“Players aren’t buying an investment; they’re buying permission to fantasize for a couple of days.” — Jack Murtagh, Scientific American, April 2025 Neurologists recently figured out what gamblers have known ever since a savvy Sumerian grifter invented the shell game: You don’t have to win to be a happy punter. You just have to bet […]
Barry Evans
Posted inLife + Outdoors
The Moons of Mars
In the first volume of his Mars trilogy Red Mars, science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson has the larger of Mars’ two moons, Phobos, destroyed after it had been weaponized. Which would be a tragedy IRL, since Phobos may well be a stepping stone to exploring the Red Planet. It could also give us information […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Free Will Redux
“We are not captains of our ships. Our ships never had captains.” — Robert Sapolsky, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will When things get weirder — and I suspect that, politically, the weirdness is just beginning — I’m in the habit of remarking to whomever is listening, “We’re just running on a program […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Ozempic, the Wonder Drug? Part 2
“The medication’s going to be 50 percent of your journey, and the other 50 percent is still what you choose to eat and the exercise you’re going to put in.” — Obesity specialist Dr. Rocio Salas-Whalen Last week, I discussed the mechanism of GLP-1, a popular semaglutide sold under the brand names Ozempic, Wegovy and […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Ozempic, the Wonder Drug? Part 1
“These drugs have the potential to change societies, not just individuals.” — Michael Le Page, New Scientist, March 29, 2025 Obesity is a chronic disease approaching crisis levels. Currently, about 42 percent of Americans are obese, having a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30 or more, with a predicted rise to 50 percent of the […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Midsummer Puzzles ANSWERS
1. Syzygy. (Astronomically, a syzygy is when three bodies align, for instance the sun, Earth and moon during eclipses.) 2. French. You’re in Île de l’Est, one of the French Crozet Islands. (If you want to be pedantic, since the island is uninhabited, the correct answer is none.) 3. Letter F: 4. Toss your quarter, […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Midsummer Puzzles
OK, its not quite Midsummer, which (for obscure reasons) is the name given to the start of summer, i.e. the Summer Solstice, this year Friday, June 20, 7:42 p.m. PDT. So it’s time for our annual puzzle edition. (You can find the answers on page 37.) 1. What’s a six-letter word containing three Y’s? 2. […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
You Say Aluminum, I Say Aluminium
My wife, Louisa, and I recently found ourselves looking up at a statue comprised of 7,400 welded aluminum plates, the Winged Virgin of Panecillo Hill in Quito, Ecuador. It’s the tallest aluminum statue in the world with a total height of 135 feet. Based on a 48-inch-tall wooden sculpture created in 1734, the Virgin was […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
The Flammarion Engraving
“That good anchorite, who boasted of having been as far as the end of the world, said likewise, that he had been obliged to stoop low, on account of the joining of the sky and earth in that distant region.” — Francois de la Mothe Le Vayer, 1662 The lovely engraving of a pilgrim — […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Aspirin: The World’s Most Popular Drug
About 2,400 years ago, Hippocrates, the so-called Father of Medicine, wrote about the curative and pain-killing properties of willow leaves. In particular, he recommended willow leaf tea to relieve the pain of women in childbirth. He was following a long tradition: Ancient Sumerian tablets had recommended willow leaves to treat rheumatoid arthritis, while the Egyptian […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Milankovitch Cycles and Climate Deniers
Talk to a climate denier — someone who believes global warming has purely natural causes — and chances are you’ll soon hear the phrase “Milankovitch cycles.” These, not humans, are responsible for climate change, they’ll say. Actually, this is what your regular climate denier will claim. In the extreme version, some of these benighted souls deny […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Axis of Evil
Don’t blame me for the clickbait heading. Capitalizing on Dubya Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address in which he singled out Iraq, Iran and North Korea as Earth’s baddies, cosmologists Kate Land and João Magueijo employed the same phrase three years later for the title of their scientificxpaper. In it, they described a spooky […]