can’t stop you. […]
Allison F. can pinpoint the exact day she fell ill. She was at work talking to her boss. “I suddenly felt like a truck hit me. I was weak, dizzy, achy, nauseous and feverish. It felt similar to the onset to the flu, but exceedingly more intense,” she writes. She went home, thinking she had […]
While browsing this year’s list of Ig Nobel awardees (improbable research is so much more fun than the kind that wins Nobels), I stumbled across a quirky little study on The Peter Principle. What’s The Peter Principle? I’m glad you asked. In 1941, a man by the name of Laurence Peter became a teacher. He […]