Vitamin D is essential for a healthy body, in particular, strong bones. The sunlight-bone link was recognized nearly 200 years ago, when dark, smoky skies in newly industrialized cities in England led to an epidemic of rickets: weak and deformed bones, especially in children. In the 1920s, the vitamin D link was further established when […]
Field Notes
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Solstice Puzzles
It’s summer solstice — and therefore puzzle — time again! Here are some of the best puzzles to have come my way in the last 12 months for your entertainment and frustration. So, deep breath and … Laterally Yours When this old chestnut was posted in Britain’s New Scientist, everyone got the obvious “aha” answer, […]
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Solstice Puzzles ANSWERS
Laterally Yours 1: Turn the 9 upside down (columns add up to 21). 2: Place the 1 on top of the 5 (20). 3: Place the 3 on the 9 (18). 4: Place the 5 on the 7 (19). 5: Place the 1 facedown on the 4 (20). 6: Place the 4 facedown on the […]
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The Myth of the Lone Genius
“Last night.” — Fictional lone genius Tony Stark answering when he became an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics If you believe everything you see on the silver screen, you know all about lone geniuses. Think Tony Stark, Doc Brown (Back to the Future) and Zefram Cochrane (Star Trek‘s warp drive inventor). No harm done there but […]
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mRNA Vaccines vs. the Pandemic
“I knew that [mRNA] can be used for everything and I had a kind of a Cassandra feeling, that I can see the future and nobody believes me.” Katalin Karikó, winner, with Drew Weissman, of the 2023 the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine I was overjoyed when, late last year, the Nobel committee announced […]
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Doubting Shakespeare, Part 3: Whodunnit?
Last week, I presented arguments supporting the anti-Stratfordian case, that Stratford’s “Shakspere” wasn’t the sublime writer William Shakespeare. If the man from Stratford didn’t write the Shakespearean canon, who did? Originally, Francis Bacon was considered the prime candidate. Later contenders included: Christopher Marlowe; Henry Neville; Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke; William Stanley, sixth Earl […]
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Doubting Shakespeare, Part 2: Problems
“They’re both bonkers!” — Stanley Wells, Britain’s leading Shakespeare expert, on the opinion of preeminent Shakespearean actors Sirs Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance, that the Stratford man didn’t write the Shakespeare canon. Last week, I noted that the traditional “Stratfordian” belief that a wool merchant from Stratford-on-Avon in England was the author of the Shakespeare […]
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Doubting Shakespeare, Part 1: Stratfordians vs. anti-Stratfordians
On April 26, 1564, 460 years ago, the baptism of one “William Shakspere” was recorded in the provincial town of Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England. According to the conventional story, this glover’s son grew up to become the greatest writer in the English language, author of 38 plays, 154 sonnets and three long poems. But was […]
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A Brief History of Dildos
“Thou … madest to thyself images of men, and didst commit whoredom with them.” — Ezekiel 16:17, KJV Along with notable human achievements such as the invention of the plow and the wheel, we should also celebrate a much older innovation, by tens of thousands of years: the dildo. In 2005, a team of researchers […]
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Eclipse!
Science started around dusk on May 28, 585 B.C. Don’t take my word for it, that’s the opinion of the late polymath/sci-fi author Isaac Asimov. On that date, the Iranian Medes and Greek Lydians, who’d been warring for six years, were fighting a battle near Turkey’s Halys River when, late in the day, the sun […]
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The Little Drone that Could
Ingenuity, “Ginny” to its friends, will never fly again. The little Mars-based helicopter-drone landed badly on its 72nd flight on Jan. 18, 2024, damaging all four of its carbon fiber wingtips and ruling out future flights. But in the three years since being released from the underbelly of its “mothership” the Mars rover Perseverance, it […]
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Multiverse
“… at a time when our world, the real world, faces serious problems, [scientists] dwelling on multiverses strikes me as escapism — akin to billionaires fantasizing about colonizing Mars.” John Horgan There are two categories of multiverses, conveniently labeled “landscapes” and “dreamscapes” by physics professor Paul Halpern in his new book The Allure of the […]